Prescott School District November Board Meeting

Church 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. I'm sorry.

I didn't even. Next up is recognition of visitors. For rules for public comment are as follows. Please approach the podium one at a time stating your name, municipality, and topic you'd like to address. Allotted time is three minutes per individual or six if you're representing a group that is present at the meeting. All comments should be directed to the board and not to staff or other participants. The board will not act on any comments that are made during a meeting. The presiding officer may direct the district administrator to follow that individual at a later date. The public comment section will be limited to 30 minutes unless board action is taken to extend. And as always, please refer to our public comment policy listed on the agenda for a full description of this section of the meeting. Anybody at this time care to approach podium be recognized?

All right, we're going to move on. Uh, we'll move to good news. We have Kayen.

Good evening everybody. My name is Kaden Hillibbrand and I'm the school board representative for the student body. Last week on Tuesday, November 11th, members of the Prescott School District and the Prescott community celebrated Veterans Day with an assembly that took place in the high school. The keynote speaker this year was Terry Bugworth. This past weekend, performances of Shrek Jr. took place on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The performances of all Prescott Middle Schoolers and St. Joe sixth graders were wonderful. Legally Blonde, the high school's musical this year, will begin rehearsals soon and will debut in early spring. The winter school sports season has officially begun in both the middle and high school. We wish the best of luck to those participating in winter activities. The upcoming snowball dance for the high school will take place on January 30th, and the group that is organizing it is looking for donations of fake trees, lights, and snowflake decorations. If any community members are interested in donating, they can contact Shauna Clawson or the school office for more information. The first trimester at the high school ends on November 25th and a pre as a precursor to Thanksgiving break finals will be happening next Monday and Tuesday. Finally, we are proud to share that the Prescott High School one act play, Last Girl, has advanced to the state competition. This is the second year in a row the one act play has advanced the state. They will travel to the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point to participate in the Wisconsin Intercolastic Theater Festival. Lost Girl. Um, there will be a free performance on Thursday, November 20th at 6:00 p.m. in the auditorium, and you are invited. Come out to enjoy a free evening of theater featuring our incredibly talented high school actors and crew. This show is appropriate for all ages, so feel free to bring your family to the show. Hope to see you Thursday evening and happy Thanksgiving.

Good evening members of the board. Um, Kyle Lego, Middle School principal. I am here to present um good news from the buildings uh from Malone Elementary. They Miss Dussk would like to thank the um MPC for getting them a new laminator. If you're an elementary person, you know how very important laminators are in the elementary world. Um, they are also looking forward to turkey bingo on Tuesday and all of her elementary students should get ready to gobble and waddle to the prize table. The Prescott Intermediate Student Council annual food drive is underway at this time. In 3 days they've gathered over a thousand items for the Prescott backpack program. Thank you to all the families that have donated so far. They're going to be collecting items through the end of the day next Tuesday uh before our our Thanksgiving break. Um, I also would like to congratulate the cast of Shrek Jr. It really was an amazing show. Um, thank you to our directors of Miss Cornish and Miss Metamro Miro, our vocal support of Faith Seawart and Elaine Schultz, Sarah Parkos, and Katy Hillbrand as parents who put in a lot of extra time. Um, we have lots and lots of people who put in I I I can't even guesstimate the number of hours they are there, right? Like I I think they had almost 40 hours after school just last week. Um, and it takes a lot of people to run productions like that. And that might be one of my favorite productions that we've done at the middle level so far. Um, it was it was absolutely fantastic and the kids really nailed it um all three shows. So, thank you to everyone who was a a part of that.

From the high school, uh, Prescott High School has a new student driven wellness club that has had multiple students participating at their meetings. The club's mission is to explore ideas and initiatives to promote positive student culture and increase our school community's overall climate. This far, this group has spearheaded an anti-bullying door decorating contest, a pumpkin painting competition to promote kindness, and most recently planned and organized the food drive and a toy drive over the holiday seasons. Athletics and activities updates. Our cross country team um our cross country program finished their season strong and it included our very own Kira Dixs advancing to the state meet, making the podium and finishing seventh overall. So, congratulations to Kira. And Kobe Russell was selected as the middleboard conference offensive player of the year for football. He was also named the All State as a defensive back. So, congratulations to Kobe.

Um, at this time, I'd like to introduce introduce Penny Peterson. She's going to talk just a little bit about some exciting things that are happening in community education.

All right. I don't know if I'm going to be as short and sweet as these guys, but I'll try. Um, I just wanted to make you aware of some grants that um we have been awarded in the last few weeks. Um, and so very excited about that. Um, the first one is the gathering place. Um, as you probably all know um the school provided or provides the space, the custodians, me, um copying, electricity, whatever, they have to provide their own funds for all their programming. And so, um, they originally got some funding from the Prescott Foundation and the city of Prescott. So, the advisory committee for the gathering place asked me to write, um, a request to the city again. So, I did that for $3,000 and we were just awarded that last week. So, they will be able to, you know, for the next 3-4 years go strong with their their program. So, that's exciting for them.

Um, the next two um I'm just excited about because they're programs that started as classes and really grew. And that's exactly what we want to happen in community ed um is to bring together people to form little mini communities about topics that they might like or causes they might be um feeling strong about. And so um pickle ball very strong feelings about pickle ball. Um, so we started that like 5 years ago. I just offered like I don't know three different times come to the gym and play. It has grown to now we have close to a hundred adults that are playing. And as we started having to get more playdates and different levels because now not everybody was a beginner now we have to go to intermediate and so um they started a board and so they meet regularly and so they still fall under community ed. The fees that we collect for community or for pickle ball. Some go to the general fund for community ed and the others go to a pickle ball account that's under community ed and those funds are used to buy supplies um, you know, balls, nets, whatever they need and then um, we also have a partnership with the city to help them update um the the courts in town. So, um, we helped him a couple years ago financially, kind of drained our account, um, for the the pickle ball account, and then, um, now they just put in more courts, and so the pickle ball people really wanted, um, fences between the courts, and so drained out our account again, but we were still short. So, the leadership team wrote a grant to Prescott Foundation, and they granted $2,200, which then covered the rest of the bill. So, now we have these nice little fences. So, if you want to go over to the camera, you can. So, thank you to the city for the first one and Prescott Foundation for the second.

Um, and kind of like pickle ball, building an all-inclusive community is a group that first started as a class that we offered on white privilege. The people that came for um that class wanted to keep meeting and so we said, "Sure." So, they met every month for the rest of that school year. This was 6 years ago. and then they wanted to keep meeting and so we were like, "Okay, well, let's form a group." So, um, they're affiliated with community ed. I still go to their meetings and whatnot. Um, and they just wrote a, um, grant, um, and we submitted it to the Western Wisconsin Conference, United Church of Christ, and we're just awarded $15,000. So we'll get $5,000 a year for the next three years and we're going to use that programming um for indigenous um toward our indigenous community. So um next year we're going to be doing a PO type event at Freedom Park um piggybacking off the relationship that Jeff Ryan already has with Lafa Flambo. The second year we're going to be working with the um Prairie Island community trying to do a garden walk and some displays at Freedom Park about the history of indigenous people in our community. Um, and then the third year we're going to do a author series um from indigenous um authors and so um, so that's really exciting. So um, thank you a huge thank you to them cuz that's a lot of money. So, okay, try to make it fast.

They're fantastic. Thanks. Um, they covered most everything. I do want to say I saw the laminer in work today down when I was visiting Malone and um that is definitely a key piece of equipment for an elementary school. Um, for our cardinal champion this this month we'd like to recognize Heather Christensen. Um, we are proud to announce her as our next cardinal champion. Heather has shown unwavering dedication to the Prescott School District through her many years of service. Always putting students and safety first. She plays an essential role in ensuring our students success by providing a caring and reliable start and end to their school day. Known for her teamwork and positive attitude, Heather consistently goes the extra mile to support others and solve problems with grace. Her commitment, compassion, and leadership truly embody what it means to be a Cardinal champion. Um, and she's been a wonderful asset to me and to the district this fall. Um, we've had to change a few routes due to some of our drivers having to be out for a couple months at a time and she is on top of everything. And as everybody knows, Winter will eventually be here. And um, she'll definitely be a big part of keeping our kids safe and making sure uh, we take care to cancel school when we need to cancel school and help out the kids. And if anybody is looking for um an excellent part-time job with a wonderful boss, we are hiring for bus drivers and we will train you. All you have to do is have a valid driver's license and we'll get you from there to transporting our wonderful Cardinals. Hardest job in the district.

All right, we're moving on to school business. First item is the consent agenda. We have October 29th, 2025 regular meeting minutes, finance reports, personal report for non-licensed staff including hires and resignations, and then the service agreement for HVAC equipment at Malone and Intermediate. Anything in the consent agenda that the board wishes to pull out for further discussion?

No.

All right, then we can entertain a motion here to adopt the agenda and approve the consent. I move to adopt the agenda and approve the consent agenda.

Second.

It's a motion and a second. All in favor?

I.

Oppose. Carries. All right. We'll move on to item B, personal reports. There's no no changes here.

Nope. Nothing there.

Okay. All right. Then we're going to move on to item C. We don't need a motion there. So, we'll move on to item C. Hiring director of business services beginning December 1st, 2025. Um, we've talked about this for a couple months now. Um, the administration is recommending hiring Ashley Bo, who is currently the Ellsworth Middle School assistant principal, uh, as our director of business services beginning December 1st, um, on a what ends up being about a one-year, 7-month contract because you can't have more than a 2-year contract for an administrator in Wisconsin. But then she would follow the the same as the rest of the administrators with regular rollover dates.

Any questions on this end, Tanya?

Um, yeah, I think it's just um something worth talking a little bit about her role and her responsibilities. It's um a different title than we're maybe familiar with. So you want to share a little bit just kind of about what her role is and what you kind of envision there?

Um, so we are looking to make sure that our district office provides good service to all of our staff and especially um the principles and the administration team. So we were looking for somebody with administrative experience. Uh, the director of business would oversee payroll, uh, finance, communications, um, community education, and then as as an individual she would also handle all of our HR responsibilities. So, as you know, our HR director uh resigned earlier this year. So, this is kind of a combination of those places and then we would restructure the uh organizational chart a little bit to put those areas underneath her um and provide some of that continuity of service that our staff deserves.

Great. Thank you.

Yeah. Pat.

Yeah. No, uh no questions.

Mickey.

I don't have any questions.

Oh, no questions.

Okay. Uh, Jim, just one really quick question. Are just maybe a comment to maybe just elaborate on this. This is this is a new position for Prescott, >> but this this is common in other school districts. I think you know there's there's been other other schools that kind of implement the same type of organiz or structure under a director of business services.

We're the uh as of right now we're the only district in the middle border conference that doesn't have one. Obviously all the bigger districts have one. Um, they're all structured a little bit differently just because as you know, kind of a medium-sized district we kind of do some combinations but yeah, everybody everybody has one except for us.

Okay. So all right, any further dialogue board? If not, we can entertain a motion here.

I move to approve Ashley Bo as our director of business services starting December 1st, 2025.

I'll second.

All right, we have a motion and a second. All in favor?

I.

I.

Opposed. That one carries. Thank you. Nice job, Jim. Uh, we'll move on to item D. Consider social school for edu for social media. um with the resignation of our uh communications person, one area we want to um make sure that we don't or that we continue to bolster and continue to improve is our uh social media presence. Um, there's a company called Social School for Edu that represents um over 50 schools in the state of Wisconsin. Um, schools in Minnesota, Iowa, uh, North Dakota, South Dakota. Um, it's called Social School for Edu. Um, a one-year contract, um, would be $11,500. Basically, what they would do is they would manage all of our social media, Instagram, and Facebook to make sure that our messaging gets out to everybody. One thing they really market is they really market their um, efforts towards open enrollment. And um, if you think about it, one student open enrolling into our district or out of our district covers that $11,500 cost um per year. Uh, and basically we would create an email account. Everything would be funneled to this company. We would have our own personal representative who would be assigned just to Prescott and they would manage everything. Um, and it would get a one-year trial run. They also offer three-year contracts, but I think a one-year trial run would really allow us to see if this is something that works for us. Um, it's kind of a quick turnaround. Um, I have previous experience with them at my last district and I know how excellent they are. Um, we'd like to get it up and running when uh Ashley comes on board on December 1st, but if we need to wait till January, that's also definitely an option if the board wants us to come back with a more more detailed presentation or um do more digging on their more uh research on their own.

Vicki, any comments or questions for?

Well, I did I went online. I went on Facebook and I did look up one of the other schools. I think it was Winona. I looked up their social media just to see what the Facebook page looked like and um they and one of the things I noticed they have a lot of reels. They have a lot of videos that are being put out. Um, and they usually have a couple thousand views and there's one that even has like 60,000 views. I think it was a back to school fun little thing that they had done. Um, and when I looked back at ours, I I think what I noticed that I I would like to see more because I'm not one who has kids in school. So, it's that posting of what's coming up. And so it seemed to be like there was a lot of that sort of stuff posted. So I I guess I don't know, you know, how how it's going to work for us. Um, but I mean the stuff looked very nice. It was very consistent. Um, and there was a lot of it being put out. So I think we've got a lot to be proud of here in Prescott. And I I would like to see Yeah, I I think it'd be great to get that stuff out there a little bit more.

I think I think one of the best things about this company is they've really figured out the algorithm. They figured out the exact time to get to post things to get the most views, what goes when. Um, and then try to ensure continuity um or even equality across the buildings. A lot of districts that have like an administrative assistant have building X doing it. Well, then building X seems to get more than the other buildings in the district. Um, and it really provides that dedicated service. They also answer or reference to the principles or me any messages, any questions, any responses, and any controversial posts. Um, we get a text message right away saying, "Hey, you should probably take a look at this."

Helen, do you have any questions on this one? Comments?

No. Um, well, one question I had or one I'm wondering and Mike, maybe you remember this, but when I looked at the school districts that were part of their membership and part of their management, Prescott is listed.

So, the management is where um they do the full coverage and they take care of everything. That's the $11,500. The membership is you um so we've sent staff to some of their trainings. Um, it's more trainings and advice. It's more of a >> how do I say this? It's it's more like services for that or >> Well, no, you they're just a consultant there. So, if you want to call them up and say, "Hey, I'm struggling with this. Hey, I'm with that." It's more of an advice line. But mostly the biggest thing is you get discounts. Um, >> Andrea Gribble, who runs it, who who's the founder, um, this summer hosted a two-day conference in the Twin Cities, and we sent staff to that. um she teaches all over the place and you get a discount for that for the for the membership where the management is they're fully in charge.

Okay. So we already have a membership with them.

We just be upgrading to a manager.

Yeah. And wanting to upgrade. Okay. Great. And so it sounds like if that's the recommendation, our experience must have been pretty good with them as as well. Um, I do think it's super important to do. We have so many positive things going for us as a school district and we need to have an avenue to share those things when people I mean right now I mean every school is a choice right now for families essentially so you can choose where you want to go you can go online there's all these kinds of choices and um we are kind of in the business of showing our best light out there making sure people know what we have to offer when we're the top 10th percentile in the state it's something to make sure that we're sharing. So, um, absolutely. As we try to keep our kids here and also gain more students as well as just letting communities around us know all the great things we have going on, I think it's a super important aspect of schools that has changed over the last probably 20 years. though.

Well, and one of the things I've noticed is, you know, all of the so the football >> group, the basketball, girls basketball, boys basketball, girls softball, everybody has got their own, >> you know, support pages and there's all this stuff that goes on all the time and I don't always see that and I don't look very often. I have to be honest. I'm not big into looking at all that um Facebook, that sort of stuff all the time. But it would be nice, I think, when there are those things that the clubs have to share, uh, the the groups have to share, that is a kind of a big deal to them. It'd be great to see that sort of stuff on the school district page and and, you know, carry over those posts and and >> a lot of times to me it looks a little segmented. It doesn't seem to all be cohesive. Mhm.

Yeah. I think that that's something I'd be curious to know more about how they do that because we have an athlete at our table right here, but our students often run those athletic pages and those posts and the social media for our for our our sports, which is really important uh skill for kids to have. I mean, this is how many business operates, you know. So, I wouldn't want to lose that. I would want to know how do we complement that and how do we pull some of that into other platforms as well. So yeah.

And I think that's something that Social Schools Freedu does. They try they try to respect each district. They also have districts where they will have students be do producing a lot of the posts. They'll work with them. They'll have uh what they call student ambassadors. Um, and they'll try to work that. But yeah, it is really a balance and I think they they do a good job at that. You know, you don't want to know about every little meeting of, you know, the pickle ball group, but the big events for the pickle ball group should be out there. The big events for the soccer team, uh, we don't have soccer, sorry. The big >> the big events for the football team, the dance team, stuff like that needs to be there. But >> yeah. Yeah. Yep. I think it's great. And my only real other question besides our membership, um, was about how do they handle people's comments and posts. Um, and it sounds like they have a plan for that and we're I notified right away, which is great. So, thank you.

Yeah. Most of that's still left to the district and the district hands, but they they let you know at 10:30 at night if >> you know something's blowing up on Facebook.

Yeah. Great. Thank you.

Okay. Um, all good comments. Um, communication so important. We talk about it all the time. even when we think we communicate really really well um there are challenges. Um, I Jim, I think the only the only thing from my perspective of of maybe waiting uh a month and we might already have this apologize if we do. I would love to see I don't know um like a communication plan, a strategy. What's our vision? What are our goals? What are we trying to accomplish with uh a new communications, you know, specialist, if you will? Um, and and then I'm I'm wondering too if Ashley joining in December and we'll be drinking from the fire hose, but does that give her an opportunity then to have a say in that? I mean, we haven't we're things have been moving fast, so we haven't really developed a a plan as such. Um, but I would that is something that Ashley and I will work together on. My thought in bringing it to the board tonight is that we, you know, we get uh social school for edu on board and at work side by side with them. But I've already talked with them. They are definitely okay with the January start as well. Um, if we want to go, you know, hey, let's hold on. Let's get our own purse underneath her. Right now, Courtney Johnson is doing a great job managing our Facebook posts. Everything's getting sent to her. Um, so can I pause real quick, too?

I'm also not suggesting that we wait another month, right? Okay.

Communicating, right? So, if if if getting someone on board right now is the right move. Um, I think the ability to circle back whether that's a month, January, February and provide that, you know, that vision goal of what our communication strategy is going to be. I that that's something I'd be interested in.

Mhm. Okay. Yeah. Because Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons we're going with social school for edu is number one, they are the people in the Wisconsin Minnesota order that area that have this really figured out. Um, and two, they will really very much adapt to whatever we need. So yeah, I'd like to build it alongside with them. But yeah, definitely come back in January, February and say, "Okay, this is our plan." Um, January and February is really when we start need to start making sure our message is out there that we are the best school in the middle borders conference, that we are one of the best schools in Western Wisconsin and frankly the entire state and we are attractive and so we got to get that running in January and February. If we wait till May when open enrollment starts to roll around, we're too late. I see that there's they're doing a kickoff presentation if we h if we contract with them with staff. Maybe that's something that they could share with us too, kind of their that might give us a little bit of an idea of of where they're headed.

Michael and I haven't talked about this yet, but we may need to sneak half an hour or 45 minutes in our January professional development day to do that kickoff event. Yeah.

Okay. And then I I guess I want to also point out I don't know if we said how much they cost, but it's a it's a little over $10,000. It looks like >> if we Yeah. If we do a three-year contract, it's $10,500 a year. If we do a one-year contract, it's $11,500 per year. And those are all based on size. So that's based on our enrollment.

And I just want to talk because, you know, budget's a question and we're going to talk about that later in our meeting as well when we talk about our buildings and all our our footprint. um some of what happened in the district kind of office area um is a little bit of some adjustments that would be a this this cost absorbs within how we're kind of running that area.

Yeah. When we when this all settles out um here come in December, January, yeah, our total our total budget will be slightly smaller than it was going into the year. So there's actually savings. So, yeah, $11,500 is not a small amount of money, but um, you know, if we added this to somebody else's plate, we'd probably have to have a conversation about offering them a stipen, too, because it does become, you know, uh a consumable job. A lot of these uh a lot of their employees are stay-at-home parents who who do this on the side, and they, you know, dedicate 20 hours or so a week to our to our building.

Great questions. you guys pretty much nailed everything. I I'll just echo um Pat made a good comment about the plan. I think you know maybe that met I I'm curious about metrics. I I maybe there maybe there has been metrics gathered on you know Facebook posts and you know interaction and activity out there but I've just we've never been we've never seen it as a board. Maybe if I I don't know if social schools has information about metrics and how how how well things are circulating on social media. We would want to know that.

They I think >> yeah, they have it to a tea. My past district New Auburn um which had 294 kids in it was um keeping up with the Chipua Falls of the world um through this company and they will they will give us a quarterly metric quarterly or semiannual metric of how many posts we have who's seeing what what's our top ones. That's all part of the package. So I don't have anything for you right now under our current system but uh I'll have something for you at some point in the spring. like you know your your fancy uh like Matik for schoolboard Facebook page. It has those metrics on it too which is pretty well >> but it has those metrics on it too and I would assume it's pretty similar. It's like time of day, when you're getting the most hits, what kind of post, how long pictures not. It's pretty impressive actually what they they're able to get.

I I support this for the one for the year. I think it's a trial run because I do think we need to kind of revisit this to see if it's >> can it be handled within the district. Do we want that burden on somebody else? Maybe not. This is could you know this so this might be worth it. And the other thing is I'm sure this is a niche industry >> but I got to ask a question. Is it is there other other providers out there that we should be looking at an RFP maybe in the in the summer to to cast a wire net? I don't I don't know if that's worth doing or not, but I'll leave that up. Maybe that's a conversation for later. Um, but communication is so important that I do feel like we want to continue this for the year at least and get and get to a point where maybe we re-evaluate if that makes sense.

Anything else from anyone? Do you have any input on this one? Facebook stuff. So, I run the student council Instagram page and I as you talk about metrics, it's definitely something that I look into a lot and views, the people that see it, the interactions from the post can all be seen on through the Instagram app. So, I'd be curious to see what this platform >> will add cuz Instagram, Facebook, they already have so much that's userfriendly right now. I think that social media is such a tool and I but I also think it could be a destructive tool. The only thing that I see that could be really competitive edge is that no school districts in our area right now from the map that I can see have the management. So I think that could definitely give us a competitive edge in today's you know user focused social media focused world.

This is public right.

Mhm.

And I I was just asking Jim but I just wanted um on we had a resignation in our district and that was our communications director. So, I I I understand how right here for this one-year time period, this is a good trial. We don't have someone currently directly in that position. So, I I think it's worth trying it and coming back to it and looking at, okay, is this something, especially as we have somebody new in our district, can we fold this within? But so much of communication these days from communication directors and others include social media platforms, the district pages, all that kind of stuff, too. So, this um makes sense to me for this this year. and then we can make decisions following.

So will the business services director be managing this for or being the >> Yeah. Yeah. So this will be I mean my one of my jobs is as a superintendent especially in this day and age is I am the chief cheerleader for the Prescott School District and I'm the chief communications outlet for the district. Um, and so yeah, but it will fall underneath the director of business services. It'll fall under her role. um when we proposed that position a couple months ago before the resignation, communications was going to move under there. So, this will just kind of take that place again for this year and I think I think uh Tanya's right on board that it gives us a year to get through it without dropping an extra thing on our new director's plate right away. Um, and then we can evaluate in the summer. We can see where we're at and and uh take a look at uh whether this is something for us. So, it would be a one-year contract December to November.

Yeah. And I'll just echo one more thing. We're our Facebook, our social media presence is only going to be as good as the content that's provided. And that still requires all buildings to provide content. I'm I'm not asking for how that works now. But I think, you know, they're going to have to be involved, which means that social schools for EU are is going to have to promote that and get and get action. And I hope that um and push it as well as you know request it if they're not getting if they're not getting the content that they think they need. So and and they will they'll give us they'll give us that feedback. They'll reach out to us. We'll talk as an administrative team about it. But yeah, right now there is a that Courtney's using is very the most simple uh email address we come up with social media at prescott.k12.wi. us and anybody can submit anything to that uh web page or to that email address, picture, simple description. And so, yeah, we're going to teach our staff to really focus on sending those in and then this person will process them and post them. And frankly, in some cases, you know, sort them out. If you have that second grade teacher who sends six messages in a week, they're probably not going to get all six posted. But, you know, trying to come up with that balance. Um, one other positive, I don't know if you guys noticed this, but you all know I'm pro women. It is 100% women uh leadership team, which is kind of cool, too.

Yep.

You and I have to go meet her at you and I.

All right. Well, if we're ready, we can entertain a motion here.

I move to approve social school for edu for Prescott School District social media management.

I'll second.

That's just for the one year.

Yeah. I wonder if we need to say one year or >> Yeah. Do we need to try this again?

We're okay.

Yeah. I mean, we're That's understood.

That's a presented one-year contract. That was what it was presented as. So,

we have a motion and a second. All in favor?

I.

I.

Opposed. That carries. Great. Okay. We'll move on to item E. Alice training reports from all buildings. Uh, to be honest, I'm new in the district, so I don't know how much we want to go over. Um, obviously, Alice training varies a lot by grade level. Uh, Malone at the younger grades reads a book called I'm Not Scared, I'm Prepared by Julia Cook and they talk about it and then they have pra they practice an evacuation drill. Um, students discuss what happens. Um, they use a big bad wolf in the in the story um that enters Antill High School. Um, as the kids get older uh things get a little bit more um involved. Intermediate school, middle school, and high school do evacuations. Um, at the high school level, they typically have um multiple uh people with sweatshirts on who would be the active intruders. And how do the kids react? Actually, they're wearing yellow vests. Um, at the middle school they had uh cones out and the cones were to be the um active and engaged people. Um, our administration team takes this very very seriously and works very hard to keep our students safe and um I'm going to say this unfortunately over the last decade students have gotten very very good at this and um are very well prepared. Uh, but we do a lot in this day and age to keep our kids as safe as possible. Um, I can go into more detail if the board wants. Um, the annual reports are there. They'll be made public. Uh, they need to be turned into the state of Wisconsin in December of every year.

All right, Pat, any comments, questions?

My only my only comments is there's two two of the reports in our folder I I don't have access to. I assume that it's for the middle school and the high school.

That's that's what they're titled. Yep.

Um,

I'll see if I can I'll see if I have sharing rights.

I just want to make sure that they're they are in there.

I think I have sharing rights.

Courtney, are you working on this too over?

Yeah.

Okay. Mike, that was fine for >> How about any other comments?

Yeah. Um, one is I'm every year I think this, but can this move to our consent agenda? um just because it I know it's almost like a repeat kind of sharing of stuff. It's something we have to do. Number two, I think I also say this every year, but research does not really um support doing active shooting drills because of the drama aspect of it. I'm a prepared trainer and um it's just something I always feel important to say. So, I actually don't really totally agree with the active shooter part of this drill. So, but I'd love to see something different. Can I can I >> can I react to that? And so I I don't disagree necessarily with you. Um

moving it to consent agenda, I wouldn't have a problem with it. I do think >> a way to report out >> though, you know, what we were doing from a safety assessment standpoint though would be important for me to understand. Right. So whether it was a self audit or something that we did in the district.

Yeah.

Right. Um, I maybe to me that's more important than a reporter with a drill.

I I agree. And maybe it's something like how many times have we actually had to put this in place in in real like just over almost like a summary because this doesn't really tell us anything other than this is kind of what we did. It's the same probably every year. It's the same requirement. So yeah, it's a requirement, but it, you know, a little bit more about um overall safety in our schools and how we're doing with that would be more valuable, I think, too.

Right. I mean, one of the things that we've talked about in the past is is and we not growing rabbit hole, right? But, you know, what do we do? What do we do for sub, you know, um for substitute teachers, right? How would they get orientated? Um

yeah,

you know, and and and how would they react in, you know, in a in an emergency situation,

um active shooter or or otherwise. So,

yeah, absolutely.

Helen, any thoughts on this?

Um, no, as a teacher, I love this. So, um I understand it's a necessary um part of the day which is a part of the schedule which is not great as a teacher and a parent, but I'm sure they reading through this they handled it with the utmost um care as they needed to. So, any questions?

I don't have any questions. I uh I did not know about any of this until I became a member of the board. when you don't have kids, you don't know these things. And and yeah, when I became a member of the board, I went, we do what? So, yeah, it's it's unfortunate that we are required to and we need to and >> yeah, I I have also questions as to, you know, kind of along the same lines as what Tanya brought up. I just >> I I had just asked over here, but we're not required to do Alice. We're required to do trainings. And I just >> I think it might be worth exploring um more research based trauma informed practices down the road. But

good questions, good comments. Kayen, do you want to weigh in on this one or

No.

Okay.

Yeah, go ahead.

Um, so yeah, I will definitely look into um whether it can be on the consent agenda. It is required by state law that we report it to you and that the board signs it. um some of the state laws aren't necessarily the they don't give the board the information that the board really needs. So yeah, we can definitely look at also into producing a a self-report. We do need to do trainings and the trainings are required. Alice was definitely the very first protocol that came up about a decade ago, but I've been trained in a couple other things and that is definitely something we can look at into changing. Uh, you know, I would never say we're going to change it for 25-26, but it's something we can look into possibly changing uh with the Prescott Police Department and Officer Jacobson for um 26-27. They are very responsive to our needs of the Prescott Police Department. So, we'd want to work in conjunction with them. Um, but yeah, there are other options out there.

All right, we can take a motion here. I move to approve the annual Alice training reports from all buildings.

Second.

All right, we have a motion, a second. All in favor?

I.

I.

Opposed. That carries. We're on to item F. Elected WB delegate for the WB 2026 convention. I've done it in the past. I'll do it again if you guys want me to. If anybody else wants to throw their hat in the ring, feel free to. Good at it. I like going to the sessions because it helps me with my career too. So I I I enjoy the sessions and I >> I kind of go to the gym.

Yeah.

Well, yeah. Being I mean this is my first convention, so I kind of more so would like to attend some of those other >> Yeah. You Sounds like nobody wants it.

All right. Well, we need a a backup alternate though, so in case my car breaks down or something.

Who is is that Pat? Are you going this year?

I'm going. Everybody's going.

Everybody's Everybody's going. It's so exciting. Um,

does anybody want to be back up? I do not.

Pat, find out. I'll be back up.

Somebody make a wish. Mike's not making it. I'm not either. SO,

the weather. I got the basketball game. I know Mike and I have a basketball game the night before. Yes,

not physically, but yes, I

have to.

I move to elect Mike Madsik as WASB delegate and Pat Block as an alternate delegate for the 2026 WASB convention taking place January 20th to the 23rd, 2026 in Milwaukee.

I'll second.

All right, we have a motion and a second. All in favor?

I.

Carries. That's it for business. on to info and discussion and we got the teaching and learning update you've all been waiting for. Good evening board. As Mr. Reef pulls that up. Um, the 2024-2025 school year report card has now become public um in the state of Wisconsin. So that's what I'm going to be sharing with you tonight is our results um on some of the calculation changes that we briefly touched on last month. And then where can we go from here respond here? Um, if you did that I know I didn't. So if you get uploaded back in the time I'll see now. Here we go. All right. So last month I came and I talked about um previous month in September our state academic results for the Wisconsin forward exam preacct and ACT um were released. And I was happy to report at that time um a clean sweep of the Millboard conference in terms of um where we ranked compared to others. um as a building as a whole and then as a district as a whole. So that information is only some of

The information that goes on the WI state report card. So, we covered some of the things that are new about the report card. There were those updates to achievement-based scoring, and that really changed a lot of the calculations on there. There were some technical changes. They added some statutory required non-scored reporting data. Um, if we had attendance or participation issues in the report card or in the participation in the actual assessment, we would have that on the front of our report card. We did not have any issues there. Any district with less than 95% of your kids participating will have that on the front of their report card. And then there was updated standard setting. So, there are a lot of changes to the report card. Um, if you want to compare it to the 2024 report card, I know some districts have already looked at their report cards and they're doing these comparisons. Um, here are the things that have changed, and you should not compare to last year. The overall score, so that's that score on the front of the page. Your overall rating could be different based on those categories changing. Your achievement score is definitely different. Your student group achievement is definitely different. Your target growth outcomes is different. Target growth outcomes achievement is different. Third grade ELA score is different. Eighth grade math scores are different, and therefore, it is a new report card. This is a new standard. We should not be comparing to 2024 or previously.

Some people say, "Well, why can't the state just keep things the same way?" Again, the report cards came out over a decade ago. Things have changed in education in that decade, including the way that we also ultimately put our kids into categories of meeting and approaching versus being below basic and basic. Um, so the report card is a reflection of that. There were a lot of changes to the state assessment calculations last year, and now the report card reflects that. DPI thinks this will now stay somewhat stagnant in the upcoming years, but as we know with anything with DPI, that had been subject to change effectively yesterday.

Some people in the media and things that I've seen posted, they like to talk about assessment versus report cards. So, last month, I presented on the assessments from last year. That's one specific year, one specific set of cohort of students. The report card does other things than that. It looks at non-assessment-based measures such as your attendance, chronic absenteeism, your graduation rate. Some of those they look at for two years. Some things we're looking at up to six years of data. Um, the DPI also gets some of that information directly from the school and the district. So, there may not be standardization between schools and districts in how they report some of their absenteeism. I know I was in a meeting at our CESA previously where a district said, "As long as we see the whites of the eyes of our student, we mark them as tardy. Even if they were only at school for 10 minutes, they're just tardy for the day, 4 and a half hours or whatever the day is." We follow the state statute that says 10 minutes is tardy. After 10 minutes is considered an absence. And then we clock students in on when they actually come in. Um, we do that a little bit differently. Kate just gets a little buzz in her little badge, and then she gets a little tardy pass. Um, whereas the other buildings, they have to actually physically type in the time. So, that's different.

Also, the expectations are different for every school and every district because what's going on the report card is also different. So, that's a big thing for the general public to understand is that everyone has different expectations put on them. Um, I've also recently seen, you know, we have the categories of meeting standards or exceeding or significantly exceeding. And last year, it was 95% of districts met or exceeded their expectations. This year, 85% of districts meet or exceed expectations. But I know that some of the things I've been seeing in social media is, "Well, then this doesn't give us anything. Everyone got a participation ribbon, and then we all go home." Um, again, you've got to look at what's the purpose of the report card. Again, some of this stuff is for six years that we're reporting on, not just last year. So, that's a big thing for the general community to understand.

I use this as an example of how your calculations are done differently depending on your district. So, Prescott, I shared this last month. We are at 16.6% free and reduced lunch. So, you can see our achievement accounts for 35% of our overall score, whereas our growth is only 15% of our overall score. In contrast, in the Middle Border Conference, the district with the most free and reduced lunch numbers is the Amery School District. You can see their achievement only counts for 23% of their score, where because they have higher free and reduced lunch numbers, they then should have more growth, and their growth then counts for 27% of their score. So, when we look at the score on the front page, we should never use that for comparison because that is a score out of 100 points that you earn based on the makeup of your district and what the expectation is. You can see the same thing as we look at our own schools. Our elementary is at 20% free lunch. 33.6% comes from achievement. We go to our high school where we have the lowest percent of free and reduced lunch. The high schoolers, 39% of their report card comes from their achievement categories. So, even comparing from one school to the next is not apples to apples. The elementary report card has third grade reading scores on it. The middle school does not have third grade reading scores. They have eighth grade math scores on it. The high school doesn't have either of those on it. So, again, you can't really compare those numbers from one building even to another within the same district.

Here are our numbers and here are the categories. Our categories all stayed the same. Our numbers did change. Not going to compare them to last year because, again, it's a new report card. But you can see our overall numbers out of 100 points as a district. We're at 79.4 points. We exceed expectations. Our high school's at 70.2. They are meeting their expectations. Our middle school is at 87.2. They significantly exceed their expectations. And our elementary school is 89.6. They also significantly exceed their expectations. So, that's where people are saying 85% of districts are meeting or exceeding their expectations. Correct? But again, it's not a comparison.

Where we do want to compare, or where we can compare, is when we start looking at the individual calculations. So, this is what the achievement looks like. What we have on the left here is English Language Arts, and we have the 23-24 school district and we have our year school year, and we have their advanced category at the bottom, our meeting students, our approaching, and then our developing students. And this is last year's. You can kind of look at how wide are these categories, how many kids are in each. We know in ELA we had less growth, and that shows up here as well. We went from 49 students down to 57, or up to 57, that are in the developing category. So, we gained kids at the bottom and we lost 131 to 124 at the top. So, we're aware of that. That's something that we are addressing, especially because most of that came out of one building. That building has a specific goal around that.

Mathematics, we did the opposite. We maintained actually in the developing category. Percentage is a little different, but it's the same end count, same number of kids, 58. But when we go to the advanced category, it went from 201 up slightly to 203. Right? So, again, our math achievement did improve a little bit. What you can compare is in each one of these categories on the report card, they have a percentile rank. So, this is our district. We are the same or higher than 90.8% of districts in the state of Wisconsin in achievement. That means we're a top 9% in the state on achievement. This is a number we can use to compare because this is comparing us to all other districts in the state of Wisconsin that are K-12 districts like ours. There are some districts that are K-8 and some districts that are 9-12. We're not being compared to that.

We look at the next category, which is that growth category. The way that growth is set up, we have English Language Arts on the left. You want blue boxes because blue boxes, the standard is that we should all be able to get to this level of 3.0, and there's a calculation that they use in order to get to that. You can see again in ELA, we are slightly lower than the 3.0, 2.7, 2.8, depending on the demographic that we're looking at. Economically disadvantaged 2.8, non-economically disadvantaged 2.7. So, that's a little unique. Typically, free and reduced lunch kiddos score a little bit lower, but we're seeing that we actually had less growth than our non-free reduced lunch kiddos. When we go over to math now, it follows the typical trend. And math is all in the blue. You can see that we are on the right side of growing our students. And as a district, we get an overall. We are the 70th percentile.

One of the things in data, when you look at it, a lot of times you look at quartiles rather than, you know, are you top 9% or top 10%? Are you in the top quartile? If you're in the top quartile for achievement, that means you have a lot of high-achieving students. You don't have as many opportunities for growth. They're already there. So, you would predict that your growth should be lower, and ours does. Ours follows that trend. We're nearly still in the top quartile, though. We're in the top 30% in growth, and we're in the top 10% in overall achievement. So, that means our kids are even growing even better or even more than what would be predicted of them. Probably why we have that exceeding expectations as a district.

We look at our priority area of target growth or target group outcomes. Again, this is our bottom 25% of students from the previous year that they track within the district. It doesn't mean 25% from every building. They treat the district as one big building. So, there could be more at the middle school level, let's say, than the high school level. Um, we can dig in and see those numbers. The general public cannot. But again, we have these scores of where did we score compared to the non-group in these different areas. Our overall score was 77 points. That doesn't tell us a whole heck of a lot. But what does tell us a whole heck of a lot is as a district, we are in the 91st percentile as a district, again, in the top 10 for our lowest quartile. So, when you think about your lowest quartile students, a lot of those are going to be students of special education. It's going to be our low general ed students who maybe didn't just quite qualify. Are we closing gaps or not? Again, everyone wants to know in their community, "How good is your school, and are you getting any better?" And I think it's pretty easy to tell on this report card that one, we're a high-achieving district, and we are closing gaps. We are getting even better than where we were.

The last category is usually one of our lowest categories: on track to graduation. Our percentile rank is the 87th percentile. Still really high, top quartile here. Where we get pinged as a district typically is our attendance. And then our chronic absenteeism, so students that miss more than 17 days. Um, and then overall general attendance. And part of that is, I think, where we live compared to, like, the Twin Cities and the opportunities that we have for spending a day with Grandma and Grandpa and going to the Mall of America versus if you're living out in Amery, you're probably not going to take advantage of that opportunity, right? So, we always are cognizant of that, but we also know that that's the one that we control the least: that category.

As we look at our final slide, I have for the board tonight. These are our scores of our different buildings. We have where we were significantly exceeding and meeting expectations, and these are our percentile ranks. So, as a district, we can see we're top quartile, top 10% in achievement. We're top 10% in that bottom quartile. Nearly top 10% in on track to graduation, and we're 30% for growth. If you look at our other buildings, you can see where our high school ends up lining up in the state of Wisconsin: top quartile, but then bottom quartile. And that's sort of what data kind of should look like. Um, the more unique is when you're in the top quartile and the top quartile again and the top quartile again and the top quartile again. So, that's unique to Prescott: being able to be where we are.

Some stars are going to show up here. This is where we are top-ranked in the Middle Border Conference. So, this is where you can do comparisons. We're not comparing these overall points earned because, again, that's different. But where did you rank in the state of Wisconsin? So, these red stars are where we are at the top in the Middle Border Conference. So, if you do the quick math there, that's 50%. 50% of the boxes up there, we are the top. If I add top three in the Middle Border Conference, all but one. So, all but one of those boxes, we are top three in the Middle Border Conference. So, as we talked about with communications, with social media, we have a lot to celebrate in Prescott. Not only have we heard about Shrek Jr. here and the great arts programs that we have, and with the high school doing Legally Blonde, our athletics, you know, and the success we have there, and we all know of that success, and then the success as well. How do we, you know, we're that three different areas that we are very strong in, and how are we trumpeting all three of those areas and having a social media company that will come and make sure all three of them are being covered and covered appropriately, and making sure that we're getting this information out to our community? Especially because if you don't directly have a child in the community or a grandchild that participates in a lot of the extracurriculars, you don't hear this story, as I can tell by the empty chairs at our board meeting.

Any questions for the board? Helen, do you have any questions or comments on this? Uh, no questions. Just nice job. Staff does a really great job. Vicki. I don't have questions, but you're right with that last little point that if you don't have kids in the district, thankfully being on the board and having friends who are teachers and coaches and whatever else, I get a lot of, "Hey, there's a game tonight. Hey, do you want to go to the one-act play tomorrow?" The thing I heard about it from a friend before I heard about it tonight at the school board meeting. So, this sort of stuff, all these beautiful, nice stars that we get, along with all of the academics or the activities and sports, that's the well-rounded education that parents want for their kids. So, I'd love to give this front and center. Yeah. Um, no questions. Mike. Hey, I really appreciate you sharing this with us. Um, I always take the chance to brag us up. I just had this conversation and pulled up your last month's presentation for my admin team at work. So, um, every chance we get to brag, I think it's worth it. You do an awesome job putting this together, so it's really easy to read and see. And, um, I appreciate it. Also, I think your social media feed is a little different looking than mine, 'cause I don't see anybody complaining about stars and comparisons and stuff. So, you have some different groups out there. But, okay. Um, just want to say congratulations to our staff, to our administration. Um, Michael, to you for pulling this together. I mean, this is amazing. And, um, just very awesome and should be celebrated. Um, maybe now's not the time, but like, so if you had like one takeaway, right, from what you saw, um, and what's next, what might that be? I think what I saw in the report card is it reaffirms what we saw and what the plans we put in place at the data dig is the report card affirms that ELA was a weakness for us, especially at the high school level, and the plans at the high school. And we just met, Jim, myself, and Sandy Stram met with the high school two weeks ago, went over what their plans were, what have they put in place so far, what's next steps. And then the following Monday on Collaboration Monday, I was actually able to come up to the high school and participate in Mr. Figgy and Josiah Wilson leading the staff through some more professional development on reading specifically within their classrooms and authentic tasks and authentic reading tasks. So, I think what I just saw is more of a reaffirmation of what we are doing is where we should be. There wasn't any surprises in the report card that says, "Oh, we need to shift and put more fire trucks over here. Here's a fire we didn't see." So, awesome. And then, and maybe then just, you know, wrapping up, thank you to the community for the continued investment, um, you know, that we've had, um, including Collaboration Monday. Uh, I think you continue to trumpet how important that is, um, and continued success. So, absolutely. Yeah, Michael, I mean, I do have to echo this because it's such great news, right? I mean, congratulations to you and the way you present it to us is so easy to understand that even if I can read it, then I think maybe most of the people in Prescott can probably understand this. So, um, the way the data is presented, but I mean, just congratulations to you and the building admin teams and the faculty and everybody that has their hand in a day in the life of a Prescott student. I mean, it just shows it's every year, right? Yeah. And I just want to say, like, last year there was a lot of distractions, right? We had a referendum. We had some contentious meetings. We are onboarding a new superintendent, letting go of a superintendent. And the fact that our staff, students, families, we were able to do this again. You know, kudos to Kaden. Kaden's six years of Kaden's data is in here. So, Kaden falls off next year. Yeah. Well, she won't be forgotten because again, her data will linger. What I really appreciate about you and your team is that you're always looking for ways to improve, and you see a weakness and you grow. You're going to focus on that, and that is one of the reasons why we're going to be the best at getting better. I kind of feel like we're the go-to in the Middle Border, like we're the Tom Brady because we're on top so much, and it's going to be hard to keep that because there's going to be, there may be a time where we start to slip. And to have that much success for that long is a tribute to you guys and to what you've done and the processes you've put in place to keep us there. Um, it's not just a fluke. It's been this way for years and years now. So, a really great job presenting this and sharing a great story. So, yeah. Kayden, do you have anything to add to this? No. Your data is dropping off. Dropping off. Yeah. Thanks, Michael. Uh, on to legal services for Prescott School District. Um, every time we have a big contract, every four or five years when possible, we should take a look at our whether it's who is in charge of taking care of our HVAC or different contracts, snow contracts, stuff like that. Um, one thing we should probably look at is our legal services. Right now, we use Weld Riley. And I don't know why this won't cast for me right now. Come on. Um, so we reached out to various agencies: Renie Lewis and Lacy, Axley LLP, Adles Law, String Law, Boardman Clark, Davis Plle, and Weld Riley. And when you go to the WSB conference in January, most of them will be there, presenting. Um, the three that we took the biggest look at were Renie Lewis and Lacy, Axley LLP. As a side note, they are actually employed by EMC, which is our insurance broker. Um, so we've had some work done with them. And then we've had a long-standing relationship with Weld Riley. Uh, they all have offices or do service with districts in our area. The fees are similar. Um, this is just presented mostly for informational purposes. Um, as part of the negotiations, we'll discuss this in closed session because, frankly, negotiations need to be done behind closed doors and not in open meetings. Um, but we have good reviews on all three of the ones that we did a deep dive in. The Davidson Plle didn't even respond to us. The other four are mostly based in the Milwaukee area. I guess I'll open it up here. Any questions from the board here? Tanya, do you have any questions? Um, no. I think it's good that we did this. Um, I think this is a great comparison. Really easy for us just to look at, and I look forward to talking a little bit more about it when we negotiate. Yeah. Pat, no questions. I appreciate you doing this, putting together the rates and getting feedback from other districts and other parties. So. Vicki. No questions. No questions. Jim, how long have we been with Weld Riley? I'm putting you on the spot. I maybe don't even know. Since you've been here at W. Um, I believe they've been there, we've been with them for about 12 years. Yeah, 'cause I. I don't think we've ever had an RFP with legal services since I've, since we've had them. So, I, it's just been, it's just good practice to probably review this every three to four years. So, I'm glad that we're doing this and going through the just to make sure that we're getting our money's worth, let's put it that way. So, uh, all right. Anything else? Anyone? No. Okay. We're going to move on. This is going to be a closed session. We'll talk for, we'll talk about in the closed session about, um, well, negotiation strategies. So, item C, I think, yeah, I'm on item C. We're on item C. Type A publication regarding board election for one seat. Is that right? Type A. Mhm. So, by law, we have to post that Helen's seat is up for election this April. This is just something that has to be done every year to meet state and federal election laws. And there's an, so I will take care of putting it in the paper. Um, it gets posted the same place board meetings get posted, etc., on our school website. Uh, I'm just going to jump in here. I don't know if anybody else wants to, but questions. I'm putting everybody on the spot. Do we know the date? There's dates that we'll end up sharing in December, but being that we're already in November, there's filed by dates that new people have to apply by, incumbents have to file by a certain date. Repeat. It's in, it is, that's what it says on here. You want to repeat that over the phone or over the microphone? Um, go ahead. Well, I, I can't repeat all of those dates. So, the first, I, we just want to repeat it over the microphone. I just want to make sure it's on record so people know. Um, so applying are, so, yeah. So, if you're interested, yeah, if you're interested in applying for school board to run for school board for the Prescott School District, you apply through the district office, through our website, or reaching out technically to me, but in reality, Courtney Johnson's going to take care of everything because she's excellent at it as our executive assistant. Yeah. From December 1st until January 6th to get your paperwork in. The election, I believe, is April 7th. It is. Um, and Helen has until December 9th. December 6th. December 26th. So, you can wait till Christmas, Helen, to decide whether you're going to run or not. So, just in closing, I, we'll have another item on this, info and discussion, so we can post it and people can see it in the notes so they have that information. Awesome. Anything else for anyone? All right, let's move on. Options for potential building consolidation, item B. So, when I was hired July 1st, one of the things I was tasked with was determining, is four buildings the right number? Is three buildings the right number for our portfolio to best educate the students of Prescott? Having just been involved in the district for 100 days now, I got a team together. I led a team of Mr. Figgy, Mr. Iggo, Mr. Cosmosi, Mrs. Ducek, our directors, Mike Ha, buildings and grounds, Nicole Lensner, food service, Sandy Strand, director of student services. We met with all of our extracurricular people, Matt Smith, Angie McGee, Penny Peterson, and then some outside resources. I have very little background in real estate. So, we worked with Megan Langanger as well as Telus Property. We have reached out to Applied Population Lab, which is the gold standard that everybody uses in W. Madison. Um, we also consulted with CISA 10, but decided not to contract because there is a relatively new building study in our portfolio, and frankly, our principals have been here long enough that they are going to be better off being able to arrange our buildings, figure out how many kids can go where, without spending $10,000 on CISA 10. Um, and then our ongoing relationship with Baird, who helps us with all things budget. So, the question has always been the intermediate school. Should that remain in our portfolio, and if so, how? Brian Zeller is here from Telus Property Services if the board has any questions for him. Um, the total buildable area is 70,000 square feet. The total acreage of the site is 2.1 acres. Uh, Telus is recommending a sale price in the range of $3 million. It has a redevelopment opportunity. It's very attractive for a mixed-use developer, potentially a multi-tenant residential or mixed-use building. It would likely require us to work with the city to get it rezoned. It's built in four different pieces over decades. So, there are challenges that come with that, including our current structure and layout, where the elevators are, the stairs. Parts of the building have fire systems in it, parts don't. Parts have air conditioning, parts don't. So, those would all be challenges that a potential buyer would have to use. Our operational costs in 24-25, our utilities cost just under $62,000. If we kept it as an office space or some other space, we could probably save about $5 to $6,000 in utilities. We weren't able to hire a custodian. So, we currently have a $55,000 cleaning contract that could go away. For custodial, we'd probably need to take our daytime person and send them to other parts of the district, as well as taking care of the gym space. Because frankly, if we're sending our kids to other buildings, those buildings are going to pick up a lot more traffic and require more cleaning, especially around lunchtime. Food service projects, they'll be able to save about $48,000 in delivery fees, staffing, and product. So, keeping it as an office space would save us about $109,000 is what our projection is. If we sold it outright, our utility savings would go up to around $63,000 with inflation. We would also lose our rent from Northwest Journey, which currently is $24,000 a year. When I met with them at the start of the school year, they are looking to expand. So, I put down $48,000 if they doubled their square footage. But our savings would be about $148,000 a year. Really quick, Jim, is that that? Okay, you just mentioned it's a year. The totals are? Yes. Total totals are per annual totals. Sorry. There you go. All right. Key considerations. We're going to need to repair the roof in roughly five years at $560,000. We could push that back a few years, do sections, do maintenance as we need to, but if we did the whole thing, it'd be $560,000. The warranty on it runs out in five years. Within two years, we're going to need a new air handler at about $175,000. There really is no space that's conducive to putting our maintenance office or our maintenance materials and stuff in the intermediate school, just because the only way to get to the storage unit that they would have would be basically hand-carrying every single thing down two flights of stairs, putting it in a storage room, and then anytime you need it, carrying it up two flights of stairs. So, it's just not conducive. Um, and we'd also lose a lot of our ability to do some of our own maintenance on our own equipment. So, working together with the team, these are the factors that we really considered. What's our future population 5, 10, 15 years down the road? Should we keep fourth and fifth grade together to keep the elementary model? If we move fifth grade up to the middle school, do they both go to the elementary model? By the way, we don't have answers to all these questions yet. But these are the things we've been examining. What's our true local maximum capacity and ideal levels for each building? How do we maintain our current programs and staffing levels to maintain our excellent educational outcomes? We just had Mr. Cosmolski up here talking about how wonderful our report card is. Our number one goal is to keep those scores high and keep delivering excellent education to our students and what our community deserves. Where do we put the maintenance and district office if we need to move them out of the middle school? What are staffing and building use implications? We've explored those some, but a lot of those are going to come on which model we have. What impact will gym space have on athletics and our Prescott community recreation? And with that, what are our commitments to the community versus the district? Is one of the goals of the school district and the board to make sure that we do have pickleball available from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. every night, or adult volleyball or T-ball, etc.? Um, that is something we need to discuss and consider because if we do sell the building and we can't find a way to lease the gym back from whoever buys it, um, that would definitely put a cramp on that. Um, these are linked to the presentation, and this presentation will be on the website by the end of the week. Um, our internal class sizes and projections are linked here. Basically, what that's going to tell you with a lot of different numbers is, right now we have 1180 bodies in the district. In five years, we'll be down to about 1080. In the next five years, we should lose about 100 students, assuming there's no big development, nothing built around, or have a lot of different students. Um, we have the Applied Population Lab doing a study. They promised us no later than December 5th, we'll have their results. So, current capacity, Malone added third grade in 2025. The ideal capacity is 345 students with 65 to 75 students per grade, or 23 kids per class. This would give us three and a half classrooms for special education and one classroom for an interventionist. Um, currently, some of those classrooms are full-size classrooms with six to eight kids in them. With construction costs, we could obviously divide those rooms up, but then that adds construction costs. The middle school, the ideal capacity is 568 with class sizes of 29, or the max is 568 with class sizes of 29. Ideally about 440 with 25 classes, students per class. That puts nobody on a cart, nobody in a closet, nobody moving room to room. We can put teachers on carts and get closer to that 568 number. High school was built in 2016, is the newest building in our portfolio, and is the least used building per square footage. The max capacity is 750. The ideal is 632 with an average of 25 students per class. Obviously, especially at the high school level, your choir, your band, etc., gets larger. FID gets larger. Some of your tech classes, AP Calc, stuff like that tend to have smaller class sizes. So, we came up with five plans. The last plan is to do nothing. But plan A, if we would split fourth grade to the Malone Elementary and move fifth grade to the middle school, the middle school would likely have a 5-6 and a 7-8 run as separate groups as much as possible. Some of the pros: this allows Malone to keep 4K as is. It runs the buildings under capacity, and it means the maintenance can remain at the Prescott Middle School. The cons: the elementary gym cafeteria, the gym is the cafeteria. So, if we add lunch times to Malone, the problem is that we then take away gym time, and that's going to create a challenge, but that challenge is solvable. One of the possible solutions is basically turning the LMC into a cafeteria. We haven't fully explored that yet, but it's definitely still on the table, but hasn't been eliminated yet. And then moving the library media center somewhere else. One of the challenges: this essentially eliminates Cardinal Time, which is our interventions for grades four and five, due to putting four grades at the middle school. We just don't have the space to split up our group small enough. Some of the questions we haven't come up with answers yet, but we're looking into the social impact of fifth graders being with eighth graders in the same building. We would try to mitigate that by keeping them as separate as possible on different floors. What do we do with that Malone library and that FID challenge? Plan B: move fourth and fifth grade both to Prescott Middle School. So, Prescott Middle School would have five grades. It would allow fourth and fifth grade to stay together on an elementary model. The cons: the middle school would be at absolute maximum. There would be no Cardinal Time. All of our elective teachers would be on carts moving from classroom to classroom, which also moves the teacher out of their classroom during their preps, or they have to share their classroom during their preps. Special education would be put in very small spaces and would have to move. Maintenance, we explored this, so we're putting it on the plan, but we want to inform the board. We do not recommend it. There's way too much potential negative impact on student learning. If forced to do it, we could do it, but it's not educationally best to put five grades in one building. Plan C: move fourth grade and fifth grade to the middle school and then move eighth grade to the high school. So, this would put the fourth and fifth grade students likely on the upper floor and incorporate eighth grade into the Prescott High School schedule. It allows us to better use our newest building in our portfolio, the high school. It allows our eighth graders to take more elective courses. They would essentially slide, likely slide to the trimester system and have access to all the electives at the high school. It keeps the fourth and fifth graders together, potentially in an elementary model. Small class sizes, so we're not at capacity. The cons: four grades at the middle school does get it, does get the middle school up there a little bit. It does put stress on the middle school for elective courses and intervention time, but those are solvable. The district office would have to move. That is a very minor thing. There are multiple options for the district office. It's five or six people. We can make, we can find corners to put us in. The big thing is maintenance would be able to stay at the middle school. Um, questions and concerns. Now we switch. What is the social impact of having an eighth grader in the high school with an 11th or 12th grader? Option D: we split into three different buildings. Fourth grade goes to Malone. Fifth grade goes to the middle school. Eighth grade goes to the high school. Some of the pros are each building has room to grow if there's an increase in population. We have those high school options for eighth grade. As our high school numbers decrease, this allows us to keep staffing. One thing we have as a long-term concern is teachers are only going to teach full-time jobs. So, if our numbers go down and our high school staff starts going down to 75 or 80, they would likely leave to find other jobs. Putting the eighth grade in there and allowing them to teach an eighth grade class would allow us to keep them at 100%. Maintenance can stay at PMS, and it gives us flexibility where to put the district staff. Cons: it's the most impact on the custodial staff for moving us to different buildings. Fifth grade has to eat lunch alone in the building. Fifth grade would eat alone, and then sixth and seventh grade would eat together. This is because DPI serving size requirements, no matter where we put them, K through five is considered one size of a serving, and six through 12 is considered another size. Um, questions, concerns. It's a lot of movement all at once, but it does get it all in place at once. So, is that worth it? And again, that social impact of an eighth grader in a building with a 12th grader? Plan E: given we're the strongest academic school in the Middle Border Conference, we remain as is for one to three years. Pros: our systems are working. We, the cons are, it's the littlest change to the staff for the next couple of years. The biggest con is there's no savings from the change of how we use the intermediate school. We still have that significant maintenance on the intermediate school in the next five years. The biggest concern is, are we just pushing the decision down the road for a year or two? So, what are our next steps? Big question for the board tonight is, which of these five options do you want us to bring back to explore on December 10th? For the thousands listening on YouTube, that December 10th meeting is at 5:00 p.m. in this room at the high school, and we would love as many people as possible to be here for their input. The admin will bring maps showing our projected room assignments for each of the options. Food service and building grounds will bring specific numbers for you. Grades and students per building, we're going to calculate those as best as possible for each scenario. We'll have gotten the Applied Population Lab results by the 5th of December. And then we need the board to determine if and how to incorporate community opinion. We can invite everybody to that session. We can do polls through Infinite Campus. We can do other things. We're also going to need to address gym space, address relocation of the district office, and the gathering space. Those are all things that we'll eventually need to solve. Questions and comments? Yeah, and you hit on it at the end here, Jim, but I just wanted to reiterate, we have a working session or workshop that is on December 10th. So, I don't think we need to get into a ton of back and forth here and get in the weeds. That's what we're going to roll up our sleeves for at the working sessions. But I'm curious to hear any initial comments. And Jim, you had mentioned, I mean, are you looking at, are you looking for us to narrow down any like deal breakers on these options right now, or what's your goal here? We can present all five. We can obviously, we have, we still have to keep teaching. We still have to keep doing all the other jobs we do. So, if we prepare two or three, you'll get a little bit more in-depth plans than if we prepare five. I'm also going to just add my comment here quickly. Our working sessions in the past that we've done are open to the public. Obviously, there, everything's open to the public because it's an open meeting. In the past, we have kept those as working sessions where we get to roll up our sleeves and really dive in. We've never had a public comment at those meetings. I'm not saying we shouldn't, but it's just I want to reiterate that those workshops are meant for us to really kind of do a deep data dive and ask a lot of tough questions and try to come up with some takeaways. And we can certainly entertain a public comment section, but I, we're definitely going to want community input. We all know that. So, it's just when do we want to, when do we want to start engaging the public? And obviously, that's going to happen sooner than later. But, um, I'm going to open it up here. Who wants to, does anybody want to start here? The comment, the input portion, I don't, we've got five options. I don't think we need input right now for five options. What we need to do is narrow that down and get to a few options. Then that's, I think, where we do that because like to get down, cuz we need, one or two at least, no more than three options, but definitely two. Yeah, 'cause we need the, we need administration. They're the experts on kids. They're the experts on food. They're the ones who know that portion of it. We need that. Then we need to approach the financial part of it. And then I think that's when we look at getting input on a couple of ideas. So, I kind of would like to, if there's any no-gos for us just right off the bat. Like, for me, it's a no-go. Plan B, admin, they don't support it. I'm not going to try to. I don't support it. Just to reiterate, plan B is where we put everybody, fourth and fifth grade, into the middle school. And the, five through eight. The reason why I wouldn't support that, besides admin not supporting it, and I trust the recommendation, there's some of like, we, we often times do kind of a little document that talks about like our things that we won't sacrifice. And so, one of those things on here for me, when I thought about what I would sacrifice, was losing Cardinal Time and our intervention time, and that plan takes that out. Um, I also think we have goals to be strong with athletics, arts, and academics. This puts our electives all on carts. I don't think I would want to teach in that. So, I also don't think it's very attractive for staff, but it's also probably not the best education. Um, special education has a really small spot. I don't know if that's too small or not, but so for me, plan B is not something I would support. Anybody else have a counter with that, though? I agree. Either. Okay. Yeah. So, let's just kill it. They don't need to waste their time on that. Yep. Um, plan A. I'm going to reiterate, strike B for now. We don't want more information on B going into the workshop. If there's compelling evidence that comes forward, the public says, "Why aren't you looking at this?" Then, you know, then we can revisit it. But for this workshop, we're saying, "Don't give us more information on plan B." Okay. Awesome. And then, um, so then if we just go the rest way, plan A. If now we're sequential, this is one I personally don't think.

I would support for kind of the same reasons. We have a chance of losing cardinal time. It might not be feasible. We'd lose our library, becomes a cafeteria, physical education becomes twice the size. So for me, this is I would say my least favorable of the rest of these. So if we were to focus on other ones, it would be the other ones for me.

Well, I got a couple other questions, but so my my list was the same. I think B's out no matter what. Um, if we're going to try to get to three options, A would be the next one out for me. So the options that I would like to explore would be C, D, and E.

C, D, and E. So C and D are both moving eighth graders to the high school.

Yep. Y

and E is obviously

E is obviously hold. Now I got a couple caveats.

Me too.

Yeah.

Right.

So I think in prep for um in prep for our workshop and and Jim, I just don't even know if this is possible, but you know, uh here it comes, right? Is I think I think what is really the only reason we're even having this discussion is because this is a financial impact. So to have a financial projection of where our fund balance is going to be out that two bianiums using some of the recent poor news that we got about state funding um and then modeling that against our potential savings and expenses for these three options would be pretty important.

Yeah. And for me that really comes into play with plan E. I'm I mean I'm only interested in hearing plan E if I can see the map of how we're going to cut I mean it's it's a lot that we have to cut out of our budget to get us through the the next budget session,

right? Yeah. I I mean everything I just said really comes into play with plan E only if it's going to be considered.

Yep.

You know, we have to make sure that we understand the the potential financial risks.

Yep. And that and that's like what are we going to cut in the meantime because we have to start saving money.

Yeah.

Vicki, do you have any thoughts?

Well, along with Yeah. the the saving money if we do the plan E, if we're looking at something along those lines, we need to know financial that way. One of the other things that I would like to know if there is even possibility of quantifying or figuring this stuff out is holding on to that old the old intermediate building. Holding on to that, we're looking at the gathering space. We are looking at the district office. We're looking at Northwest Journeys wanting to expand. Um, there was one thing that had come up a while ago about why if if we have that space, would an alternative high school in that space be an option that we could start running? Um, that brings in revenue. So, what is the revenue that we could bring in? What are the potential I guess options? What what is out there? I we've had people call about, you know, could we use it for office space? Um like there's I I don't think selling the building is the only option. I think if we hold the building, there's maybe is there revenue we can bring in with it. That's kind of something I want to learn from this process, too, is if there is something. So maybe that's where like plan E comes in. Maybe we need a year to look at this and figure it out down the road. and and this is just the start of the process. Um, but I I think for me C with and D are are kind of the ones to look at cuz I I I do feel that we've got this really great building here at the high school and if it is not being used to its potential, I don't want to end up I don't want to be in the same position that Hudson ended up with where they've got schools that are operating at 60%. I mean, I think we need to figure out how to best utilize our best buildings and move students around that way.

Yeah.

Yeah. C and D, the other thing that I would just want to know is we talked about in C and D the social impact of 8th with 12th graders. I would like to know if we can the number of 12th graders that a graduate early, b um do outside classes, so they're not in the building. um truly how many 12th graders are here for the end um for that year that are

um that would socially be that would be when there were eighth graders.

Um yeah, I would be curious to um I've worked in schools where 8th grade has been part of the deal. Um and I would just be kind of curious um if we can do like well I my experience was like a house type model. they're really kind of in a area, in a hallway, in a space. And is that doable here? Cuz cuz my my thought is like, yeah, we can share amenities and great spaces, but we can really keep that a a a space separate separated where they're having little crossover. Obviously, they're going to have it. Um, and some of that's not going to be bad. Um, some of that will be really good, actually. But, um, I I do think we have to look more at like a house model where we're very few classes we're embedding them in. Maybe some electives here and there, or maybe none. Um, and I think we can do that.

Hey Jim, I don't I asked about the financial projection and economy. You might not know. So Cara had had used a modeling tool.

Yeah.

Oh, okay. You're you're familiar with it.

So, um, unfortunately I can't I I have a meeting set up next week with Barrett. I couldn't get him in this week. I couldn't get him in time for this. So, yeah. But that is something we're going to look at um both if we hold on to it for one year or multiple years. Vicki in your comment. Yeah, we've looked at that too and one of the things um how much space we can get in. Do we want to be do we want to be landlords? What kind of landlords would we want to be? Um how much we want to do? The gathering space is a conversation in every single model. Um, you know, frankly, I'm kind of looking at this um I describe it to everybody who asks about it. It's kind of like a whole bunch of rivers and a bunch of different branches and some end up in the same place and some end up in in different places. Um, but if we're an educational situation institution, our number one question is what's what's going to be the best for the education of the kids? And then yes, it's got to come right after it, but do we sell it or keep it? And what do we get for it? Telus is projecting $3 million. What would we do with that $3 million? you know, um just to throw some things that have come across my desk in the last month and a half. Um it cost us about $2 million to uh build out the under level of the middle school and add four classes there.

That's what I was going to ask you.

Um, another option that's been proposed um is behind the middle school build a basically an essentially a half a pole barn that's half maintenance area and half office space like you see in a lot of different light industrial areas where the office space could become the district office and the gathering space. Because a concern that's not on here that's been brought up a lot too is um with the gathering space, granted they're wonderful community members. They're the sweetest, wonderful people. When I'm having a bad day, I sometimes stop by and talk to them, but it does add increased security risk to our building when we have non-staff members coming in and out of the building all the time. Um so we'd be better off building a building a separate building for that. Um we do have plans, rough plans together with um how we could use the intermediate school for the district office, the gathering space, community ad and PCR. Um, you know, but that does leave a lot of space for us to either rent out or work together. Um if we look at selling it, can we work with somebody who would lease us back the gym? Um there's a hallway there we could brick off pretty easily and then possibly lease back the gym um and use the gym for a lot of those PCR classes as well as a lot of our own middle school um and high school basketball games, volleyball games, etc. Um so yeah, they are they're all going through my head.

Yeah. And I I would like I I just yeah, I definitely like how this is laid out where there's if we keep the building, if we don't, I would like to keep kind of going with that thought. Um my gut tells me that we need that space for things like the things that we're me we're mentioning, but that does leave us with about a $735,000 deferred maintenance cost that we know is going to happen down the road, too. Um but but that to me is like maybe that's what we wait on. Do we have to sell it or not? I mean, there's some of those things too that we can look at. So but yeah, in all the models that they bring forward, I think that we would like to see what happens if we sell it, what happens if we keep it. And and ultimately we know we have to do budget reductions. It has to happen. Um and so if if we if we don't do anything with that, what does that look like for us? And that's that plan D.

Well, I think and and eventually, right, we're going to get to it, but eventually, I mean, we we need the public to weigh in, right? So, I think I heard we think that a valuation of the building right now on the market is $3 million. Okay. So, um I'm throwing I'm throwing a dart here, but it would to replace that square footage today new today, not even next year, is 25 to 35 million, right? So, uh, if we're going to sell something for three and we're talking about building this and building that and doing that, I mean, we have to understand that we are not going to even come close to replacing that square footage for for the same cost. Not saying that not saying we shouldn't sell it. I'm not saying we shouldn't repurpose it, but that is something that needs to be considered and the public needs to weigh in on that.

Um, and and for me, we just we got to do that financial projection and modeling.

Yeah. to to really, you know, plant the flag as to what we think the environment is going to be the next handful of years.

I'm going to jump in here, guys. Um, first of all, I just want to point out this is really great to see. I think it's being very very transparent to the community right now to bring this forward. This is the first time we're seeing this and the public seeing it with us. Um, so I transparency is everything and we've had issues with that in the past. So, I'm glad we're I'm glad we're talking about it. We have a workshop. We're going to we're going to dig into this. I my my comments on the plans are slightly different than your guys'. I I bring up plan A, which is the plan to move forth to Malone and Fifth to Middle School. I I'm curious about that plan. I know there's there's cons to it with cardinal time and I'm curious to know if there's ways that we can um challenge challenge the administration to bring that. I bring it up because when we talk about when we go back to last year when we were going through the referendum, it was discussed that at some point we will want to possibly consolidate academic buildings and what would we do with fourth and fifth grade and it was brought up that fourth and fifth grade may move to the middle school. That was kind of one of the I I don't know if it was on a flyer or if it was on one of our handouts. I don't remember, but I don't I know it was talked about at some point and I it would behoove us if we did not at least investigate that a little bit more because that's what the public probably heard. I don't think we ever talked about moving eighth grade into the high school, which it seems like there's some good, you know, some pros there that we should explore. I'm not I think we should explore those, but I I worry about planning not being completely vetted out and allowing the public to weigh in on that. Um, second

and that's plan B, right? Fourth and fifth grade to middle school.

I'm No, I'm sorry. It's plan A.

Okay.

Plan A. Fourth, fourth grade to Malone, fifth grade to middle school.

Gotcha. Okay.

Um, just to comment quick. Yeah, as I said, I came out in July and um, yeah, all I had heard was fourth and fifth grade to the middle school and um, we looked at everything. 8th grade to the high school didn't come up till probably 3 weeks ago, maybe. We started looking at building capacity.

Yeah. Three or four weeks ago.

Completely makes sense, right?

Capacity high school.

Number wise, absolutely makes sense and we should explore. Fourth grade at the Malone was somewhat of a seemed like at least last year the information we got was almost like we could do it tomorrow if we if we had to. So, I think I I'd like to at least keep it on the table to explore fourth grade to Malone and fifth grade possibly to the middle school.

Yeah. I mean, fourth grade to Malone is both part of plans A and D.

Yeah. Okay, that's a good point.

Um,

A and D definitely keep those.

And by the same token, yeah, C. So, yeah, C is the one that puts four grades in both A and C put four grades in the middle school. So, which is doable, but that's where we start to start to

the last thing I wanted to point out before and you want to jump in here, Vicki, is with planning where we do nothing. The reason this is up, and you guys mentioned this a little bit there, but the reason we're talking about this is because of the financial constraints that we have on our budget and how can we optimize buildings and save some money. And Pat made an excellent point that, you know, we need to see that impact on what it looks like with their fund balance. But remember the referendum last year, we made a commitment to our faculty on salary closing gap and and trying to do that. We we we we got part of the way there this this year. We we wanted to try to make a commitment to next year on closing the gap there. And I think we need to factor that in to do whatever we can to try to continue to close that gap so our our faculty can stay competitive. That was the whole reason we went to referendum.

So I I wanted to call that out. I think all this is great discussion, but that if we're going to go with a plan E, we need to understand what that means. Uh can we can we still can try to close gap on not just F and it's it's it's across the whole faculty. It's not just teachers. It's it's it's all the it's all of the the staff, right? Support staff and boss and all that.

And and like I would say, you know, in the in the in the salary and benefit um work that we did over the last year, I think that should be included in these financial forecasts.

I don't want to lose sight of that. Really important. Just got to make sure that it's included in there.

Yeah. And I I guess too the we can go out three years to see what it looks like, but I think after one year of keeping that building up and going, I don't I I think year number two, we're going to be in trouble from the way you

100%. Yeah. The longer the longer we wait.

So I I you can forecast out to three years, but I think really it's what happens if we wait one more year

at Yeah. at this point on November 19th, I I don't know if I could recommend more than wait one more year.

Um I didn't want to kind of paint the board in that corner, but yeah,

I I'm all for doing this the right way and getting community input and taking a year to figure this out and then maybe maybe it's a you know, a change we we have to wait one year to do, but it's something that we got to you know, let's get it right.

Yeah.

Yeah. I I don't think this is what you guys are saying, but we need to stay on Jim's current timeline. Even if we think we have a year, we we cuz we'll take a year

and then you want to understand that years from now.

Yeah.

You know, yeah.

So, lots to discuss at the workshop. I think we should table. Do you have anything else done yesterday?

No, I I was just looking at our bear models and by the 2027 2028 school year, we're in the red.

Yeah. So, we don't have that much time to wait and we're in the red by two over 2 mil.

The the financial impact and the projections that we did, I think we need to make sure that we get that information if possible by the by the workshop. That would be really helpful to make any decisions. If we can't, then it has to be probably a followup

maybe another follow-up conversation our workshop.

Okay. Um, fair enough. Anybody else? Is that I mean, does that sound good?

It's probably 26. So, what I'm hearing is develop plans A, C, and D and change plan E to remain as is for one year.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean,

unless one of us wins the lottery,

right? Whatever we can. I mean,

yeah,

I I'm I'm very interested in the financial impact and I know everybody else is too. Uh but priority is also making sure we do not uh disrupt the academic excellence that we have in Prescott as well. Great discussion uh and thanks for putting this together. Again, I think it's really important that we're transparent. Public sees it right now. Mike, I'm so sorry, but can I ask one more question?

No, it's too late. Okay. I mean, we got a visitor here today and so can you real quick, broad, what's driving the $3 million um evaluation? Yep. Please introduce yourself and all that.

And are there potential tax credit, you know, type development opportunities that are taken into account with that? Just I'll show

Yeah. There's not an exact science.

Can Can you just Yeah, go ahead.

Sorry. Brian Zeller with Telus. Yep.

I'm one of the principles founders.

Thank you. Um, I've got a wide array of experience in commercial real estate. Sold everything from the dog track in Hudson to the racetrack in Somerset to a couple of schools already. Uh, I represented South Washington School District. I represent Stillwater School District right now. Uh, I represent Hudson School District right now. Um, so the valuation process is not an exact science, especially when you're dealing with these larger, older buildings with the the HBAC systems that they have and the complexities that come with that. But, um, from my experience, I feel very comfortable in that 2.5 to $3 million range. I had mentioned to uh to you earlier that right now new construction costs are so high and the entitlement process is so painful and so long that uh redevelopment is pretty attractive right now to to project developers. So that's why I think on a timeline point of view I would expect a pretty quick timeline um and why I feel pretty comfortable at that moment. Yeah.

Anybody else? Any questions here? I mean, we can I appreciate you jumping in here and kind of introducing yourself.

This might be a long question in the building and look at your revenue sources or if there are other revenue sources that might kind of jump out at me from a repurpose if you were to hold it, but to to kind of look at some happy medium. Are there other ways that you could you could um generate some income? I know that's kind of a slower slope for a district, but um and then I guess my last question will be did you bid the roof cuz that number on a per square foot basis seems a little bit high.

That's uh what's been was projected when so we just got done with a referendum that we passed in 2022. Um and we updated a lot of the roofs in the building. That's what that company gave us, but we did not bid it out to everybody as far as I know. Um, but then I was here before that number was gen or that number was generated before I was here. It's been a while.

This this might be an unfair question. Um, with some of the other school sales that you've been involved with, I would assume that the most conducive product type or what developers are looking for is to use those for some sort of a housing. Um, mixed use mixed use multif family. Okay.

Brian, thanks for thanks for jumping up and answering some questions. We appreciate it. And I'm sure we'll be probably one last thing that I would mention working the way of government relative to zoning and peritted uses. That's that's a conversation that um would recommend

100%. We've been through this one other time and it didn't go well. So, I I want to make sure that we're really aware of that. Yeah,

public, we know that we've been through this before and and it was a rough rough night. Let's just say to say the least.

So, if we go down this road at some point, then then we'll make sure that it's again, transparency is everything right now. So, I appreciate you jumping in. Um I I had a quick question about um the reconfiguration the different I don't know the different ideas there. Is there any licensure considerations that we have to consider with staff or do you already look at that?

Lots of them. Um and then we would kind of we can give you a pretty good estimate if we're going to three. It's things we can solve when we're going to one. There's a lot of movement with the DPI itself

to take a look at licensers especially ex uh

there's a thing being proposed right now to basically on the superintendent's word allow anybody to go one grade level in another direction. So somebody has a K6 license and all of a sudden we ask them to teach seventh grade. They've been teaching sixth grade social studies for 20 years. Wait, they can probably handle seventh grade social studies. Um, and the DPI is not happy with the antiquated equated licensing system. So, there's some movement that way. Um, yeah, there's I'm sure we can get most of it through, Michael, but I'm sure we'll hit one or two where we're just kind of running into a wall and we might be

sciences I know are specific.

So, um,

a lot of your high school teachers do have 612 or 712 licenses.

So, that's not really a thing. Um, okay.

We would likely move, let's say we move the eighth grade to the high school, we'd likely move a lot of that staff to the eighth grade. It would definitely influence, you know, hiring over the next four or five years. Um, if, for example, if fourth grade staff moved or fourth grade moved to Malone, my assumption is the vast majority of fourth grade teachers would move to Malone. So,

um, but yeah, down the road we're definitely we'll definitely hit a bump or two,

but again, a lot of other districts do it. All right, let's move on. We're going to next item is first 100 days report. Oh my gosh, that too. Um, this is me as well. So, uh, I promised the board when I was hired, one of the things they asked me to do is come up with a 100 day uh, plan. So, shockingly enough, if we don't count Indigenous Persons Day as a holiday, this is my 100th day in the district.

Wow.

Wow. Okay, it seems like six or 600 depending upon how we go. Um, but uh I promised I was going to come in, listen, learn, and lead. Um, and so this is what uh just kind of a summary of some of the stuff I've done in the first 100 days and some of the stuff that uh frankly I didn't quite get to. Um, I think one of the big things is we started off by really working on the school culture and building strong community connections. Um, one of the first things I did was we established a superintendence advisory committee. We meet roughly every month. Um, it ensures an ongoing dialogue with all staff groups. We have teachers, instructional aids, custodians, and bus drivers. We still keep asking for a food service representative. Um, frankly, a lot of them go home around 1:30 or 2:00 and coming back at 3:45 to sit down with me is not super attractive. Um, but we meet in the middle school library. Um, like I said, roughly once a month. All topics are on the table. They get information from me. They give us input directly from their staff. Staff have questions. All of it is also then it gives me information to take back to the admin team. It's not a runaround of the admin team. It's just an augment where I can sit down and talk to them. Um I've met with Matt Wolf quite a few times. um uh Cara Clatt and I reached out to Beth Lancing early on in the uh whole uh what is um assessed value versus equalized value and worked a lot with them. So we've been working a lot with them back and forth. Um I've joined the community chamber of commerce um and uh I meet a lot with local business leaders uh first national a lot of the other ones trying to build those relationships. Um, I've attend the community Prescott community club events whenever possible. I presented on two occasions once more just like a fiveminute introduction and then the other one started out as a what's the first uh 3 months of the school year look like. I presented in October um and our budget information out was there. So it did become a 20-minut uh budget Q&A session. Um that went well. Um I met with St. Joe's Chris McGee. Um we have a unique relationship with them. Uh discussed our common goals, continuing partnership. Um what happens when I close school is also a big thing. Um but learned a lot about our relationship both at the 4K level and when their middle school students join ours. Um I've met with various local land owners. A lot of this was uh interest in our property off Jewel Street. I didn't know that selling 100 ft of uh roadway would generate so many people who wanted to come and talk to me. But I sat and listened to all of them and learned a lot about it. Um recently um one of our local developers um local movers and I um got together and I learned a lot more about the dis about the area in the city of Prescott and what our opportunities are. Um I've met with a couple times with the Kulie River Trails to talk about some of those their outdoor opportunities. um and how they would like to have a trail system. Matt Smith was involved in a lot of those conversations cuz we want to make sure we protect our cross country fields. Um one of the things I did really early on before school even started was I sat down with Chief Michaels and his entire staff. Um really took a look at our MU, looked at a lot of our protocols, um when they should talk to building principles, when they should come directly to me, uh what things can happen that way. And I think that really helped build a lot of trust between our new organizations. Um they participated in homecoming activities. I was able to attend national night out and support them. Um listening to our staff besides the uh advisory committee. Um, I made a real big point the first 2 or 3 months and um to get in the buildings, whether it's greeting kids as they come off the bus, whether it's being there at lunch, whether um it's trying to be there around there and just get their my face out there as much as possible. I am proud to tell you that uh I spent about an hour in the high school today and I asked seven kids if they knew who I was and all seven knew who I was and that's that's a I'm wearing that as a badge of pride. um only four of them knew my name, but the other one the other three knew knew who I was. So um staff listening sessions in addition to the um because we had quite a few people apply for the superintendent advisory committee and some of them didn't get on. Every quarter I come to this room and I'm going to sit down for an hour and a half and listen to any concerns, any questions that uh the staff may have and that's open to everything from administrative assistants to custodians to everybody else. Uh you all know this already, but I really enjoyed meeting all of you one- on-one for about an hour throughout the summer. Um to talk about your vision, your mission, uh what your priorities are, and uh try to get to know you a little bit on a personal level, too. Um we've added uh two critical positions. One tonight um our director of business services and then our director of buildings and grounds. Um, one of my first meetings in June was with Mike Hika and he told me at the end of it he was retiring at the end of the year. Um, so we worked through that and Adam Mo is going to come on and do a great job and I'm sure Ashley B will do a great job as well. Um, our district office our one of the things our number one thing is we got to take care of the staff. We got to take as much load off the staff as possible so they can focus on the kids and that's got to be our district office. We talked about that a little bit tonight how that or chit's going to chart is going to change. I've also been working with the building principles making sure they have what they need from financial reports etc. um trying to streamline some of the professional development processes etc to really try to enhance that uh commercial ser customer service and then talking about licensing and benefits snafu and stuff like that another thing at the DPI frankly they used to have I think I think they're down to about 15% of the staff they used to have in teacher licensing um don't quote me on that, but it's some pathetic number like that compared to 10 or 15 years ago um and then we also you know it came from the staff and through the administration team, the board's uh change to the board pol to board handbook allowing us to support some of those new teachers in getting their license. Um so as we talk about licensing for changing buildings, that's something that'll come on board. If we know somebody has to slightly change their license, the district's going to support them doing that. uh the budget process. Um we didn't it wasn't our fault, but uh the changes that happened in the budget uh at the state level um and frankly due to declining enrollment um caused a lot of my work to be focused in the budget area. Um we looked at some of our substitute teacher compensation. We continue to look at that um area as well to make sure that we're getting substitute teachers as much as possible because we know that if we have teachers covered during their prep time, yeah, that's wonderful and great for the kids, but that impacts the learning of of their regular students, the students who are normally assigned to them, if they give up an hour of their planning time to to cover another class. Staff culture. Um, one of my admin meetings, I had to spend quite a bit of time to get the admin team to really understand that I am absolutely not going to start my tenure at Prescott High School standing on a stage in the performing arts center and talking at our staff. So, um, we gave them the morning just to do their job and get prepped and get prepared. And then we hosted a Cardinal cookout uh that you see on the left. uh the admin team, I mentioned it and they did it all from getting all the food and everything together and taking care of everything. And then um shout out to uh Josh and Michael, they kind of led, but everybody was involved in developing different teams. So instead of sitting and hearing somebody talk about bloodborne pathogens for 20 minutes, in one of the games you played after the Cardinal Cookout, um you would have to go get clues. And the only way you get clues or get more balls to put through the holes or stuff like that is to answer questions to cover a lot of those things. Um, I heard wonderful, wonderful things about that first day. The only thing they didn't like is that it was 94° out and 99% humidity, but that wasn't my fault. Um, personal day drawing. I stole this from Mark Hollesman, who is the superintendent in Jainsville. Every quarter I am drawing from a building. So, the first person I actually drew at the Cardinal Cookout was Char Maloo. And um she got a personal day on October 31st, and I got to work upstairs with our transition students and spend the day um as a as an instructional assistant. I love the fact that the staff treated me like a substitute instructional assistant. We did laundry, we did packaging, we did different things. And it was a normal day for all the students. Um, I just did my best to fill in for SH and fell way short of her normal level of ability, but um, it was a good day. December 17th at the middle school, I'll be Mrs. Dwisky um, teaching about how Lincoln was assassinated. And then in the winter spring and 26, we'll have random drawings for the intermediate at Malone. Um, all staff members in the building, you might see me cooking one day, you might see me being an administrative assistant, you might see me being a night custodian. The only thing I can't do is drive bus because I don't have a license yet. And yes, of course, uh Heather is ready to give me my license next summer. So, um building consolidation committee. Yeah. Well, if we just spent 20 minutes on that, um Cab Fields, um I met with Crazy about baseball at the fire hall field um to talk about their programs, their needs. um some of the bleachers down there have some issues. What are their visions? And I also let them know um about the potential sale to the city hall, which we haven't heard anything from since that meeting, but I want them on board right away early on if that does uh if the city ever comes back and talks about that. But that's a beautiful field and a beautiful centerpiece to to our district that's been here for many, many years. Um, the other thing that I heard early on in my listening session was we need to strengthen our relationship with Pierce Pierce County Human Services. Um, so we had a sit down with Pierce County, the police department, and all of our administration. And it was a good 3hour meeting, 2 hour, 2 to three hour meeting. Um, and it was a great sharing session. We learned a lot about what they want from us when we were doing reporting, how to report, when to report, and I think one of the best things we heard was their frustration a lot of times when they can't do uh they can't do as much as they would like to for kids and there was a good bonding experience there. Um to the point that we are looking at taking part of our January professional development day and this was at the uh request of our administrative team. Um we're going to have them come in for the January professional development day and they are going to present to um 4K through fifth grade at one point for for one point and then 6 through 12 because by age group there's different needs things I didn't get to um I have not been to the 4K sites yet. Uh Sarah does a great job with them, but one thing I need to do is I need to get to the 4K sites um to meet with them, understand their programming, their needs, assess their facilities, um and really talk a lot about the curriculum that they teach. Um, I'd like to meet with our local realators and really have conversations about how do we market ourselves to new families? How do we share accurate information about our schools? Um, how do we talk about our triple threat, academics, arts, and athletics? And um, I started this a little bit this week. Um, honestly, I've been spending some time doing HR roles over the last month. Um, I would have done this a couple weeks ago. Um, but starting to transition from those mornings and lunchtime sessions where I'm just trying to be visible to starting to do some classroom visits. I was able to help uh two different third grade classrooms with their subtraction today. I was able to work with some geometry students. I was able to talk to some uh high school English students. Um, so between uh Malone and the high school, I probably spent about 2 and 1/2 hours today in the building just getting to be with kids. Um, and realizing how special and wonderful they are. Things I've learned. I'm going to say this and I with pride everywhere I go. It's hard not to say it when I go to our middle border superintendent conference meetings, but we're the best. Um, we're the best in the middle border conference and the best in Western. Absolutely. Without a doubt. I have never had a dis I've never been in a district in my 33 years that has had something like collaboration Mondays and they are a key to our success and we cannot give them up ever. Um, building thinking classrooms is having a huge positive impact on student learning. We have a dedicated staff that put students first. Our professional learning communities are dedicated to doing the hard lifting to ensure student growth. Our district office needs to keep on working to get that. Our focus needs to be on serving staff. We are here for them. They are not here for us. Um, our administrators live in the classrooms. They are in their classrooms all the time. Um, I love it when I go to a building and I can't find the the principal because the principal's in a in a in a in a classroom. And our administrative assistants are excellent. And I like the fact too that they finally learned that, hey, if I go to the building and the principal's in a room, I'm good. They don't need to come find me. Um, the other thing that's unique that, uh, we've really developed, and kudos to, uh, our teaching learning director, Michael, um, teachers are starting to really evaluate each other and go, not evaluate each other, that's the wrong word, observe each other and learn from each other and give each other feedback. Um, frankly, if I was a third grade teacher, I would much rather get feedback from another third grade teacher than from the superintendent who spent 20 years teaching high school math. Um, and the community has been wonderful and very supportive and very open. I also have not yet sat down with the guys at uh PEX on a Friday lunch, but I'll get to that eventually. So, and last of all, I had multiple job offers this summer. I picked the right one and I'm proud to be here. Anybody question comments on anything here?

No, I'm like super excited to see this. This is really impressive.

Yeah.

When I when I looked last week, I I used chat GPT to figure out when 100 days was. And it it took um Indigenous Persons Day as a holiday.

And so, however you look at it, this is day 100 or 100 or 101.

99. Yeah.

So, anything else, guys? Okay, we're going to move on. Uh, we are through the info and discussion on the recognition event. Anybody want to jump up and be recognized over here? I love it. Okay, we're going to consider a motion to convene a close session under exemptions 1985 1 C E and G and in room A17 for PHS and that's around employment. Uh and I'm going to look negotiating purchasing of public property there. It's for RP for legal services and then one other uh legal counsel issue. There's three three things in our in our close session. Uh so we can take a motion. Somebody has to give us a time and then we'll do a second and I'll uh take the motion or we'll go to vote. We'll do a vote. I move to adjourn to close session in room A17 at Prescott High School at 8:25.

I'll second.

We have a motion in a second to go into close session. All in favor?

I

I opposed. That carries. We will adjourn from close session back into open session and take any motion actions if needed in open session in room A17 if anybody wants to stick around.

Thanks.

Thank you.