of University Women, AAUW. Tonight we have three of the candidates for the Shaboygan Area School Board. Christopher Domogosky, Mary Lynn Donahue, and Mark Mansell. Our moderator tonight is Mary Jo Mabrierti. Mary Jo has over four decades of experience in not-for-profit management and fundraising, and she was the Chief Development Officer at the John Michael Kohler Art Center at the time of her retirement. She also has many years of community service, including the Board of Directors at the Shaboygan County YMCA and the American Civil Liberty Union of Wisconsin. She is a longtime member of the American Association of University Women, and she has moderated several earlier candidate forums. Please welcome Mary Jo. Thank you, Julie, and thank you all for being here. We're going to start tonight by having each of the candidates make a three-minute statement, and I'll tell you what we want you to answer in that statement. When I tell you we're gonna, this is three minutes each, we are gonna start with Mr. Domogosky, then Ms. Donahue, then Mr. Mansell, and we will alternate alphabetically who goes first in the following questions. In your statement, could you please tell us what are your primary qualifications to be a school board member and what is the one best thing you can contribute to the Shaboygan Area School District? Mr. Domogosky. Chris Domogosky, I grew up in a family with six children and really part of the reason that I'm running for school board has to do with that, so my mother was an elementary school teacher as I grew up, and my father taught at the Technical College for more than 20 years. I followed through with that, and while I was still in Milwaukee, I taught at both Gateway and Fox Valley Technical College and in the Milwaukee Police Academy, so I have some experience teaching myself, but really some foundational impacts, I would say, in that it was impressed on me very strongly that the buildings blocks that we got through education really was our pathway to success, and so I believe that that is very, very important, and I would say that I think it's important to understand that two of my sisters are elementary school teachers at MPS, so I have a lot of experience with that. I've raised five children, four of which three have graduated from Shaboygan Area School District and once currently a senior at North High School. I'm also familiar with the schools from my employment. I've been in law enforcement for the past 30 years. The last 12 plus years I've spent employed as the chief of police for the city of Shaboygan, and so I think from that I have some unique perspectives on some of the issues that we face as a community and how they show up in the schools and some of the success that we can have in taking that on, and from that what I'm gonna say is one of the biggest issues that we have is that the schools are part of a larger system, and if that system is siloed, and the agencies and people that make up that system if they're not talking and sharing information, we don't have the success that we normally do, so I think it's very important that we do that, and I have a lot of experience from working as the chairman of the State Law Enforcement Standards Board and on other nonprofit boards of making sure that we're listening and getting input from everybody that's involved in aligning everybody and moving them in the same direction. I've also spent time as a volunteer coach for CISO, been involved as a mentor through big brothers and big sisters and been in the schools as a lunch buddy, and then lastly for the past 10 years, I've been a member of Fight Crimes Invest in Kids, which is one of five groups that make up a stronger America, and as part of that, I've spent the last two legislative sessions lobbying in Madison for support for early childhood education and quality childcare because I understand that the interventions that we make early in life really do make a difference long-term. Ms. Donahue. Thank you. My name is Mary Lynn Donahue, and I'm running for an open seat on the Sheboygan Area School District's Board of Education. To set the record straight, the contest is between me and Chris Damolgoski. Mark here is unchallenged, what many incumbents wish for, and Mark is a non-city seat, and so the contest that people will be voting on to make a choice is between me and Chris. Well, I grew up here in Sheboygan. I graduated from St. Clement's School and graduated from North High School, and like a lot of children, I couldn't wait to leave, and I left for a while. I went to school for a very long time. I worked hard, I traveled, which was great fun, and then I came back to Sheboygan in 1981, and it was the best move I ever made in my life. I came back as a lawyer, a legal services lawyer, representing low-income people in civil matters, and then I met and married this magnificent man who's in the audience somewhere, Timothy, oh, Timothy, of course he's hiding, Tim Van Akron, and we have two wonderful children, Michael and John Flanagan. We are all graduates of Sheboygan Public Schools. Tim is a graduate of South High, so it was a little hard for me, but we've made a compromise and we're all pretty happy about it. Like Chris, I've been a student and also a teacher at LTC in very interesting law schools in Bulgaria, Lithuania, and Poland teaching short courses. I did not make it to Ukraine, but I have a sense, just a sense of the horrible things that are happening there, as I'm sure we all do. So service to the community has been a key part of my life. The community gave me so much and it was my way of giving back. I was on the school board previously. I served on the Sheboygan Common Council, sitting down there for nine years, and on the police and fire commission. Learning how to work as a government person, as a government official really gives you a sense of how you need to learn to work with people, listen, and weigh competing views and competing values. I've also done an incredible amount of local board service. The Sheboygan County Head Start, the Public Education Foundation, the Arts Center, the Sheboygan Symphony, First Congregational Church, you name it. All of these organizations have made my life so rich and I want to give back. The one best thing about me, I would say, is I am a problem solver. In all the time and all the roles that I've had, I have learned to solve problems and I think that's one of the key strengths I bring to the race. Mr. Mansell. Hi, I'm Mark Mansell. I guess a little bit of my background is I grew up in Central Wisconsin, Rapid Stevens Point. I graduated from Stevens Point's senior high school, went on to college at UW Oshkosh, then got hired here in Sheboygan and had been here for the last 33 years and I essentially have no more ties to Central Wisconsin so I consider myself a Sheboyganite even though it's only been for 33 years. I guess some of my primary qualifications that I've always hung my hat on is that I'm the father of four children, all of which have attended their entire school careers in the Sheboygan area school district. My last one is a sophomore at North currently but then I balance that with having been a property owner during all those years also so I can balance the need for quality education but yet at a responsible price so I think that's a key component of one of my qualifications. I think the second portion was what do I, the primary thing that I bring in? What is the one best thing that you can contribute to the district? Well I guess I would consider, I've been on the school board for 15 years. I guess the primary thing that I would bring would be leadership and experience on the board. I'm currently the clerk on the board. I've served as the vice president on a couple of occasions. I chair the human resources committee currently and I've done that in the past. I'm a vice chair. I've been the vice chair in curriculum and instruction and I've been the vice chair on finance and I've also served on the facilities and recreation committee which are our four committees. So I know how this board operates. I know how the district operates and in the upcoming years we currently have two essentially brand new board members and we were expecting two more members and so we'll have four members out of the nine that will have essentially no more than a year of experience. So leadership and transitioning these new members and to continue to function at the high function that we do. I've always been impressed by the way the school board operates here. It doesn't seem to be like any other government entity. There's differences of opinions but there's always consensus and support between our members and I think that's a key ingredient in keeping the continuity of all of the past members and current members of this board and the way it operates. Thank you. School board candidate Susan Hine had a class tonight and is not able to be with us in person and I have been asked to read this on Susan's behalf. Susan Hine has lived in Sheboygan for most of her life. Susan earned her BA teaching degree from Lakeland College, now university, master's counseling degree from Marquette University and a doctorate in higher education organizational leadership from the University of Southern Florida, Nova. She is currently employed as a clinical therapist at counseling center of Sheboygan. Susan's family and her husband Daniel's family including their children are all Sheboygan area school district graduates. They are very proud of the district in the accomplishments their children have achieved due to the education they have received. Susan also volunteers her time with the Sheboygan service club and diploma dash with the Sheboygan public education foundation. Quote, I serve on the school board to support the district as it continues to engage all children in educational opportunities and preparation for their future. Quote, I am proud to be a member of the school board and of the commitment of my fellow school board members to provide excellent education to the district community. I am especially proud of our students, teachers, administrators and all staff members. I will remind the candidates of their three minute limits on the questions and we'll now proceed. And this is the first of several two part questions and we'll start this one with Ms. Donahue. What are the most important challenges facing the district in its responsibility for the education of our youth and what are your priorities for meeting those challenges? We've just come through a seismic time in our lives in the community and in the nation and in the world because of the pandemic. The pandemic has truly been a world changer. It has turned our world upside down and it's certainly turned the school district upside down. Our students came back in the 2021 school year and our teachers and staff and parents are working very, very hard to bring them back to where they were. I call it the new normal, but the new normal has to be even better than the old normal. Students coming back have spent a long period of time away from a traditional school structure. They have missed their friends. They have missed their community. And as they come back into the school district, we have special challenges to help them regain their academic skills and to meet the fairly significant mental health needs that students have. So I think those are extremely significant challenges but make no mistake, public education has always been challenging. There's, it is the foundation of our democracy and yet it brings in everyone and has many, many different masters to answer to. So within that realm of complexity and difficulty, I think priorities need to be one, bringing our kids back to the standards, academic levels that they had been previously. The district's report card indicates that there has been some slippage. Number two, I would say that we need to address the needs of all of our students. Remarkably, for someone like me who grew up in Sheboygan, 52% of our students are students of color. We are a majority minority school district, or should I say that the other way around, but that is another huge change and we have a loving and inclusive responsibility to all of those kids. And so we need to work really, really hard to ensure we have enough teachers, enough time, enough parental involvement, enough mental health resources, counselors, programs to really bring us back together into a cohesive and highly functioning school district, which I think we are even now, but there's, we can only go up. Mr. Mansell. Could you please repeat the question? Yes. What are the most important challenges facing the district in its responsibility for the education of our youth and what are your priorities for meeting these challenges? Well, we've got several priorities. Mary Beth hit on the primary one and that is getting student achievement back up to the levels they were before and trying to continue to improve upon that. But as far as issues that are gonna be going on, there's proposals to sell the property on the east side of Taylor Drive currently and to be able to determine if we move forward with that and how that progresses, unlike previous property sale, we certainly would like to see this be, go a little bit smoother than that. We're on the brink of needing new middle schools and that's gonna be a significant amount of money. Currently, there's a committee, a citizen committee looking into the options and we're waiting for that to finish that process to determine how we move forward on replacing urban and replacing Farnsworth Middle Schools. There's no announcement made, but I would expect that the superintendent is gonna retire in the next few years and the most important job that the school board can do is hiring a superintendent. So those are significant things. Some of the other things that we're facing is just a lack of teachers and people going into the teaching profession. So being able to attract and retain teachers, quality teachers to provide the quality education to our kids is a significant challenge right now. We're also losing students, just the demographics, there's fewer kids. So fewer kids means we're getting less money in state aides, so we gotta try to make ends meet that way. We also are facing a challenge with the vouchers going to private schools, which was about, I believe, $4.3 million this year, which we then were allowed to tax to make that money up, but that's additional property taxes on everyone. I would say that the way the board operates and that I would see it is that we need to provide the resources and the support in the direction to the administration and to the teachers and the staff to be able to provide this education so that they know they're supported by their board and the community that we're just kind of the go-between between the community and the administration in order to make all these things happen. Thank you. Mr. Dalmugoski. So I think the other candidates did a really good job of laying out the issues ahead of us. I think the biggest challenges are just what they said. It's dealing with the pandemic and the impacts that has already had on our kids and on our community. And that shows up not only in the achievement level as been mentioned, but also in their social and emotional well-being. And so the school or the school district really has a bigger challenge other than just educating them. It's really making sure that they're well from a holistic point of view. And so as it's been mentioned, having the services in place and delivering the training to the right people and making sure, like I said before, that all the other system partners are engaged and aligned so that we're using the best of all the resources in the community, I think is extremely important. And so that means having an expert in place and having a CAT team at Health and Human Services that works with the school district. It means making sure that the programs that we have set up so when the police go to a house and see trauma going on that they can deliver a message to the school district so that the teachers know that some kid might be off the next day because of what happened in his or her life the evening before. So all of those things kind of go together. I think one of the big priorities needs to be not just getting caught up in today, as Mark kind of mentioned, it's being future-looking too so that we have the resources, both the physical resources, like buildings and things like that, but also the people resources. So teachers and counselors and treatment staff and also quality leadership in the school district. And then I think the enrollment issue, again, is a big issue. Both the issue that shrinking enrollments but also the issue that Mark mentioned about vouchers and the impact that can happen. So I think staying focused on really the great things that the school district offers and some of the work that passports have really done to do things like keep charter schools as part of the district so that there's options and pathways for every kid really is really, really important. And then I think as we're dealing with trauma and some of those kids that really have some difficult issues in their life, it's making sure that they stay engaged and in school and that might look different for different kids. So it might be going to different schools. It might be online, but whatever we can do to keep them and those families engaged. Thank you. We'll start the next question with Mr. Mansell. Would you support additional teaching assistance in classrooms with multiple special needs students? In addition, teaching assistants are currently paid $15 per hour. Would you support raising their pay to $18 or $20 per hour? Well, fortunately, I don't have to ask you to repeat the question. Okay. I don't know that I have enough information based on the question to really be able to address the answer. Am I willing to provide additional teaching assistants to a classroom for special needs kids? Absolutely yes, if they're needed there then we should have additional teaching assistants. But without knowing the need per se, it's hard to jump on board just saying that more people in that classroom is going to be beneficial or more beneficial. And the same with the increases, we just raised that pay to $15. I've always been an advocate for our support staff to have higher increases or higher percentage increases than our administrative staff or our teachers because of the inequity between what they receive, you know, a 2% increase on a $12 an hour job compared to a $80,000 high maxed out teacher are two different things. So in the other, I would have to say on first blush I would be supportive of increasing that more but I would need to balance that against the financial impact and our ability to pay.  But I'm obviously supportive of it. One of the challenges that we face right now are the increased private sector wages. So $15 an hour at the school district may not be enough to really make the ends meet for somebody else that could walk out the door and work private sector at $20 an hour. So we're in a competitive world. So we try to make the working environment and the reason why they're working for the school district, hopefully a little bit more palatable that if they're not making quite as much as in the private sector that they still would prefer to be working in the district because it's not always all about the money. Mr. Dalmugoski? So I would support the concept but I would agree with what Mark said and part of that is really looking at the whole staffing plan for the district and determining priorities and needs and determining where that fits in. So it could, you know, that what it could come down to based on the budget is are we adding teaching assistance or are we adding music teachers or are we adding school counselors? And so I think really without looking at the whole big picture and seeing where the greatest needs are and then prioritizing that and working from there, it's really kind of hard to answer the question but I think the general concept is yeah, we wanna make sure that all the kids have the resources that they need to be successful. Thank you. Ms. Donahue? 18.3% of our students in the Sheboygan area school district are students with disabilities. It's about one in five students. State funding for students with disabilities has been, let me be frank, a disgrace. We are wildly underfunded for services for our disabled students and it's a crying shame. It really is. I wholeheartedly support looking for additional teaching assistance. They are a vital part of a classroom. I've been in classrooms, I've watched them and they're not only good for the child who is disabled but also for all of the students in the classroom. Now we started talking years ago about what a living wage was and it was $15 an hour. That's not even close now, that's not even close. So we need to support adequate and decent wages not only for our teaching assistance but for everyone in the school district. Now, how does that happen? How can we take care of that? Well, I suggest that we take it to our state representatives. School funding is still not back at the level it was in 2010 when there was a drastic and dramatic cut to public school funding. More funding was provided this year but that funding went to taxpayers, nothing wrong with that but there was zero increase per student in the Sheboygan area school district. No more money. There's something dramatic and there may be questions about the school funding formula so I won't get on my high horse to too high a degree but the school funding formula is broken and it needs to be taken a look at. Now the ESSER money, the elementary and secondary school emergency relief money and we're in our second phase as I understand it has been really critical. We've been able to hire 11 new teachers. We have four new school counselors. The problem is that that is, and I'm as Mark and Chris would say this is not sustainable because that money will be gone in 2024. So we really do need to be putting our thinking hats on but we have to attach our tongues to our brains and start talking to our legislators about the fact that they're, my prejudice here, there's truly nothing more important than the education of all of our students. We just need to be on it. So $20 an hour, absolutely. More teaching assistance in the district, absolutely. It's going to be one of the things that I am going to work on so hard once, if in fact I am elected. Thank you. We're going to start the next question with Mr. John Logoski. The district is currently considering proposals for the purchase and development of the 26 acre vacant property across from the Field of Dreams Sports Complex on Taylor Drive. How would you like to see that land developed? I would like to see it developed in the best interest of everybody and so I think there's lots of different stakeholders that are involved and really I can't give you an answer on that until I hear really what all of the stakeholders have to say and what the different viewpoints are and then really weigh that and so there's benefits for how that land could be developed that would benefit the school district. There's the city that could benefit in many ways based on the different developments that go up there. There's neighbors that live either across the street or some of them that live essentially on the same parcel directly there and so I think there's lots and lots of different stakeholders that it's important to hear from and then part of it really is the development agreement as far as what it brings to the tax base. So how does it impact just our everyday residents? How much money does it bring into the school district? How much does it bring into city taxpayers? So I think there's really a lot of different issues to look at. The city has many different needs it has housing needs and additional healthcare needs and so I think all of those have strengths to the proposals but really until as a school board member until I heard from all of the different constituencies and stakeholders I wouldn't be able to give you an answer about what the best use is. Ms. Donahue. I did attend a school board meeting where proposals, two proposals were discussed for the parcel of land. There was a proposal for some senior living. It did not seem particularly well developed or well thought through and then there was a very interesting proposal from Freydert Hospital or the Freydert Medical Complex to develop a clinic and small non-surgical hospital on site. The Freydert proposal was extremely well developed, very thoughtful would bring a pretty penny, I would say to the school district in terms of the sale price. Taxation for hospitals and clinics is kind of complex, some are taxable, some aren't but I believe that it is a really, it's the highest and best use for that property. Now, as Chris said, there are some issues because it borders right along, believe it or not, all of those wonderful houses that our students built. I think it's North 27th Street, I may have this. But when I was on the school board long ago, students built these wonderful houses up and down the street that's adjoining. How we treat those neighbors I think is very important. How they feel about the development of the proposal I think is very important. I do think it's time that that piece be developed. We all learned a lot from the controversy that arose across the street, both the city and the school district. And I'm pretty confident that the school district is moving forward in a real thoughtful way on it. I don't know what the decision is. From my perspective, listening to those two proposals, I clearly think the freighter proposal is the most sensible, just based on what I was listening to, not a deep knowledge. Mr. Mansell. Well, the update is, and I guess what I'm gonna be in support of is, is we took action last night to direct the administration of the school district to enter into contract or offer to purchase negotiations with freighter to move forward on the proposal that they had offered. This is still the infancy stages. There's a zillion hoops to jump through in regards to getting community input. The city is gonna need to get involved to do zoning changes and stuff like that. So this is far, far, far from a done deal. But on behalf of the school district, I believe the purchase price was $3 million. So that's a significant amount of income for that property and way above what the other two offers. We had put out a request for offer to purchase the property or develop the property. I can't remember the terminology, but we'd received three proposals, two of which were invited to present. The third one wasn't invited to present. So right now that's where the board has moved forward to pursue that. I believe the estimated property tax income would be about three quarters of a million dollars a year. And that's even with the reduced rate because of the hospital beds. Because it's gonna primarily be a medical facility and then adjacent to that portions of senior housing, including a memory care unit, which is drastically needed for this community. And I'm sure it'll still be filled the capacity and there'll still be need after that. But I guess that's where the direction the board gave last night after our closed session. And I'm anxious to see how that moves forward. Something needs to be done with that property because there are wetlands on there that continue to expand. And if nothing gets developed on there, might be a point where it can't be developed at all. And it wouldn't be much of an asset to the district or to the community at that point of just having a swamp land over there, I guess. Thank you. Next question and we'll start with Ms. Donahue. What kind of training should teachers, staff, and administration receive to ensure that all students are treated equally and that all interactions are appropriate for all students? Sometimes we think that if we treat people equally, we are treating people with equality. It's a really tough concept. I'm trying to choose my words carefully because it is such a complex question. So I'm just delighted to be the first to answer it. We need to ground our training and our orientation in the perspective that 52% of our kids are not white. There needs to be a full understanding of the diversity of the school district and the diversity of our community and the diversity of the world and how that impacts how children learn. Teachers need to have appropriate and powerful education to understand how complex and how difficult it can be to just an example, a friend of mine was a librarian at Sheridan School many years ago. A lot of Hispanic kids there and she was talking to them about how they were gonna decorate their mantles for Christmas and this child looked up at her and said, what's a mantle? Because we don't have mantles. So to understand that culturally children are different, they come from different backgrounds, they may learn it while all children learn differently, is tough. I know that the school district is investing in that kind of training for its staff and the education needs to spread out even beyond that. It needs to spread to parents and to the community to understand that we are a diverse and so enriched by that diversity community. So I would say the training needs to be thorough. It needs, I'm not aware what is happening now. I will learn, but it needs to continue or it needs to be started because that is the name of the game in this community and it's, to me, it's good news but we need to work in that direction. Mr. Mansell. Please repeat the question for me. What kind of training should teachers, staff and administration receive to ensure that all students are treated equally and that all interactions are appropriate for all students? Well, I guess I don't really, I guess I'm gonna just come out and say, I think that's a very loaded question. You're making a lot of assumptions there that people aren't being treated equally or fairly. Obviously, I think that any kind of training to make all of us better people and how to treat everybody appropriately is appropriate training. And the other half of that is, you didn't provide any options as far as what training is even available out there. So I can't make a choice of what training I would support without knowing what the options are and that would have to be something that I would need to get more information from. But I don't think we should all, I mean, and obviously all of us are different and all of us have different expectations between whether it's the staff or the children. And sometimes you have to treat people differently but still be cognizant of the differences and being appropriate and fair. I get that, but I just don't know. I think we're making some assumptions there that may not always be there. And I just don't know that that's fair to say that it's not happening because we, you know, I guess they'll just leave it at that. Mr. Domagoski. So I think that it's not an easy question to answer because of the, even the diversity of our teachers. And when I say diversity, I'm not just talking about race or ethnicity, but we're talking age experience and all these other things. So some new teachers that have just come out of college probably had some different curriculum that some more experienced teachers might not have had. And so they might need some classes that way. I think there's also a teacher that's been in the district for a long time might be much more aware of the resources available for both within the school district and within the community. And so I think there needs to be some base level and then on an individualized basis, some of that training plan would have to go from there. And it would include things like training on a base training, base level training on trauma so that they recognize what's going on with some of the kids who have been through traumatic experiences, the ability to identify that and refer to other resources within the district. I think obviously some type of cultural awareness or cultural competency or whatever it might be called depending on where you are and what's available, but the district could definitely identify good training that way. And it's probably things that should be ongoing because the community is always changing. And so we need to keep up with that. But I think really there's a number of different things that teachers need to be aware of just like anybody in the community does. And then depending on some of our jobs, there's different things. But I'm gonna go with that. So I think there's a variety of things but part of it is recognizing trauma and culture and how we can impact that and be positive with those things. Thank you. For the next question we're gonna start with Mr. Mansell. A recent accountability report which is required annually by the DPI and currently available on the district website showed most K-12 schools exceed or meet expectations. Two significantly exceed and one meets few expectations. How can the district help students close the learning gaps and how should the district monitor the learning progress of students in schools that do not meet expectations? Well, we're always monitoring that. I think there's significant plans in place right now by our curriculum instruction department for making those improvements and implementing those improvements. There's a lot of collaboration between the successful schools and the ones that need improvement more. And obviously it's through testing and just that I'm drawn a blank on evaluating the children to know where they're at and being able to have a team effort to identify those weaknesses and how to improve them like through reading interventionists or reading specialists. And there's a lot of development going on right now with in our curriculum and instruction area to identify best practices that are helping those kids the most. And there's a difference between teaching the higher end kids versus the kids that are needing to get caught up. So there's a variety of factors that go into that but I can assure you that the curriculum and instruction department is feverishly working on all that. I mean, we get reports out on that all the time and it's happening. Mr. Dalmugoski? So I think it's really paying attention to it is the number one thing. And so some of that is already going on. You can see that in the reports at the school board meetings. It's making sure that we're developing the resources for those that are lagging behind specific things such as Mark talked about, about reading interventionists but it's also after school programming, summer school programming. It's understanding that kids are individuals which I think most of our teachers understand very well and they have different learning styles. So it's adapting some of the teaching to those individual learning styles and making sure that the resources are there and available. And I think it's making sure that kids aren't left behind so that those kids are struggling. We're making the early interventions before they get too far behind.  So I think it's making sure that we have the resources and programs available, making sure that we are engaged with the families so that the parents are engaged and sometimes I understand that that can be very difficult but it's really taking those extra steps to make sure that we are keeping them engaged and involved so that the kids are getting the support that they need. Thank you. Ms. Donahue. So when we talk about accountability and accountability reports, it's often characterized as the districts or schools report cards. And I would offer to all of you the interest of looking at those statistical reports that are on the DPI side as well as on our own school district site. The school district does okay. About 63% of our students meet expectations but we need to put it in the framework of accountability tests and testing. It's been said that you can predict what a child's test score is going to be in a direct relationship with the number of square feet in the student's house. In other words, poor kids have a harder time scoring high on standardized testing than children whose parents do better. Those tests are very important but they are only a piece of the picture. And so I, from what I have been able to read and to observe and to question, our school district is hyper-focused on making sure not only that the kids do well on tests but that they're actually learning all of the things that they need to learn to be good citizens in the world. There have been times when the emphasis on testing has been, I would say almost destructive to learning because the intent of teachers and the fear of students all relates to standardized testing. Important, I am not in any way suggesting that we shouldn't do them but we need to understand the whole student, what the student is involved in. As Chris is saying, where does the student come from? What resources does the student have at home? What can we do within the context of the school district to involve kids? Just go to the SASD website. It is a wonderland of programming and interests and ways that we challenge and involve our kids and the community and our parents. So I think the district, as Mark said, is laser focused on making sure that we meet expectations but my expectations are a whole lot broader than just what you find on a standardized test and I think that is the case for the district as well and I think that's the direction we need to go. Thank you. Our next question and we will start with Mr. Domulgoski. What are your views on school vouchers and the proposed expansion of the voucher program being discussed by Wisconsin legislators and how do you understand the effects of this proposed legislation on future support for public education and on taxpayers across the state? So I would tell you that it's complicated so that I support parents having a choice and the ability to decide what's best for their kids and so I would say from that point I'm not against vouchers for private schools. The problem that I have with vouchers is that often if we don't do a good job in the school district we lose the best kids and that's a bad way to say it. Those with the least challenges to private schools and so I believe that the district has done a very good job compared to other districts about keeping some of those options in the school and that's really the strength of the district as I've said before is that there are options and pathways for everyone and so as long as we focus on that I believe that we can keep enrollment up and keep people engaged in the district and the kids in the district which will bring those public dollars to us. I can just tell you from my own experience, growing up I went to Catholic schools. My kids started out in private schools but ended up going to public schools in the Milwaukee area and when we moved here, somebody from the community that I think very highly of even called me up before we moved and said let me tell you about all the private schools and what your options are up here because that person knew my background of growing up and the fact that I had gone to Catholic schools and I said well one of the things that really attracts is the shabuigan is the strength of the school district and so that's where we're planning on sending our kids and as I've said we're very pleased with the education that all of our kids have had and so I'm not necessarily against vouchers, I support parents having choices and I believe that it's our responsibility as members of the school board to give parents those choices within the district and so that's what I would work on doing. Thank you, Ms. Donahue. So the school voucher program started in Milwaukee, expanded to Racine. It is now a statewide program. It currently has income limits in other words not all parents are eligible for vouchers. The proposal before the legislature now is to make all parents eligible for vouchers no matter what their income level. The problem with school vouchers is and we need to understand that as Mark said, in the last school year within the Shabuigan area school district and I believe there are five or six private schools that enroll voucher students, $4.3 million was paid in school vouchers. What we need to understand is that came right off the top of the Shabuigan area school district's budget. It was not a separate expenditure made by the state. So what was given to voucher parents was taken away from public school parents. I agree with Chris that parents should have a choice. I grew up in a public, in a private school, which is St. Clements, which is why I can write pretty well and Sister Natalia, my eighth grade nun, who just died at 91, but was a friend of mine through life. It was a wonderful education in some respects and other respects, there's a reason I don't do math. I fully respect and my parents sent us to St. Clements. It costs $25 a year by the way. So that really, it was before the dinosaurs, but not that far before. School vouchers, if we're going to do it, if we're going to give parents money to send their kids to a private, almost always but not always, religious school, it needs to be a separate expenditure that is separately voted on by the legislature. So that in Shabuigan, for example, 44% of the students who are in private schools are receiving school vouchers. If that limit is lifted, I don't know how much more money will be taken away from our school district, we can't afford it. We truly can't. So again, I think we need to speak to our legislators and say, if you want to support private schools, that's fine, give parents that choice, but it needs to be a separate expenditure. Mr. Mansell. Yeah, still sorting my thoughts out here and I may end up surprising some people that actually know me fairly well. I'm not a big fan of vouchers. I just think inherently there's a problem. I obviously support parents options and choice to go to a private school, but I just, I have a real difficult time taking public funds and shooting them to a private sector school. If I don't like the Sheboygan Police Department, I want to hire Joe's Police Service. I want my $5,000 worth of my property taxes to go hire that. That doesn't happen. This seems to be the only public service provided that people can get their money out and go and take it to a private organization. The other thing that it hasn't come up yet, but what about the private school that ends up being extremely controversial for whatever reason it might be? And now you're going to be taking public funds and putting it into ideology that might go against everybody's belief system. I just have never really been on board with it. Like I said, if the state wants to come up with a different way of funding it that doesn't impact the funding for the public schools, let them create their new monster that way, but it shouldn't be at the expense of funding the public schools. Next question, we'll start with Ms. Donahue. How can the district adapt curricula to reflect the changing needs of the workplace? I think that may be one of your only one-part questions. And I really appreciate it. The school district is doing some really remarkable programming. I remember as parents, we all want to send our kids to college. College is very expensive. Sometimes it leads to a great career path. Sometimes it leads to debt. We need trained and skilled workers who don't necessarily pursue a traditional college route. So what do we do in the school district? The Red Raiders program at both north and south is astonishing. The cooperation and the involvement of private businesses in our community to fund and to equip, really, laboratories with educational equipment, equipment that kids can use on the job is amazing. The other program, which I think is amazing for information technology, it's called College Here and Now. So children, students in high school at both north and south can take classes in technology at the high school that count towards an LTC associates degree. And then when they graduate from college, they can go to Lakeland and complete a bachelor's degree in another two years in information technology. I mean, the innovation that you see not only in these two programs, but really just across the district, I think is really impressive. So we need to continue to do that and look at different ways of how do we connect what our society's needs are with our students' abilities and inclinations? We need students to be good citizens, but we need them to be able to make things and repair things and think about things and make this a better world. So I think the school district is on it and I applaud those efforts. Mr. Mansell. I was gonna say it's already happening. It's referred to commonly as college and career ready and we've even developed our own report card which is much more accurate and useful than what the state accountability is and the state is actually moving towards that because what we're needed to do, we need to have these kids that are planning on going to college prepared to go to college and be successful in that. So I think there was years ago, there was too much of a push for just everybody should be going to college and now we've finally recognized that we need to develop a workforce, more of a blue collar force and we have partnerships with Lakeshore Technical College along with Lakeland University for various programs and developing careers. We've got certification programs through LTC. We've got kids graduating that are certified welders. We've got CNAs. I wish I had the whole list in front of me but it's impressive and it's on the website. I'm sure we could find it but it is very impressive and I would think in I guess kind of jumping back to that accountability score, not all of our kids are going to college and we can't expect them to be scoring in the 20s on the SATs or the ACTs and exceeding expectations in reading and math. I mean, it would be great but we need them to be able to graduate and function and I guess one of the new things that we're teaching the kids is personal finance now too which I think is an important factor not only so that they're prepared once they walk out the door and one of the things that going back that we need to be proud of for this district in how we are able to continue to improve educating our students is our absentee rate is below the state average which is good because the kids aren't going to learn if they're not in school. So that's one bonus and then the second one is how do we grade ourselves as a district and that is our graduation rate and our ability to have these graduates prepared for their next step whether it be college or career or military. Thank you. Mr. Dalmugoski? Yeah, I think they all hit it right on the head and it's really important that the school district continues to do the things that it's already doing and staying connected with our businesses, with our chamber, with our non-profits and offering the things that they do both the different pathways. So the pathway programs that we talked about with LTC and Lakeland, the Red Raider program, the mentoring that goes on, the opportunities to job shadow, one of the real, when I look at my kids or even when I look at myself, the kids that are really successful and it is different for everybody but those that can really figure out something, the earlier they can figure out what they think they wanna do and have that goal really keeps them focused and gets them so that they are prepared and follow the right path. To have a career and I get it, it doesn't work that way for everybody. Some of us take this circular path where we think we wanna be an accountant and we go to school for a couple of years and figure out, yeah, no, that's not it. Then we take a left turn and try something else until we really figure out what that is. For my youngest son, he was tired from school and needed a break and so he did what Mark said and went into the military and he's in the Marine Corps and now has some job skills and some ideas what he wants to do so he's gonna be moving forward that way and so that break was really helpful but I think it's having all of those connections so that we are able to equip and give the opportunity for kids to do things like shadow and mentor and have the tools and the programs available so that they're prepared for the workforce when it gets to be that time. And even the entrepreneurship is such a big thing so having the opportunities like they do in Sheboygan with Jake's and the connection now with Lakeland and some of those things, it's really just amazing and so I think we just need to stay connected and not forget that. Thank you. We do have another forum following this one so in the interest of time, this is gonna be the last question of the evening for you school board candidates and we are gonna start with Mr. Mansel. What would be your key proposals that you would suggest for overall improvement of the Sheboygan area school district? I don't know that I have anything to propose. It's always been our priority to continue to improve and if you take a look at our five-year plan and our quarterly updates on that, every June we have a June planning session where we come up with the goals and identify what we wanna accomplish during this year in the district and it's broken down into a variety of things. So it's already happening. I guess there's nothing new that I can propose to say that we can make it better. Mr. Dalmugoski. So my key proposal would be that based on the impacts of the pandemic and just the way that society's gone, we've lost some community and we really have such an amazing community here with so many great resources in that that we really double down and try to build on that community again and create more engagement with parents in the schools. I think that's so important and I don't think that we have the strong PTAs and things that we've had in the past and so that building community and the key is the schools are really one of the key assets in our neighborhoods. So taking advantage of that and using our school district really to the greatest advantage that it can be to the community. Our schools are really a social, economic and cultural driver of this community and so investing more in the community and that connection with the community would be my primary proposal. Thank you, Ms. Donahue. So number one, we need to continue to advocate for more funding for public schools. We need to continue to build a relationship with the folks in Madison and as Chris said, they need to understand in more significant ways than they appear to at this time that a strong public education system is what powers the state forward and of course that extends into the university system. I believe Mark spoke earlier, I think it was Mark, about the schools that will need to be replaced. We needed to be thinking thoughtfully about how we maintain our infrastructure, how we fund it. The school district from a borrowing perspective is in pretty good shape, but borrowing costs are borrowing costs and how do we do that? And do we take it to our community to say we need new middle schools, we need to be thinking through where we're gonna be educating our kids. Right now, my understanding from, just from attending school board meetings is that the ESSER funding, the federal funding that has come because of the pandemic is really and truly a lifesaver for the school district in all sorts of ways, but primarily one of the larger uses is for recruiting teachers and teaching staff and how do we maintain those teachers? Teaching used to be a truly rewarding profession, it is still a truly rewarding profession but I believe it has a whole lot of challenges that for example, we're in present when my kids were at grad school or at urban. How do we, what is the pipeline that we build to make sure that we have highly qualified, wonderful teachers for our kids as well as teaching assistants who need to make $20 an hour and staff? Working on mental health, the school district through its pace program has connected with Lakeshore Community Health Center and other providers to actually provide mental health workers for our students. There's a, and talking to the staff there, there's a huge waiting list for these counselors for us because our kids need help, need mental health and so I think that we need to continue to work on that pipeline as well and to fashion a vision of what our really good school system would look like with healthy, mentally and physically healthy students who are taught by well paid, engaged and dedicated staff. We're there in many ways but I think we've got a whole lot of work to do. Thank you all very much for being here tonight. We are going to get reorganized and the forum for the County Board Supervisors candidates is going to follow, I believe, starting at 7.30. Thank you.


The axiom that an army marches on its stomach is as true as it ever was. But the modern army also moves on its lines of supply on wheels, tracks, wings, and hulls, on land and water, and in the air. This is logistics, once defined as the art of winning battles by getting their fussest with the mostest. This chapter of The Big Picture reports not only on today's improvements in maintaining the army's mobility, but also the constant research into still newer and better ways of keeping the army at least one move ahead of any potential enemy. An official report produced for the armed forces at the start of American participation in World War One. There was little modernization of logistics. Men and equipment moved into battle much as in Civil War days, more than 50 years before. But almost immediately there was progress, as evidenced by this Model T version of the Jeep of World War Two. And the genius who adapted the farm tractor to military use was also on the right track. But for sheer pulling power, few vehicles then could match this artillery mover with four-wheel drive, a new weapon against mud, the army's ancient enemy of movement. Scenes like this inspired the Doughboy's expression, built like a Mack truck. This vehicle packed enormous power for its day under that deceptively small hood. By contrast, here's the army's modern-day answer to mud and rough-going in cross-country heavy hauling. This vehicle, with all wheels driving, uses a unique principle to gain traction. Called the gore, it is designed to do just that, go, even under conditions like this. The cab will turn up to 90 degrees either way and literally waddle its way through the mud. The gore is more economical to operate than tracked vehicles of similar capacity. It is also easier to operate, with such engineering features as a push-button gear shift. Two models of the gore were made under the Ordnance Tank Automotive Command, a cargo truck model, and a fuel tank semi-trailer. In this test over a rugged course at Fort Knox, Kentucky, the gore shows some of its capabilities in off-road mobility. The gore has a waterproof skin, enabling the gore to swim. The treads of the large tires act like paddle wheels, propelling the vehicle like a boat, and up to three knots. The army's land vehicles, the most popular, was the Jeep of World War II. Here's its successor, called the MUT. The MUT can do everything the Jeep could do and then some. It can climb hills better, it is more powerful, yet it weighs a thousand pounds less when rigged for airdrop. The MUT has some features borrowed from the world of sports cars, such as four-speed synchromesh transmission and a low-range gear case, which can be shifted while the vehicle is moving. While it is not a swimmer, the MUT will forward hard-bottom streams. The MUT is capable of speeds up to 60 miles an hour and has improved riding comfort. Designated the M151, the MUT is destined to carry on the tradition of dependability established by its famous forerunner. The CAT, with its extra-wide treads, is a trackless train. It was developed by the army primarily as a major transit system, linking military camps in the frozen wastes of Greenland. The Arctic ice cap offers little in the way of traction for ordinary vehicles, but the CAT answers this challenge. Here at Camp Tudow, on the Greenland ice cap, sledge cars are loaded with equipment and supplies for army engineers who are building a new campsite at a considerable distance from the supply center. Loaded and linked behind the tractor locomotive, the sledges resemble huge boxcars, except that there are no rails, no roadbed for this freight train. After a snowstorm, the permanent root flags mark the invisible trail for the next train. Great quantities of cargo can be hauled at relatively low cost by these freighters of the far north. Traveling in groups, they must observe the rules of good railroading. When the CAT trains converge on their destination, they present all the appearances of a busy big city freight terminal after a blizzard. Tracked vehicles are also useful in another climatic extreme, the jungle. The army continuously tests and improves amphibious track carriers in field exercises such as this one in Panama. Those spare tires are actually rolling fuel tanks, real space savers. Swamps are only minor obstacles to the various types of amphibious tracked carriers. Modeled after the smaller but very successful tracked vehicles of World War II, they have proved invaluable in terrain impassable by other means. Before taking leave of land transportation and going on to other categories, we should pay our respects to an older means of transport which has served the army well. Time after time, when all else failed, the army mule came through. Even after army duty, as in the case of these war surplus mules being shipped to farmers in Greece, the mule continued to serve. For any salute to the army mule, must take into account the animal's cantankerous disposition. Military training never quite overcame the mule's natural indifference to authority. But in spite of his tendency toward insubordination, the mule performed many miracles of supply transport. This stubborn but sure-footed animal for decades was considered indispensable as a cargo carrier on the most rugged terrain. Is he really indispensable? What about this strange beast of burden? The mule has a right to be suspicious about this mechanical monster. Maybe he senses a rival. There's nothing reassuring to the animal kingdom in the vehicle's 12-mule power engine. Nor in the way all its wheels turn for instant steering. Now the mule's worst suspicions are confirmed. The vehicle actually is his replacement. Its simple, flat-top body makes it easy to load and unload. With no cab, windshield, bumpers, or fenders, the mechanical mule goes almost anywhere its four-footed namesake can amble. It carries far more cargo than any live mule and is adaptable for moving supplies, miscellaneous gear, and even troops or litter patients. It kick or balk at water crossings. One of the biggest advantages of the mechanical mule is that the driver can dismount and guide it from cover. The mechanical mule displays more motorized maneuverability. A victim of technological progress, the mule was retired from service with full honors on December 15, 1956. Another category of vehicles is used by the Army when it goes to sea. Largest of the tractor transports is the amphibious armored personnel carrier called an LVTP-5. Here it is put through its paces by men of the 4th Infantry Division in an exercise off San Juan Island, Washington. The carrier conceals its bulk by virtually submerging, offering a very small target. Armor cover all around and overhead protects the men from air bursts and small arms fire. The carrier can defend itself with the guns and its blister turret, or hide within its own smoke screen. And only when it reaches shore does it reveal its size. Another class of seagoing vehicle is represented by the LARC-5, a 5-ton amphibious truck. Essentially it's a boat on wheels, or if you like, a truck that floats.  At home in heavy surf, the LARC-5 and a larger version, the LARC-15, are prime movers of cargo from ships to shore where there is no harbor. A giant in this series of amphibians is the BARC, a floating barge on wheels. Its tires are over eight feet in diameter. Crew for the BARC is four men, with two men assigned to port and two to starboard. Like the LARC amphibians and its predecessor of World War II, commonly called the duck, the BARC shifts power from wheels to propellers when it enters the water. Operating as a lighter, the BARC provides ample capacity for cargo transfers of up to 100 tons. LARC can handle heavy equipment with ease. Its roomy deck accommodates the largest vehicles. Even these awkward pieces of construction machinery present no loading problem. As a vessel, the BARC has sufficient motive power to make headway and moderate to heavy seas. One of the biggest advantages of the BARC size is that it can carry heavy-duty equipment ashore to improve its own landing area or to build a harbor if necessary. As a troop carrier, the BARC is surpassed only by conventional ships. It can carry as many as 200 men and their combat gear on land or sea. We're getting into still another category of army vehicles. It looks like the driver of this one got too close to the water. He seems to be stuck in the sand. Well, there's a dandy solution to the beach parking problem. This early model air car has no wheels. It hovers on a cushion of air generated under it by two aircraft engines driving ducted propellers in the hood and trunk. Skimming over land or water with equal ease, the experimental air car can develop speeds up to 60 miles an hour. It can travel over any unobstructed surface at an altitude of 6 to 9 inches. Maneuvering is accomplished by opening ports which divert the air flow through adjustable veins. In this way, air performs the functions of propulsion, braking and steering as well as suspension. The air car is capable of turning on its own axis and can carry a payload of 1,000 pounds. It seats four men who ride into a new realm of combat mobility aboard this vehicle. Here's a concept of air transport which is typical of the pioneering spirit of Army aviation research. This kite-like flying machine is called the flex wing. Combining the maneuverability of the glider with the storage ease of the parachute, the flex wing has a nylon wing attached to a collapsible framework which unfolds for use like an umbrella. It can fly at speeds of up to 100 miles an hour or slow down to land at almost a walk. Theoretically at least, it can be made in any size. Here's still another experimental Army aircraft. This one incorporating vertical takeoff and landing capability with high speed in the air. Once the research craft is airborne, the engines are tilted forward in conventional fashion. Landing and hovering, blasts of the plane's ducted propellers are directed straight down. This type of craft eventually may replace many of today's planes and helicopters. When these ideas and developments are on the way to becoming realities, the Army's aerial tasks are served ably today by these many specialized aircraft. All operational and each designed for a particular function. Copters also have been developed for specific tasks. Both categories range from light to medium capacity. The minimum landing requirements of the rotary wing craft, combined with the speed of the fixed wing planes, gives the Army the flexible mobility it must have in the air from headquarters down to the front lines. The bird dog is named for its primary job of spotting targets for artillery. As a liaison plane, it can also be used for dropping emergency supplies. Worthy descendant of the World War II fire control reconnaissance planes, the bird dog operates easily from small improvised landing fields. It's much larger than the bird dog, but with its powerful turboprop engines, it needs little more runway to get up and go. Canopy gives both the pilot and observer a good look around. The Mohawk also carries cameras and radar for reconnaissance. Moving small units along the battlefront to places where they can do the most good is the specialty of the beaver, a rugged utility plane. Twist out from under the noses of the enemy, this combat team can be working 100 miles away in less than an hour. Once by the otter, big brother to the beaver, this plane can carry 10 combat-equipped troops in addition to the pilot. Without the troops, it will transport six litter patients or 2,000 pounds of cargo. But the otter is still small and agile enough to use tight, roughly surfaced fields. Versatile workhorse for rugged airlift operations is the twin-engine caribou. The remarkable craft will provide swift, medium-range airlift for 32 combat troops and their equipment or a full 6,000 pounds of priority cargo. And its ability to take off and land on short runways in remote areas is amazing for an aircraft of this size. The caribou is one answer to the Army's need for its own means of accomplishing large-scale air movement of troops and supplies. As the largest fixed-wing aircraft presently used by our ground forces, it has proven itself to be a vital factor in the Army's ability to react instantly to a developing situation and to do so in sufficient force to make that reaction decisive. Outstanding characteristic of Army air mobility is its helicopter force, battle-proven in Korea as an invaluable aid in reconnaissance, resupply, rescue and a host of other duties. One of the better features of the helicopter is its ability to go almost anywhere. This makes it invaluable as an air ambulance when moments saved mean lives saved. This turbine-powered Iroquois holds a number of world helicopter records, a feature of the Shawnee, sometimes called the Flying Banana. The Shawnee is a transport-class helicopter capable of carrying up to 20 troops at more than 100 miles an hour within a range of 200 miles. It will also lift 3,000 pounds of cargo or lend a hefty hand to disabled aircraft. Large numbers of troops are involved in a fast movement. The Army calls on the Choctaw. This veteran of the helicopter service carries up to 18 fully-equipped troops. The Choctaw also can ferry a jeep or equivalent load with its sling hoist. Any concept of mobility must take into account the remarkable agility and precision of movement demonstrated by the well-trained Army pilots of these four Su helicopters as they put on an aerial square dance. This maneuver would mean nothing on a battlefield, but the capability of the craft to perform it and the skill needed by the pilots are great assets in combat. This one-man helicopter, it answers many requirements for extending the soldier's freedom of movement. Here's a gadget several steps closer to the ultimate in personal military transportation. Straight out of science fiction into practicality, the rocket belt is undergoing comprehensive testing by the Army. This demonstration on the lawn of the Pentagon attracted considerable attention, official and otherwise. The men enacting the roles of minute men emphasize the progress in science for military purposes since the Revolutionary War. Strapped into the unique device, our test pilot is ready to blast off. Let's see how this fantastic device might be used in combat. Just as this man can leap across 100 yards of water, a company of troops outfitted with these belts could scale a cliff or vault a chasm almost instantly. The ability to move troops, their equipment and supplies is the first requirement of military operations today. The greater the Army's mobility, the greater its power to strike back at aggression, to counter man threats against our freedom and that of our allies in the free world, to augment and sustain the advantages of our technological superiority over opposing forces. Great strides have been made in Army mobility on land and sea and in the air. But there is no resting on the laurels of success in these fields. Research and development must and does continue into new and still better means of maintaining the Army's maximum capability to move swiftly against any enemy.


The idea behind ambient occlusion is that a point on a surface with other geometry very close by is going to get less ambient light because less of the light bouncing around the scene is going to reach that point if it's blocked by nearby geometry. So the points increases and crevices especially are going to have stronger ambient occlusion. In this example here with ambient occlusion enabled, it looks like we get some extra shadowing folds of the statue and the corners of the background walls and floor. In non-real-time rendering, we can do very high quality ambient occlusion factoring in the details of all the geometry. In real-time however, we can only afford a crude technique called screen-space ambient occlusion. To determine how occluded a point is, we project out a small dome from that point in the direction of the normal for that point. And within that dome, within that half sphere, we consider a number of random sample points and we want to determine how many of those sample points are blocked from the camera by other geometry. In the diagram here, the point being considered is on top of the fender and the blue dots represent sample points that are not obstructed from the camera but the red dots are sample points obstructed from the camera by the side of the hood. This diagram is actually a little messed up because where it depicts the position of the camera in the diagram doesn't match up with the image on the right. In the diagram, the camera actually should be further to the left, but it conveys the general idea. Anyway, having determined how many samples are occluded and how many are not, the occlusion factor is the ratio of the number of occluded samples to the number of total samples. So here in the diagram, our occlusion factor is 6 over 11 because 6 of the 11 sample points are occluded. The more the occlusion, the less ambient light should reach that point. So example 9, SSIO demonstrates this technique. And as you can see, we're not applying any albedo texture to the model here or to the walls and floor. Instead, every point is just given the diffuse color of 0.95 and an off-white color. And then we're applying our usual fog lighting, but ambient occlusion is being factored in for our ambient lighting. So looking at the code where we render, first thing is the geometry pass. We're doing deferred rendering here, so we're rendering into the G-buffer. And the shader for that looks much like we've seen before. Except note, we're competing fact positions in normals in view space rather than world space as we have usually done before. For our fog lighting, either works just as well, but when we calculate the ambient occlusion, we're going to want these in screen space. And then in the fragment shader, we output the values with the G-buffer. Notice we don't have any specular component this time. We're not bothering with any specular lighting here. And the albedo, the diffuse color, again, we're just setting it to this off-white color for every pixel. So that's the first pass. Next thing, we want to calculate the ambient occlusion for every pixel, outputting the occlusion factor to an SSIO texture. So we need a frame buffer for that. That frame buffer is constructed up here. Nothing really new going on, except note that the format is just red, not RGB, because we're storing just one color value. You'll notice also we're creating this blur frame buffer. And that frame buffer looks very much the same. And we need this frame buffer because after generating this SSIO texture, we then want to blur it. Because we're computing our ambient occlusion with a relatively low number of random samples, the ambient occlusion map comes out pretty noisy. But we can mitigate that by applying this blur. In this case, we're using a simple blur that just averages together 16 adjacent samples. There are surely better blurs we can use, but this is adequate for demonstration purposes. And anyway, once we've done the blur, then we do the final lighting pass. And the blurred ambient occlusion texture is one of the inputs. In the fragment shader, we do the fog lighting as normal, except the ambient occlusion is factored into the ambient lighting. So now the hard part, how do we generate the SSIO texture? Well, one thing the shader needs are sample points, and those are generated up here. In this loop, we're generating 64 sample points, setting each one to this uniform array. Each sample has an X and Y that is randomly in the range of negative 1 to positive 1, and a Z that is randomly in the range of 0 to 1. We then normalize these vectors, but then we randomly scale their lengths in the range of 0 to 1. So this gives us a random point somewhere in a dome region where the dome has a radius of 1. We generally though want the sample points to cluster near their origin, and so that's what this logic is about. So that's how we generate our samples, and as we'll see in the shader, these sample vectors are going to be relative from the point we're rendering, which means we'll need to define a coordinate system at that point. We have the normal for the point as we always do, but we haven't defined any tangent or bi-tangent. Well, because we're using these same sample points for every single point when we generate the ambient occlusion, it's actually best if we can randomly rotate these samples from point to point. So we actually want to pick a random tangent for our normals, and once we have a tangent, then we can use the cross product to find the bi-tangent. So to pick these random tangents, we're going to want to have this noise texture. It's a very small texture, only 16 pixels and 4 by 4. Notice that we're using 32-bit floats, and notice we set wrapping mode to repeat rather than clamp. So looking finally at the SSAO fragment shader, we're getting the fragment position and the normal, which we call are in view space here, not world space. We're getting a random normalized vector from the noise texture. Notice that we scale it by noise scale. If we just use text chords without the scaling, then the rotation of our samples would only very gradually shift from pixel to pixel over the whole image, making the sampling less effective. Anyway, from our random back, we want to find a tangent orthogonal to our normal, that's what this formula gets us. We then find the bi-tangent by competing the cross product, and we put the tangent, bi-tangent, and normal together to make a TBN matrix. So now we want to compute this occlusion factor, where 0 means not occluded at all, and 1 means totally occluded. In this loop, we determine whether each sample is occluded, and if so, we add 1 to the occlusion factor. Otherwise, if it's not occluded, we add 0. Once we have the number of occluded samples, divide that by the number of total samples, and subtract it from 1, which we set to the frag color. So in the case that none of the samples are occluded, this ratio will be 0, subtract 0 from 1, and we just get 1. But in the case that all of the samples are occluded, this ratio will be 1, 1 minus 1 is 0. So the more occlusion, the larger this ratio, and the closer the frag color gets to 0. To determine if a sample is occluded, we need to compare its Z value against the Z value in the depth buffer for the pixel that the sample corresponds to. So we need to find the sample first in screen space. We first do so by multiplying it by the TBN matrix, and this TBN matrix, remember, is defined by vectors in terms of view space. So this is rotating our sample vector into view space. Our samples recall, I'll have lengths in the range of 0 to 1, but the size of our sample radius is something we want to define in the shader. So we have this radius constant, which is right now 0.5. So this rescales a sample to have a length somewhere between 0 and 0.5. Then we add the sample vector to the frag position, getting us the position of the sample in view space. We then get that sample position into screen space by first multiplying by the projection matrix to get us into clip space. We get from clip space to normalize device coordinates by dividing by the W. We then finally multiply by 0.5 and add 0.5. This gets us X, Y, and Z values in the range of 0 to 1, which actually technically isn't really screen space because in screen space the X and Ys have the dimensions of the actual output image. But anyway, close enough. We then can use these X, Y values to read from the G position, getting us the view space coordinate of what was rendered at that point in screen space. What we want to know is whether our sample in view space, whether its Z value is closer to the camera than the Z value of this occluder position. Remember that in open jail, Z values are negative in view space, so we test whether occluder position.Z is greater than or equal to sample.Z. Adding in a little bit of bias, this constant defined up here, which avoids a little bit of acne. And if so, if this potential occluder is closer to the camera than our sample, then our sample is occluded, so we add one to the occlusion. So this seems to work, but if you look closely, there's actually a little bit of an odd problem, and that is that notice here the hands and the feet, how they kind of have a dark outline. It's as if the wall behind them is being occluded by the feet and the hands, even though the feet and the hands are actually nowhere near the wall or the floor. We shouldn't be seeing that dark outline. What's happening here is that say those points around the feet, many of their samples in our current test are being occluded by the feet, they are further away from the camera. However, the feet are definitely not within the dome projected out of the points on the wall because it's just too far away. What we need to add is a range check. We're defining this flow of range check that's going to be between zero and one. When the occluder position is within the dome, it's set to one. For points outside, it's set to zero, except because we don't want an abrupt cutoff, we use the smooth step function. Smooth step is like a clamp, but it also smooths the values within the range into a curve, like seen here. So for example, when the length from the fragment position to the occluder position is equal to the radius, this ratio will be one and the range check returns one. For any length less than the radius, it'll also return one. As the length exceeds the radius, the range check value will start shrinking to zero. So if the occluder position is far outside the dome, the range check will diminish the amount of occlusion to something relatively insignificant. It'll never be totally zero, but close enough. So now if I rebuild, now if we look at the feet and the hands, they don't have that outline thanks to the range check. So that's how we can do screen space on an occlusion. Last thing to say about it is it's actually highly debatable how realistic this effect is. If you look in the real world at, say, corners between walls and ceilings and floors, you can find some examples that seem to accord with the ambient occlusion effect, but you can probably find more examples that don't. Turns out light phenomenon is extremely complicated and the screwed approximation doesn't really match reality. On the other hand, people generally do like how ambient occlusion looks, and so on that basis it's perfectly valid. It tends to give her scenes an appearance of more depth and detail. Just understand it's not necessarily realistic.


17 points, 13 rebounds, three blocks for you, but you scored the final five points for this team. What put you in a position to succeed late? Just staying active, making sure that I'm putting my imprints on the game, you know, whether it's finishing around the rim or, you know, offensive rebounds, just making sure I'm doing something out there on the court. The way this team began playing the first quarter, combining that with Ben Simmons leaving early, if you go back maybe a week or a month, is this a game that this team is able to close out? Yeah, I mean, I think we've definitely grown a lot when it comes to that. Just having more resiliency earlier in the season, like you said, we may have given this game away, but you know, it was a tough one. I said back to back for both teams and we stuck to it and we got a job done. When you're on the floor with KD and he's lighting it up the way he did, obviously with the points, but also facilitating as well. How ready do you have to be being the one that doesn't want to screw up his flow? I mean, he just played basketball. He always tells everybody on the court, let me just play a game, play basketball, so you know, you can never really worry about messing up. So, and then when he gets into that mode like he was tonight, 45, just can't take it for granted and just appreciate greatness. What are some things that he says to his teammates when he's in runs like that? Oh, I mean, when he's locked in, I mean, he's picking the spots. He's defensively, he's also engaged and I think we all, we feed off of that. He's black in shots.  Taking both games of a back to back to start off this home stand. How big of a check on the to-do list is that for this team? It's big. I think we definitely need to start stacking some wins. We got a big home stand coming up here, home stretch and we just need to stay consistent in these next two games. We definitely need to get them.


And he wouldn't be the responsible for climate science, everyone, that if climate action would lead to global warming would drive us to a point where a one natural system, including in our society, can be known on the path to the impacts of climate change. This means that beyond experience, increased catastrophic events and increased loss of damages to communities, already now, there are things to see in the reversible impacts of climate change. To address this, we need English finance to communicate and reformise the media experience in these contexts, to do resilience and adapt to these impacts. At the same time, we need to reconcile our advocacy in demand for rapid, deep and sustained mitigation efforts through historical approaches, particularly in the global world. The IPCC has recently released its assessment. Yes, from the reports, climate change is already causing, you know, substantial damages to our natural ecosystems, to people and their livelihoods, and the extent and level of vulnerability, of course, will be severe, especially in countries that have development constraints. Yeah, and globally, these first spots are in Africa, Asia, Southern Central America and the Arctic region. So these countries will be exposed to food and security, water crisis and health crisis. Because of this, there will be a lot of opportunities and also women, pregnant mothers and children, young people will be exposed to climate disasters. And again, there's a reason for that, because climate change will be distributed, you know, to almost all the countries of the world. So no country will be excluded, you know, from this impact based on the IPCC projection. So we need to invest massively, although there is an increased level of, you know, adaptation, I thought towards creating a climate smart system that will respond to future climate change. Climate communities can not wait. Humanity can not wait. We need climate action now and we need adaptation of resilience now and we need to reach that zero as early as possible. Yeah, thank you very much. You know that you weren't going to be responsible for climate size of one that if climate has to be less global warming. Good morning, everyone. Ladies and gentlemen. It's such a great opportunity to be here. From the video, and that is a, as Joshua said, is the founder of green agriculture projects. He's also working with the World Bank. So we did a collaboration on the video about the impact of climate change, how we are going to communicate climate size to diverse people to ensure that we build a resilient system. Yes. Before my name is Dr. Archibor Walker. I'm a member of geography. I'm a member of Unigeria. And it's so great to be here. So I'll be presenting on the topic of the effect of commercial building orientation on indoor climate in tropical environments. Because having that context bringing you an insight on how advanced learning studies really look like. Also an expert reviewer for the IPCC. And also a climate policy expert for the UNFCC. So the latest reports by the IPCC, as you already know IPCC is an international body that reports on climate science. In the IPCC's report, I was part of the review. So really talked about building a climate smart, you know, resilient systems across every sectors, building sector, transportation, agriculture, energy sector, and every other sector of the society. So let's get started. This is another slide on how to integrate adaptive measures and climate change to reduce CO2 emissions. And then moving lively routes, clean energy, water and air quality. So over there, that's a picture, a kind of a picture that shows how buildings should look like. You know, green roofs on buildings to moderate the microplans of the building. Thank you very much. In background, the main purpose of all buildings is to adapt to the current climate and provide comfort from this environment and for, you know, occupants. Like as we are now, we are temerly distressed or temerly stressed. We try to work out of this building. So, however, in this area of climate change and global warming, maintaining comfort for building occupants is very difficult. But it's also essential. So especially in tropics, tropical environments that is being powered by, you know, extreme conditions. So it's a race of also building structure. Sometimes you see flooding, you know, having impacts on the building. So some of the weather variables or climatic variables that determines, let me say that determines the comfort zone or your comfort limits are basically temperature-related humidity, rainfall, solar radiation, prevailing wind speed. And those are some of the key climatic variables. So buildings in tropical climates should all be orientated to the south. This is just, let me say, summary of what we should be expecting, how we, you know, organize our building structures and the orientation. So in the tropical environment, those orientation, the fastest should always be facing the north or facing the south. Okay, so this is some of the impacts, especially in developing countries. Extreme flooding could, you know, submerge building. Sometimes you realize that even in the, in the way season, you'll find out that purple ponds will have to migrate to different locations that is safe. So it becomes a very big problem. You know, some that still insist on staying. Of course you can see the impacts almost submerging the entire building. And it's not just commonly in tropical environments or developing countries. It's also a prevalence in developed countries. So it's something that affects each and every one of us, no matter where we are. So that is why it's really important for us to learn on how to adapt. So next slide. So this is one of the IPCCG. The next assessment report should be around 2030. This is the sixth, the last assessment report until 2030. And we are trying to, you know, see how we can, you know, achieve the UN sustainable development goal by 2030 and also to have CO2 emissions by 2030. So there is some of the scenarios, the 1.5 that we all talked about. It is the safe haven for us. So if you don't take action and we don't reduce our carbon footprints, we likely get to 2.2 degrees Celsius. And those are some of the impacts you'll be experiencing in the nearest future. Or if you want a scenario of 3 degrees or 4 degrees, it becomes more extreme. Like I said in the video, these impacts and the risk will be distributed to every regional of the world. So no matter where you are, if you don't deal with your residents, you'll be impacted. But mostly in Africa and Asia, I think India is currently in the world's most populous country. So India has some South Asian countries we would experience greater impact. Africa also has a greater impact on climate change. So when we talked about comfort studies, like I said, it depends on the activities that you're engaging in. So if you are doing a hard work, probably you're distracting in your location or probably in the room that you are doing the activity. So each of these temperature varies depending on the human body and the metabolic heat production. And also the next radiation exchange. So it becomes very important for you to assess the climatic condition, the microclimate of the buildings. Probably is a commercial building. That is why this topic is really important because every building is kind of the same. So even if it's in a school, it's still a building. Even if it's an office space, it's still a building. So it could be retrieved and catered anyway. So this is what we talked about, the predicted mean votes is just like a kind of model that is used to assess those scales, the different kind of temperature depending on your physiological conditions. So we have cold, slightly cold, neutral, slightly warm. And warm thoughts. So this is one of the works that Rodriguez and Lajin did in 2011. So very important work that he did in terms of really assessing those physiological conditions based on the human body temperature. So aside from that, there's also the predicted percentage of dissatisfied. So this talks about the number of comfort hours and the number of also discomfort hours. Probably you are trying to calculate in a year or probably in a week how many comfort hours do you have? How many discomfort hours do you have based on the current realities of climate change? So there's also the standard effective temperature, which basically is to evaluate climate conditions that are really extreme. It's really important for countries in the tropics because they experience extreme humidity, high humidity and high temperature. So temperature ranging from a 30 degree Celsius and above and relative humidity ranging from 70, 80 percent and above makes it really relevant to measure the comfort limits. So yeah, so also Mike also tried to do some especially on the various sensation of the sedentary place of property as we are sitting right now. It's very different from when you are engaging in an activity. So the comfort limits of course becomes very high, especially when you are sitting in one place, you are not exercising and all of that. So it becomes really difficult. Then this is also some of the methods of course, aside from calculating comfort limits in tropical environments, they are also methods used in calculating comfort limits in developed countries based on their weather conditions. Okay, so this is the study area. This is Uyo Oban, Southern Nigeria. You can see in the map we have four points from location and this is the building structure. So each of those building structure has similar design and we tried to use some micro-climatic side measurements. There is what we call the slim side perimeter. It was really mounted on those buildings to collect an ambient air temperature relative humidity and wind speed. So those were the three parameters that we really measured. And looking at the transitional periods, we tried to measure it across the two seasons. We have two seasons in Nigeria, the rainy season and the dry season. So we took the measurement for 14 days in the dry season and 16 days in the rainy season and the height of the measurement was 1.1 meters. So we used the Kolei method to estimate the comfort zone, comfort limit. And based on what we had, the lower comfort zone was about 23.9 degrees Celsius and the upper limit was about 29.30. So between 23 and 29, that is the comfort zone. So if you move away from that figure, you are already terminally stressed. So we had some results, very interesting results. We realized that because our measurement was different from that synoptic earth from 9 to 12 to 3 p.m. and also 6 p.m. So we had to measure those variables and also the orientation. Orientation was south to north, west to east, north to south, and east to west. So at 13 and 3, that is 15 earths, we had a high number of discomfort earths, 23, 30, 25, and 30 each of those orientation. So you can see from there, then our comfort earths, we had less comfort earths because it was during the peak of high extreme temperature. So also we tried to look out for the comfort limits at 1600 degrees. So those were just the value. And we realized that when you're looking for those comfort limits, signal variations was really a factor, especially during the rainy period, we tend to have a high number of comfort earths during the dry season. Dry season we tend to have a high number of discomfort earths. So as you can see from these charts, each of those earths were calculated and that is the upper limit, the lower limit of the comfort zone and each of the earths was calculated. So you can see how the changes are shown. Then these are some of the findings. The ease and waste should be shaded, especially since if the orientation is not our south, so we need to shade for passing pooling. So passing pooling was one of the interesting features that we need to adapt into our building. Aside from using aces and other technologies, we should try to use some bio-climatic aspects, climatic factors to really design our buildings. And again, climate proofing, there are some areas that are prone to flood, so we need to look at those areas, probably retrofit those areas to ensure that our building doesn't collapse when there is extreme flooding. So we need to allow urban planners and designers to design their buildings, take into account the current climatic processes. I think we have been saying for a while, but for now that was what we had and the most interesting thing is that you can replicate this study in any area, especially in tropical environments, and you can also use other methods to estimate for temperature and polar regions. Thank you very much. We lost a bit of time at the beginning with the video stuff, but there's a question on the slide I was going to ask. So just maybe a quick question. Does the comfort zone change over time as people adapt to higher temperatures? Yes, the comfort zone changes. As we adapt, depending on the region we are, the comfort zone is just like a standard to measure the weather or the climatic condition in that building. So if the adventure is high temperature, because the limits will have to be evaluated. When we are seeing the comfort limits we also measure if someone is out of the threshold or is within the comfort zone.