Staff News & Information

THANK YOU to our BHS team for a successful Freshmen Break In on August 23rd! There were 150 Freshmen and 111 DRIVEN members in attendance! This was an increase in attendance from previous years! The incoming freshmen were able to engage in community building activities with upperclassmen and become familiar with BHS. Kudos to all staff involved and thank you for putting together this event to help with the transition to the high school.

Kudos to all of our staff for hosting such great experiences across the district for Open House! While traveling around you could feel the positive energy in every building! If you didn't know it was Open House night as a community member you may have thought a really cool concert was taking place at our schools as they were packed! Thanks again for all of your efforts to get spaces ready to welcome students and start the 2024-2025 school year!!!

Just a few highlights to mention:

• Boys Cross Country: Jaiden Matchse (Match-Key) won the Senior boys race by .02 seconds at Tremper Dog Days of Summer Meet at Kenosha Park. The team has had a good start with a relatively young team with some upperclassmen looking to finish strong.
  
• Girls Tennis is 5 and 2 overall. There are 38 girls out for tennis this year (this is about ten more than last year).
  
• Football is 3 and 0, non-conference wins over Waterford, Kenosha Tremper and Janesville Parker. The team is off to a great start to their season!
  
• Girls' Volleyball has started with a tough schedule to begin their season and is sitting with a 3-8 record. They are a young team that is working hard and focusing on communication and improvement.
  
• Boys Soccer: 5 and 0, non-conference wins over Racine Case, Janesville, Kenosha Christian Life, Big Foot, and Wilmot.
  
• Boys Volleyball: Boys' volleyball has 39 athletes this year, enough for a Varsity, JV1, and JV2 team. Varsity is 2 and 3 as they have only competed in 2 tournaments so far, but it is a very promising start.
  
• The Community Ed Department hosted a dance camp with over 75 youth and performed at the first home football game!
  
• The One Act Play started auditions and crew sign ups for the 2024 BHS One Act Play called The Lost Boy. This is a no-cut production. Most acts from other schools are 10-12 kids total, but we had 28 students audition and will be able to participate in the play this fall!
  
• The date for the free of charge performance is on Tuesday, November 19th at 7:00 pm at the BHS Auditorium.
  
• Star Stuff Theatre started their practices at Dyer for Finding Nemo Junior - over 60 students initially were interested and are already in the midst of practices!
  

Thank you to all of our staff for your participation and positive attitudes during the 2nd annual Demon Olympics. I know some might say that the time spent during the olympics is time out of classrooms, however, it is also important to spend time together engaged in team building activities that build a positive, fun, energetic, and collaborative environment where we simply get to enjoy being back together as a staff! So, thank you for your positivity and time enjoying some fun with each other!

Congrats to our metal winners!!!

Gold: Lois's Treasures (BHS team)

Silver: The Undecided (Waller team)

Bronze: We're #1 (Karcher team)

• New concrete was added on Alice Street to accommodate for 2 more buses each day for the middle school, as well as new concrete near the playground area at Karcher to help prevent damage to the building.

• The High School servery was completed just in time for the start of the school year. As a reminder, this was accomplished using our Fund 50 account which can only be used for food service.

• Gateway donated 12 welders to the new High School Welding Academy and the B&G staff added 5 welding booths to accommodate for the program.

• The Cooper and Dyer PA (public address) systems have been updated with new speakers in each classroom, microphones in the principal's office, and microphones in the main office to speak to staff and students.

• As we head into the school year I reminded the school board that we have a 4 year lease with our student chromebooks (we are on year two) and all students have a district issued chromebook for 1st through 12th grade students. Our 5K students share a chromebook cart with one other 5K classroom at each elementary school.

• Additionally, we insituted a no cell phone rule across the district with the exception of lunch time for our high school students. Which means students are not allowed to have their cell phones out or visible during any classes.

Jill Dreger (Director of Health Services) and Molly Souza (District Nurse) spent time during inservice with staff to complete epi-pen and sudden cardiac arrest training. Staff were also reminded of the location of AEDs in all buildings. Jill and Molly also updated all (IHPs) individual student health plans and held training sessions with staff on individual student needs.

• Within our Pupil Services Team was the development of the first ever Back to School en Español on August 27th in the Karcher Middle School gym. This event was hosted by BASD, Family Dental, Los Compadres Restaurant, and some community members.

• The event featured resources from the Burlington Library, Aurora Hospital, Los Compadres Restaurant, Burlington Coalition for Dismantling Racism, Family Dental, A Breath of Hope, Racine County Human Services, Dyer PTO, Racine Literacy Council, United Migrant Opportunity Services, Perla Tapatio, KMS and BHS Student volunteers, and Experience Burlington to support all of our Spanish Speaking families in our school District!
  

• Thank you to Diana Shay, the BASD staff, and the community groups that helped to make this event so successful!

Thank you to all of our staff for all of the time and efforts put in during inservice time when it comes to curricular trainings, less planning, team collaboration, and simply ensuring you were ready for students for the start of the school year! There have been a lot of changes given the redistricting, closing of a school, staff shifts, and the list could go on and on. Thank you all for your efforts, energy, and time to hit the ground running for the school year!

Please welcome the below new staff to our team since the last newsletter! We are excited to welcome everyone to BASD and know that you will all make an awesome impact and ripple on our students across the system!

Certified Staff New Hires:

• Zack Wedding - FRC - Alternative Ed Teacher - August 21, 2024

• Krista Roessger - Dyer - Long Term Sub Teacher - August 20, 2024

• Bridget Savaglia - District Office - Director of Human Resources - September 3, 2024

Non-Certified Staff Appointments:

• Yasline Bolstad - Dyer - Burlington BAC - September 3, 2024
• Oswaldo Chavez-Romero - Karcher - FT Custodian - August 20, 2024
• Brittany Christenson - Dyer - Full Time Paraprofessional - August 15, 2024
• Jackson Dempkey - Dyer - Burlington BAC - September 3, 2024
• Allie Fischer - Waller - Burlington BAC - September 3, 2024
• Benjamin Guerra - Waller - Burlington BAC - September 3, 2024
• Rebecca Headley - Dyer - Burlington BAC - September 3, 2024
• Weston Kairis - Waller - Burlington BAC - September 3, 2024
• Nicole Smith - BHS - Administrative Assistant - September 10, 2024
• Megan Weissenborn - Dyer - Part Time Paraprofessional - August 15, 2024
• Paula Young - Waller - Burlington BAC - September 3, 2024

Extra-Curricular Appointments:

• Hunter Anderson - BHS - Soccer Assistant JV Coach - August 15, 2024
• Andrew Brockman - BHS - Tennis Assistant Coach - August 13, 2024
• Ben Puffer - BHS - Freshman Football Coach - August 12, 2024
• Mark Strasser - BHS - Football JV Assistant Coach - August 13, 2024

District

• School supplies for teachers - Burlington 1st Church of the Nazarene
• Backpacks and school supplies for students in need - clients at Eric Thompson's Edward Jones office
• School supplies for teachers - Applied Material Solutions (AMS)

Burlington High School

• $4,494.90 - DRIVEN - Racine Community Foundation
• $6,000.00 - Football - Blue Devils c/o Sarah Gerber
• $500 - WBSD - Clinical Psychology Associates
• $500 - WBSD - The Jewelry Center
• $500 - WBSD - Fred's World's Best Burgers
• $500 - WBSD - Performance Tire & Auto Service
• $500 - WBSD - Jackson Wine, LLC
• $500 - WBSD - Burlington Dairy Queen
• Lincoln Aviator - Auto Program - Miller Motor Sales, Inc.

Dyer

• Thank you to The Coffee House and Baked Box for donating a yogurt parfait bar, muffins and cookies and to Best Bargains, the Dyer PTO, and Green Beauty Corporation for their contributions for the welcome back bags for staff.
• Thank you to Antioch Pizza for donating an estimated valued of $486.13 in pizzas and salad for lunch for the entire staff on September 6, 2024.

Karcher

• $259.43 - Demon Closet & Karcher Kupboard - St. Mary Immaculate Conception
• $259.43 - Demon Closet & Karcher Kupboard - St. Mary Immaculate Conception

Every year the school board is asked to nominate a board member to serve as the WASB (Wisconsin Association of School Boards) Legislative Liaison for the School District. The Board unanimously approved the nomination and appointment of Rosanne Hahn to serve as the WASB Legislative Liaison.

Every school year, as a District, we need approval of the school board for our school safety plan per the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). Our two safety coordinators for the District are Chris Weins (Director of Pupil Services) and Jess Warren (Director of Buildings and Grounds). Chris Weins presented the school safety plan to the Board.

Chris Wein's focused on:

• Every building has a secure entrance sequence that is used for visitors. We also utilize the raptor system for checking in visitors upon their arrival to the main office. All exterior doors throughout our buildings are locked to also ensure security and safety of our students and staff.
• Within the buildings all doors are in the locked position so that, in the event of an emergency, staff are able to pull doors closed and are secure.
• We will be using the month of October as our "safety month" across the District. Each week in October, we will be focusing on a different safety drill and we will be communicating from the District level to all families with information about each of the drills prior to the start of the week of that specific drill. We felt it was important to do these drills closer to the start of the school year versus spreading them out throughout the school year to ensure that all staff and students are trained and aware sooner rather than later in the year.
• The following are the drills of focus during October: Fire drills (required monthly), tornado drill, run, hide, fight, and evacuate.
• Note, fire drills do take place on a monthly basis throughout the School District.
• Chris also shared that our safety team (made up of some directors, building principals, or assistant principals) meet with the Burlington Police Department every month to align our safety efforts throughout the school year.
• Last but not least, shared that we plan on having a practice reunification drill at some point this school year with some parents and students. The use of a reunification site comes into play if we have to block off a perimeter around a school building and parents are not able to come to the actual school to pick up their student(s). A reunification site is where we would be transporting all students, so that parent pick up would take place away from the building of concern. This could be due to a gas leak, issue near by in the city/town, and/or due to another threat to student safety. Our reunification site is the Department of Public Works (DPW). We pointed out that BASD is the only School District in Racine County actively working on training in relation to our reunification site!!!

Ruth and I have had lots of conversations with Brown & Brown (current consultant to assist with decision making) along with other schools and businesses to assist with our decision making process when it comes to health insurance. Two options went to the school board with the recommendation from us to stay fully funded for one more year.

Option 1 is to stay fully funded with United Health Care as the increase is lower than we predicted it to be coming in at 19.9% with a one time credit of $265,000 which brings it down to 14.8%. We know this is still a high percent increase which is why we are wanting to explore and move towards self funded.

Option 2 is to shift to UMR self funded health insurance with the pharmacy piece being with RightwayRX. This would be a 22.8% increase.

We want staff to know that our goal and desire is to shift to going self funded. We do believe it will be financially beneficial for employees and the school district over time. We simply were not confident in the self-funded recommendation, want to involve staff more in the process, and feel we need to do a bit more research before we shift to self funded. It will be the right move for us, we just don't think it is the right move for the district come this January.

Therefore, our recommendation to the board was to continue with the fully insured plan for one more year to give us more time to involve staff, conduct more research, and feel confident with our plan design once we switch to self funded. The board approved the recommendation. Therefore, we are not changing our plan design in January - it will look and be the same as it is now for one more year.

There are a few months of the year, namely the end of November and the middle of January, when our cash flow is insufficient, and we need to borrow money to pay our bills. There are a few reasons this occurs.

One relates to the timing of when we receive our two main funding sources. We receive the general state aid quarterly, in September, December, March, and June; and we receive our tax levy collections starting midway through the school year, on January 20 and February 20, and the final payment on August 20 (after the school’s fiscal year end). The second reason we must short-term borrow is that our fund balance is not sufficient to carry us through this time frame.

While fund balance and cash are different, cash makes up a significant portion of fund balance. Also, fund balance is not a savings account! Fund balance is the difference between assets, such as the balance in our checking account, and liabilities, or amounts that we owe and must pay out in the near future.

So, think of a fund balance as being your own personal checking account. You have money coming in to your checking account (when you get paid, etc) and then you have money going out of your checking account (when you pay your mortgage, car payments, cell phone bills, groceries, etc). Your checking account fluctuates throughout the year based on what you are putting into it versus what you are taking out of it.

This is the same for the school district. The district has to short term borrow because we do not have enough money in our "checking account" (our fund balance) to pay our bills at certain times during the year.

Assets, liabilities, and fund balance are reported as of any given point in time. Assets are items like the balance in our checking account and receivables, which are amounts that are owed to us (the right to receive cash) in the future, such as filing a grant claim to be reimbursed for expenditures we have already paid out. Liabilities are also known as accruals or payables, which are amounts that we owe others (obligations to pay out cash) in the future, such as invoices for instructional materials we’ve ordered and received, and payroll taxes and other tax deferred contributions withheld from employees’ paychecks. Fund balance is not static and will ebb and flow throughout the year based on the timing of revenue receipts and expenditure payments.

So, because we do not have a higher fund balance, we have to short term borrow. Therefore, Ruth asked the board for permission not to exceed $2,300,000 in borrowing for the school year. We pay the full amount back by September 24, 2025. The board approved this resolution authorizing temporary borrowing for this school year.

Committee updates since last board meetings:

• Board Governance / Communication Committee - Marlo Brown, Chair
• Met on August 29th to discuss mainly the superintendent evaluation process. The board will be trained from WASB (Wisconsin Association for School Boards) on the superintendent evaluation tool on October 8 and then utilize that tool for an evaluation. They will be sharing their evaluation feedback with me at the December board meeting in closed session.

• Personnel Committee - Noah Strohm, Chair
• Met on September 4th to approve the appointment as well as the resignations, retirements and terminations since the last School Board meeting.

• September 24, 2024: Policy Committee @ 5:30 pm
• The policy committee is going to get back on their routine of reviewing 7 policies per meeting along with other policies that are being suggested to the district from NEOLA to revise.
• September 26: Teaching & Learning Committee @ 9:00 am
• The committee will be going to Karcher to learn about their bell schedule and understand the changes and pieces the district put in place with the shift of 5th grade going to the middle school.
• October 2: Board Governance / Communication Committee @ 5:00 pm
• Will talk about the community informational sessions I plan on starting on October 2 in the morning. I will be holding monthly sessions from 7:00-7:45 AM for the community to come and learn about our system with different topics each month.
• October 8: School Board Workshop @ 6:00 pm
• This workshop is time for the board to be trained on the WASB Superintendent Evaluation Tool.
• October 9: Personnel Committee @ 1:00 pm
• Review appointments, terminations, resignations, and retirements and/or other personnel related items.
• October 14: Monthly School Board Meeting @ 6:30 pm
• Normal monthly school board meeting. We do plan on starting back with dinners with the board and school presentations. I will be talking with the principals on Tuesday, September 17 to solidify which school are attending each board meeting.
• October 17: Buildings & Grounds Committee @ 6:00 pm
• Jess Warren will be explaining and sharing what our 5-10 year capital improvement plan looks like so that the board understands where we are in relation to what projects are having to be shifted to a later date due to our current financial state.

Thank you all for providing such an awesome start back for all of our students during week one of the 2024-2025 school year! It is almost hard to believe we are already into week two already! I feel like inservice happened yesterday! Thank you all for the work you do across the district for the betterment of our students and for your continued commitment and care for each other as colleagues!

BASD Proud,

Dr. Jill Oelslager, Superintendent

Taylor Wishau, Board President

Marlo Brown, Vice President

Paul Kobernick, Clerk

Peter Turke, Treasurer

Rosanne Hahn, Board Member

Noah Strohm, Board Member

Aubrey Thompson, Board Member

• August 12, 2024
• July 11, 2024
• June 10, 2024