River Valley School District

you

On our morning show today, we have Lauren Glassbrenner, a good friend from River Valley District Administrator for the River Valley District Inn to talk with us.

Where did the summer go Lauren?

I don't know,

it's gone.

I wish it lasted longer.

If we could have three months of summer instead of two, it should be nice, but it's okay.

I'm excited to have the kids come back.

The teachers are starting to get into their classrooms and put up the new bulletin boards and get things ready.

So we're getting ready.

Everybody's excited to get everything up and moving and be ready for the kids to return to our school year for the 26-27 school year.

Well, you have a special opening day then for River Valley.

We sure will.

We have an opening day, which we call our open house and it's actually on the 25th.

So it's coming up in a couple of weeks here.

So on the 25th from three until 6pm, we have every classroom ready, every teacher there, every person that would be able to see their child ready and willing at the district.

And we do it at three to six so that families that do work

have to have the ability to get into the schools.

But that's where everybody can kind of bring their school supplies if they have them purchased and have everything ready.

We actually will have a clothing swap that day.

We'll have some free school supplies around so any family of need feels like they can get ready as well.

So on that Tuesday, the 25th, we'll have a great big open house.

There will be food trucks on campus so that people can grab

ice cream or a burger or maybe some hot dog or something on that fun night and then a week later, which would be the first of September, school starts.

You'll have more people on campus that day than you do for the River Valley School

Fair.

Yeah, that's for sure.

Well, you know, the only other day that probably surpasses our open house is the school fair.

Right so like that's really it because if you have a thousand kids and each kid brings one or two parents and a brother or sister We could have three thousand to four thousand extra people on campus Which is good?

I love it It's great to be a part of it's so exciting and so fun and kids are getting ready You can tell kids have started riding their bikes around campus kind of nosing around wondering what's going on who their teachers are and all those things so I think the kids are ready to come back and I think the parents are ready for the kids to come back as well

River Valley, a homecoming in school fair.

It's probably not too early to start talking about that.

When is it?

No, no, no, no.

Our school fair will be on the 24th.

fifth of September.

So that's almost like a week, excuse me, a month later.

So that'll be the last full week in September.

So we'll have homecoming week, September 21, 22, 23, 24.

And then on the 25th, we have our school fair, we have our parade, we have our big homecoming football game.

All week though, River Valley celebrates homecoming.

So the week of 21 through 25, it's once upon a homecoming, a very magical kind of

you know, medieval theme where we're all really excited about being there to really celebrate what it is to be a graduate from River Valley.

So many alumni come back or what it is to be a kid in River Valley and all the great things that we offer.

I can picture how the Boulevard is going to be decorated now with that.

Yeah, you say that.

And I don't think people quite understand that there is at Varsity Boulevard, which is the street right there as you're coming onto our campus.

You know, just this median that's out there that I didn't understand what they did

my first year when I came to River Valley and each activity or athletic team that will be in part of homecoming, whether it's the football team or the FFA, they will take their senior members and turn them into

a caricature, if you will.

And then they decorate an entire section for that team.

So it'll be interesting.

Once upon a homecoming could be crowns and jewels.

It could be castles.

It could be a lot of different things.

And that whole boulevard gets taken over with light displays and decorations and all these themed ideas that just really create a sense of inclusion and a sense of pride.

for being a part of that big homecoming week.

It's really fun, really fun.

They really do, we really do know how to celebrate homecoming.

You do.

It'll

be here before

we know it.

Sure will.

Over the summer, you know, some school topics were in the news.

One of those, July 1st, the new cell phone policy across the state, this encompasses

all

schools, doesn't

it?

It does.

It's interesting to hear how some parents are responding online.

And I guess I just want to clarify real quick.

There's a new cell phone policy that came out of legislation.

It came out of Act 42, which required all school districts in the state of Wisconsin to adopt local policies prohibiting the use of a cell phone during instructional school time.

Again, a state policy, not a river valley policy.

And it's fun.

I put that in air quotes everybody.

It's fun to watch parents react to that.

Um, there are several, you guys know this out on Facebook where parents get all fired up about things and they go on there and they say, well, did you see that?

I can't even have my kid have their cell phone next year.

You can't.

Well, that's awful of that district to put that upon us.

It wasn't the districts.

It was the state.

And there was a lot of research that went into it because we're really trying to get kids focused back on learning, intentional learning, and to really not be distracted so much by the things that get them distracted.

And developing brains need to focus in on things.

And this would really help our teachers.

Our teachers are all in.

Many parents are all in.

Talk to your grandmas and grandpas.

Grandmas and grandpas are all in.

And so it's a cell phone policy, but it does

encompass many other things.

It would be smartwatches because you can get a phone call from a parent on a smartwatch.

It would be AirPods, those white like things that you shove in your ears and those are kind of a wireless earbud that connect back to your phone.

So we can't allow those because kids could bring their phone, put it in their locker and then be able to

communicate through their earbud, if you will.

If a parent purchases a tablet like an iPad, those are not allowed.

Headphones in general are something that we have to be really careful with.

So during the school day, all of those things have to be kept in a locker or a vehicle.

That's just the flat, honest truth.

They can't have it out.

Now, do districts provide

Technology, of course we do.

In River Valley, we have a Chromebook, which is basically a Microsoft pad or whatever you want to call it, but a Chromebook for grades 3 through 12.

Kids are still going to have computers.

It'll be our job to make sure that we figure out a way to keep the kids, you know, on task with that.

And we can do that.

But when it's purchased or brought from home, those are the things that they cannot have.

We've had to put a lot of policies in place.

You know, technology is a gift, but it's also a tool that can be misused.

There's special policies that had to be in there so that, you know, a cell phone could never go to a bathroom or a locker room.

We don't want any kind of infringement on students' privacy or adult privacy.

So again, at River Valley, it must be stored in your locker or your vehicle.

Plain and simple.

turned off would be great.

A lot of them will put them on probably what you call airplane mode, which just silences it but keeps it fairly active.

But it really is something that we feel will be a good thing to get kids more focused in on the work that we want them to do.

There are a couple exceptions.

If there's a medical need, let's say your child is a type 1 diabetic.

And their smartwatch is connected to a device that reads their blood sugar.

That would be allowed.

But that would be something that would be in a written agreement with the district and through their health plan with our district nurse approving.

It's not just a mom worrying about a kid.

It's really something that has to have an official plan and policy in place.

That's just one example.

Maybe a hearing device or Braille might be another exception that we would allow.

So there are a few ways that we can have an exception, but for most children, no more cell phones and just be ready for that.

And we've talked about it.

The kids know about it.

We had student groups talk about it last year.

Yeah, I think we're ready for it.

We're actually putting in some more enforcement in our hallways just to make sure kids don't say, hey, you know, Mr. Mr. Knee, I got to run to the bathroom and then they go to their locker and they spend time on their phone.

So we're really going to be kind of clamping down on making sure that kids are doing what they should do at the right time in the right space.

Nothing at lunchtime or anything like that.

Not at River Valley.

Certain districts have said.

you know, you can access it at lunch.

We have said it's not in our building.

So let's say I have a junior or a senior that's leaving campus for lunch.

We allow open campus for our upperclassmen, juniors and seniors.

They can obviously, when they get to their car and they have it off school grounds, of course, they'll get back on their cell phones.

So that'll be a time.

The other thing is if a kid ever needs to reach out to a parent or a parent needs to reach out to a kid, we have fully staffed front offices that are willing and ready to do so, right?

And if a

Let's say they forget, oh, I don't know my mom's phone number.

Run to your locker, grab your cell phone, bring it in here, bring up the number, use our phone, call your parent.

We're all in to help kids communicate with families, just not through personal cell phones during class or instructional time in our hallways or in our classrooms.

Right, I was gonna say you have very capable people at the front

desk

and within a minute or two, you probably have that communication

going.

Yeah, very true, very true.

So I think it'll be something that we'll take a little getting used to because I think

Some kids have really become reliant upon their cell phone.

as communication.

And there are many forms of communication and this will get our kids back to a different kind of communication.

And a lot of people are excited about that opportunity.

I don't know if you had a chance to see Toy Story 5.

I have not yet.

My son did go.

I haven't heard about it.

He said it was great.

I think that's a must see kind of along those lines of cell phones and technology and kids.

And the bottom line of the moral was just moderation.

There's a

time.

Absolutely.

playing and imagining and making eye contact and maybe, you know, but I think that, you know, they hit a home run with that.

I think it's really needed right now that.

I appreciate that.

I'll have to really watch it with that context in mind.

But it's also like, we have to understand that if a kid, and I'll say a kid, anybody between the ages of zero and 25, their brain development has been transitioned to something different because they grew up with technology their whole life.

Right?

So, but if you're in your mid 30s, you can remember when the first cell phones were around.

You know, I'm in my mid 50s and I can remember my first Blackberry and my first flip phone.

I didn't use it for my brain development, but anybody kind of from that 25 to 30 range all the way down, they grew up with cell phones as they were infants around them.

And there's a lot of research out there on how that changed the way they developed.

communication, the way they developed attention span, the way they developed kind of how to research things.

The cell phone and technology in general have changed the way that human brains are wired.

And that's been interesting as an educator to keep up with because we're trying to embrace it.

It's an incredible tool.

It will always be here.

We can't pretend it's not here, but we have to teach kids how to use it appropriately at the right time in the right place.

And overuse is bad.

And that's hard to hear when it's really easy to get a kid that's really distractible onto an iPad and put them over there so that they quiet down.

I get why it's a great fix.

but it's also maybe not always the most appropriate fix.

And we have to be really careful on how we use it with kids.

Those of us as grandparents and parents, you know, in adults, we have to moderate our own too.

Yeah, that's for sure.

We're modeling, right?

You know, it's really interesting when you go out to eat, imagine, and again, if you go out to eat somewhere at a fairly nice restaurant, just set your phone down and look around.

Most people are still using their phone and it's right by their

plate while they sit and eat.

And I think it just makes me think about being around a dining table and fighting for the last pork chop as a family, you know, like that idea is, you know, everybody would have been on a device now.

And we've got to, I know, go back to olden days, but I think we just need to get back to better communication and make sure that we have the skill of communicating an honest, open, fair ways without the use of technology.

Indeed.

So it sounds like every district will have kind of their own policy then.

Yeah, the basic premise, it

It's not, they'll be a little bit different language, but it came from our lawyer, right?

Like there's basically five legal teams that help run every school district in the state of Wisconsin, and they took language straight from Act 42.

Some districts are able to say, oh, you can get them out at lunch.

you know, some districts have said don't get it out at lunch, but really it is to adopt a local policy prohibiting the use of any cell phone, smartwatch, air pod, tablet, headphone during school day.

That was the basic bottom premise of it all.

And from there, you could take and put on a little bit of a local spin, but there's not much space in there for a lot of movement, I guess I would say in your local policy.

Morris Code probably is out

too.

Yeah, probably out.

Yeah, probably out.

Yes, yes,

yes.

Yeah, here we go.

Well, kind of dovetailing that in a little bit.

AI use.

Yeah.

So artificial intelligence is another thing that I think if I sat down and talked to my dad about how AI use is around in his daily life, he'd be like, what are you talking about?

AI use, artificial intelligence is basically the use of your tablet or your phone that kind of remembers

if you would, the activity that you've had on your cell phone, or on any tablet, so to speak, so that artificial intelligence really looks at the habits or the history of everything that you've used in technology.

And we've had to also, in districts, create policies around AI use, because if we assign a task for an upper level student, let's even just say for grades six through 12, and we say, hey, we want you to go research, if you will.

the history of the Civil War and how it affected Sock County or Richland County, right?

We could put that into a Google generator, Google, the website, the search engine, and then from that Google, it now then interprets that through artificial intelligence.

But when I put that into my computer, my computer remembers that Lauren Glasbrinner has a district in Sauc County, Richland County and Iowa County.

And so it starts to go back to the history of my use within technology and bring forward information based on my research habits.

If a kid does that, they copy and paste that as if it's their own work sometimes.

And that's basically cheating.

So it's really required our teachers to ramp up kind of the expectations and the clarity of what we want the kids to do in classrooms to make sure that they're still intentional learning.

You can't just put something into a search bar, copy and paste it and pretend that you came up with that idea.

You have to really think about integrity of learning.

You have to think about cheating.

And you also have to think about when you gather evidence

citing the source that you used.

So it does put a little bit of onus on the teacher to make sure that they're not just creating questions that can be researched on Google and expect one word answers.

You really want kids to dive deeper into thinking.

And so a lot of districts are really embracing the use of AI, but also making sure that kids understand the dangers of AI, as well as the good things that can come from it, just like your cell phone.

you know 20 years ago when we got a cell phone we were all excited that they were there and now we're pulling back a little bit making sure that we understand how to use that tool appropriately.

AI will not go away.

It is going to be here.

It's another artificial intelligence process that we will have for the rest of our lives.

So as a school district, we have to embrace how are we going to use it effectively, authentically, and get kids to understand in order to have sound learning integrity, we've got to be transparent about what we're doing.

So just fess up.

Yep, I used AI for this part.

Here's what it told me.

I took that part.

I went over here.

I researched this part, and it really makes the kids think about what process or strategy did they do to complete that assignment, if you will.

Will there be more possible work in classrooms?

If you're working on a paper in the classroom, you'd probably be monitored a little better, right?

Absolutely.

Some teachers have gone old school.

And I put that in air quotes too.

So I can think of a teacher that I have at River Valley High School, and she has gone back to using an old blue book.

And a blue book is this little blue

piece of paper and you open it up and it's just lines, right?

And you really have to formulate answers immediately from your memory, from your ideas and create it on the piece of paper.

You will see many more people put authentic tasks in the classroom with pen to paper or pencil to paper and make sure that the kids are going through that process in class to prove that they are there.

Giving a great demonstration speech would be a great way to show authentic learning.

prove to me you understand what you think you know.

Okay, prove it, get up, show me some props, present it, show us the process, great, what another great thing.

So presentations such as that show us that the kid did have the learning, that it's authentic, that it shows integrity, and those are all the things we wanna do.

Kind of the one word answer, fill in the blanks, making matches, sending stuff home like homework and doing a worksheet at home and bringing it back.

You don't know who did that work when it goes out of your classroom.

So much more in classroom work will probably be something that we're going to see.

And that's okay.

Or while they're giving that presentation, talk about how you learned this from AI that led you down another path that made you research something else and just be again, transparent and upfront with all the learning that you had, but also citing the source.

Oh, I got this from Google AI or I got this from chat GPT.

And that led me to researching something else.

Again, that transparency, that integrity that goes along with that learning process, I think it's something really important for us to get the kids to see and be able to do.

One of our guests last week was mentioning the fact that there's a trend with 18 to 25 year olds to kind of go away from AI a little

bit.

Yeah, it is.

I'm going to tease you a little bit, but you think of the LP, right?

You think of the record player.

You think of how trendy

old vinyl albums are becoming because for that 18 to 25 year old like collection of that authentic sound is really something that's real popular again.

kind of getting away from technology and going back to an authentic experience is very popular now again for the 18 to 25 year old.

Another thing that I would say about AI that's really important for us to understand is that there are federal laws that kind of mandate what a district can do.

And there's FERPA laws and there's COPA laws.

And I know this sounds crazy talk, but FERPA is the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act.

So that you know that it gives parents the rights

to view, to see, to control what their students are researching at school.

So that makes sure that parents know all of that's up to them.

They have very, they have rights to that.

It's so that they can see their kids' grades, that they can see those records.

All the, you know, we get federal funds coming in to make sure that we are being compliant to FERPA.

But the other one is COPA.

And COPA protects kids under age 13 from online data

online data collection.

So let's go back to AI real quick.

If a kid uses Google and they're under 13, that Google site may be keeping a history of their activity

And that's something that a district is then responsible for on a Chromebook that we would give them to say, nope, you can't use Google.

You must use this other website, which does not keep your history.

And it does protect you more from the collection of your website addresses and things.

So Kopa is something that we have to be really careful for.

And Kopa really hits for any grade kind of 4k up through grade seven or eight.

So it's something that we have to be really careful for.

And there are very few like

I'll again give you the example of chat GPT as being a really popular AI kind of site.

It is not COPPA approved.

So I can't just put chat GPT on every school computer.

It's not approved.

It's not a COPPA compliant.

product.

So I have to go out and find COPA compliant products and there are a few out there and that's why we often choose very specific sites or very specific like tools within technology to use with kids because we're doing that to restrict companies from using your child's data to target them with ads or sales or taking their information and using it maybe inappropriately.

hard to stay one step ahead of everything.

It's a research game, right?

We're always trying to do our very best to make sure that we are giving the kids the best that we can, but also limiting them a little bit to make sure that we're following federal and state guidelines.

For sure, it is hard sometimes, but you've got to stay

at least one step ahead of the teachers and the kids in order to get them what they need.

Because I also don't want staff coming to me and saying, you know, you're archaic.

You're not allowing kids to learn the new things.

They are going to go into jobs that need all these new school and these new techniques and these new strategies, but you won't allow them to get it at River Valley.

I will, but I also have to follow the federal and state guidelines.

So it's a balancing act.

at all times to make sure that kids get access to what's appropriate and that they're ready to leave us to go off into the learning world of 18 to 75, doing whatever they need to do.

There was somebody giving a speech.

Maybe this happened more than once at a college commencement this spring, but when they brought up AI, there was a huge boo.

Yeah.

I think part of that is some jobs

could be obsolete as a result.

Yeah, that's very true.

You have to understand how to use it appropriately.

Again, it's that integrity of the task.

It's that using it appropriately.

It's not the overreliance on it.

And so AI is something that's going, again, like I said before, it's always going to be here.

Now we've got to figure out what parts of it are the best parts for us.

It's really nice to have if you need to

put some work down and have it summarize something.

So for example, if I needed to give a presentation for a slide and I need five paragraphs to be shoved into one paragraph, I can dump that into chat GPT and say, take this volume of word and then get that down to basically five sentences.

Boom.

I copy and paste it in.

It synthesizes and redos it for me in 10 seconds.

Great.

That's a nice use of it.

I had the original work.

It took my work and turned it into something new.

And then I just have to cite that I used that tool, which would maybe be chat GPT to get down to a much shorter text.

Great.

time saving, great use of it, you're being authentic because you're putting in your own work.

If you just put in a question that says, write a five paragraph paper for me that summarizes what happened in Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck and plop, it puts it out there and you copy and paste that over to a Word document and then turn it in and say, golly, that was a great book and you never read it.

There's a problem.

So you just got to make sure that we can go back and forth and use it in the best way.

He's been able to buy the Cliff Notes.

Yeah, we

had Cliff Notes.

Cliff Notes, that would have helped.

Back in the 80s and 90s.

Back in the day, that would have helped.

I love that.

We'll be back with more in a moment.

Lauren Glassbrenner, our guest from River Valley Schools, and we'll be back with more in a moment.

Lauren Glassbrenner is in the house today, River Valley District Administrator talking about school related topics and the start of school getting underway again in just a few weeks, which is unbelievable.

I know we wanted to kind of move into another topic here today, the four structures of school.

Yeah, so you think of how a kid can go to school in Wisconsin and you think, well, Lauren, you're in charge of a public school.

Yes, I am.

I'm in charge of a traditional public school system, a district in Wisconsin, one of the 431 districts that sit in Wisconsin.

Within that, though, there's other options out there.

There's school choice options so that

in school choice if a family lives really close to Richland Center, but their land is still on a tax bracket that goes to River Valley, they can choose to go to Richland Center and transfer the funds from River Valley's accounts over to Richland Center's accounts.

That's called school choice.

That's different than a whole bunch of other things that we have.

So they've chosen to take their children to a different district based on their home district.

They...

can do so in Wisconsin.

Many states don't still have that.

Wherever the lines are drawn, wherever the boundaries are, that's where you go to school.

River Valley has a very large district.

I've talked about that many times because we had the four towns that came together for the consolidated high school in 1962 with Plain, Lone Rock, Spring Green, and Arena.

Those four towns and their four districts became one large district called River Valley.

What happens though when you have a big district like that that has land

mass is you often have families that live closer to the building in a different school district.

Another great example for me in River Valley is we have family farms that are in our district but are only like five miles away from Barnabeld.

So the families will have to apply and say, yes, we're going to go to Barnabelle because it's much closer.

Some families school choice based on daycare.

Some families school choice based on that might have a better activity.

If I had a kid in orchestra and River Valley doesn't offer orchestra, you can choose to go to a different district.

The crux of it is, though, is then you're in charge of transportation and you're in charge of making sure that happens for your family.

So that's one thing.

That's called school choice.

So then we have public and then we have school choice.

There's also something out there called charter schools.

Charter schools are still public options, but those have to be married under the district's umbrella.

So Richland Center, for example, has a couple virtual schools.

Those are virtual charter schools.

They're part of the Richland Center district.

but they are under the auspices of Richland Center.

So that's a charter school.

River Valley used to have a small charter school out at Arena, and it was called the Studio School.

That has phased out, but that is still part of River Valley.

So then we have the public school, and then you have the charter public school.

It's kind of a school within your school district.

Then we also have private schools.

Private schools are what

you might go to for like a St.

Luke's or a St.

John's, right?

Those are private schools and you have to pay as a parent out of pocket to go to those school districts.

Those private schools are usually within the district's boundaries.

For again, River Valley, I'll just give you the example of St.

John's, which is a small Catholic school right in the heart of Spring Green.

you can choose to have your child go to this wonderful little private school that has more of a Christian basis.

You have to pay out of pocket for the tuition, but if there is a special need for Title I, maybe some reading, maybe some special education, or for transportation, it's still the district's job, my job, to make sure that I'm offering those services for you.

So that's three so far, right?

We have the traditional one, we've got the charter ones, and then we have the private ones.

The other one that's out there has become a big political hotbed of questions.

The fourth system that we have is private school choice voucher.

It started a long time ago, back in the 1990s, I think it was 92 possibly, down in the Milwaukee area.

And that private school voucher program officially was called the private school choice program.

And it was funded by state tax dollars.

And it was really for specifically Racine and Milwaukee County's debt back there, where they were trying to give some families that had great need, maybe low income, to go to a private institution.

And they had caps on them and they had all these kind of limiting

factors.

Many of those are religious schools as well, but they were using public funds to pay for that voucher program.

There are actually four voucher programs that are approved in Wisconsin.

And I don't really need to list them off, but there's the Milwaukee, the Racine, and then there's also Wisconsin Parental Choice Program there.

What's interesting though is there was a cap on that voucher program.

And that cap kind of starting back in the 90s had a 1% increase, a 1% increase up until the 26, 27 school year, which is this year.

And so that cap is coming off.

which means many of our private schools might have the opportunity to become part of a voucher school.

And that would mean that more local dollars would go to pay for private schools.

And that scares public schools.

We're already fighting to keep the doors open and to do all the great things that we continue to try to do.

And so we're really worried about the removal of the cap, that district level participation, but we're also like worried that

They are funding those schools.

I don't know how to say this, Phil.

I'm trying to say it the right way.

I guess I'll give you an example.

To go to a voucher school, a high schooler currently for that program, if that school in the private voucher system gets $12,700 plus per kid, we get less in the public school system now.

So those voucher programs have grown so rapidly and grown exponentially that they now are getting more money than a typical public school district.

In, for example, in Richland County, in Sock County, in Columbia County, in, you know, Iowa County, there are very few voucher programs out there.

That in my mind, okay, but I end up as a district being a pass through of those dollars.

So no matter if I want to or not, every year I have to give some of the River Valley school budget to the private school voucher program.

And this last year was more than $100,000.

I think it was somewhere around $150,000.

I ship back to the state of Wisconsin so they can continue to afford this voucher program.

And it's not for schools around here.

It's for schools down near Milwaukee and Racine.

And when I explain that to your typical voter, they're like, well,

They can't do that.

They can't take River Valley tax dollars and ship it all the way down to Milwaukee.

But they do.

right?

And so as people are learning more about candidates, you know, there's going to be a primary tomorrow or as we get towards November, I just want them to be informed on the four types of schools that they are paying for out of their tax dollars.

Again, you have your traditional school, your typical public school district, tax dollars funded charter schools, those are under the umbrella of a typical school district tax dollars.

private schools.

You would say private schools have tuition, but there's still tax dollars to pay for transportation.

There's still tax dollars to pay for special education.

But the biggest, I don't know if I'd say offender, but a biggest one that surprises people is that private school choice voucher program, which is highly popular down in a different part of the state, their taxes are paying for that too.

And I just want people to understand kind of those four structures within the K-12 education system within Wisconsin.

We've talked many times in this program about school funding and can you see that changing down the road?

I mean, that's a million dollar question, I know, but

it is a million dollar question again.

Is there a

chance

that it

might turn around?

It's going to have to.

We cannot afford to continue.

the way that we're going.

I don't know how else to say that.

You just saw Hustisford.

Hustisford is a cool little district that's down in the Dodge County area.

So Hustisford, if people want context, is kind of south of Beaver Dam, over by Huracan.

It's kind of a smaller district down there.

Again, Hustisford, just as a school board, took a vote to dissolve.

they don't have enough money anymore to keep their small school district there.

So they voted to dissolve, which means all the kids that are in their boundaries now have to be shared out if the state allows this dissolvement.

I think some schools will choose to kind of integrate each other.

There may be districts that choose to combine so that they can continue to afford what they have.

Consolidate, I guess, would be the bright word.

So you're gonna see probably more consolidation and you're gonna see some

more dissolve.

And within that, it's going to have to have a really, I guess, public process so that it's understood by our local voters and our local taxpayers.

We want to make sure that we don't kind of tax our folks out of understanding what public schools offer, but we also have to, as we right size, make sure that we're spending the money appropriately.

It's no surprise that we have fewer kids in Wisconsin.

than we've ever had before.

It's no surprise that Wisconsin has a great statistic right now that's called brain drain so that as kids get a bachelor's degree and they grow up in Wisconsin or if they get a master's degree and they grow up in Wisconsin, they're leaving Wisconsin.

And so our population's going down and naturally the districts are going to get smaller and what's going to then be resulting from that is dissolvement and

consolidation.

And we just want to be aware of that.

And so to answer your question, we're going to have to have a state conversation about what to do with school funding.

We can't afford four different systems.

I gave you the four systems before between voucher and private and charter and public.

We can't afford those four systems in the way that we're continuing to do it right now because it's out taxing

our citizens.

And I think that's something that our legislators are going to have to have the guts to jump into.

And I know there are some that are ready to do it.

I think it's going to be a big topic of conversation as we hit that November election time.

So I want all listeners out there to just be aware of the four systems and to call your local school district and make sure they understand.

what's going on.

I'm not trying to hide anything.

Of course, I'm an advocate for public schools.

That's what I've spent my whole life doing.

I think public schools are the great leavening.

It levels the playing field for any child.

If you come from a family that's destitute or a family that's wealthy, you can get the same experience in a public school.

And I love that.

It's a great

great leveling.

It provides opportunity to any child based on their intelligence, based on their communication skills, based on the empathy that they have within their system.

And I believe public schools are something that is a part of a great democracy so that everybody can have a voice.

They're governed by

public people, they're governed for the betterment of your communities.

I love public schools.

I'll always be there.

But with these other three systems, it requires us to be very aware of what's out there.

So again, I have one of the best jobs in the world to be a part of a public school system.

There's going to be changes in the next 10 years or even the next two years if we're going to continue in the way that we're doing things, because I can only hear concern from my citizens out there that are saying, Lorna, I think you're doing a great job, but

I can't afford it anymore.

What are we going to do?

And that's really not a Lauren answer.

Then it goes to the legislators to get the funding, formulas change to make sure that we are aware of where all our dollars are going.

They can only go to referendum so many times.

Yup.

Yup.

Yup.

Uh, Brian cry, my friend always calls them a never random, right?

Never end them.

Yeah.

Never end them.

Uh, and we want them to be.

something of the past, right?

We shouldn't have to come every three to four years to say, hey, should we continue offering these great things to public schools?

We should be able to take our tax dollars and be able to afford that basic education for kids.

So it's something that's out there.

Again, as you go to your primary or as you go into November, just be aware of what's happening with school funding.

I'm not advocating for one or against another.

I'm trying to be apolitical here, but I want people to be well informed and that takes the responsibility of them to research some things.

Do you ever get any senators, assembly people stopping by and

asking?

Yeah, absolutely.

Howard Marklein will come by and see me once in a while.

I see Sarah Kayesky.

I see Karen DeSanto.

I see some of the candidates, some of them that are fighting against those folks who want to come by right now.

So there's a lot of people in primaries right now that are really using school funding as a way to become more interested and to kind of grab the attention of voters.

So again, I just wanted to bring up those four options so that I could be part of that.

projected proactive kind of these are the four systems and be aware of them.

Indeed.

Well, we're off and running.

I know your football players are on campus right now working out.

Yes, they are.

It's great to see them.

It's great to see everybody.

The cross country teams will be starting soon.

All the volleyball teams will be starting soon.

The soccer stuff will be starting soon.

It's just

It's an exciting time in any school district to get the summer over and to get the fall beginning and it's I know even I think I'm going into year 36.

It's still exciting for the first day of school to see kids come be ready for those things like our open house.

Oh, one more thing I should.

announce about that open house that's coming up on the 25th.

That's picture day.

So you want your kid to look good, right?

So like make sure that you understand that and all the letters come out from your schools and they start to get, oh, you're in Mrs. So-and-So's class and all that stuff.

So just, it's an exciting time and we're excited to have the kids back on our campus.

We've worked hard to get it all ready to make sure it's clean and it's prepped and we're excited for another wonderful school year.

Yeah, we always look forward to having some of the students on.

I think some of the FFA

students are

coming in later this month.

They'll, they'll get you the rundown of that school fair more than anything.

And during homecoming time, that's an exciting time for us.

So in the valley, we come back to school and we get ready, right?

You get ready for basically three weeks from there is the school fair and homecoming.

So we really get, we, we move right ahead.

And so from there, it just flies by.

it absolutely flies by.

So we don't take anything for granted, but we also want to make sure everybody is communicated to and that they're ready to go on those opening days.

So again, the 25th opening day, it'll be our open house from three till six on the River Valley campus.

And then a week later on September 1st, we're ready for your kids to come

back.

Some highlights over the summer too.

I know you have some some kids involved in the arts, some musical kids that have been doing some summer camps and things like

that.

Absolutely.

Whether it's an FFA camp or whether it's a music camp or a band camp or whether they, you know, take an internship at some of these places, it's been really fun to see the kids stay actively engaged.

Even finishing up summer school, right?

Like we just had elementary summer school finish for the second time.

So

It's just trying to make sure that we celebrate kids and that we're there to offer them the great things they need.

Is

it a musical year this year?

It'll be a musical year.

Yep, yep.

There'll be one coming.

Have they announced it yet or?

They have not.

Yes, it'll be coming though.

You'll know soon what musical the River Valley High School will present to us all.

And that's usually in December.

It is

in December.

So that'll be

announced

right away.

Little ways off.

Yeah.

All right.

Lauren, always good to see you.

Thanks, Bill.

I love being here.

Next time we see you, the school year will be underway and

it will be.

Yeah.

You'll still be in your new school clothes.

Yes.

I'll be in my new school clothes and hopefully not too much more gray bearded than I am today.

Lauren Glass from River Valley District Administrator, our guest on today's morning show.

you

On our morning show today, we have Lauren Glassbrenner, our good friend from River Valley District Administrator for the River Valley District Inn to talk with us.

Where did the summer go, Lauren?

I don't know.

It's

gone.

I wish it lasted longer.

If we could have three months of summer instead of two, it should be nice, but it's okay.

I'm excited to have the kids come back.

The teachers are starting to get into their classrooms and put up the new bulletin boards and get things ready.

So we're getting ready.

Everybody's excited to get everything up and moving and be ready for the kids to return to our school year for the 26-27 school year.

Well, you have a special opening day then for River Valley.

We sure will.

We have an opening day, which we call our open house and it's actually on the 25th.

So it's coming up in a couple of weeks here.

So on the 25th from three until 6pm, we have every classroom ready, every teacher there, every person that would be able to see their child ready and willing at the district.

And we do it at three to six so that families that do work

have to have the ability to get into the schools.

But that's where everybody can kind of bring their school supplies if they have them purchased and have everything ready.

We actually will have a clothing swap that day.

We'll have some free school supplies around so any family of need feels like they can get ready as well.

So on that Tuesday, the 25th, we'll have a great big open house.

There will be food trucks on campus so that people can grab

ice cream or a burger or maybe some hot dog or something on that fun night and then a week later, which would be the first of September, school starts.

You'll have more people on campus that day than you do for the River Valley School

Fair.

Yeah, that's for sure.

Well, you know, the only other day that probably surpasses our open house is the school fair.

Right so like that's really it because if you have a thousand kids and each kid brings one or two parents and a brother or sister We could have three thousand to four thousand extra people on campus Which is good?

I love it It's great to be a part of it's so exciting and so fun and kids are getting ready You can tell kids have started riding their bikes around campus kind of nosing around wondering what's going on who their teachers are and all those things so I think the kids are ready to come back and I think the parents are ready for the kids to come back as well

River Valley, a homecoming in school fair.

It's probably not too early to start talking about that.

What is it?

No, no, no, no.

Our school fair will be on the 25th of September.

So that's almost like a week, excuse me, a month later.

So that'll be the last full week in September.

So we'll have homecoming week, September 21, 22, 23, 24.

And then on the 25th, we have our school fair.

We have our parade.

We have our big homecoming football game.

All week though, River Valley celebrates homecoming.

So the week of 21 through 25, it's once upon a

a homecoming, a very magical kind of you know medieval theme where we're all really excited about being there to really celebrate what it is to be a graduate from River Valley so many alumni come back or what it is to be a kid in River Valley and all the great things that we offer.

I can picture how the Boulevard is going to be decorated now with that.

Yeah, you say that.

And I don't think people quite understand that there is at Varsity Boulevard, which is the street right there as you're coming onto our campus.

You know, just this median that's out there that I didn't understand what they did my first year when I came to River Valley.

And each activity or athletic team that will be in part of homecoming, whether it's the football team or the FFA, they will take their senior members and turn them into

a caricature, if you will.

And then they decorate an entire section for that team.

So it'll be interesting.

Once upon a homecoming could be

crowns and jewels, it could be castles, it could be a lot of different things.

And that whole boulevard gets taken over with light displays and decorations and all these themed ideas that just really create a sense of inclusion and a sense of pride for being a part of that big homecoming week.

It's really fun, really fun.

They really do, we really do know how to celebrate homecoming.

You do, it'll be here before we know it.

Over the summer, some school topics were in the news.

those July 1st, the new cell phone policy across the state.

This encompasses

all

schools, doesn't

it?

It does.

It's interesting to hear how some parents are responding online.

And I guess I just want to clarify real quick.

There's a new cell phone policy that came out of legislation.

It came out of Act 42, which required all school districts in the state of Wisconsin to adopt local policies prohibiting the use of a cell phone.

during instructional school time again a state policy not a river valley policy and it's fun i put that in air quotes everybody it's fun to watch parents react to that um there are several you guys know this out on facebook where parents get all fired up about things and they go on there and they say well did you see that i can't even have my kid have their cell phone next year you can't well that's awful of that district to put that upon us

It wasn't the districts.

It was the state.

And there was a lot of research that went into it because we're really trying to get kids focused back on learning, intentional learning, and to really not be distracted so much by the things that get them distracted.

And developing brains need to focus in on things.

And this would really help our teachers.

Our teachers are all in.

Many parents are all in.

Talk to your grandmas and grandpas.

Grandmas and grandpas are all in.

And so it's a cell phone policy, but it does

encompass many other things.

It would be smartwatches because you can get a phone call from a parent on a smartwatch.

It would be AirPods, those white like things that you shove in your ears and those are kind of a wireless earbud that connect back to your phone.

So we can't allow those because kids could bring their phone, put it in their locker and then be able to

communicate through their earbud, if you will.

If a parent purchases a tablet like an iPad, those are not allowed.

Headphones in general are something that we have to be really careful with.

So during the school day, all of those things have to be kept in a locker or a vehicle.

That's just the flat, honest truth.

They can't have it out.

Now, do districts provide

Technology, of course we do.

In River Valley, we have a Chromebook, which is basically a Microsoft pad or whatever you want to call it, but a Chromebook for grades 3 through 12.

Kids are still going to have computers.

It'll be our job to make sure that we figure out a way to keep the kids on task with that.

And we can do that.

But when it's purchased or brought from home, those are the things that they cannot have.

We've had to put a lot of policies in place.

Technology is a gift, but it's also a tool that can be misused.

There's special policies that had to be in there so that a cell phone could never go to a bathroom or a locker room.

We don't want any kind of infringement on students' privacy or adult privacy.

So again,

At River Valley, it must be stored in your locker or your vehicle.

Plain and simple, turned off would be great.

A lot of them will put them on probably what you call airplane mode, which just silences it but keeps it fairly active.

But it really is something that we feel will be a good thing to get kids more focused in on the work that we want them to do.

There are a couple exceptions.

If there's a medical need, let's say your child is a type one diabetic.

And their smartwatch is connected to a device that reads their blood sugar.

That would be allowed.

But that would be something that would be in a written agreement with the district and through their health plan with our district nurse approving.

It's not just a mom worrying about a kid.

It's really something that has to have an official plan and policy in place.

That's just one example.

maybe a hearing device or Braille might be another exception that we would allow.

So there are a few ways that we can have an exception, but for most children, no more cell phones and just be ready for that.

And we've talked about it.

The kids know about it.

We had student groups talk about it last year.

Yeah, I think we're ready for it.

We're actually putting in some more enforcement in our hallways just to make sure kids don't say, hey, you know, Mr. Mr. Knee, I got to run to the bathroom and then they go to their locker and they spend time on their phone.

So we're really going to be kind of clamping down on making sure that kids are doing what they should do at the right time in the right space.

Nothing at lunchtime or anything like that.

Not at River Valley.

Certain districts have said, you know, you can access it at lunch.

We have said it's not in our building.

So let's say I have a junior or a senior that's leaving campus for lunch.

We allow open campus for our upperclassmen, juniors and seniors.

They can obviously, when they get to their car and they have it off school grounds, of course, they'll get back on their cell phones.

So that'll be a time.

The other thing is if a kid ever needs to reach out to a parent or a parent needs to reach out to a kid, we have fully staffed front offices that are willing and ready to do so, right?

And if a kid, let's say they forget, oh, I don't know my mom's phone number, run to your locker, grab your cell phone,

Bring it in here, bring up the number, use our phone, call your parent.

We're all in to help kids communicate with families, just not through personal cell phones during class or instructional time in our hallways or in our classrooms.

Right, I was gonna say, you have very capable people at the front

desk

and within a minute or two, you probably have that communication

going.

Yeah, very true, very true.

So I think it'll be something that we'll take a little getting used to because I think some kids have really become reliant upon their cell phone

as communication and there are many forms of communication and this will get our kids back to a different kind of communication and a lot of people are excited about that opportunity.

I don't know if you had a chance to see Toy Story 5.

I have not yet.

My son did go.

I haven't heard about it.

He said it was great.

I think that's a must see kind of along those lines of cell phones and technology and kids and the bottom line of the moral was just

moderation.

There's a

time for

playing and imagining and making eye contact and maybe, you know, but I think that, uh, you know, I, they hit a home run with that.

I think it's really needed right now that, uh,

I appreciate that.

I'll have to really watch it with that context in mind, but it's also like, we have to understand that if a kid, and I'll say a kid, anybody between the ages of zero and 25, their brain development has been transitioned to something different because they grew up with technology their whole life.

right?

So, but if you're in your mid 30s, you can remember when the first cell phones were around.

You know, I'm in my mid 50s and I can remember my first Blackberry and my first flip phone.

I didn't use it for my brain development, but anybody kind of from that 25 to 30 range all the way down, they grew up with cell phones as they were infants around them.

And there's a lot of research out there on how that changed the way they developed

communication, the way they developed attention span, the way they developed kind of how to research things.

The cell phone and technology in general have changed the way that human brains are wired.

And that's been interesting as an educator to keep up with because we're trying to embrace it.

It's an incredible tool.

It will always be here.

We can't pretend it's not here, but we have to teach kids how to use it appropriately at the right time in the right place.

And overuse is bad.

And that's hard to hear when it's really easy to get a kid that's really distractible onto an iPad and put them over there so that they quiet down.

I get why it's a great fix.

but it's also maybe not always the most appropriate fix.

And we have to be really careful on how we use it with kids.

Those of us as grandparents and parents, you know, in adults, we have to moderate our own too.

Yeah, that's for sure.

We're modeling, right?

You know, it's really interesting when you go out to eat.

Imagine, and again, if you go out to eat somewhere at a fairly nice restaurant, just set your phone down and look around.

Most people are still using their phone and it's right by their plate while they sit and eat.

And I think it just makes me think about

around a dining table and fighting for the last pork chop as a family, you know, like that idea is, you know, everybody would have been on a device now and we've got to, I know, go back to olden days, but I think we just need to get back to better communication and make sure that we have the skill of communicating and honest,

open, fair ways without the use of technology.

Indeed.

So it sounds like every district will have kind of their own policy then.

Yeah, the basic premise, it's not, they'll be a little bit different language, but it came from our lawyer, right?

Like there's basically five legal teams that help run every school district in the state of Wisconsin, and they took language straight from Act 42.

Some districts are able to say, oh, you can get them out at lunch.

you know some districts have said don't get it out at lunch but really it is to adopt a local policy prohibiting the use of any cell phone, smartwatch, air pod, tablet, headphone during school day.

That was the basic bottom premise of it all and from there you could take and put on a little bit of a local spin but there's not much space in there for a lot of movement I guess I would say in your local policy.

Morse code probably is

out too.

Probably out.

Yep.

Probably

out.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Here we go.

Uh, well, kind of dovetailing that in a little bit of AI use.

Yeah.

So artificial intelligence is another thing that I think if I sat down and talked to my dad about how AI use is around in his daily life, he'd be like, what are you talking about?

AI use artificial intelligence is basically the, the use of your tablet or your phone that

kind of remembers, if you would, the activity that you've had on your cell phone, or on any tablet, so to speak, so that artificial intelligence really looks at the habits or the history of everything that you've used in technology.

And we've had to also, in districts, create policies around AI use, because if we assign a task for an upper level student, let's even just say for grades 6 through 12, and we say, hey, we want you to go research, if you will.

the history of the Civil War and how it affected Sock County or Richland County, right?

We could put that into a Google Generator, Google, the website, the search engine, and then from that Google, it now then interprets that through artificial intelligence.

But when I put that into my computer, my computer remembers that Lauren Glasbrinner has a district in Sauc County, Richland County and Iowa County.

And so it starts to go back to the history of my use within technology and bring forward information based on my research habits.

If a kid does that, they copy and paste that as if it's their own work sometimes.

And that's basically cheating.

So it's really required our teachers to ramp up

kind of the expectations and the clarity of what we want the kids to do in classrooms to make sure that they're still intentional learning.

You can't just put something into a search bar, copy and paste it and pretend that you came up with that idea.

You have to really think about integrity of learning.

You have to think about cheating.

And you also have to think about when you gather evidence

citing the source that you used.

So it does put a little bit of onus on the teacher to make sure that they're not just creating questions that can be researched on Google and expect one word answers.

You really want kids to dive deeper into thinking.

And so a lot of districts are really embracing the use of AI, but also making sure that kids understand the dangers of AI, as well as the good things that can come from it, just like your cell phone, you know,

you know 20 years ago when we got a cell phone we were all excited that they were there and now we're pulling back a little bit and making sure that we understand how to use that tool appropriately.

AI will not go away.

It is going to be here.

It's another artificial intelligence process that we will have for the rest of our lives.

So as a school district we have to embrace how are we going to use it

effectively, authentically, and get kids to understand in order to have sound learning integrity, we've got to be transparent about what we're doing.

So just fess up.

Yep, I used AI for this part.

Here's what it told me.

I took that part, I went over here, I researched this part, and it really makes the kids think about what processor strategy did they do to compete.

complete that assignment, if you will.

Will there be more possible work in classrooms?

If you're working on a paper in the classroom, you'll probably be monitored a little better,

right?

Absolutely.

Some teachers have gone old school.

And I put that in air quotes, too.

So I can think of a teacher that I have at River Valley High School, and she has gone back to using an old blue book.

And a blue book is this little blue

piece of paper and you open it up and it's just lines, right?

And you really have to formulate answers immediately from your memory, from your ideas and create it on the piece of paper.

You will see many more people put authentic tasks in the classroom with pen to paper or pencil to paper and make sure that the kids are going through that process in class to prove that they are there.

Giving a great demonstration speech would be a great way to show authentic learning.

prove to me you understand what you think you know.

Okay, prove it, get up, show me some props, present it, show us the process, great, what another great thing.

So presentations such as that show us that the kid did have the learning, that it's authentic, that it shows integrity, and those are all the things we wanna do.

Kind of the one word answer, fill in the blanks, making matches, sending stuff home like homework and doing a worksheet at home and bringing it back.

You don't know who did that work when it goes out of your classroom.

So much more in classroom work will probably be something that we're going to see.

And that's okay.

Or while they're giving that presentation, talk about how you learned this from AI that led you down another path that made you research something else and just be again, transparent and upfront with all the learning that you had, but also citing the source.

Oh, I got this from Google AI or I got this from chat GPT.

And that led me to researching something else.

Again, that transparency, that integrity that goes along with that learning process, I think it's something really important for us to get the kids to see and be able to do.

One of our guests last week was mentioning the fact that there's a trend with 18 to 25-year-olds to kind of go away from AI a

little bit.

Yeah, it is.

I'm going to tease you a little bit, but you think of the LP, right?

You think of the record player.

You think of how trendy

old vinyl albums are becoming because for that 18 to 25 year old like collection of that authentic sound is really something that's real popular again.

Kind of getting away from technology and going back to an authentic experience is very popular now again for the 18 to 25 year old.

Another thing that I would say about AI that's really important for us to understand is that there are federal laws that kind of mandate what a

a district can do, and there's FERPA laws, and there's COPA laws.

And I know this sounds crazy talk, but FERPA is the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act.

So that you know that it gives parents the rights to view, to see, to control what their students are researching at school.

So that makes sure that parents know all of that's up to them.

They have very, they have rights to that.

It's so that they can see their kids' grades, that they can see those records.

All the, you know, we get,

federal funds coming in to make sure that we are being compliant to FERPA.

But the other one is COPA.

And COPA protects kids under age 13 from online data collection.

So let's go back to AI real quick.

If a kid uses Google and they're under 13, that Google site may be keeping a history of their activity

And that's something that a district is then responsible for on a Chromebook that we would give them to say, nope, you can't use Google.

You must use this other website, which does not keep your history and it does protect you more from the collection of your website addresses and things.

So Copa is something that we have to be really careful for.

And Copa really hits for any grade kind of 4k up through grade seven or eight.

So it's something that we have to be really careful for.

And there are very few like

I'll again give you the example of chat GPT as being a really popular AI kind of site.

It is not COPPA approved.

So I can't just put chat GPT on every school computer.

It's not approved.

It's not a COPPA compliant product.

So I have to go out and find Copa compliant products and there are a few out there and that's why we often choose very specific sites or very specific like tools within technology to use with kids because we're doing that to restrict companies from using your child's data to target them with ads or sales or taking their information and using it maybe inappropriately.

hard to stay one step ahead of everything.

It's a research game, right?

We're always trying to do our very best to make sure that we are giving the kids the best that we can, but also limiting them a little bit to make sure that we're following federal and state guidelines.

For sure, it is hard sometimes, but you've got to stay

at least one step ahead of the teachers and the kids in order to get them what they need.

Because I also don't want staff coming to me and saying, you know, you're archaic.

You're not allowing kids to learn the new things.

They are going to go into jobs that need all these new school and these new techniques and these new strategies, but you won't allow them to get it at River Valley.

I will.

But I also have to follow the federal and state guidelines.

So it's a balancing act at all times to make sure that kids get access to what's appropriate and that they're ready to leave us to go off into the learning world of 18 to 75 doing whatever they need to do.

There was somebody giving a speech.

Maybe this happened more than once at a college commencement this spring.

But when they brought up AI, there was a huge boo.

Yeah.

I think part of that is some jobs

could be obsolete as a result.

Yeah, that's very true.

You have to understand how to use it appropriately.

Again, it's that integrity of the task.

It's that using it appropriately.

It's not the overreliance on it.

And so AI is something that's going, again, like I said before, it's always going to be here.

Now we've got to figure out what parts of it are the best parts for us.

It's really nice to have if you need to

put some work down and have it summarize something.

So for example, if I needed to give a presentation for a slide and I need five paragraphs to be shoved into one paragraph, I can dump that into chat GPT and say, take this volume of word and then get that down to basically five sentences.

Boom.

I copy and paste it in.

It synthesizes and redos it for me in 10 seconds.

Great.

That's a nice use of it.

I had the original work.

It took my work and turned it into something new.

And then I just have to cite that I used that tool, which would maybe be chat GPT to get down to a much shorter text.

Great.

Time saving.