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we are utilizing IXL a little bit more and internet and if you're familiar with that again to increase personalized learning for students we are starting to bring in more sat online sources this will be a focus for me in my work with the high school I feel like we need to do a little bit more in this area or three pandemic probably five or six years ago we've had some benchmarks that were really informative push kids to regularly hard at really rigorously I should say and we're looking to bring some of those back and to do more work in writing with shops is process for three so so we working strategically with the high school and our school Improvement plan strategies around sat specifically we purchased Newsela Pro in partnership with some of the work with at Advanced it's a reading assessment tool but it's also mainly used the teachers are able to print for example that article that I mentioned that A-Rod and his home run you can print that article download it the teacher can use it at the 12th grade level of contact complexity or through mid-level or any level in between so it's very powerful so that students can do the same story and understand that they're seeing uh work on comprehension but at the narrow Pace when needed and it is special areas we've done some organizational uh interesting things in the in the way of bringing in some of our special areas you should do an extra lesson with students so we can release to teachers to have a PLC so that they can take a look at their data a little bit more people will spend more time doing this and creative with how we Implement that um so just some other District actions as you know we have been working on our our El Chief our systematic elt program we are still in the process of rolling that out we are at the kg level hoping to move on to high school next year or possibly the year after we're trying to pull our resources to support both K5 and 68 right now with our with our side of coaches we've been increasing our deliberate on increasing their crop we start focusing on increasing the quality of our ESL highlighting services so there's been a lot of professional development training around there and not just for the teachers but also for the for the administrators so they can walk in and understand what should be happening we need to provide feedback on that we've had coaching institutes the inside of coaches in our district and they help our teachers to provide strategies for for our multilingual Learners against access to curriculum and to provide suggestions on ways to uh to engage we a few years ago we started to move our bilingual program a Spanish program at Rogers Park we had a portions program over at Broadview and we had enough students and with us students accordingly that was talking to the students to step on families and and do some great disconnection for folks we had enough students who needed both Spanish and Portuguese in both school areas so we complemented the programs on both sides and we're in the second year of the bilingual program migration over to the Broadway middle school and we continue to support that we've increased our offering our immigrant after school Camp so that is the part of some of the best ceremonies that have been used to support our second language or nurse in their needs I'm going to say they probably maybe struggled the most during the pandemic in terms of access and so we are retardedness but after school or do a little bit of catch up with some of our activities to give them some more skills and some more time with developing language and in Tradition and support so again we've focused a lot of our efforts around intervention we've maintained our srpi pairs again those were physicians in our schools can be very valuable particularly at Q5 and Kelly and her team have implemented Elite Grant support for students who were probably asset and can put some great strategies in opportunities in the area Factor and the principal levels we invest heavily and are intend to invest heavily in the future in our principles on the research shows that a high quality principle is uh is is one of the lead contributors to academies and outcomes for the school and as a result we have dedicated more time and investment in our principles their learning and also in accountability systems around school outcomes with the chiefs of schools who are working with all of our principals now we can Target and work with school Improvement at a meeting with on a regular basis and we're doing a lot of calibration work a lot of data work here it wants your questions all of those meetings to the phenomenal and continue to organize ourselves around us again PLC Plus work targeting PD Cycles i-Ready leadership training and we a similar group of us are who supervise the principles that meetings assistant superintendents I think Catholic churches and myself along with the two G's are engaging in very in-depth training through the center for educational leadership called cell to improve our skills in supporting and improving the skills of our principles honestly you know at a national level people are calling this a need for Urgent Response and that's where we are as a district as well I am meeting with the principals in talking about where students are individual students and and planning for them as well as what they need to be doing for school Improvement planning outside of the regular right so these are deep meetings that are being done on a regular basis pushing into schools the chief of schools our present there with support of the assistant superintendents as well and and myself and we're pushing into grade levels for teachers we're talking about what their data is looks like now and actually what it looked like for a pandemic and and that piece and what our historical is looked like over time in getting into the standards of folks I mean this is really where the work is the teachers and principals are working very hard to meet the needs of the students and who are trying to respond to help them do that work in the best way possible um back at the last page there was a bullet about a device newcomers curriculum DHS what is that so so when students first arrive here they we did not have a newcomers partner for a very long time we did pilot and pro approved program a few years ago where we have a very targeted curriculum on the basics to acquire basic basic information basic language and vocabulary when they come that's different from another group of students who are more ready for the next level of in their development belonging material and so each year they make tweaks and adjustments to the new Commerce curriculum but also the demographics of our students have changed are changed over the couple of the last couple of years we're seeing more students with interrupted education so that so in some cases it could mean a student has not been in school at all and so there needs to look a little bit different than other students and so we made adjustments in in what's offered during uh during the the class time that the students are are with your teacher so we've dedicated time for your Commerce you're welcome I thought we were moving away from myself there are so yeah it's mainly it's being phased out we do we have good resources in terms of personalized tools across the district the high school has the least amount of approvals and so it's really at the 912 level um so they're still using it um pretty heavily for for our practice um it's not going to replace instruction but it's going to reinforce it it's a skill area that can competitive and sign practice in an area so my path at the middle school level has replaced that and having a higher level of active adaptivity based on their score on the assessments a lot of comment um as we're looking at this this map that you guys are put together about how to create these improvements in the classroom and for students it really dovetails so nicely with the presentation we had on the Strategic plan um I would see exactly how you guys have you know kind of created this like these standards around the data that you're looking at and I really appreciate that offensive version so thank you thank you that's our intention you have to excuse me too in all my years at Westcott I never just heard the terminal culture used in teaching art course development so times are different now I guess any thought to bring back psaps for the middle school students who um so we tried that for two years and I was looking for a plan of missionaries he had people just took all issues with the validity of the test we cannot in terms of some follow the rules for you ASAP hold on one second yeah because they're valid um and when we have uh sat and PCT at the high school we rent tables they spread out for the gym it's a pretty big big deal you just don't have the space so we really we're about assessing uh in a way that the test has been to assessed so we struggled greatly with that I I do you still have to bring back but you'll find a way but it is definitely been so we we still do have opportunities to take smt items and PSAT items and bring them in to to the middle school that was some of the original 10 was to do some pre-work to prepare students and more importantly one of the things that kind of fell by the wayside College as the Border pandemic came on is the we've linked the whole purpose by that was to get kids LinkedIn brain connector Khan Academy so we can go to the high school they're already pre-programmed into the Improvement um you know Improvement courses that are offered for free there's some research behind Khan Academy for example in 30 hours of the Khan Academy at raisinsure as his corresponding points so we are looking to to encourage more of that but the it doesn't mean that we can't do something with it it's just the the expense of the PSAT that we were every word you know utilizing in the lack of being able to follow and adhere to the rules or the assessments problematic for us yeah and then to go all the way back to the beginning okay for our preschool program yes that's just Danbury students correct yeah yes we make exceptions for our district students not at the Christmas no occasionally you might hear students that reside in other towns we may have some students that are placed through DCF in a neighboring town or things like that so it's not unheard of but they are all the responsibility of the memory of other schools so they are 100 our students yeah thank you [Music] so far labels some tiles thank you Lauren for putting that together um does anybody have any um more Communications comments or updates so I have dstvc um we had a person meeting um and they are looking for mentors desperately mentors they've started okay so you can see some more schools younger Schools elementary schools so they're a desperate need of that yours if you're interested in a job and then November 9th they're having um of fun to college foundations for your future future program 7 PM for high school seniors they started the seats for stem program which is the KD program Lauren can I just ask something does the dsnbc what's the commitment for mentors you know fantastic um I don't know exactly what the commitment is but um soon right yeah okay she's the one to reach out to me you know I said yes I'm sure know what it is my care culture can I just ask for a second typically it's a it's a commitment if you took on more than monster independent living for everybody but it's usually during the watch for about half an hour so thanks Kevin other video [Music] I will ask for a motion that the Board of Education movements or executive session to discuss a matter involving a student event that would result in disclosing a public record that is exempt from disclosure so we'll move by is that really sort of it's really segmented by Michelle
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so the end of the units we would take all those ends of unit assessment and average those out to get there part of what and I didn't go over this because of the time before what we're noticing too is a lot of the inspirable so we see 56 are great at unit 2 whether it's place value is that great multiplication and division third grade and then by the time that's retaught and extended upon for up to 70 80 right so we so do you have numbers on end of year for those two grades or not necessarily the end of year would just to jump in the end of the year there's no summative end-of-year assessment in bridges map I think like uh for that like accumulative if you were to think about it as you've got 10 buckets that you want to be able to measure on throughout the year what we're going to do is instead of having one measure at the end to measure all those buckets we're going to take the individual measurements throughout the year and average those to be able to say have we gotten to about 75 or better on all of on each of those components along the way does that make sense no it does I'm just curious like I I just feel like the kindergarten in the first grade as far as math goes into year they're you know at 90 over 90 and the other two are at 75 but it's not measuring the same thing it's not really apples to Apple so I'm just trying to understand where the discrepancy is for the from that yeah why it looks different I hear you the other reason for that is if you look at the growth we actually make more growth in the second third greater than you take one um and that's one thing we're looking at with our math program is are we challenging kids enough are we um are we using the best measures of assessment that's why we're curious to see how star plays into this um see if that kind of gives us another angled triangular data um you know our is our Intervention Program the right for things for the kids that we have so it's great you know with kicked off and I with the work that at least beltano and Ray started to have someone here full-time really examining it and asking questions why are we doing it like this why are we doing that we're just making a list and trying to figure out the best place to go from there just one more question quickly if I might there are a lot of good numbers here I don't need to harp on the ones that don't look great to me um grade three math what I'm seeing looks pretty weak is that accurate am I reading it wrong are the S back numbers they weren't part of this yeah um sample on page 12.
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yeah that's what I'm trying to see yes so if you look to page 13 though you'll see why those numbers look low that's that circling back that I just tried to explain to the Felicia so unit 2 is a 69 we teach it that's up to the hundreds we teach it and add more to the thousands we're up to 83 when we teach that unit but in terms of averaging like a challenge to 10 buckets analogy we got one we got a couple of ones that are cycled back so the first time around it's going to bring them down if we threw those numbers out I just didn't feel comfortable throwing ends of you and stuff and test upon a report that fact but you can throw those two out those numbers jump to you know probably mid 70s low 80s I'm sorry mid 70s for grade three below 80s for grade two retake here we take a test again you replace greater than the attitude together that's the whole that's a huge debate in other places are we teaching the math are you did standard are we teaching the average grades like that's when he gets Valerie but I just decided we'll just average them all out but what I'm hearing being shared which is a valid point is how can we make sure that we're actually um presenting our math numbers you know holistically we look at kid by Kid we look standard by standard but do we have that overall score and shouldn't be another question too you have some kind of an overall score courtesy of the state for third grade or third grade yeah and we'll we'll be using star to be able to have that better extrapolation of of a quantile score which is like Lexile Lexile is reading sport quantile is like a math ability score um to be able to give us perspective of where kids are at on the journey throughout the year so we have a better perspective of what the Consulting looks like so we'll be able to share more about what that information looks like at the end of the year and we're finding good correlation of that assessment to overall end of uh in the year student performance as well okay I have a couple questions sorry I'm sorry but um Andy here so um when people visit the dra like because you keep thinking I hear on the news like oh you know education scores are down and you know across the country so where like and I see all your current last year like where do you think we are relative compared to past years like are we down on percentages that we are yeah there could be a few reasons for that one you know two we're absolutely 100 spending more time on the building blocks of moving all that communicable awareness phonological awareness products so by spending time on those code Breakers we are not spending as much time on what we used to do with comprehension the love of reading um building volume but that's seems to will should portend for long-term success we're also not seeing the drop off between Brave and display that um you know we're hoping to get more resources that will support the way we are now instructed um reading a decodable books so instead of reading level text where kids may not be able to read those words on the page either decodable textbook that match where the kit is in terms of breaking the code so if you looked at data from like the past six years you can see that even on dimples all of our scores are still the percentages are lower than there were like four years five years now Dibbles is going up because we're spending more time focusing on that um yeah but these are I think we're in a current dip when you look at the last four or five years but where you look at the data from 2006 2007 when we were at two thirds you know we're actually we've moved things incrementally up you said there was new dra new Devils test do you think that new versions are having any impacts or hard to say hard to say that after one year it's hard to tell um and I know in the past we've talked about like a certain grade level uh is there one grade level that you're like I is on that they're needing more support academies and that was the second grade you mentioned last year yeah and we're very appreciative of the fact that the Board of Education recognized the needs um to have the class size within the Board of Ed limits do you think foundations Integrity is uh helping and an improvement are you seeing that or that's still early to tell too early to tell foundations well no that's not true foundations has been extremely effective for our students who are getting readings here um they are clearly missing those the skills they need to help them break people and I keep using great programs it's been a huge Improvement and being able to implement that last January um with first grade and then that answers that question about a lot of first grade was so hot um our secretary of so high this year and then second and third grade later on was free and we're seeing that in kindergarten Integrity last year first grade this year absolutely those are making a big difference with my last question okay I promise I just want to jump in real quick to just you're asking a good question of what is what is the historical perspectives look like for grades over years and at a later report I'll I'll help to be able to paint the picture of what the state of you know performance over time kind of looks like for Canton um in conjunction with the the principles are doing um social emotional security that's you know was lower on that school climate like what are you doing what's going on to like balance out you know is that we're still play-based learning and I know the math program has a lot more games and Hands-On and you know game Planes the curriculum and lending itself but do you are you getting back to like what are we doing social emotional to support kids who you know did lose so much for Cohen you know playing together working together problem solving Behavior there's got there's a lot of instruction around what makes a good Community member and some kids are well versed in that and we're absolutely seeing it impacting others who may not have the same experiences you know and the survey was lower because you know Don't Go Near it you're gonna get close it's like that was a young mind kind of thing um but we have a number of kids that need we have a number of kids to be explicit instruction in a number of things whether it's reading whether it's math whether it's how to be a good partner you know how to stand up for yourself and you know we're seeing that we still have like play-based learning kindergarten centers and stuff yeah yeah okay um I would just conclude with this and thank you for your presentation if you feel that you're more under a microscope it's because you become the foundation it all starts with you and if we don't get it right with our with our students if we don't get a ride with our parents if we don't hit it right with our teachers and our staff then that crack grows um from year to year so that's why the questions tonight to make sure that we're doing all the right things to make sure our schools are on well from the board of education's perspective so thank you for your presentation thank you for your comments so one last question on a scale of one to five five being the highest where do you see Cherry Brook primary school right now generally I can't blame answer that every kid's experience and every staff member I'm asking you as the principal as a leader of that school where is that school right now on scale one to five three we have you know that's a great number where we have a solid foundation but there's areas there are things that we need to do with some of our students to help them out there are things we need to do with our teachers there's things we need to curriculum wise there's things we need to do facilities wise um you know we don't have everything we need to um Norse does any place have everything they need and we're doing the best that we can with what we have so I'll take the three today and I'm hoping when you come back in May you're going to tell me it's a fourth minimally okay and on heart I want it to be a four and uh yeah all right excited to see the rubric for that all right any we'll move to Rebecca thank you Andy thanks for the presentation and Rebecca you can take all the time you want the most important thing that we do as a board of education is meet with our principals to hear what's going on in our school so don't feel rushed take all the time you need we want to hear from you now and please jump into questions so before we move to you Rebecca um just came I just have to add on to your excellent question about social emotional learning um we purchased as Kim I know you know this um from being on the Early Childhood task force we purchased hundreds of dollars of play-based materials for our primary grade classrooms this year and I saw so many of those resources being used today so I just wanted to mention that again thanking the word for all of your support and teachers are trained in the responsive classroom approach and uh from our emotional intelligence Academy the teachers many teachers have gone through our Academy and I see them applying the strategies in their classroom so I just needed to add on to that because I'm so proud of what we're doing in the area of social emotional learning and I also want to say I'm so proud of the work that Andy and the entire staff what they've accomplished at Cherry Brook Primary School I want to acknowledge um Mr Daniel's comments earlier about some challenges we're facing now and we're not the only School District in Connecticut facing challenges um we have students entering kindergarten as Mr Robin stated many students have not been in a school before and this is immediately following two years of non-socialization by students so we have some behavior issues in kindergarten that we are dealing with right now uh Mr Robin and our special ed department and I are working collaboratively to support our students in any way that we can we've hired behavioral interventionists um who are who are at Cherry Brook School on a daily basis to assist us in that support so I just want to let you know that's ongoing I spent the day at Cherry Brook today supporting staff and students and again working in collaboration with Mr rap we're seeing the same thing at Canton Intermediate School as students transition to fourth grade it seems to be those transitions so we do have students with behavioral needs that we are supporting students who have experienced trauma in their background so all of our staff we're learning about trauma-informed instruction how to best support our students their social emotional learning their mental health so what you said Lou is so true earlier on and and we do work collaboratively to support our students so in spite of all of that when you look at the academic results of our students I'm really proud of our teachers Andy thank you for your presentation tonight okay Rebecca thank you for your patience now we'll hear what's happening at the Intermediate School and like I said before I jumped in at a new point when you have questions I just want to point out in our picture here I've been seeing them in the corner um that there is quite a bit of landscape work done for custodians and some other landscape groups came in and gave CIS a nice facelift in some areas so we have a nice outdoor dining area in the front of our Courtyard is pretty beautiful and has some wonderful tables that we eat outside of we do a lot of learning in our Courtyard area and the flooring project was completed over this summer as well in most of the parts of the building we have just one part of this lab so a lot of work happened on the interior and the exterior of the building this summer and I think it looks good may I just asked first question Donna maybe you can help me with this the container the containers that you have at uh CIS are they going to be moved are they getting out I mean what's in there the containers for the Bears well the large trailers that you have the storage trailer storage containers are they necessary because when they open up Cherry Brooks it was all moldy and everything had to be thrown out anyway oh everything has to be thrown out there we tried for an insurance claim too so they're they're emptying it out and we're working on finding a place for it do we own that trailer I can't remember I think we owned that one yeah that's why we they have to move some things around down there as well those are not good places to store Furniture we've now learn okay you can use the additional parking I thought you were talking about our dumpsters because of the number of code yellows and record setting but Mr Richardson was able to secure us some dumpsters with metal tops and we've had no bear issues since then for checking things off um so like Mr Robin I will start with a review of our um our data and our performance from last year um we use S back as one piece of that data snapshot but we also rely on Star we use star three times last year in the fall in the winter in the spring um and as I'm doing this year last year was also the first year that we focused on for our academic goals looking at students and accelerating growth for students who are below Benchmark not every student who's below Benchmark who accelerates their learning achieves Benchmark so those students unfortunately and all of their hard work isn't always represented when we look at percentages so I just want us to keep in mind that in fourth grade we had 60 percent of our students who were below Benchmark in the fall who gained more than a year of growth last year and that's a lot of hard work on their part and also on teachers 52 percent of our students in fifth grade for Math and 42 in sixth grade um so we do uh have some dips in performance when we rely on the aspect data Alone um not unlike other schools at our level and our schools in our area particularly in fifth grade when I look at the star assessment one of the things that um I'm happy now being able to look back over the course of the year is really how predictive um the performance is from the Star data so if you look at our winter performance on the star which is that middle line and compare that to the svac summative assessment the scores are incredibly close um we took our spring star after the S back so we do still continue with instruction even after the S back test happens I mean we still continue to see some growth when I when we look at that bottom row um the 12 the one the eleven percents those are all students who fall into the category of having accelerated their growth last year they grew me on the one year that you would expect the student to in a school year um digging in closely to the strands on the s-back assessment and looking at our strengths and some areas that we wanted to focus on this year in our fourth grade class we're strong in reasoning and problem solving um but Concepts and procedures was an interesting strand for us in that it was our greatest strength but also our greatest weakness so we saw a large disparity in performance for students and that Concepts and procedures is where you would see students number sense coming out um which we had identified through Star as a challenge for ourselves over the course of the year so knowing that our most struggling Learners are struggling with number sense and that basic numeration um I will talk further about some strategies that we're using when I get into that part of the visitation Nation last year's fifth grade students we saw the same pattern in Concepts and procedures so again going back to challenges with number since so we've implemented some things in both worldly and fifth grade this year that will globally address that on the next slide we look at the English language arts performance um accelerated group again though slightly lower than our students in math but we had 63 percent of our students in fourth grade became who needed to gain more than a year of growth and they did um about 30 in fifth grade and 41 in sixth grade you can see when we look at the guided reading levels that's a different type of assessment so s back and star are computerized measures whereas The Guiding reading level is where students sit down and talk to their teacher about their their reading and their comprehension they read to their teacher versus digging into the strands on the S back our fourth graders last year were equally strong in their listening and their reading comprehension as well as their writing and reading comprehension was was a slight strength fifth grade reading comprehension was our greatest strength um and our listening comprehension is where we saw the fewest number of students struggling on the weakest skill overall was in the area of writing um so that'll be a cohort it's now in sixth grade that we watch closely and with our move back to three-person teams in sixth grade the number of minutes in our writing classes has increased so that will be an interesting cohort to watch as the year goes on to see if that increase in writing minutes is up in the way that people fit everyone um before I go to the next slide again just as we're thinking about the alignment between Star screens and um I'll just have you if you don't mind we'll take a look at the numbers um for the svac performance the 66 66 63 and 72 and then when we go to the next slide um almost identical numbers with our spring like style level I share that because the Lexile levels through star demonstrating growth but it's also we rely on Star especially having used it all of last year it provides teachers with for each individual student a summary where their skills are at it breaks down every skill and shares with the teacher we should be working at a second grade level for this skill a third grade level for this skill or they're above grade level for this skill so it allows teachers it gives them a tool to develop some really individualized plans for all of the students who aren't at goal That's the basis for our conversations as we're doing goal setting conferences this week and next week is really digging into what are our plans for each and every student who's not at grade level um so I'm happy to see that it is closely in line with respect because that was a question of us last year so so do we run an errorism in star or is it necessary at one point do we go All-Star not as back or well I could talk for hours about my philosophical beliefs about svac I think that svac is mandated by the state I think it's one snapshot it's one piece of data I would never want to rely on just that one piece and that's why I think star is such an important information because we have data in the fall the winter and the spring um if I could jump in real quick too I think it might even be it's very valuable for us as what um what Mrs Corto was sharing was the actionable data that you receive as an educator and as a teaching team with Star by having it at multiple points throughout the year you can go into deeper levels to be able to make determinations and provide support with us s back is required by the state we value multiple measures over time that allow us to be able to then celebrate growth too and I think she that's one thing that you're doing a really nice job of of celebrating and highlighting with this and one of the things that the middle school will see is they begin to implement Char is that you will see students grow in history going all the way back to Cherry Road and we'll be able to see a student's trajectory so the more often that students take that star assessment the more reliable it comes becomes um but again it's not just the tool for looking at and measuring um like a final growth number it also allows to for instruction and we can base some of those instructional decisions on that data um like Mr Robin I did not include any of my climate data in this presentation but it is in my report so I'll reference that now and then there's questions we can chat about it um from our family engagement and communication data from the parent survey that was completed last spring um all strengths but when we break out the teacher communication which was I guess we'll find a relative weakness at unfavorable there are eight questions that go into that question or into that indicator and the one that we most teachers are choosing to focus in on as their role is the question I talk with teachers about my child's schoolwork we push out a lot of information but recognize that talking of the parent is not the same as I'm just emailing or sending out a message after your test so thinking about how do we engage in conversation with families on a more regular basis particularly those who may not reach out to us but we want to start that conversation with so many teachers are choosing that particular question as their goal for evaluation purposes in the student climate data um also from the student survey the two that stand out to me are physical safety and the social emotional security so physical safety at a percentage of 73 favorable there were there's three questions that go into that um I feel safe at school we were at 99 I feel safe when I'm at the bus stop was 96 and this same question that chairs were recognized as an area of her growth was the same for us I have seen students being heard at school more than once while we cut it in half really that percentage from a few years ago we have 24 of our students saying that that was the case so that's something that we continue to keep my close eye on social and emotional security has four questions um and the one really that we need to spend our efforts on and arguing so through some measures that I'll talk about later is that there are groups of students who make others feel left out um so that that feeling of being connected to their classmates being connected to their school is something that we we see as a need in our addressing so I think maybe I'll take a breath there and see if you have any questions about our performance and our review of that performance from last year and you have to go back a few slides back to the academic questions how are you um planning this Peggy Steinway hi um how are you going to address or what do you think a solution is for trying to get more Community for the kids who do feel left out and they left out at school outside of school do we know um and if you don't mind that's very directly related to our climate goal and we have a number of strategies um so I'll share those when we get to that goal if you don't mind no no that's great thank you definitely address that though so we'll start with our academic goal um much like uh the goal at Cherry Brook is to improve standardized measures and reading and in mathematics and we really have two pieces of data that we're going to be looking at for that one is that we want all of our students who are at Benchmark in the fall to be benchmarking the spring that we don't experience regression for students over the course of the year and that for students who are below Benchmark in the fall we hope to see that 50 of them have accelerated their growth so that they have they are closing the Gap they're closer to Benchmark if they don't meet Benchmark again we have some students that are significantly below Benchmark right now and so for them making more than a Year's worth of growth may not still get them at Benchmark but we close that Gap and if we can continue to do that every year then they will eventually be in that Bandit with their hard work they can be a benchmark can you give me some examples of treatments that you would apply to try to move a student from below Benchmark to equal to or above again um and there's some of our strategies that I'll talk about on the next Slide the first is early in the year at our last PD session we had teachers who reviewed and first started to think about who are the students in their classroom that fit into that category that they're not Adventurer I don't think that that's always been our practice um it started last year narrowing our goal focus down to the to the students who are below or well below um we create individualized plans for them so much so that for some teachers it's by it looks like a folder like I have a concrete action plan for each student in my room and that's what we're talking about at our goal setting meetings is what do those events look like or some students those plans look like individualized work through Freckle or through star or through Learning Ally that students can do asynchronously or at home but we also have a tremendous number of students who are in intervention so during our Flex block we have both reading and math tutoring that's going on most of our reading tutoring is in the area it's in Wilson or just words that aren't really on that can you make awareness and that phonics instruction we have some small groups that run for lli which is comprehension but are a more significant need are more of those basic reading skills um we took a gamble last year by increasing our number of flex groups and the trade-off for that as I had shared with you at the end of last year was that we couldn't have Recess by grade but it allowed for us to really double the number of students that were in intervention um and we saw a tremendous amount of growth for those students in interventions so we're continuing that that because here um and our tutors also push into or have sometimes pull students out of academic classes to provide direct instruction at their level so I'm I'm thrilled and even with Andy you know the amount of time and resources that we apply to those students that are below what do we do to Fan the fire for those kids that are accelerating what do we do to keep them moving in that direction and actually going further and Beyond that's a great question we do have an enrichment specialist this is Juliano um this is her first year um yeah thanks again to your support we were able to have a halftime certified position so that was our request that I made to this room last um budget season and that went through so she um we identified students in fourth fifth and sixth grade we made the criteria for being talented and gifted um she runs groups during Flex time for for those students so we have kids are everywhere during the last time summer with special education teachers some are with tutors some are with Mrs Giuliano for enrichment and other students are in the classroom working with the classroom teachers in very small groups because we have so many places for students Mrs Giuliano is also working with sixth graders um during our specialist Block doing some interdisciplinary um extension activities in both areas of science and social studies so those are the ways in which we keep those students motivated those are well that's one way and we run math Olympiad with Mrs Giuliano and Mrs Roy so so then the question so the question we if you take a red yellow and green red yellow and green the accelerate what do we do for the kids in the yellow how do we get them into the green how do we move them from at Benchmark to getting in with Mrs Giuliano a little bit more and would we be able to track that so would you be able to tell us in May that we've had x amount of students here and we've just pushed those students we pushed x amount or Y amount of students into the into that area I can I think actually I could probably give you a sense of that even now because we use the olsat test um to identify students who are talented and gifted we give that in the fall to students in every grade once a student is identified for talents in a gifted programming that doesn't go away you can't lose your giftedness but we do add students every year and so it may start as a small group in fourth grade but by fifth grade now the number of students who qualify grows and then it grows again in sixth grade so those would be numbers that I could provide would you say we put equal amount of resource into each one of those areas into below Benchmark Benchmark and I know we don't use gifted and talented anymore but really to that area are we putting equal amount of resources into each one of those areas no no and what where are we putting most of our resources the students who are below Benchmark okay which I think is appropriate um that's also where we have the largest the larger number of students right um but I do think that through extracurricular opportunities through the extension and through the enrichment we're also meeting the needs of students who really need that question to be able to excel just to add with that as well I think one of your questions about that that yellow ban and how do we how do we see the Growers versus the sliders with it a lot of it too is enriching what we call the tier one instructional program which is the day-to-day instructional program so you can see that growth by doing exactly what they're doing by focusing in on the explicit elements that need Improvement and then continuing to focus on that with instruction and see the growth we can see those Growers with that and then continuing to support the instruction to deeper levels deeper levels deeper levels is another way to be able to see that that strategy grow for school-wide enrichment as well so I'd like to see that though in May I'd like to see how that sure that works you know because I I think that that says a lot that's a valuable metric for us as well okay good yeah thank you um so using that number of 50 of our students that we're hoping to move from below Benchmark to Benchmark is where in the next several slides um our targets are are from so what we did not do is write our targets as we're hoping to add five percent or we're helping to add 10 um we really look very closely at each um band of students so students who were below Benchmark but were near how near were they students who were below how below are they um and looking at what does reasonable growth look like for them it's still accelerated and how for how many of them will that push them into um meaning Benchmark so what we see here in red is an anticipation that students do not regress and 50 of our students who meet acceleration well um we'll we will look at the S back data but that of course doesn't come up the test is in May we won't get those results until the summer um so for our purposes as far as designing instruction we'll rely more on the star um where you can see um that the second row on each of those charts is where we were for the fall and our targets are in red again the percentages vary depending on where students performed when they look how closely they were how close they were to Benchmark versus great equivalency or the English language arts schools were done in the same way you'll see in the guided reading levels specifically we have some lofty goals we're looking to have an increase of 16 in 43 and 19 in fifth grade and that's because we just have a lot of students who are really close and so we feel really confident um that we can set an aggressive school like that because with the right instruction not always through intervention but also just through the the teacher's construction we feel like we can really move a lot of kids in fourth and fifth grade in their leading level up to being at benchmark fellow our star reading assessment server for the last year so those are our academic goals our strategies on the next slide um we will continue to rely on high expectations teaching um and thinking about leveraging the the teaching strategies that we know are proven to help close gaps for students so when you think about it the growth profile that we use as a district for purposes of teacher evaluation there's probably 30 or more um elements within it there are some that should be leveraged more than others there are some that are just proven through research um to impact the success of students in classrooms so that's where we focus our attention during PD um and practicing those skills um and that's where Mr Emery with the math department Mrs Johnson with the language arts department on thinking about are we clear with our learning targets for students are we clear about our learning goals what is the type of feedback and is actionable and as a useful and meaningful to students right in the moment those are two of the most high leverage um bang for your buck if you will if you're if you're a teacher and you're going to focus on improving one one thing those two instructionally are great places to land we're reading culturally responsive teaching in the brain which is um helping us all think about the ways in which we connect to students and How Deeply we know our students and what their needs are um so when we are putting much thought into the relationships that we have with students and making sure that they are available for Learning and that we're reaching them in a way that their brain is wired for we started that PD so sometime earlier this year and we'll continue on November 8th we're doing a book study and that includes all staff certified and non-certified staff um we had our first launch session with our teachers College reading and Writers Workshop um coach where we thought again our kind of main question during the launch was how do we use the workshop model to build positive relationships with students how do we help students create identity maps about who they are as Learners um thinking about the power of conferencing with students and what types of questions we could ask them such as when does writing feel good for you and learning about students to a much deeper level and then it all goes into the relationships that we build with kids but then how can we use that to inform our instruction teachers were able to walk away with again leverage practices that can hold them in the classroom build on memory but also build on just some of those the skills that we look to to to address in reading Rebecca I'm impressed with um all the extra things that you do to and Andy too on what you do for your teachers to help them in with their continuing edit where do you guys get your continuing ahead where do you get your Concepts and ideas what what helps you come in with I got this idea yeah um um so we collaborate with each other uh last year I was supported by this District to return to UConn through their educational leadership executive leadership program and being around others um Roundtable conferences with other administrators that are in the area um I've shared with this group before that I really believe strongly in research for better teaching um so I've attended PD through them that kind of keeps me feeling in the loop with things but I will also be honest that working with teachers in PD is one of my favorite parts of the job as well so I love our PD plans I'm I'm Mr Bishop and Mr case's Case early in the spring because I'm always eager to look at what our PD plan will be for the next year I'm protective over building use time sometimes to evolve but I think that that time is incredibly valuable with teachers sure we invest enough in in your professional development is there more that the board should be doing for our administrators conference wise Forum wise webinar wise is there anything that you guys see that maybe we should be considering or should be in a budget I've never once looked for or wanted a professional development opportunity and not been able to participate in it it's good to hear I never say no it's a great opportunity it's great I mean investing in computer professional development gives us dividends Beyond so I appreciate it um so thinking about when we looked at the strands for our svac data um we did we are implementing this year some number sense and language conventions lessons in both grades four and five um those lessons are planned collaboratively in the math and the language arts department meetings um Mr Emery and Mrs Johnson Model A lesson once a week again they plan them together um but it's meeting a definite need that we had in number sense um and then the language conventions or read aloud time to address some of that comprehension skill work that showed as a deficit in aspect testing we will use Freckle Lexia learning ally as a platform to provide um I would say supplemental work for students at home I don't want kids learning on Freckle but it is when parents ask what can we do at home that's a great answer because it can be individualized and teachers can push out practice problems that are right at a student's skill level in their mean we are we've doubled the number of sit meetings that we have in a week so that was a scheduling concern that we had so this year already we've held 20 sip meetings which is our student intervention team so those are for students who have academic struggles and also behavioral struggles that's the team that pulls together and um it includes myself Mr Johnson Mrs Mrs Johnson Mr Emery our school psychologist um our special education staff our social worker our school counselor um so twice a week we all gather to make sure that we have the right plans in place many of those meetings include parents and we've been fortunate this year and we hope the trend continues that every time we've invited a parent in-person meeting they've made themselves available um so I feel like we are part of a very supportive Community who also wants to they want their children to accept us as much as we do we'll continue to have an increased number of flex groups we ran what we call like a mini launch cycle based on S back and spring data so we service 34 students in the area of math 39 in the area of reading we are starting our first flex cycle in about a week those numbers are increasing to 36 students for Math and 47 for language arts so we do use the flex time and other times during the day for our tutors to work with students who are below or significantly below benchmark surprise and hit my breath but those are my my academic goals and strategies welcome any questions we'll move on then to our school culture and climate goals um mine are very similar to Mr Robbins just I broke mine out into one of her students and a separate one from parents but we're really looking about at looking at students being actively engaged in active versus participants in our school community and we know that to be engaged our students have to be physically present so attendance will be one of our data points that we're looking at specifically the students who are chronically absent and we had 23 students who met that criteria last year chronically absent means a student who has 10 or more unexcused absences um you know attendance during covid was it was challenging we had students who were out for illness which would be excused we had students who needed to be out because they were isolating or they were quarantined they were close contact um some families who at times depending on what the metrics looked like there's they kept their child home we saw that beginning to decline last year and we really are at a point this year where we need students in the building um so like Mr Robin we're looking at attendance data very closely working with families through our social worker making sure we're understanding the reasoning behind students being interested we know the amount of homeschool students we have it's CIS did or not do we know so I I have that information but I do know is um we enrolled 32 new students over the summer to CIS which is high for us and many of those students not many um more than usual um of those students were returning to public school from homeschooling okay we also hope continuing to look at their students who are chronically absent we want to decrease how absent they are our average is 17 on excuse absences are so are any of those parents who like take a trip you know or just something I know you have that not for us but the information they give it at the school like is that part of it or small portion of it and see if that's a stop okay and we talk to parents right like um you're approaching your 9th absence that we know that you're on a vacation you know we appreciate the communication and if they're in contact with us and help us understand why a child is absent and that goes a long way towards preventing The Chronic absenteeism but regardless of the reason whether it's a trip or an illness or um a school avoidance time outside of the classroom and not at school impacts performance and so it's things that we we need to address but perhaps in different ways we will look at participation in school events our Behavior data looking at how we recognize students in a positive way but suspension data and referral data will be a part of that look and then of course our student surveys and then our next goal is thinking about parent participation and how active they are in our school community and so we will rely on our survey results once on their attendance at school events school events meaning things like fright night perhaps or parent conferences but also coming to a Sit meeting that is hard it's during the middle of a work day and then sometimes to hear news that is difficult to hear that your child is struggling and sometimes for us to say we're struggling to figure out why you're trying to struggling and help us work together so when parents when when we have 100 participation at Sydney meeting Senate ppts um that shows me that we have parents who are actively engaged in their school Community we want to confirm so our strategies for helping kids feel connected Peggy to your to your question a while back and how do we help kids feel like they're not being left out um we'll continue holding practice of the morning meeting and closing Circle those components of responsive classroom that we increase time for during covid and maintained I'm building that whole school assemblies for the purpose of community building and this year we're implementing an advisory program so our advisory groups meet twice a month everybody all certified staff including myself have an Advisory Group we meet with anywhere from eight to ten students those groups are across the grades sorry you know two or three from each grade and it gives our sixth graders a chance to be the leaders of the building and be role models and a chance for our fourth graders to see that fifth and sixth graders are people too and help us all kind of build that sense of community across the grades we use one of those advisory meetings each month as a circle um to be able to get to know each other to share about ourselves and as the year goes on to be able to talk about the things that CIS that are challenging or that we would want to work on together to improve and then we use the second advisory meeting as more uh and something of an activity so start with hello week for example we we did an activity during advisory we did we have advisory on Friday and in our groups we will be brainstorming what a family crest might look like for our small advisory family um brainstorming that and we will build on that and then we'll have an also assembly at the end of the year where we show off our completed crests in the month of November before Veterans Day assembly we will be learning about gratitude in our advisory groups so it gives us a chance to connect some advisory groups have developed handshakes so when they see each other in the hallway now they don't just walk by each other but they have their secret handshake um and it gives most students their advisory teacher is one that they don't have so it's another adult in the building that they're connected to I mean that they can go to in a safe space if they need somebody to to talk to or they need help we are expanding our extracurricular offerings and activities which has been very popular this fall um we're working on a school-wide mural and I have a picture of kind of an unveiling if you will um at the end of my presentation of what our mural will look like we have um a commitment to continue to look at the classroom libraries that we have and the books that we have in circulation in our library and make sure that they continue to represent all students GIS again when we Implement High leverage teaching strategies so that every student can learn they feel like they are seen in their classrooms um so good instruction also allows for students to know that they belong because we're reaching them with the strategies that they need and then from a parent perspective we will hold meetings in a hybrid format some parents prefer in-person meetings and others prefer virtual meetings so we want to be accessible to parents um I people continue to message with parents um sometimes it's weekly sometimes it's multiple times of movement sometimes it's not when I have something to say I say it to parents um and a goal of mine is to increase my social media presence that's not a natural skill of mine to be on Instagram um but I'm trying and I have I have some followers so way to go there's more data that I can report at the end of the year through this company I'm wearing one these are the ways that we hope you know we're proud of the things that we do at CIS we want to share them on our next slide are our priorities all of this work that I talked about tonight all falls within our strategic plan within our strategic plan we talk about curriculum and instruction um advisories so students feel connected engaging with families so with every all of the work that we're doing is still very tightly aligned to that so our priorities if I were to have to choose four would be to look closely at our teaching strategies and keep that as a top priority accelerate growth for the students who need it will be a part of almost every conversation that we have for students who are struggling build strong connections to the school community Through advisory through extracurricular activities and to do that also by some school-wide Gatherings so big things that happened already this year that we've not done for several years kid governor was an election process with all the fifth grade in the cafeteria we haven't done that in several years we had a whole school assembly to kick off this school year and it's just nice we have a tradition where we clap in our fourth graders so our fifth and sixth graders come to the gym and they clap and welcome our fourth graders and it's just a nice moment that we've been able to have for a few years it's really cool um within our strategic plan I also do just want to share that teachers also create their own goals um around advancing our strategic plan so in addition to my four priorities we have a lot of curriculum work going on this year particularly the social studies and grades four and five but also training our department leaders to be able to perform some Equity audits so that we have that expertise within our buildings so that we can apply that to existing curriculum but also as we're piloting and we come to the close of piloting a curriculum that we have we know that we've embedded it and looked at it through that appropriate lens we have some teachers who are passionate about responsive classroom um we were able to train one teacher over the summer who donated her time to attend that training but we want to continue to make sure we have resources available for new staff who get to be trained on responsive classroom and then we have a larger group than we had last year who's looking at a code of conduct and looking to develop a code of conduct that we think memorializes our philosophy around restorative practices and decision trees but also makes it very clear to parents and to students where expectations are for Behavior and what we can expect um as far as supports go from the school but also consequences if they need be and then lastly our successes to date we've had a positive start this way where we have several new large initiatives right so we have advisory the language conventions the numbersense lessons and the increase in sit meetings those all Impact teacher time um and so I have to shout out the teachers who um with all of these large initiatives starting at CIS this year not a single complaint not a single teacher saying we should be doing this nobody talking to Union reps that this isn't the right thing to do for kids these are time intensive initiatives but everybody is doing them with 100 of their effort because it's just it's what's right for kids um and any change that impacts your time is not easy for teachers and the teachers at CIS are fantastic and so they they deserve a little non so that's when um early in this year we have had seen the need for some quick identification and intervention for students who are in need of support um you know 32 new students into a building in addition to a fourth grade class those are all students that we are getting to know sometimes we've planned for students and sometimes they're brand new to us and we haven't and we have to adjust and we have to get to know those students and their needs very quickly and I think that we have done that and we'll continue to do that we've had some nice community building events already fifth grade had or sixth grade had an Empower experience we have fright night coming up this week lunch in the cafeteria Veterans Day will be more traditional assembly versus the parade that we've had over the last couple of years and we have seen High participation in extracurricular events this fall we have pictured some students who we were able to celebrate as being our top readers in the summer reading program we have chess club and we also speaking of parent engagement we're running um you know an opportunity for parents to celebrate their children's birthdays because as we get older we're not doing parties in the classrooms um but about a third of our families um responded in wanting to be part of our birthday book program so that was nice it's a nice way to celebrate their children and to support our library our extracurricular activities um participation is high when we add up everything that we have going on in this fall um there's about 295.
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students staying out there now of course there is some overlap so that is our next conversation is who are we missing who are the kids who aren't able to participate in an extracurricular activity and what are we missing some of these are activities that run all year and others are activities that we're running on a six-week cycle um Dungeons and Dragons club and chess club came from students who advocated for the need for that club we have a desire from some students they've met with me and they've pitched the idea for an engineering club and a theater Club so we will continue to meet the needs of as many students as we can and give them an opportunity to do something at school where they feel connected to school at maybe outside of the General Ed program and then lastly I just want to share a little bit about our mural project so all of our students um through the hard work of Mrs Costello brainstormed um themes like one word themes that they might want to have this mural represent we put those themes together into statements and students voted and the winning statement was at CIS we grow like Rising Stars we grow as students Learners creative thinkers and friends with positive character so given that theme that students chose just they started a student sketched on what they thought that mural should look like and we were able to send those sketches to our artists in Residence who's supported by our Canton Arts Council and that artist from The Hot Spot um looked at patterns and sketches and how could we represent as many sketches as possible so this is not one individual students sketches pieces of many student sketches but this is a draft of what our mural will look like when it goes up in our cafeteria later this year is it a banner or is it uh actually it's a mosaic so it will be three large panels um that will be grouted and every student and staff member at CIS will lay a piece of tile into the mural that's great and then it will be hung in our cafeteria pastel has done a lot of work you have a yearbook I mean that would be a great cover for everything we do the sketches in themselves concrete like the book I mean these sketch is so beautiful and it just um it shows you what CIS students feel CIS is all about and we've tried to capture it in one mural but they're beautiful sketches um we're although also collaborating with the American mural project so one of our sixth grade teams went there today and over the next couple of weeks um every student at CIS will go on a field trip there to see this massive neural installation and see the the authentic side of the artwork as well okay questions for Rebecca I have a question um and speaking of field trips as you just mentioned the American mural project um do you know how many vehicles are scheduled for each class like fourth and six and then are there other ones that we're building upon I know we're still looking at the not even classroom but the trip but similar to the YouTube classroom yeah um so we're in the exploratory phase for a couple of things so all of the classes have the American mural project um trip fourth and sixth grade will go to um what is our our field trip um Hill said I can think of Homestead the hillstead museum um for their for their day there fifth grade is going to the Old State House um early in November we had tried to go to the Native American Museum in Washington Connecticut during our Native American unit they are fully booked but we've hired two Educators to come to us and they're bringing some artifacts which is a big part of that unit so we'll have that experience um fourth grade is in the process right now of exploring Sturbridge Village um which is still tightly aligned just when we think about Regional history to the curriculum that's in fourth grade um and sixth grade is as you mentioned exploring what do we want to do as a as a spring trip um so teachers and staff have been surveyed as well as parents I'm thinking about some different options um I wouldn't say that I'm at a point right now where I could say which one thank you and just to follow up with that too just for for the board to know as well we talked at the curriculum subcommittee as well about being able to have a sense of what are the what are some of these key experiences that are extensions for our students outside the classroom to be able to uh participate in so Rebecca thanks for sharing some of those we'll bring that back to the subcommittee to talk a little bit more and bring it back to the electric wood other questions so just a couple oh I'm sorry go ahead for recess um you started the three classes out last year and then well um you see negative and positive you know there's they're not all together with their peers and there could be both negative and positive results of that um I mean I've heard from parents over the years too like they're not you know they're not with their friends anymore you know it's not the whole grade level together um will that change will you will there be like one day a week where they're all together as a grade level because now covid I think a lot of people thought that was to the coven but it sounds like it's for academic reason yeah which makes sense because I know you're trying to you know increase academics but like socially emotionally like I don't know I don't know how you do remedy that how do you get them with their peers so we have um warning recess time depending on what time the student arrives to school so morning reset starts at 7 35 and we come for the building at 7 55.
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um it's not um lunches by grades right now um and your right recess is half a grade at a time um right now with a number of students who need intervention I would not be able to service all of them I would have to cut it in half if we didn't have recess on the model that we have right now um so that's where I'm placing my priorities on the academic support for those students now as we get further away from covid and as hopefully we see you know through changes in curriculum and tiered interventions that we have if that name declines I mean no way opposed to the full class signing recesses it's just not something that we've been able to figure out from a scheduling perspective to be able to have in place the reason that it's five days and not four is purely just a research-based interventions or you know at least half an hour for five days a week and then trying to maximize that intervention time that we have with kids yeah I just wondered if there was any way to make it you know happen every now and then or something um and I just want to say kudos to your band teachers Mr B and Mrs D because they've put out you know instruments for two grade levels and starting in students on that which is you know probably never happened in the history of camp we have to outfit two grades of students so I just wanted to say good job and cater to all of their changing Minds for the student who thought they wanted the tubo but now they want the trumpet um and they're being incredibly flexible and helping all those students find their way but they're they're teaching two beginning band classes this year and if you listen to them you never know these are so fantastic so any other questions I have a couple are you fully staffed I have one vacancy right now um which is a posting for a special education teacher which is posted kind of a need that we didn't realize we would have and until the school year started otherwise I am fully staff prepare Educators I have two building subs and I have the two or something Andy I meant to ask you this question too soon you can chime in on this but what can the board do for you what can we provide what are we not providing what's kind of on your wish list that we can maybe help you with and then Andy I'll go to you on that um for me um when we were experiencing the need for more behavioral support and special education staff and I brought that concern to Mr case and he was able to support me with that posting the challenge is not every posting results in applicants or someone who's qualified to work with our students um but that is that is the way that I feel supported by this board is when I have a need for staff I feel like I always been heard and that need has been met Mr Emery is now full-time at CIS and Mr Robin has a full-time counterpart to Mr Robin or to Mr Anne-Marie at his school um the enrichment position um so those are positions that I've advocated for that it's important thing more that's great but how about now this this special hosting is one that I need to fill we will continue to look at the behavior supports that we have on base for students it's a it's a small group of students but making sure that we have the right Social Work support to me to meet all of their needs and I do think we are right now but I also would not hesitate to reach out to Mr case if I felt like I needed more anything that you need anymore we can provide you know Staffing is important and you know being flexible to meet the needs that are in front of us that we may or may not have anticipated uh one of the nice things that we've had this year and I know we've got cool injury is the amount of time with early release days that are open for our building the more time our incredible keeping staff can spend together right focused in on something together and you mentioned PV before just to sit in a room with a team of teachers that's extremely powerful and to remove through distractions from them and allow them in time is just really fantastic the last thing we'll need it shared working we're in the process of figuring out is um and I think I talked about that was the quotable tax for kids so they can apply their foundational skills and the literature that they have okay thank you thank you so I'll ask you the same question ask Andy on a scale one to five five being the highest where are we at CIS what's your feeling I've been thinking about so I had the luxury one more time answer to that um and I I think it wavers by day um depending on which students are needing support from us but I think we're at a high floor closer to five I think we have we are meeting the needs of both great majority of students at CIS our teachers are doing a fantastic job of getting to know new students kids are happy we have the advisory groups are just fabulous ways for first of all to be able to connect with kids when I am able to be working in my office at the end of the day and see 25 kids playing disc golf I'm going to build that makes me happy so I think we have some nice things happening um we are certainly challenged at times um but we have a process in place to work within the systems within our building and also with the parents or students who need that support and we have those that plan is is working thank you just in case you have anything you want to have thank you excuse me one second I'm all choked up um really Rebecca thank you so much for your outstanding leadership that's CIS you know the mural project is just one great example of that um you're very humble you won't give yourself the credit that that's due um Mrs Costello's our fabulous art teacher but the project wouldn't have happened without your support your leadership so that's just one example of arranging for all of the Intermediate School students to go to the American mural project to be able to see the largest mural in North America that happens to be so close by and then to be able to put this mural together just one example of the great things that are happening that you share tonight so thank you so much I'm so proud of the work that both of you are doing um I'm sure you as board members are as well one thing that really impresses me is that if I were to ask Mr Robin or Mrs Corto about any one of their students they would be able to talk about that student that is so impressive when these administrators sit with their teachers to develop goals for the year they're talking about individual students and developing individual action plans for students that doesn't happen everywhere but that happens here in Canton so thank you for knowing ours students so well get them to reach high levels that's impressive Grace and I like the idea that we know our students uh and I think our students know you guys as well I know in particular the students talk about Mr Robin always being out there in front and reading them saying hello to them and I know you do that too but uh we appreciate that so thank you for your presentation tonight we look forward to great things for the rest of the year when we get back together in May we'll be excited to hear about the progress thank you thank you thanks for spending so much time with us today part of that's my fault I apologize to the board for the questions and keeping it here we're gonna we're gonna expedite the rest of the meeting um and I can I can tell you we'll be out of here by right before 10.
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I'm sorry for late since late evening okay um we're gonna go to uh we have a HVAC indoor air quality that you want to talk about Donna uh yeah this is a grant um the state is about 150 million dollars uh allocated for these grants it's a strict turnaround due on December 1st um and they did that so that there's basically two summers to do the work for most schools it really wouldn't affect us because what we want to do is um give it a shot at getting some of this money for the HVAC system at the auditorium for that at the high school um it is a pretty competitive bid and um it's not a great reimbursement rate it's based on statute so I found out today it's about a uh a 27 reimbursement rate and we can't use any arpa funds it has to be uh basically Town Fund CIP funds so we can work that around we were doing that anyway though right yeah it's not a change yeah it was it was 150 funded through arpa so if we get this uh we would then have to decide how much um that we want to start the funds and then move the remainder to CIP and the town is okay with that I've already talked to them about that so um it's just kind of a technicality moving right around so it's not a big deal uh but basically we just need your um approval to apply for this grant tonight to install the air conditioning um and uh we'll do our best Tom Richardson and I and and uh Arnold are working on it together so so is it over two summers or you will you have we'll do it in one summer so we'll be ready for September or that's the idea yeah that's great yeah okay so we'll take that off again right so tonight thank you so much Donna thanks for your hard work on this um tonight um we're just asking for you to authorize me to submit this grant by December 1st because the grant proposal necessitates that you make a motion exactly sure thank you thank you okay um Mr Bishop you're gonna we I think you've heard an awful lot from me tonight so I'll go ahead and table myself for the moment thank you we'll give you more time that's great let's go to the consent agenda though Mr Case okay this evening for the consent agenda you have the approval of the minutes of the regular meeting of October 11th and also we have two maternity leave requests one for Kelly dimartino a special education teacher at Cherry Brook primary school and one request for Jennifer McDermott also a teacher at Cherry Brook primary school so both of these leave requests meet the contractual guidelines so I would recommend that you approve those requests this evening so absolutely and I've written their letters for FMLA but so is uh Andy reported tonight there's no subs what do we do for these two spoons so as soon as you approve these um we leave the requests we I mean these um vacancies for a long term okay okay any questions on the consent agenda and one is a special ed teacher so we worry about that yeah sure okay um so I can I can move the consent agenda at this point right yes okay we have a motion to approve the consent agenda thank you Felicia thank you Joe first and second any further discussion on the consent agenda all those in favor aye aye thank you that's a unanimous on the consent agenda thank you okay so the approval of the policies that we read the last time they were in your kit if you saw them I think we had a pretty good vetting on each one of these so any highlights you want if you want to mention on any of these I think we took care of that last night right any questions from the last time is there anything lingering okay so we'll take these one at a time they have a motion to approve the reporting of child abuse neglect and sexual assault in the minutes will show it's p5141-4 thank you Ryan second thank you Erica and uh any further discussion on that one all those in favor aye opposed thank you Peggy okay for sexual abuse prevention and education program p 50 5145-511 we have a motion thank you Felicia thank you Kim any further discussion all those in favor aye you voted yes correct yes correct okay so uh P 5144-4 physical exercise and disciplined students the revised policy motion thank you Joe thank you Erica any further discussion on that all those in favor hi okay and the final one is the minimum to be free lunch periods for teachers uh that's p41 13-12 I have a motion thank you Ryan thank you Kim maybe further discussion all those in favor aye aye unanimous okay and then finally uh is Don outlined the approval to apply for the HVAC indoor quality grant for the uh Auditorium we have a motion on that thank you Joe thank you Felicia any further discussion all those in favor aye aye and that covers it any board comments for tonight again I apologize for being this long but I think these are the you know the meat of what we're here for so uh it's important that we give them the time and the vetting so again I apologize we went wrong any other comments for tonight's meeting anything you'd like to see for the next meeting anything we missed any critiques everybody's coming right all right hope to see you all there yeah I would just like to um I would just like to add that I that we took your feedback um this summer as we talked about the administrator's presentations I hope it showed that we listen to your feedback and tried to apply it with some visual colored graphs with a couple of you mentioned that would be helpful in looking at data and then also the executive summaries I hope that was helpful if you have feedback for um Mr Moore and Mr dipepo as they're putting their final touches on their reports and summaries just let me know that and we can tweak that and why don't you you mentioned how you're going to Aggregate and do a comparative in our December meeting you want to let the board know that right so one once you hear all of the importance what I like to do in December those of you who've been on the board of wild no I'd like to give a state of the school district report where I will give you the trend data for various types of data attendance data School discipline data as well as academic data which uh Mr Bishop will go over and that also aligns with our Equity policy where I need to come before you um a few times a year to talk about the different types of data as specified in their Equity policy as to how our various groups of students are doing so that'll be December perfect preview of Coming Attraction excellent okay anything else all right motion to go to Executive session thank you Erica thank you Ryan this will be quick uh any further discussion you're just inviting me oh we're inviting just the uh superintendent to be with us that's it all in favor aye opposed bye thank you unanimous this will take three or four minutes like I promised you before thank you Kira thank you Donna thank you Claudia
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executive orders from the governor to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the covid-19 virus we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call um toll free 877-853-5247 or 888-788-0099 and enter meeting ID 925-8215 -8705 again you can call um either of these toll-free numbers and enter meeting ID 925-8215-8705 this information is also available on the published agenda in the Public Notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on CTN Channel 16 ATT channels 99 and online at www.a2gov.org watchctn okay so um Sean would you read the land Heritage statement sure thank you I acknowledge that the land the city of Ann Arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including Odawa Ojibwe and badewad me and YN dot peoples I further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the United States on lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous peoples The Taking of this land was formalized by the Treaty of Detroit in 1807 knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can Empower us and our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals thank you John Sean would you do the Roll Call sure all right we'll start off with commissioner Needham thank you commissioner Needham all right council member Desh I believe is phoning and let me allow them to talk briefly council member Dash all right well they may be unable to unmute right now but they are present um all right moving on to commissioner Graham I'm here thank you uh council member Griswold here in Ann Arbor commissioner kalawork here uh chairperson Brown here in Ann Arbor commissioner mursky you're in my home from Ann Arbor Vice chairperson Mitchell you're an Ann Arbor commissioner oriel all right uh commissioner Gabe Randall commissioner Gabe Randall not hearing you Shannon we do see you but we can't hear you um commissioner Marson I'm here in Ann Arbor thank you uh commissioner Gruber not hearing me either oh there you are okay here in Ann Arbor great thank you uh and commissioner nedric here in Ann Arbor great thank you uh and that is a quorum all right thank you Sean so the next item on the agenda is the approval of this agenda um has drafted um um let's see um does anyone wish to change any any part of the agenda are there any additions or edits that are suggested I moved to approve the agenda as posted okay do we have a second hello yes we have a second uh let's take it from uh commissioner Gruber okay yeah I'm on my phone so I can't see everybody on that on the call all right um um all those who approve the agenda as as written um say aye or raise your hands right hey hi hi any opposed any abstentions okay the agenda's approved unanimously uh the next item on the agenda is the approval of minutes um these are the minutes of our last meeting on September 22nd um so let's see the uh so do I have a motion for accepting the minutes I moved to accept the minutes um do we have a second second uh commissioner whoops commissioner Morrison yes seconded okay so the floor is open for discussion is there any uh anyone want to discuss anything okay so um so all those who approved the minutes as written raise your hand or say aye say no any abstentions okay I hear CNN so the minutes of our September 22nd meeting are approved has drafted um so the next item on the agenda is public commentary so this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099 [Music] foreign enter a meeting ID 925 -8215-8705 [Music] again that's 888-788-0099 and enter meeting ID number nine two five eight two one five eight seven zero five this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and the video feed City staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there can be a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established is there anybody on the line yet Sean I do not see anybody on the line right now okay so we'll wait another 30 seconds just to see if somebody uh calls in and raises their hand okay is there anybody on the line there is not okay thank you um so this ends the public commentary period there will be another opportunity to submit public comment near the end of this meeting so there is no one finished business on the agenda today so let's move on to new business and when we do because I'm I have to attend this meeting on my cell phone um I'm going to pass the chair responsibilities on to read a Mitchell device chair if there are no objections are there any objections okay Rita you have the floor all right thank you according to our agenda we do not have any new business um and uh or unfinished business I'm sorry so we can move on to the new business and our first topic tonight is an overview of our Ann Arbor water and we have a guest joining us tonight staff um uh Brian steglitz and um he we've asked him to be with us tonight to talk about the the new unified Ann Arbor water department so with that um Brian if you would just take over and give us some some overview that would be great okay great um can you hear me okay yes all right well thank you first for asking us to come uh speak about this tonight we're trying to take this opportunity we'd like to take this opportunity to continue with the messaging around our new brand so I'm really actually pleased that you asked for us to come because we probably would have reached out to you anyway so um but what we've been working on over the past um it's probably the better part of the year is looking about looking about how we can Rebrand the utilities right now we we operate I think as you all know three different utilities that have typically operated in silos being the drinking water system um Wastewater resource recovery and storm water management and what this branding has allowed us to do is to talk about this around a singular water you know water is a singular resource you know we use it for all of these purposes there's been a trend in the water space to begin to talk about water as a single singular entity one water and we're we're taking this opportunity to really get up to speed the industry has been there already for several years so I wouldn't say we're behind but the time was ripe for us to start looking about how do we start talking about this as a singular resource um so you know what you'll hear in a lot of upcoming Communications as we start to continue to talk about this is the connection of the utilities again managing the similar resource um really talking about the value of water in the community um it provides all you know the three things that I just mentioned associated with our utilities but people on use it for recreation we use it for power production so it's a really it's a central part of the an arbor Community we all probably touch water in some way every day um so again the brand Ann Arbor water um is is to really just illustrate the importance of that um for the city and the community there were some questions that were sort of posed you know about strategic goals um performance-based indicators you know right now we're really just focused on communicating so people are aware they understand that you know their services won't necessarily be uh changed as they as they receive them as they interact with the city but are messaging and again and public engagement is all going to be more focused on the singular resource we've had multiple periodicals that we use um we've used our quality water matters brand um for drinking water and that's been in place for several years so all of the things that are going on are going to be Blended underneath this new umbrella so actually beginning um I think on November 1st so next week we'll have our first Ann Arbor water newsletter that goes out that will replace the the several that we've been historically doing and it will be blending communication about all the utilities underneath that so that'll be a subscriber base we can send you the the link to that so you can get access to it and then if you're interested um you know through our gov delivery you can subscribe to get our monthly newsletter so we're really excited about it I've already seen the draft and it's really it's really great so um I think we're really proud of what what our team has put together um in terms of kpis I think that was another question that was asked um of me to potentially address you know we have we have many kpis and we have had them um associated with all of our utilities and we continue to track those things those things include things like compliance um for the water and wastewater utilities um you know I think you all know we've been tracking pfas in our finished water so we have metrics around that um and thing also maintaining our buried infrastructure so we we have a goal of cleaning a third of our stormwater catch basins annually we track and Trend sanitary sewer overflows we look at condition assessment of all of our varied infrastructure so water storm water and sanitary collection and we Trend all of those things um in the past year just as for some statistics to share you know we've lined 60 000 linear feet of sanitary sewer and um over 15 000 feet of storm sewer so lots of really good work um that has happened um and I see you know Molly is on the call so a lot of this work is stuff that she her group is working on um trending and also you know completing so kudos to the folks in public works um and then I'll just add too um I was I was sort of reviewing to sort of prepare for this to see some other some of our other metrics and um we televised and cleaned uh about 500 000 linear feet of sanitary sewer um in the last year too so really pretty impressive work done by our Public Works crew so those are just a sampling of the types of metrics that we have in place associated with this new Ann Arbor water brand um so I guess with that I really wanted to see if there were any questions that's sort of a brief overview but I'd be happy to answer any questions you have um about this topic um council member Griswold uh yes I really appreciate this and I was frantically looking for the first newsletter today and couldn't find it so I'm glad to know it doesn't exist yet and uh I I did mention uh in an Administration meeting probably six weeks ago at the most a couple of opportunities for improvement regarding um water information and it was taken more as a criticism than the opportunity that I uh had mentioned I'm glad to see this and based on the timing I know it had nothing to do with my comment um but I think this is great and my question is will this include um the one for dioxin and Gelman or will that continue to to be a separate update foreign we have a a responsibility I think in a previous resolution to report on that back to council and that's how we've been we've been following that that um communication obligation so uh I think that's probably going to continue separately but if we get feedback um from Council um that we that it should be Blended we can consider that there's sort of a lot to talk about typically associated with that um we don't want to maybe distract from the rest of our messaging um but I you know I haven't really given that a whole lot of thought so if there's there's direction that you think is appropriate we can take that into consideration as we continue to communicate about these things oh okay thanks because I probably get more questions about the Gelman plume and dioxane than I do about anything else but I agree we don't want to distract uh and lastly um I appreciate the visibility that the the water department or whoever's out there that little drop Guy and um and the the testing for the three types of water now what I was told is that people who drink Ann Arbor water during the test they prefer Ann Arbor water and people who don't drink Ann Arbor don't necessarily is is that actually statistically true I don't know if we've done a lot of statistics on our taste tests at our events um I can tell you that Ann Arbor tends to win out if we were actually scoring and ranking but um yeah I think what are the experience that we I think when I participated in those that we hear is that people get accustomed to what they're used to and that tends to be what their preferences are so typically people who have grown up on Ann Arbor water prefer that and that there are people who we run into who um you know maybe they're they're from the U.P and they grew up on a well water and they tend to like the the flavor of hard water so um yeah it's a personal preference I would say but in general Ann Arbor water Stacks up well I think as you know aesthetically we've won a lot of Awards in the state on um the taste of our water so we're pretty proud of that oh okay thank you and and again water issues are something that most people just take for granted so you don't hear from constituents unless there is a problem or a complaint so again uh thanks for everything you two do th I'm glad that you appreciate Huron our water drop because I think a lot of people um really enjoy that particularly the kids so we're glad to have volunteers to fill the suit when we have our events I was dancing with him recently so maybe I could volunteer after my time on Council always looking for volunteers um commissioner Graham foreign I think you're admitted sorry Brian how how are we doing on beginning construction on the Water Treatment Plant upgrades yeah thank you for that question um so we're we're still really in the infancy of that project so we have we're right in the middle of doing some of our initial planning and one element of that is um building a pilot plant that mimics the full-scale treatment process the reason we're doing that is we're going to evaluate some treatment modifications um that will allow us one to do some challenge testing on some of these emerging contaminants that the council member raise dioxane pfos so we'll look at if there's Technologies we could Implement that could position us to be better able to remove some of those if we needed to in the future the other thing that we're going to be looking at is new softening technology um and really the the real driver for that is is it there's technology that exists now that will allow us to soften the water which is one of the the critical processes that we use in a much smaller footprint and in that case we could potentially save a significant amount of money on rehabilitating the plant if we can um do our softening in a smaller space so there are some significant economic reasons why there we're going to be doing the this pilot work so the pilot work is anticipated to take probably about 18 months um and then the results of that will inform the decisions that we would be wanting to make on what types of treatment we think are appropriate for Ann Arbor for the future so in terms of when full-scale construction it happens we're still many years away from that but we're doing we're doing the beginning parts of the work to make the decisions on what treatment is appropriate for the city so um you've also been working on doing a better job controlling order from the uh sewage streamer plant how's that coming that seems to be going very well we have um you know we get intermittent intermittent complaints but it's been um we haven't had them um in recent history so I I would I think it's going well but you have made improvements in the last year or so I would have to get back to you because I don't know the details on what the the recent changes have been um but I know that they've been they've done some Odor Control studies I think one of the things that they do is they use um a chemical um that helps control odors and that's been very successful so um we've actually been thinking about setting up a time to come to talk to you about some items associated with the Wastewater system so that would be a really great opportunity to maybe dive into some of these questions and I can have Keith Sanders here be better suited to to answer some of those than I am thank you uh anyone else that looks like oh John risky thanks Brian by the way I've been on my bike a half a dozen times at least um by the wage treatment plant in the last couple of months and the order hasn't been noticeable so take that as uh feedback for your for your tracking thanks very much great um I have two sort of main topics um short on one is um as I understand and now all the water departments are under one organization is that right and in other words what I'm basically getting at is do you have now greater later labor flexibility and productivity by combining the three utilities because that part of the design so we haven't made any any structural changes to Staffing associated with this at this point in time um you know we all of our utilities fell under the purview of public services and they still do and when we've always built the utilities together so they're all built as a singular bill so there we've we've received we already received some of those economies of scale on organizational benefits so this is really more about communication [Music] um and branding and trying to get um an understanding in the community about the value of water as a singular resource and to ensure that people take it seriously protect it and make sure that it's available for all these important uses great okay thanks the other couple of questions that I had relate to kpis so I very much appreciate the regular reports um that we get via email on water quality you talked about a number of other metrics or kpis are those available in the public domain in other words can you go to the city website and track some of the figures um that you talked about some of the metrics so you can actually see what those what those look like I don't think that they're at this point um available through our website so that's something that we can I can explore okay I don't want to put Molly on the spot but she may be able to answer about some of the metrics that her group is tracking and we can discuss if there's if they're not means of maybe making them available in the future yeah I I don't know that we need to get into that level of detail what I would hope is that they um become available in the public domain that they're trended so we can see not just a snapshot um that you know X number of feet were done in this year but how was that compared to Prior years and even more important how did that compare to the goal for that year so if you did you know 500 000 feet or 60 000 feet or whatever it was was that meeting the Target or was that 50 short of the Target or was that above the target that's really what I think is is helpful for us in judging um how we're doing against you know some of our key key indicators and um what our what our objectives are in order to be able to maintain and operate the system effectively so those are just my thoughts on on that topic yeah that's really good input and I can tell you we've been thinking about this um also we have we've been working with our I.T Department um we have some new tools that are available to us that will allow us to to share information um more timely also so I think this is something that I can bring up with them and we can we can get back to you on how we think we may be able to do that and in what time frame that would be but I think it's a great point and I've made some notes and I'll I will be sure to get back in touch with about okay and I can add to that if I may Brian um sure that so for the galvanized service line replacement project we have created a dashboard and it is my understanding that it's live we're making some tweaks to it recently based on some feedback we had from our water advisory Council um but that was just sort of the first of what we hope to be you know sort of many dashboards that are public facing on our web page excellent excellent there is a City website called um performance measures and there's only about five departments that link to that page and all the measures that are posted there are about three or four years old so um it would be great if we had that level of um transparency um that I think also is helpful for not only Commissioners but the public and potentially even for staff so thanks very much uh Steve Brown oh yeah Brian I just had a quick question of whether the dams are part of this is um maintenance and supervision of the dams part of this new Department so the maintenance and the operation of dams falls under the umbrella of the Water Treatment Services Unit so the answer is yes from a structural standpoint okay great that's all I wanted to know and um I have a question which has to do with um uh tracking contaminants in groundwater specifically I understand that there is some tce that's being ident that has been identified at least on the west side of town and and possibly other areas and I'm just wondering if if that um this information on that kind of testing and tracking will also be available to the public I'm going to have to look into that and and let you know I don't know off the top of my head okay all right thank you um oh John mursky has another question no well just one quick comment um for everybody's knowledge uh I think Brian correct me if I Wrong the city um owns and controls four dams and two of them generate electricity so we get hydropower from two of those dams um that we then send into the DTE grip that's not very widely known that is correct it's about one and a half megawatts uh any other questions or comments all right um thank you so much for this and I look forward to an ongoing discussion of of these issues and and um keeping the importance of water in the four it really is something we all need uh thank you thank you for the opportunity to talk to you tonight yeah thanks all um we're gonna move now to uh discussion of the annual Solid Waste report and we have Sarah Mason and Molly masajewski and Molly please correct me if I really mangle to your name it didn't do too bad it's machiaski oh thank you you're closer than most so thank you for that so yeah uh we'll turn it right over to Sarah Sarah okay this is Sarah's show tonight okay oh gosh thanks Molly um okay so I think I tested this earlier I've got a short presentation to share with you just to kind of help um guide the information I have so let's see make sure I can get this to work okay I think we're there and can everyone hear me okay I've had some microphone issues so glad to hear it um and good evening uh thank you again for having me uh as a reminder I'm Sarah Mason I'm the resource recovery manager for this city I first met most of you last year shortly after I began working with the city um and I'm excited to be back here with you tonight to share some of what we've accomplished in the past year some of our challenges and some of our opportunities I also want to just highlight that many of the things that I'm going to talk about many of the programs are directly tied to recommendations in our most recent Solid Waste Resource Management plan so we are making work our progress in that work uh the plan included you know 24 different recommendations under six different Focus areas around residential commercial downtown area Services education and Outreach diversion related facilities and funding and in almost each of those were were doing some work and making some progress towards some of the recommendations so what I'd like to do this evening is um share some in-depth detail on some of the major initiatives we've been working on and then uh touch on a few other programs that we've got happening and then talk about some of our challenges and opportunities and of course leave some time for questions and answers so the first thing I want to talk about is the recycling education cart tagging campaign and some of you may recall the city was involved in the planning and organization for the Washington Regional Resource Management Authority or you may know it as warma over a few years and I'm happy to say that earlier this year the city was able to join as a member of the authority to help work on messaging around Recycling and it's all agree services in the region our membership brought access to some education grant dollars that were awarded to warma from Eagle for improving the quality and quantity of recycling collected and curbside programs the other seven member communities of warmer were able to complete this work last year and we focused on our residents for this year which came at a great time for Ann Arbor as our new processing agreement did have a few small changes to the items that are acceptable in our curbside carts for recycling so the the cart tagging program which is designed by the recycling partnership began by sending out this informational postcard to all residents and single-family homes that identified that we were going to be doing the project and what can go in your cart and then some of the comment items that we see in the cart that don't go in the cart then over the next five weeks there was a period of cart tagging carried out using temporary staff from lead point which is a staffing agency that the recycling partnership works with and they went by to look in carts and leave a tag if they found items that were in the cart that were not supposed to be in the cart and they did that just by quickly lifting the lid and looking on top and um so these were the tags that we used for that program and there it's an oops tag it's meant to be um it's not meant to be punitive we really want everyone to do the right thing it's just meant to say um you know oops we found something in your cart that shouldn't be in there so please correct it and take that out um to measure the success of the campaign they do a audit oh material before the cart tagging and on and on a sample of material after the cart tagging to see if there was an impact on the quantity and quality of material collected as part of that scrap metal items were one of the items that was previously accepted in our curbside cart but are no longer part of that program you can still take scrap metal to the drop-off station but it's just not a good fit for the curbside program it doesn't act the way packaging would act in the Murph in the Sorting equipment so we actually had quite a bit of it in there we send out this as a top issue mailer focusing on that change to let our residents know that that was something that could no longer go in the cart and we did see a dramatic reduction in the sample collected before and after so we do think that this messaging was helpful Additionally the results from the five weeks of cart tagging showed that for the households that were visited uh we had an 80 an over 80 participation rate which is excellent and we saw a 20 decrease in the contamination from the pre-tagging sample to the post tagging sample and so um that was also really excellent to see some of the top contaminants that we saw included bagged recyclables plastic bags and plastic wrap bulky items tanglers which are long things that can get wrapped around the Sorting equipment so think of the garden homes or like a chain or other long things um Christmas lights uh and then shredded paper and shredded paper is another item that was previously accepted in our curbside cart and it's not now it um shredded paper in a Murph is like a party uh just goes everywhere it's really too small to be recovered in that type of environment so it's better to I say party because it's like confetti uh it's better to take that to a drop off so that's the first thing that I was going to mention um the second big initiative I want to talk to you about is the solicitation process we've undergone to secure a new franchise collection contract for commercial solid waste the city does have a franchise for the collection of commercial solid waste the current agreement has been in place for over 10 years and it was amended and extended because it was coming up for renewal when the salaries Resource Management plan was in development and we wanted to wait until we had the recommendations from that plan before moving forward with this contract we did a lot of stakeholder engagement we talked to our internal City staff we talked to downtown stakeholders we talked to other businesses that sent out a survey to gather feedback from other businesses that receive collection under this contract and then we put together our RFP which was issued in May and then the original due date was the end of June an extension was requested and granted uh and so we that should say July 16th I'm sorry I have a typo it was extended to July 16th um you know that's correct extension granted June 16th due July 14th and then we have the evaluation committee which was made up of City staff including um we had customer service staff uh staff from OSI the office of sustainability and Public Works staff we conducted vendor interview vendor interviews we had two responsive proposals and one response of no proposal and after the vendor interviews we selected Waste Management uh as the intended vendor subject to a you know successful contract negotiation which we have been in place now we've had three negotiation meetings with them we have a fourth tomorrow um just to work out some of the details around optional Services requested in the uh contract and then we hope to have the final contract to city council for approval the end of this calendar year very early next year so the current agreement expires on June 30 2023 and collection service under the new agreement would begin July 1 2023 but in the intervening period we're asking the vendor to do a right-sizing analysis of the current level of service and make recommendations to improve efficiencies where they fit some of the other areas of focus under the new contract include moving to direct billing and customer service to be handled by the hauler instead of by the city this is a pretty significant change and it is to create a better efficiency and a better service quality for customers under the agreement the city especially around customer service was in the spot of being the in-between of receiving a phone call and then having to contact the vendor get the information back and then call the customer back this will allow better communication directly between the customer and the caller the city will remain in an oversight capacity for any escalated customer service concerns if things are not being handled appropriately they can certainly reach out to the city to have that conversation with a hauler and then the billing will also be handled directly um that is the proposed plan at this time The Proposal included an online application for customer service as well as having uh customer service available by phone and by email so this is a big need that we responded to that we heard from stakeholders since they felt like there was an opportunity to improve that communication City customer service is very responsive and they were very happy with it but they do have a little bit more limited hours than what will be available um for folks that need help on the weekends or after hours in the evening the other big thing that we looked at and this was also talked about in the solid waste Resource Management plan especially in the downtown area is a need for seven day a week collection the current agreement offers collection Monday through Saturday but we know that in the downtown area especially the weekends can be some of the busiest times and that gap between a Saturday morning collection and a Monday morning collection there can be a lot of trash generated so we did make that a mandatory part of their proposal that proposers offer us um pricing and service for seven days a week and they were responsive to that also we asked for subscription-based Organics collection so there's no um broad scale program for Organics collection from commercial properties and there will be that option under this agreement they've partnered with Waste Management has partnered with migraine Michigan to be able to offer that service to those customers who would like to have it and then we also asked for an on-demand bulk collection for larger items that won't fit in your regular collection containers so that you can get those handled distance I wanted to also point out that um you know with the commercial RFP we did have a focus on both customer service and also looking for a vendor that would help us meet our meet our a20 goals so we did have a focus in the evaluation criteria on customer service and a sustainability plan in addition to their work plan and qualifications this is a project that goes along with the procurement for the new commercial franchise so we are undertaking an audit of the downtown Solid Waste collections uh we have contracted with ohm advisors to assist with completing this audit and for the purposes of this project the downtown area was defined using the DDA boundary and the audit is focused only on trash collection and it's looking at how businesses dispose of their trash their frequency of service and the sharing of containers among other items and the goal of this is to be able to help us better understand maybe where containers could be Consolidated where there could be efficiencies to make sure that there is um equity in the cost and that uh like businesses are being charged like costs for the level of service that they need this will also help us understand if we have an opportunity to establish minimum service levels to prevent the Overflow of trash in order to do this work um we had to gather a lot of existing data sources see what information was available find those holes and then try to fill them so this work is ongoing but once completed it will be able to help us analyze the data and look for groups and tiers of like businesses to establish opportunities as I mentioned for establishing minimum service levels and then also look at revising our fee structure for those containers that are shared which there are many of those in the downtown area the next item I'm very excited to share and you might be aware the city's existing drop-off station was located on a closed landfill it's been settling for some years it has quarterly inspections by an engineer to monitor it um and I'm just really happy to say that um you know staff before me applied for and was awarded a grant to help make this project help a new uh drop-off station come to life so the grant was submitted last summer we found out right at the very end of last calendar year that we were awarded 850 000 towards this project there's an additional one million dollar sort of earmarked from Washington County Solid Waste funding to go towards this project as well that's still subject to approval by the County Board of Commissioners and the remainder of the funding will come from the approved city of Ann Arbor Solid Waste capital budget I I am I I really enjoyed about enjoyed learning about the regional collaboration since I've been here and this project has really representative of that we've had Washington County Recycling Arbor in the city of Ann Arbor and many others uh you know working towards this for years we've known since 2008 at least that we needed to have a new site for this facility so we've had a project team as I mentioned of the city and the county and recycling Arbor working together on planning for this we wrote a scope of work for a contract that was awarded to RRS to complete the drop-off site design and Engineering work the facility is uh targeted to be located on a parcel of property at the wheeler service center it's known as the Hilton parcel I don't know for those who may be familiar um that is geographically located in Pittsfield Township so that will be subject to approval you know by their Planning Commission and that's slated to happen hopefully by late spring between now and then we've got quite a bit of work to do we've been in the planning process of uh with the project team talking about what the new site should include what we would like for it to include and um that you know there's many benefits of a new facility trying to maybe expand the types of materials have more hours of operation it will be designed from the ground up as a drop-off station so that will allow for a better flow of traffic and better movement of people better location of equipment on site and a big part of this a critical part of this is that we have to have Community input insight and buy-in for this to be successful and so part of the work that IRS is doing is they will be working with the key stakeholders to develop or prioritized list of options that best accomplish the objectives of maximizing recovery reuse and recycling minimizing of waste to landfill and maximizing environmental stewardship and education through an Innovative design that helps meet the needs of the community but that does not duplicate services that already exist in the region or close by and so they will be developing a community outreach plan that will include meetings with key stakeholders as well as two meetings with the public to give feedback on a final conceptual design so they will be making three conceptual designs that will be narrowed down to one and then we will have a minimum of two public engagement meetings uh before taking a final site plan for and we're hoping that if we get approval we'll be able to go out for the construction bid early summer to have it be started maybe late summer early fall next year foreign a lot of big things happen this year uh one of the other items is that we've long partnered with the Ecology Center to do education around our trash recycling compost programs and the work that they've done for the city historically has been focused more or less on youth education and we've heard through the solidaries resource management managing process planning process and others that we needed to have a broader reach with that education and so we did again a lot of stakeholder engagement talking to internal stakeholders external stakeholders to see what that should Encompass and developed a contract that has five major work areas including the development and the marketing of a community-based social marketing plan campaign uh commercial sector education Outreach at community events multi-family education and then also youth education the community-based social marketing was one of those items that was a direct recommendation from the solid waste research management plan and so that will be developed by engaging the community different groups of folks we have some priority audiences um our partners our industry stakeholders those that operate them or if operate the Compost Facility and then community champion so that plan has not been developed yet we're just in the very early stages of putting that together so you will probably be hearing more about that work as it progresses some a couple of the other programs I just wanted to touch on are that um we also completed two successful move-in and move out events this year one in the spring one in the fall both were held at 2000 South Industrial for drop-off operations we also provided extra collections of four days in the spring for free and five days in the fall event for free um to those uh customers who requested them in advance we also have had several of our contracts up for Renewal and under negotiation so the contract for our compost operations uh the current contract the operate the current operations contract for the existing dos as well as the recycling collections for commercial multi-family um and then on top of all of that we continue to monitor issues we have um you know trash in downtown alleys and we continue to work with a various stakeholders to find more Sustainable Solutions for some of the things that happen there and then also we have winter compost collection is on schedule for 2023 we did that for the first time last year we did once a month and we'll do that again for January February March to help collect more of the food waste in the winter foreign that we do have some challenges and some opportunities and some of the uh this is my last line sorry okay um the challenges and opportunities uh staggering remains a major challenge as there still is a national demand for CDL drivers in response to that Public Works did secure funding um in this year's budget for four new full-time employees to work in the solid waste collection program however because of the demand for drivers we've launched a trainee position and program to hire in employees without experience and give them on-the-job classroom and field training to prepare them to take on a permanent position that that is for more than just Solid Waste positions within public works but it will help us to get folks in the door for those full-time positions that um do not have the experience as it is now we could do be we need to do some greater Outreach to multi-family and Commercial businesses to increase the recycling collect it and also to make sure that they're doing the proper handling of their recyclables we have a real issue with breaking down boxes and you know trying to achieve space in some of the dumpsters we're looking for opportunities to collaborate on promoting the circular economy you're going to hear a lot more about that great work shortly um and then continuing to look for ways we can increase the capture of reusable materials for move out and reduce the landfilling of those items and um that's just continue to look for other ways to explore programs and services that help us move towards the recommendations of the plan and ag0 that's it thank you very much for your time thank you Sarah um I'll open the discussion with for some questions and first up Chris scram uh Sarah two things one uh the last I heard the new review station would be out on Jackson Road how did it come that it moved to um that road I think there are maybe two different projects so the the drop-off station the city's drop-off station that's currently uh reuse station is that injection yeah so the the ReUse is a separate project that I think recycling Arbor is doing and I think yes that's still slated for over there at the recovery yards so you're talking about property just south of the wheeler Center off plat or coming in the other way uh yes so people want to be determined people won't have to go through the scale to get to the drop off center I trust so we're still in the preliminary design stages right now and in conversations with Pittsfield Township so we do have to go through the Pud approval process and we'll see you know where that goes um secondly um I've always put my white paper shredded in my white paper to recycle in a clear plastic bag and put it in the recycle bin I thought that was the rule and now you don't want it like that I'm supposed to take that to the drop-off center right yes you should take the shredded paper to the drop-off center and just get your other items I understand that I always have we went in a clear plastic bag so it's clearly identifiable as white paper to be saved pulled out of the stream yeah my understanding is that the Murph doesn't want any bagged material okay um oh sorry someone I was going to move to Shannon um we don't hear you oh bummer uh I think we I think we don't have Chad on this either um okay all right I'm so sorry Shannon um if Shannon if Shannon texts or emails one of us then we can read it that would be good wait let's do that and I'm gonna move to um um commissioner Gruber and then we'll come back to you Shannon thank you Sarah that was that was really helpful information to hear I wonder I I'm a parent and so I observe the waste stream at the schools and I notice at least at this one school that I'm at Daily there isn't in some cases there's no recycling bins we have our own composting program but I don't think a lot of schools compost so I wonder as part of your education Outreach and marketing plan do you you listed a lot of really great groups does the the aaps School District fall under any of those groups do you do Outreach to them so um yes so the the youth education program um we we did change it uh it used to be there would be like a menu of options and different teachers could select programming and we've revised that so that and we are working with aaps so that all second graders and all seventh graders will get a program around materials management and through that we've partnered with the Freeman Environmental Center where they um and so the the second grade trip is like a half day field trip there where it's half day with the Ecology Center at the cities program and half day with the Freeman Center staff doing a program with them so yes it includes them on that side of things but not necessarily on like reaching out to the administration to see if they have recycling bins but all schools should have recycling so that's definitely something we could follow up on um yeah again they do have recycling bin but like for example at lunch there's a lot of material used that it can be recycled but it doesn't it goes in the trash it's not stationed in places where staff or students can recycle and that might be an individual school thing but maybe some Outreach on that would would help it seems like maybe each School kind of does their own thing or at least that's my perspective okay it's not like a central message sent to the schools about Recycling and composting I I don't know if you guys do composting for each school or if they have to specifically request it there's a lot of space that could get composted right uh so that's good feedback and I'm not familiar enough to know with how the school system is organized and how they like disseminate information to their different facilities how they set it up but that's good to know um and we can keep in mind when we're talking with them I'll just I'll just say one more thing I'll give you a number we did a um uh we did a waste audit at Eber White Elementary School with their permission and we um we only measured food waste we didn't measure recyclable materials and there was 200 pounds of food waste every day at one Elementary School which comes out to about 36 000 pounds of food waste over the entire year at one Elementary School we were accomplishing it now but we're composting it in a pit on site so it's not going to the city compost but I don't know how representative that is of the entire District but I would guess um it's pretty close I mean other schools are having similar numbers thank you thank you yeah uh John mursky and Shannon did you send a question and I'm not sure who you sent it to it didn't go to me I hope it went to Steve no chance Sean Sean okay bless Sean to come in okay so but first to John mursky okay thank you I want to make sure that I understood the new commercial contract is uh trash to landfill collection only right um yes also with uh subscription-based compost course right with a subscription composting but in terms of any changes to recycling um there's nothing related to that right that's I know part of this shrimp but that's completely different activity right yes and yes so you're right uh there was a recommendation originally to it didn't go quite like you know there were a few options there and yes so it's not consolidating recycling into that but nothing has changed with our recycling collection just with the trash right am I correct that recycling in the commercial center is in the low teens in terms of diversion rate does that sound right I think maybe I think it's above 20 so I don't think it's quite that oh okay that I would have to double check yeah okay and Sarah if I could just add one thing about recycling collection so the one thing that has changed in the last year is in July we started Saturday collection in the downtown uh that was something that we've wanted to do for a very long time and with the additional funds to hire for more people we were able to make that happen um I agree um I was looking for something else actually in preparation for this meeting and I came across something and this is going way back so I don't know if anybody can copy uh comment on it let me um let me look at my other screen here just a second it says um so this was on a March 2009 resolution to authorize commercial solid waste collection contract with waste management and it says in the statement related to it that the results of this effort indicate that the recommended programs can be implemented to enable the city to achieve 50 diversion of his commercial waste stream while maintaining a positive net impact on the bottom line of solid waste Enterprise funding that what happened if we were targeting 50 in 2009 what what's different about today or what went what changed can anybody comment on that I can't speak to this program specifically however I will tell you that generally diversion rates have been a trickier thing in the industry because we've seen a light weighting of the ton as packaging has evolved and what goes in the recycling stream um that might be a little bit different on the commercial side but on the the residential side we've seen that really um a shift you know we've seen newspaper drop out no one really takes the newspaper that much anymore you know we've seen cardboard go up the packaging has become thinner and lighter weight more plastic less other materials so um in general tracking those diversion rates which are done as a weight-based metric because there's been a lot of discussion about you know uh is that the best way to measure a successful program because your volume could go way up but the weight may not we look into diversion rates in Greater detail um another thing for for my uh education and understanding uh I remember past reports on the status of the solid waste Reserve fund used to indicate that there was planned spending for rebuilding the drop-off station there would be you know a footnote saying that you know X number of dollars were being planned for that and what you mentioned As I understood it is that the funding for this Capital project is coming out of set the capital Solid Waste um budget uh or capital capital plan with what I write down the capital budget basically what is this I know obviously the solid waste Reserve fund is used to some degree depending on commodity prices to buffer that and things like that is it used also to fund capital projects like the drop-off station or was funds from it used for the Murphree construction I don't think so I think Ria did that on there what's the solid waste Reserve fund used for other than these buffers to buffer us against uh Market let's call them Market uh fluctuations that's a good question uh I'm probably going to have to defer um to finance and like find out a bit more I'm a little bit new still and knowing the history of the fund and everything so I'll have to out for you and get back okay I will I will just add though that um you know you mentioned you talk about sort of saving for rainy day or fluctuations and we are already seeing some pretty big shifts um in the market in the recycling Market in particular the Commodities markets have fallen for paper we we are seeing um pretty significant price increases coming for almost all of our contracts well I should say virtually all of our contracts that are up for Renewal and um also the even our preliminary engineering numbers for the drop-off station look like we're going to be spending quite a bit more than we originally planned so those you know those things do have an impact and I know you know again we don't want to speak for Finance on the particulars but that is that is something to think about um you know on top of you know we continue to look at ways that we can improve service and add service and of course then we've got to figure out how to balance that and we don't want to necessarily use fund balance for that but we we do have to factor everything in and look at the whole picture when we're making those choices right okay and then related to that um posted the legislar prior to the meeting uh there was um a sort of budget summary for solid waste collection revenue and expenses and it looks it looked the way I understood it is that Solid Waste ran a circle so two years were posted 2021 and 2022 I think the two fiscal years I think they were fiscal years and it looked like there was like a This Is Now by memory three and a half million dollar Surplus two years ago and roughly half of that last year does that sound right yeah uh um I you know I'll I let me get back with um with you on the particulars around the finances okay I can do that yeah and then one last question sorry talked about with uh the Ecology Center and I know that while ra is affiliated with the Ecology Center it's a separate entity with a separate board and separate finances and in talking um with Brian weinart um and those another associate from Raa I was told that the maintenance of the r to Z A to Z recycling guide um is is which you might call an educational activity but there's no funding for that from the city in other words they don't have any resources even you know a percent of an FTE to maintain that um and it seems to me that that's uh an important resource certainly it is for me I look at it all the time when I'm confused or when I you know someone asked me particularly my wife can I recycle this or can I recycle that and it seems to me like that's something that needs to be addressed because that I think you know it's even linked on the city website um so maybe that's something you can look at together with the Ecology Center and Ria to ensure that there's some resources to maintain that um because you know there's been some changes with some of the new materials that you send up about what is and what isn't recyclable and things like that so um just a hint to pursue that potentially going forward that's it thank you all right thanks John um I am going to read Shannon Gibb Randall's question and thank you chin for sending it we got a little confused in the background here um Shannon says that she has a question about school as well um her husband wants to start a composting a program for the open school but the once in a month in the winter makes that impossible the pickup I guess it is on-site is impossible due to the volume is there any way to consider a more frequent service for schools due to the volume and that's for composting specifically I believe so as it is now I think there may be a couple of schools that were piloted where the city does collection for compost but mostly we're not providing that service directly and so the service that will be available under the new franchise agreement will have service up to six days a week so because it is focused more on that food scrap and certainly food heavy businesses or other locations would need more frequent collection than once a week and that would definitely be with the schools with the public schools they received their trash collection under the agreement yes okay but this is composting I would have to look at a specific instance but I think yes they should be available to have that service if they're under the contract okay Shannon did I ask the question correctly one more thing okay send it over so just to clarify your question was about subscription-based composting under the new contract or was it about residential no this was about public schools composting in public schools and so the the example was the open school map open right so servicing if we can service a school um that sits along a residential route that has carts then we're able to absorb that into sort of our current operational structure if they're looking at something larger like getting a dumpster then in servicing compost that way that would fall under um the commercial compost subscription base that we're looking at starting with waste management and their subcontractor under that new contract okay but right now large-scale School composting is not offered uh-huh so what about um Shannon I'm sure not I'm not sure I'm getting in this because I'm not familiar with the program but winter service is is there service in the winter so right now we do winter compost uh just once a month uh we have very very low volumes um so low it's almost hard to measure they're so low sometimes especially when they get frozen in the carbs um but um we piloted that last year and you know we felt that it was successful that we hope to grow participation but we don't really plan to grow the the frequency right now just because the volumes are so low yeah if I may under the the subscription service under the new contract that six days a week would be year-round yeah yeah that's different yeah right okay all right so right sort of apples and oranges as far as you know it really depends on the container type and where that school facility is located and what type what volume they're looking to get rid of okay and I'm hoping that you'll kind of address or you know assess the schools as well because maybe each one has unique situations and and I would guess that there's a lot of interest in it certainly there's an educational value yeah I do know that some of the schools have tried composting you know I don't know what service they've used and what success they've had but um you know with the uh contract with the Ecology Center that's something an opportunity that we can look at okay um commissioner Gruber did you want to pursue your question with your hand up I think it mostly got covered I just would encourage you to reach out to the schools because I I do think there's a lot of interest and I do think that the district is going to be is hearing from the community that they want more of this and so they they would potentially be in I hope they would be interested in the subscription I don't know how that works but that um I I would encourage you to communicate with the district on that option for them yes thank you we will definitely look into that all right um and I'm a little worried about time y'all but um Steve uh Brown you had your hand up I'm gonna pass okay all right I actually feel like we need to move forward with our next um topic but I really want to thank um Molly and Sarah for being here and answering these questions and it sounds like there's some some um important kind of follow-up that we can do and we'd be happy to do that so um let's let's collect our questions and pass them along um and so um I am going to ask that we all move to our next topic uh which is the circular economy and we have presentations um led by um Commissioners Cowart and council member dish and the students staff that have joined in and prepared information for us so um yeah okay if I take it over okay thanks yeah I've just got a brief intro here to a two-part uh overview that we're going to be sharing about the circular economy uh this support builds out of the environmental commission zero waste working group uh for nearly two years uh council member dish City staff member Jenny Petoskey and myself have been meeting weekly or even more frequently than that sometimes to focus on strategy 5 of 820 how to move forward how do we move forward and move towards a circular economy our Guardian objectives with all of this work has been to Define measure and promote the circular economy in Ann Arbor this work has been extremely successful in in my opinion in garnering financial and other support to kind of move it forward and accelerate the work and I think that's been due to kind of this effective Partnership of a council member or commissioner and City staff so that we've been very coordinated in our efforts from the very beginning just some examples of the resources that we've been able to pull together for this we've had two interns supported by the office of sustainability we had a micros Grant from what we have a Michaelis Graham from next cycle uh that was initially to support the interns but due to timing that's been redirected for outreach we also had support through next Cycles i2p3 the intergovernmental initiatives for public-private Partnerships that has really helped us refine and focus our message and uh the outcome of that is going to be what Jenny's going to be sharing with you in a minute uh We've also been very fortunate to have a group of students from the school for environment and sustainability with us for their Master's project for about a year and a half and they've also leveraged additional funding to bring resources and support to the work and finally we just got funded with a twenty thousand dollar Urban sustainability directors Network Grant to help us with some focused community outreach that we'll talk a little bit more about in a minute and I just want to recognize one of our great Partners in all of this Kathy Duchamp from the Ann Arbor Thrift Shop is one of the attendees tonight so just want to thank them for all of their work uh and you'll be hearing a little bit about what we've been doing with that partnership so with that I'll turn it over to Jenny to give us kind of the overview hi all can you hear me okay I'm going to share my screen all right so I'm Jenny Petoskey I'm the solid waste Outreach and compliance specialist I originally gave this presentation at a pitch for the Michigan recycling Coalition Conference as part of the next cycle challenge track so you'll hear me asking for funding that was part of the pitch I left this in here to help illustrate the innovative ways that we are seeking support which John just uh enumerated and to highlight the significant support of the state for funding for materials management there's a lot of money out there right now um as you know city council unanimously passed a carbon neutrality plan um for the entire city to be carbon neutral by 2030.
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foreign [Music] foreign I would like to call this meeting of the Eastern Township Board of Education to order pursuant to the open public meetings act adequate public notice has been given by the secretary of the Evesham Township Board of Education in the following manner posting written notice on the official bulletin board at the Board of Education Office emailing written notice to the Burlington County Times And The Courier Post filing written notice with the municipal clerk of Evesham Township may I have a roll call please this is Capello here this is Everhart Mr physicaro here Mr Katherine here miss Noel Mr lancelotta here miss Lloyd here Mr Meegan here this is Ryan here we have a quorum okay at this time I'm going to ask for a motion to go into executive session and a motion to approve items 2.1 through 2.3 whereas in njsa 10-4-12 allows for a public body to go into closed session during a public meeting and whereas the Board of Education of Evesham Township has deemed it necessary to go into closed session to discuss certain matters which are Exempted from the public and whereas the regular meeting of the board will reconvene following the end of the closed session at approximately 7 30.
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yeah I think hopefully you can hear me no it's not on the closer we're short remember short people can you hear me okay we're gonna go ahead and get started truthfully I kind of prefer not to be at the microphone but I know there are a lot of people in here um I'm Angie Ridgeway and this year I'm serving as the president of the Avon Oriole Advocates and let me just say a minute if I could about our organization um first of all we are a Grassroots group here in Avon Indiana an Eclectic group of individuals who came together eight or nine years ago to say what can we do in our community to support our schools different from the great things that happen in ptos and athletic organizations and so forth and we are all volunteers in fact I'm way beyond having any children in the school district but I care so much about our schools the quality of our schools and our teachers and our children that I continue to volunteer and so that's what the organization is about I'd like to recognize a part of our executive committee of the organization facilitated and organize tonight's forum and you know because you're all different kinds of work that putting together any kind of big event is a lot of work so I want to recognize those members of our executive committee if they would mind to stand and just kind of wave their hand and let's thank them for all the time they've devoted to putting together this evening [Applause] and all of my obsessive emails about can someone be at the door can someone do this okay I also want to thank the Avon Community School District because we don't have an infrastructure we our organization doesn't have buildings it doesn't have chairs it doesn't have administrative assistance and all those kinds of things so thank you to Dr Wyndham and the um Kevin Carr Dr brahmas all the people at Avon Community Schools who allow us to use the infrastructure to make these kinds of things happen because we're just we're a volunteer organization okay The Advocates lend a voice to the students teachers and staff of the Avon Community School Corporation to promote student achievement and Community engagement and one of our key principles is that we advocate in a positive way and so I want this evening to really be highlighted by some some great discussion and a reflection of our views and hopes and desires is all in a way that makes our children proud because I think that's what we're all about isn't it um if I could please I'd like to introduce Kim Woodward from our school board I asked him if she might come in for just a few minutes and really talk about what is the role of a school board member and she has been the Indiana school boards Association president not right now currently past president for the entire State and I thought well she brings a unique perspective if she would offer a few minutes of description what does the school board member do so thank you Kim and then she'll she'll toss it to Trophy to to moderate our questions thank you I also don't like a mic but I will use it uh so thank you Avon Oriole Advocates uh for making this candidate for impossible this evening I believe that it's important that voters uh see and hear our candidates views uh their knowledge uh their position on key educational issues and most importantly their heart for children my name is Kim Woodward as I've already been introduced I serve on the Avon Community School Board this is my 18th and a half year um seems like it really has flown by to be honest um I was previously the president of the Indiana State School Board Association for three years uh and I want to talk a little bit about my first leadership role in Avon Community Schools was as president of the marching black and gold uh band boosters after serving in that role for three years and as I rode off into the sunset of my daughter's graduation I was approached by two members they're sitting over there of the school board asking me to consider running and one of them actually said it's easier than being the band booster president well that was a lie there is some truth to that statement because I still miss that every Saturday in the fall so the role of a school board member is really quite simple three things one you hire and retain the superintendent two you enact and uphold policies and three you act on matters brought to the board in public meetings very simple three things that's it that's all there is and yet these roles bring about enormous responsibility academic achievement advocacy fiduciary responsibility leadership and probably most important character few can really give a solid or consistent definition of what good character is but for me in my board experience it is the belief that a board member will be assessed by the community as reacting in a positive ethical and moral manner to whatever circumstances arise in the commission of their duties so there are several important parts of that particular statement the first is it's a belief that others hold about you it requires that over the course of your term or terms that you earn trust it is the willingness to not rush to judgment and to have the emotional intelligence to collect facts and opinions before bowing to short-term pressures there will be a long-term decision by decision scorecard kept about you and it is important that at that point the board member be especially Vigilant because a single misstep can really destroy years of solid work on behalf of children finally character is about making decisions in an environment of informed thoughtful consideration and not ignorance or emotion it means being focused always and only on our end user the reason we serve the faction that schools and public education is created for students children kids our future a free and public education is one of the most noble aspirations that any society can have I'd like you to think back on your own educational experience do the vestages of what you learned when you were in public school like you know how to read or what eight times six is which I didn't Master until the fourth grade or the ordinary ordinal coordinates of north south east west do those linger in your daily life today yes of course they do School taught you to learn and learning taught you to Aspire succeed struggle have character do you remember that special teacher or bus driver or principal that made a difference in you of course you too do you remember the school board members that helped make all those great decisions about the learning environment and the teachers employment possible no of course you don't and that is exactly the way it should be good board members are servant leaders who Elevate and enable that school environment good character and belief in the nobleness of Education are personified by most of the school board members I've had the pleasure of serving with and others that I've actually met through professional development we are where we are doing what we do because it needs to be done right we do this not for ourselves we do this for kids everyone's kids all of your kids my kids everyone that lives in the Avon community's children and we don't have crystal balls and we can't guess the next issue or hindrance or mandate that will arise that we will face but we can take every day as it comes and try to do the very best we can for our children we can't know the future but nevertheless we work for the future and every time I walk into one of our buildings I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the work we do is Honorable it is important and I am proud to have done my part thank you for listening it's now my distinct honor to introduce Trilby Barry Taman from our Oriole Advocates who will be this evening's moderator thank you [Applause] thank you Kim all right like I said my name is Trilby we have randomly placed our candidates up here so to take any uh type of question um of it to be um just to make sure it's all random I apologize so we're gonna run through introductions and each candidate will have a minute to respond or to tell us and then we'll go through questions and each question they will have two minutes so the question the candidates have not received the questions until today we did give them things that they might we might ask questions on so they're having to um think on the spot of what their answers might be we'll start with the first question closest to me and then after we go I should say I have to go through the introductions and then the next question will start with the second candidate so to begin and I'll tell the candidates this we do have a timer in the crowd so you might see a hand come up if we if we feel that uh you're maybe getting a little lengthy which is right in the middle all right so please if you would candidates starting with closest to me Anita give us a minute of an introduction about you well good evening I am Anita Downing Overton born and raised in Indianapolis Indiana I have lived in Indiana my entire life relocating to Avon in 2003.
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no we don't know we're going to call the meeting to order [Music] that's okay we're going to start with the Pledge of Allegiance [Music] of the United States one nation under God and indivisible with liberty and justice for all foreign to the board meeting tonight I want to remind everyone that we are video streaming so this meeting is being live streamed so I want to welcome those who are in the room and also welcome those who are joining us via the Internet so I think the first agenda item is the consent agenda items yes and I would ask that we make the correction to the consent agenda items and remove Seth young as a Seth Young's resignation okay so um we need to vote on removing that item do I have a motion I can get Earl do I have a second I have a second by Pat any discussion all of those in favor 6-0 now we'll take a motion to approve any consent agenda items absolutely I have a motion by Travis do I have a second by Susan any discussion all those in favor so now I'll ask if there's anyone in the room who would like to speak on any item on the agenda or any other topic hearing done we'll go down to ready Grant presentations present for us about the uh ready Grant proposal I have to start by thanking Kathy ertle at the ETC and Corey white cell with hwc they were instrumental in helping us get a grant proposal ready in time for the ready Grant to ask for an amendment and very supportive and helpful we really appreciate their help we are very excited about a ready Grant proposal that has tentative approval I'll be bringing back asking for board approval soon that opens up opportunities and Pathways for our kids in CTE or College and Career Technical education locally at our high school there are some really exciting things in this proposal that are going to be coming down the the Pike and our teachers are here to share about it and what they're excited about their programs and just give a brief overview so we are excited to share about the ready Grant proposal and I'll be honest it's that it's a tough act to follow what we just did uh we didn't bring cookies but you'll see later we're gonna have a state-of-the-art facility to make cookies in here let me go ahead and click to the next one uh to kind of just talk about where we came from and and there's been so many people involved in getting this ready Grant proposal together and getting it to where it is right now back in August we had learned of some ideas that have been put in with the ready Grant and as we started looking at feasibility of what we could truly do and building out different possibilities we realized that we were going to have to really kind of streamline and look at what are we doing in-house and what is some of that low-hanging fruit that we can bring in programs into our high school so um the big thing was how can we increase our quality of CTE programming how can we increase the pathways we can offer and how can we bring state of the art facilities here to Jennings County for our students so you can go ahead and click we started out by looking at the original proposal which was again a career and tech ed Center on Jennings County high school property as we all know as we look through that and worked with the board with the board sessions the funding was not going to be there to build out an entire career center so we looked at how can we what we have now and originally didn't even know if that was going to be a possibility with the grant through working with Kathy ertle and the EDC we were able to figure out that there was opportunities that we could rearrange this grant so then we went to go look at our data and if you'll click for me we started to look at you can go ahead when we look to revise the program we want to know what do we need and what you'll see here is over 70 percent of our students at jchs are enrolled in some type of career and tech ed course it's it's where our entire pathways are going right now so we offer 13 Next Level programs of study on campus and then additional 16 at the Southeastern Career Center so we want to know what could we add to our programs and or bring back to our programs and what can we improve at our high school right now if you go ahead we also looked at our enrollment Trends both from the actual campus of Jennings County high school and then what kids were enrolling in at the career center and the big ones that you will see are health science uh welding is a big one and then culinary arts has really exploded currently in our high school so that's where we looked at how could we build Out programs in entrepreneurship slash culinary arts we've got some ideas to tie those together Health Sciences which we obviously know is a major need in our area well can you go back real quick um and then Advanced manufacturing but before we we go on I know you guys have heard me talk but I asked these guys to come and I put pictures up Tevin has really grown I'm going to start with seven he has really grown our culinary arts program and did a tremendous amount of work to visit locations and look at different culinary classrooms to get together supply lists and what it would be I want to turn it to you Kevin just to say what this means and what this is going to allow us to do so first I love the idea that we're going from 1968 kitchens to 2022.
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up there we're gonna call this meeting to order um so we're here tonight to request approval of the superintendent contract which was advertised and presented in a public hearing on October the 6th 2022. um so that contract would employ Nicole or Nikki Johnson as the superintendent of Jennings County School corporations beginning November the 1st 2022.
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we're good all right hello everyone my name is Henry your host look my co-host Tommy keakley we're here for the western Mass finals of Nissan Meadow Spartans versus Northampton Blue Devils go Spartans exactly here [Music] awesome thank you [Music] I'm getting seriously to happen [Music] they heard that by the way yeah oh it's Hampton face off let's start with Spartans intercept or thank you that's back it's like 15. my father on the defense [Music] intercepted by testing all up the field to oh she falls deep pass over to [Music] silky stairs intercepted by the Blue Devils oh they're going up the field 40. close to the 50.
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one of the strategies in there was to move toward a circular economy that's under strategy five so our project is showcasing the role that reducing consumption can play in reducing carbon emissions and also in promoting Equity by expanding opportunities to reclaim products materials skills and valuing people circular economy is all around us but it's not a household work word our project has inventoried map and now we want to brand and Market Ann Arbor circular economy to make it visible accessible and enticing to all who would shop sell or participate maybe the circular economy isn't a household word because it addresses parts of our carbon footprint we don't often think about when think about people think about reducing their carbon footprint they typically think about energy solar panels electric cars they don't think about the goods that they buy this is where the circular economy comes in 45 of greenhouse gas emissions are from the consumption of products and materials I just want that to sink in a bit everything we buy produces greenhouse gas emissions so if we can reduce the consumption of goods we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions the circular economy place also plays a role in resiliency which we measure as connections and skills that enable people to thrive as climate change progresses and equity which we see as ensuring everyone has access and equal outcomes or the outcomes that they desire through our one-on-one engagement we have discovered that equity and resilience are inherent to and developed by the circular economy over the last day hold on a second over the last 18 months through a literature review and one-on-one engagement we discovered that the circular economy is vast and it's grounded by those whose participation is a part of their lives rather than a term this is historically our black indigenous people of color and lower income communities some of you may think of the circular economy as product and business focused what we discovered is that is that it is also about people governments skills and services while the linear economy creates emissions by linking consumption to waste the circular economy reduces consumption-based emissions by keeping consumer goods in circulation read the items on the list on this list do you do any of these items raise your hand if you do any of these items if you do you're part of the circular economy it's not a household word yet we need to brand and market so that it is I'm going to take you on a journey of our discoveries when you think of the circular economy think Social Services these entities employ reused Goods to help house and resettle people many times these organizations trade goods amongst themselves a circular economy in miniature these organizations build equity and resilience in our communities think food redistribution and growing local that build resilience and Equity through access to local healthy food as you may know food production especially at scale is fossil fuel intensive anything that maximizes the use of food reduces greenhouse gas emissions think buying in bulk and buying local to reduce the need for creating new or even recycled packaging to build equity via investment at the local level and to shorten Supply chains think re-skilling for the circular economy Workforce which will build equity through opportunities for good paying jobs think reskilling for people repairing their own Goods which helps them to be more resilient think communities participating in swap days repair cafes and Fix-It clinics to recirculate and extend the lives of goods while building connections think hyper local online communities like buy nothing groups think Innovative reuse this is the Ann Arbor Thrift Shop after completing considerable one-on-one engagement we did three case studies to better understand how the circular economy could be measured one of one of our discoveries is that the Ann Arbor Thrift Store creates an on-ramp to the circular economy by mimicking a more traditional stores displays and layout think borrowing raise your hand if you use your local library to borrow books now raise your hand if you've borrowed something besides a book from your library all right the Ann Arbor District Library has been loaning more than books since 1969.
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now therefore be it resolved that the Board of Education will go into sessions for the following reasons as outlined in njsa 10-4-12 items 2.2 through 2.3 do I have a motion Mr physacaro second Mr lanzalotta roll call please Mrs capala yes Mr physicaro yes Mr Canton yes Mr lancelotta yes Miss Lee yes Mr Meegan yes Mrs Ryan Yes motion carries thank you we'll see you at approximately 7 30.
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I worked 26 years for the Federal Aviation Administration Air Traffic Control Center as a human resource management specialist currently retired so I have been a people person and a good listener most of my life thank you my name is Jennifer Smith I've lived in Indianapolis my whole life I moved to Avon in 2017. I have two kiddos one at Maple and one at Avon Intermediate East I have worked as occupational therapist for 13 years in home care so that's currently what I do thank you hello my name is Sarah parent and I want to thank everyone for being here this is amazing And for those of you who are streaming online as well thank you clearly there's a large Spotlight on school boards right now and my focus will always be the needs of the students first and foremost so as a school board candidate I offer a very unique perspective because I used to teach in Avon schools for over 11 years I have a parent I am a parent of four children currently in our schools and I am an experienced advocate for Education I'm known for being well informed about school related issues and I also am not afraid to ask challenging questions I like to engage in respectful dialogue and I believe that's the most effective way to not only express my opinions but to get answers I have met some really fantastic people um during this campaign people who are passionate about our schools our community and their property values and sometimes we have heard some really wild information that can distract from our schools is that my cut off thank you thank you uh hi thank you for coming my name is Shawna Lake me and my family moved here in 2016.
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updating everything with kids to get them for After High School during high school but two if they want to go and work in the food service industry which is growing we we always need people to cook and so it's it's um also with this since we've done catering starting last year we began that or actually it's spring before last year we really hit hard with it we're able to do a lot more with it from the different designs and tools and and stations that we've picked out that'll be very valuable for us so I also want to throw out another really cool thing that just happened last week Tevin applied for a Matt Grant from McDonald's ownership and got 500 in the grant that will take care of all of the chef coats for all of our culinary students so I'm always looking to improve that but what we did is we paired it with our entrepreneurship pathway and are also going to look to build out a coffee shop we have the coffee cart that goes around but actually built out a coffee shop that our business students and special ed students will combine to work on and run a business inside of the high school to give us that entrepreneurship pathway Health Sciences we don't have the teacher yet because we've never had the program so um but very very excited about what Health Sciences is going to bring to us in the building I can't thank schneck Medical Center and Amy hooking us up with their whole team um they went to town with what we needed and on top of that the really cool thing we also added about 10 even though we've got we're going to have multiple full hospital bed setups the kids that aren't working on those simulation dummies can also use Virtual Reality to go through it Stephanie and I were really lucky to go to a career and tech ed conference right before fall break and that was the hot talk all over was how can we use Virtual Reality to to bring this to these kids so then if you'll click um Advanced manufacturing which is a a big part of what our community is asking for and how we can get better opportunities there and I brought one of our other rock star Braden day to kind of talk about what it's going to mean what we're going to do with the shops in that area yeah so just to build like off to Heaven said I mean manufacturing has changed since 1968 so much I mean it's so Advanced it's very clean um the equipment has all changed and so it just needs to be updated so bad to get us to be on track and these kids come straight out of high school and be Workforce ready here in the community so um you know with this grant enabling us with new equipment and the new layouts of the rooms to just flow so much better and be so much more productive it's just unbelievable I mean it's true Game Changer so going along with that virtual reality idea too three state-of-the-art virtual reality welders that kids will be able to use and and the coolest story and I was talking to Mr day about those he had a student this year if you want to kind of tell about yeah so when we put this together um Dustin said hey I hope you don't mind but I had this idea and I was like no that's actually I was going to put it on there I said I added them and didn't tell him yeah he's like he's like hey by the way um but I was like No And I I had a student this year and you have one every year that's not been around that atmosphere and it can be intimidating and um but this year I had one that was just overly scared basically to going out into that welding booth and he was so nervous as soon as an ark would flash he was throwing the rod and jetting out the back of the curtain and so by having you know this virtual reality option that student would have been able to go in go in get used to that atmosphere thrown straight into in so I mean I think it's going to be a lot different going forward dealing with you know circumstances like that so right I was gonna say in some of the other great discussions that we've had about the virtual reality is obviously you know we want to implement this for our current students at the high school but but having these options is going to help us begin to really promote these programs and start with our elementary schools because these kind of things can transport across the county we can have students you know in our building but we can also take that to them so that they can try welding they can look at look at things through a CNA or through a cma's eyes and look at the the health care piece so you know not only is it what our high school students need it's what all of our kids need to start to think about these things and most of the time prior to me going to the CTE conference I would have really said that this didn't connect between culinary arts and welding but I got the opportunity to talk to a welding instructor up there and he goes down specifically to their culinary arts class and he looks for the kids that can decorate cupcakes the best so you may want to go do that and that's exactly what he said he said if they have great hand-eye coordination you can decorate a cupcake he said I steal them and put them on our virtual reality welder and let them see that there's other paths that they can take and I thought I would have never thought that so Tevin you may want to keep right now and but uh and then you'll go ahead and click the the greatest part of this plan is that this is the phase one um this is where we're going is investing in our CTE programs for our high school students and that's again Advanced manufacturing Health Sciences culinary arts looking to add even more with entrepreneurship welding and agricultural opportunities um that we're bringing in and then continuing to look to the Future for opportunities to how we can continue to expand what we can offer kids and I just want to say really quick um hey thank you guys for the opportunity to work on this I would be absolutely wrong if I didn't mention that congratulations to to Nikki and just say that from August to work on this plan with her showed exactly why she's the 100 right choice her leadership on this was second to none and uh it truly does mean our kids are going to get the greatest opportunities I I can't even imagine the fact of what we're going to be able to offer kids and seeing the excitement that as we've talked to some teachers and started bringing this out to see what they're excited about is is second to none so thank you all for your support and your guidance through it um as well as Nikki and we really appreciate what the opportunities we're bringing I was actually going to thank them as a team the high school teachers the high school staff Philip and Roy in August we have the potential for an opportunity that was overwhelming in scope in a short amount of time had to be turned around but when we sat down and said what would we dream for our kids what would we dream and they dreamed it and then we figured out a way to make it happen and get the proposal together in time and what that means for our students is they will have Pathways and certifications that they will leave the high school with all right here in Jennings County they have the potential being a CNA a CMA having industry certifications in advanced man and safe service certifications in culinary arts if they would like to do so when they walk out of our high school doors and that's a fantastic opportunity for our youth and so I appreciate all of their dedication and work to make that happen a short amount of time and even the the icing on top of all of this is fiscally we can do it very responsibly between the grand and what we can do with bonds and it won't touch anything with tax rate tax rate and I'll bring more information back but it's exciting to be able to say that and to do that for the kids are we looking at any uh seems to be a big need here so not currently right with this um this is more geared toward manufacturing and that was really with the ready grant that was their focus was more manufacturing but yes I think in the future as we face this in that will be something we'll definitely want to bring in any additional discussion or questions for the team thanks thank you so we'll go on down to um old business we have a Neola policy that we need to approve tonight this is policy number 3112.
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so I'm asking for a motion I have a motion by Chelsea do I have a second second I have a second by path and we'll open for discussion and I'm going to start the discussion um I want to just let everyone know the process I think it's important to understand the process that we went through to get us to tonight um I want to let you know that it was a very rigorous process so we actually contracted with the university search team in order to really make sure that we um we're gonna looking for recruiting and hiring the best candidate for Jennings County Schools um when the university search team came on one of the first things that they did is they surveyed both team members from the corporation and also community members and as well board members the board met with the university search team and looked at those survey results and really said what is it we're looking for in a superintendent and we went through every single one every single one of us went through those survey results and really talked about what we were looking for from that point moving forward we took every single application and we reviewed those applications the physical applications with the university search team we decided we picked who we would interview moving forward we had first round interviews which were conducted on two different days every single board member was in attendance either in person or virtually from those first round interviews um we took a look and said where are we had three choices we could pick one of those people and we could hire them right then we could say you know every individual that we interviewed they're not what we want in Jennings County Schools so we could start it over or we could have gone on to second round interviews and all seven board members made the decision to narrow the candidate pool down and move on to second round interviews so the next week we had um call those candidates back we had second round interviews and then the same three questions we asked ourselves again do we have the right candidate for Jennings County schools and we talked again all seven board members were present I felt like it was extremely important that this is the most important one of the most important things we do as a board and that's hiring our only employee we have one employee and that is the superintendent so I felt like and the entire board felt like it was extremely important that we be 100 in agreement and if we couldn't be in agreement as a board then we didn't have the candidate that we needed or wanted that was going to be best for our school corporation and so um after those second round interviews um all seven board members really sat down and discussed the pros and the cons the um of both candidates and um as a board we decided that Nikki Johnson was the best candidate for Jennings County Schools and I I wanted to make sure to share everything that this board went through because we did not take this decision lightly we wanted to make sure that we were getting the best person not just someone who lived in town not just someone who worked here but the best superintendent for our school corporation and I believe we have found that person um I know you'll see that there are only six of us here tonight um and I hate that but um Tony did Tony dagger is the seventh board member who's not here um he texted me earlier this week and was not able to be here but I felt it was important that you all know where he stood on this decision as well because obviously he's not going to vote tonight um and so I just want to read what he shared with me I have known Nikki for a long time she is a dedicated educator that comes from a long line of educators I am proud to say that I totally support Nikki and look forward to her leading Jenny's County School Corporation he shared congratulations so um I'll open the floor to any additional discussion I think you've covered everything I I mean we start this is pretty that uh Maybe had some dissatisfaction saying that we wouldn't do a process we wouldn't do a fair open honest process and we have done that I mean I explained it very well a lot of time with it and I'm certain we got the right any additional discussion from board members for this vote I would like Susan if you would please call the roll so that um yeah we have a motion in a second we do you already have a motion under seconds yes Travis yes Amy yes dolphin yes yes 60 Debbie congratulations thank you I want to thank you for the opportunity and um I would like to say that my heart belongs to jinx County and I will work Tyler's tirelessly each day to make sure our children have the best opportunities to Humble her I want her to notice how quickly I was replaced foreign [Music] [Laughter] a couple of things first of all I know your family is present you and I talked about this and I believe it's extremely important because when we get a superintendent we also get their family so I wondered if you'd take a moment just maybe introduce them well if they'll stand up and give away when I call their name my husband Andrew is here and my mother Phyllis amick and then our four children Jocelyn is a freshman Libby is an eighth grader Lila is a sixth grader and Luke is a third grader so for all of you that just stood up we want to thank you for sharing your mother with us because that's exactly what's happening she becomes part of us and that sometimes that takes some time away and some effort away from from you all and so we know that it's a sacrifice for you especially um but um we just want to tell you what a special um mother wife daughter that you all have and we just want to say thank you for for sharing her with us um and I think before we close um I just think it would be also appropriate um Jim we can't thank you enough for everything that you've done in the interim um while we were conducting this candidate search to keep us on the straight and narrow I've learned a lot from you and I thank you for that um I have you on speed dial just in case I think everybody else in the room might as well it was my privilege to serve really it was a a great opportunity for me I enjoyed labor to love I just failed a retire in that's all I turned in my keys to this guy why should it feel sad but I have my ID card right here [Applause] hey Seth will you make sure you deactivate it I'm still yours until midnight past 1201 so as a congratulations to Nikki and also just to thank Jim for everything we do have come so I think some lemonade and some refreshments so when we uh during this meeting everybody grab and if you're gonna stay come back in and join us because we have a board meeting continue to do the work of reward um at seven so I'll entertain a motion to return motion by Pat and a second by Travis all those in favor 6-0 meeting adjourned
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and it's out of bounds out of bounds off of Anna Macarena [Music] pass intercepted by animac the field testing all to Emma Gaza County called it's a Blue Devils good move I play blow down flipping blue Devil's almost intercepted well collected by testamental back up to anime green that's act down testing all goddamn a thousand that's in two back to Gosling in front shot shot nope stopped by the blue Devil's defense all the way back to the top intercepted by the Blue Devils through the legs all the way down keeps going oh [Music] down to Sophie stairs and the ball will go out of bounds [Music] top that's enough back at the animatrini down the sideline past two setup [Music] foreign [Music] s have great pressure going on right now ball has barely been over half field passive top back in macaroni shot stop the blue Devil's defense he's ready to fight for the ball around the back end line another whistle [Music] pass intercepted Again by Spartans back down Spartan's offense playing well in front shot blocked again good shot oh gets on net there's a scrum for the ball and a whistle a tough whistle for Spartans great defense though for the Blue Devils test in front good pass down low and taken away again by the blue levels foreign for the ball in front shot oh whistle again [Music] spawns ball on the right sideline pass up top intercepted by Blue Devils again see oh intercepted as far as moving it back in all taken by the Blue Devils on a rush stopped again down [Music] pass across intercepted moving it man the ball is gonna stay in bounds Blue Devils with the ball and some great defense by this bar and stick it that ball back I mean you have a chance to shot here once again good defense by the Blue Devils get it out still scrolling for the ball spawns come out with it shot once again blocked oh that one almost got on that it's out of bounds passed down by the silent intercepted by the Blue Devils again swinging a mess oh play Blood down spawns ball inside the zone shot in oh she still doesn't Corner alert that's what they call it he's talking about a student fan section not yelling out their famous Corner alert today foreign ER [Music] shot in good tip oh it goes off the post and it's in Spartan's goal still trying to figure out who scored that goal there's a few tip-ins goal scorer by number 23 Grace rapold on the Tipping blue Devil's ball now one nothing Spartans oh they scored yes good goal Spartans play Blood down again as far as ball just by Hatfield pass back well taken up by the salary by Molly holler taken by Emma Gaza to Denault play ball down for a kick blew it up a small and there you can hear famous Spartans field hockey student section bus Barnes spawns at the ball down the sideline to report blocked by the Devils taken Now by The Devils Fallout spawns fall oh maybe corrected blue Devil's ball nice one pass in blocked now taken Again by The Blue Devils this Barn's open that shoot it shot once again has not gone.net this is all taking the canvas Burns just great pressure moving the ball down low let's take handling taken by the Blue Devils blown down blue Devil's ball [Music] oh [Music] I'll take it by Emma cousin back up the holler good blue Devil's defense once again Paul taken by Anna macaroni pass download Gosling oh she just misses pass intercepted ooh goes off of Spartan's foot taken by the Blue Devils pass once again intercepted oh bad bounce off of one of the Blue Devils Defenders taking a game by the Spartans to the slot intercepted by the Blue Devils oh good takeaway it's gone for the ball Spartans come out with it pass down low to Gosling nope causing the stairs stairs in the center oh bad shot taken by Ray pulled shot did not get to net it'll be Spartan's ball on a blown down play oh and a corner alerts we have a major Corner alert beware corner pass up top to stairs oh fake shoot it back down to stairs Sarah's on the right side with a good shot deflected in front and it'll be Spartans ball for what seems to be not another corner no it is can we stand corrected Corner alert is out pass into the front to stairs oh nope forgot that's a move that's a move did Dan read a fake shot I heard he likes his fake shots pass in front scrum for the ball oh Paul blown down again it's going to be blue Devil's ball tunnel before it's dominating this first most of this first half three minutes ago in the game you know a half quarter I don't know what these period something like that blue Devil's ball down the sideline intercepted Again by this barns oh let's come for the ball to come out with it down the sideline pass down past missed picked up by the Blue Devils right on the end line taken by the Spartans oh back to the Blue Devils scroll through the ball surprise come out with it again down low here comes a shot oh good defense from the Blue Devils out here we go another Corner alert I don't think that's this this is not a corner of my friend Tommy they're calling oh it is staying corrected taken by oh good shot on the ground and I'd stand for the rebound oh that's a that's a Spartans goal my number Emma Gosling Emma Gaza with the tapping goal with an assist come from Sophie's hairs Gaza coming out now what's up again number 13 Ava guile [Music] whatever's ball number 17 Emma Gosling [Applause] foreign [Music] Spa down low in front oh just missed and the ball is just gonna get out of bounds passed by the Blue Devils intercepted by Spartans again oh [Music] sparring just applying major pressure right now [Music] past the stairs while taken by the blue Devil's defense it'll be blown down it'll be Spartan's ball oh that again [Music] go on our alert Corner alert [Music] corn alert I'll be surprised last Corner they did score so another chance of Spartans score here again oh top back down in front shot here comes a shot back door oh what I think that was a save I think it was saved foreign ball ini up back to macaroni and front and that's the end of the whatever quarter period period yeah a great great period from Spartans up two nothing this but the western Mass semi-finals between the East Side metal Spartans and the Northampton Blue Devils and a little bit of technical difficulties over here with my host I'm back Tommy Kegley blue those ball to start off the quarter my apologies for the sniffling it's quite cold out here but I'll take my Spartans down on the other side in front of stairs stairs over two and in the ball plays blowing down once again Gosling back up top to Mac or any macaroni in front shot nope blue Devil's ball foreign once again taken away by the Spartans it'll still be blue Devil's ball oh once again taken by the Spartans down the right sideline taken again Blue Devils in front good defense by the Spartans taken by Weiss up the right side down to Grape old back over to Weiss oh to repo scum for the ball blood levels come out with it pass across Blue Devils down the middle intercepted by macaroni Macarena de guile with a move Cuts back in and it's off a foot it will be Spartans ball that's a corner alert we got some fans here now a Spartan student section is crowding up a little bit some may say packed most packs has ever been [Music] corner from Weiss up top to stairs stairs with a shot oh that's gotta hurt take him by the Blue Devils down the left field silent will go out so it will be Spartan's wall that shot when it's coming at you it hurts those balls are not soft yeah they do not have that many pads no protection as they say to those balls over to holler intercepted Again by The Blue Devils Blue Devils down the right field sideline back up top to Kyle Kyle with a move gets past the blue Devil's Defender an amazing move from Kyle intercepted Again by The Blue Devils Pluto was down the middle taken by Gosling oh blown down it will be blue Devil's ball as we're calling in my my co-host Tommy Keekley has been kicked off the mic and Shadow Brian will be joining us thank you oh good save for the blue Devil's goaltender shot by Gotham walked again by the Blue Devil skull tender taken by the Buddha oh they're accepted by guys on guys on the front Lewis is a scrum for the ball Blue Devils have it pass off Target down low taken by the Blue Devils cross into the middle good interception by macaroni macaroni oh with a pass that's just gonna get saved I'm going out of bounds Matt greeny with the ball now over the stairs Sears is past intercepts by Blue Devil's defense Blue Devils with a good brush down the sideline boggles out of bounds it will be Spartan's ball change coming in number nine Molly holler for number 28. testinal [Music] down to Gosling Gosling over to Weiss [Music] Weiss down low to Ray pulled just stays in shot blocked by the goalie shop by Denault blocked again good Blue Devils defense great great pressure from the Spartans keeps the ball and it'll be blue Devil's ball pass intercepted by the spawns down low to guile Gaia with the ball blowed down it will be blue Devil's ball thank you [Music] hold down again blue Devil's ball once again Pluto's with their first good Rush of the game passed down intercepted again up top to guile [Music] with across the stairs stairs down low to absolutely nobody that ball will be saved by Weiss over to raypold rippled down to Weiss and the ball is just gonna stay in what a great play up the field the Blue Devils and the ball God of Bounce it'll be Spartan's ball oh it's blue Devil's ball nice one a few mess-ups but I will stand the sideline it's intercepted by Weiss [Music] ball played off the foot it will be blue Devil's ball [Music] pass intercepted by spards now back down intercepted right side taken by the Blue Devils and that ball will roll out of bounds over the stairs stairs back over to Gosling intercepted by the Blue Devils midfielder put up his ball intercepted bye Spartans pass over to the blue messed up been all with the ball now pass over the stairs oh blown down with the hand again back down to Peter Ross petos is passing intercepted by the Blue Devils attackman put up his paw whatever's down low it's gonna go back to the defense pass up top taken by the Spartans over to Denault good defense that's Blue Devils it will be blue Devil's ball go tree does not like that it's true sure bone down it will be Spartan's ball Pastor Howard down to holler hollered the ball taken will be Spartan's ball again all right with the ball passed down to Gosling causing down low with his pass in good kick by the Blue Devils goaltender while taken by Hollywood and it'll be blue Devil's Ball but they play off the foot taken by the Spartans now cross over to Mac Howard download to raypold fall in front to Sarah stairs with a shot oh just wide [Music] pass blocked by Weiss download to rape old that's great to the middle good goaltatting from Blue Devils the special guest pretty silent in here you know it's pretty silent up here I'm your special guest special guest Chad get up here Chad let's go let's get chat up here look you can die though you can go after you can switch off with him it's my first time doing this in my life yeah you're gone according from Weiss up top to stairs oh the play back down low but we'll go out of bounds all right all right Buddha was ball now oh I'm here with my special guest Aiden Asher what's going on political spawn now taken by the Spartans Ball blow down again by the referees it'll be blue Devil's ball who are the Blue Devils Northampton I'll take a bike off all right yeah taken by raypold gray pulled in the Weiss scrum for the ball comes out to repoed foreign 's ball again corner now from Weiss [Music] Weiss what's going on there over to raypold down to Denault got the Gosling in front good goaltending the Blue Devils blue Devil's ball he's not even talking about a talker and jackets huh I'm gonna shout out Dan the Man our next special guest will be Chad O'Brien taking over for my spot as host how we doing tonight Asher good good amazing big game here uh semi-final awesome first game he saw metal he said at two nothing right now we're winning we're winning 115 remaining here in this uh second quarter still a lot of game ahead of us but uh looking pretty good so far for the Spartans here huh oh yeah oh yeah Gotta Give it up there I think uh this is all uh Reeds Reed's doing here yeah I was gonna say I gotta give a big shout out to Dan Reed Dan the man you know yeah the coach he saw him out of Spartans definitely have been a uh he'll be watching this later yeah he will be absolutely there's been a huge factor for this team um obviously last year they had a very successful run went all the way out to uh the vineyard for a game oh yeah and uh the State Playoff I don't think that they won though no no no but uh either way they can do the State Playoff is definitely a big achievement yeah that's always good you know yeah so uh you saw my 16-1 so far this season so oh yeah that's uh the players and more importantly the coach you know my Man Dan can't get much better Coach than him he is he is something special absolutely especially on that hockey rink too me and Ash both know uh from playing hockey from it's definitely got a uh that'll be the end of the second quarter oh never mind sorry about that oh yeah yeah take a moment they're gonna play this one out here a little time foreign [Music] player shot from outside it'll be stopped by the Blue Devils another shot and it goes just right I don't know and we have reached halftime here okay to look at the big smile on Dan Reed's face coach Reed definitely happens I can see he's focused in on the last half yeah you saw metal just getting dialed now focused keep doing what they've been doing here in this first half here are you talking to his players he's ready you notice any Star players so far this uh first half after no I just got here no he just got here yeah yeah I don't know what's going on but uh that's gonna wrap me up you know all right take a moment foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign s and the Northampton Blue Devils here I am Owen Reed with my co-host Shadow Brian pleasure to be here yeah Spartans with the face off download taken by Northampton intercepted Again by the Spartans and the ball will go out of balance it will be Blue Devils ball Blue Devils with the ball now taken by Matt Carini down to Weiss taken by the Blue Devils all right take it Macarena with the ball now moving in on the net down to denal and I'll go out of bounds unfortunate look for Ali some other opportunity uh it was definitely coming to a high there it was there they had to look to the middle she could have just got that past definitely somebody open taken Now by Howard intercepted by the Blue Devils good block by Howard but she would not end up with the ball maccarini the block it will be Spartan's ball power with the ball down low to rape hold and pass off Target taken by Weiss ooh off their shin pads that one stone Weiss with the now down to raypold pass across intercepted by Pluto's in front stairs shot in its head [Music] I didn't catch who scored that I think it was number 17 Emma Gosling big goal for Esau Meadow really taken the lead and uh showing some dominance over the Blue Devils here Gosling with their second of the game and absolutely dominating half Esau metal leads three nothing now here with just a minute and a half into this third quarter a big goal by Gosling just absolutely dominating the Blue Devils now I don't think the Pluto's have a shot on goal yet by number 17 Emma Gosling all intercepted by Gosling no stairs back up top to Denault over to Weiss to raphold back twice shot on front blocked by the Blue Devils taken by Weiss once again chipped in scrum for the ball repelled in front Blue Devils look good block and it will be Barnes ball once again unfortunately someone will look to capitalize on this penalty corner twice boys taking all the corners today place up top the stairs stairs with a good slap blocked by the Blue Devils defense it openly not sure what the call was there I think it's a play off the foot I don't think I want to play the ball off the foot okay I don't know a lot about field hockey to be honest neither another corner from Weiss if you're just joining us here on lcat we have 12 minutes remaining here in this third quarter it is three nothing after Gold by Gosling serious with the ball now oh and they're gonna call it off her foot that was a tough one over the Blue Devils oh tough Miss good play from this far in sideline to keep that ball in somewhat of a play of us with the ball now up top just barely missed by Denault but picked up by macarini oh some good four checking but it will still be as far as wall macarini down to Weiss that ball is Just Gonna Roll Out blue Devil's ball some good four checking here from where he pulled website is that is that a thing I know that from hockey that's it I do that all the time [Music] Spartans ball now Macarena up top twice shot in from Weiss in front in oh whatever's ball another play off the foot tough that's a tough one oh little small again God is not happy about that last one they are not happy about these calls some of these calls are somewhat questionable taken download a Weiss just missed it good save back up top to Denault Denault crossed over to holler body played off the potty and there will be blue Devil's ball [Music] what else with an absolute whack taken by the Spartans a little of his ball again okay anyways barthol now take it by macarini up to Hollard Paul taken by the Blue Devils Back Down the Spartans ball roll out of bounds will be blue Devil's ball whatever's with the ball now in front taken by Weiss over two rape old repo with a good move to get loose in the defender up to Weiss with a good look down the field she's moving oh good chip in that Ball's rolling around there's a good opportunity here for the sirens to take advantage in front Sears oh good defense from the Blue Devils but it's going to be Spartan's ball for a corner foreign ER here from Weiss [Music] big opportunity here pretty song Meadow usually goes out to Sears who has a cannon of a shot fake shot by Sears bouncing around taken by Ray Paul they pull battling for the ball in front throwing out to Macarena in front good tip by Weiss and it's right out in front of gosling looking for a third of the game [Music] yeah well barely Captain by the blue Devil's defense blue Devil's ball play off the body not a good call at all good some good floor checking by the Spartans down to Gosling hold down again it will be Spartan's wall macaroni up top moving in with a good move down low ball in front rolling around good scramble holler with the ball now back up top over to Weiss Weiss in front with good shot good tip and it's rolling around nice and loose and it will be blue Devil's balls what else with the ball now crossed in good defense by half power to keep that ball in the offensive zone over two Weiss whites down the field now oh not a good slap but rapper with the ball out of bounds what else ball super encouraging pass block by raypold into stairs stairs was not the best shot but we blue Devil's ball in front Passover [Music] blue Devil's ball again for another questionable call whacked almost taking off somebody's head foreign it's going to roll out and be blue Devil's ball pass in stairs stairs have passed over to guile and it will be blue Devil's ball again there's been a lot of opportunity for the Spartans tonight and most have been blown down by the officials over the Weiss Weiss with a miscommunication out there taken by the Blue Devils Blue Devils down the field a good Russian good defense by Matt Carini blown down again put up his ball taken by hollered good interception clone down once again by the officials good slap in rolling ball really some of the first offense and the Blue Devils had all game but some Stellar defense from the Spartans to keep them from it and it'll be the first Blue Devils corner of the game after an absolutely dominating three pretty much three quarters of this game [Music] good levels now up top little layoff pass Macarena in there taken by Howard guy all fighting for that ball too foreign back up top oh and it'll roll out of bounds Grace we pulled something out after Ava guile good slapping Blue Devils some even better defense from the Spartans over to Kyle [Music] it's good good guy out with the ball now over to Weiss twice just misses but still hot on track of that ball twice cross into stairs just missed tell you with the white oh blown down again by the referees he'll be blue Devil's ball wow these are some questionable calls here from the officials Howard with the ball in front taken by the Blue Devils intercepted once again by the Spartans over to Kyle with the ball in front stairs battling over to grayskyle with a good shot it's in Grace Kyle with her first of the game four nothing now Spartans 221 to go in the third quarter just dominating right now [Music] blue Devil's Ball Four nothing Spartans want to do Grace guile gray skile The Freshman sister to Ava Gile wise with the ball now over to Gosling God's still looking for the third of her game [Music] intercepted by macarini macaroni to Sears Sarah is moving in hot taken by the Blue Devils good interception over to Weiss Weiss makes a good play ball scrambling blowing down blue Devil's ball foreign picks it up now down the field cross over to Sears oh sir stumbling in front guile blown down again it'll be blue Devil's ball lots of opportunities blown down by the referees in this game twice good defense ball oh that was uh not the best play I don't really know what the call should be there clock ticking down to just over 40 seconds left in the third quarter blue Devil's ball we'll say again move in here I don't have much time left if they want to get stay somewhat in this game Blue Devils down the side some good attacking by Hollard try and keep this ball the Spartans taken by Weiss down to Kyle just mask good play but stop by the blue Devil's Defender as far as ball just out of 10 seconds ago in the game five four three two and one that will be the end of the third quarter for nothing Spartans and absolutely dominating three quarters from the Spartans here today [Music] order of the semi-finals between the East Barnes and the Northampton Blue Devils like I said before a dominating three quarters from the Spartans over the stairs stairs up to Gosling Gosling down to guile over to Denault tonight with some good offense back up to Kyle guy will pass in scrambling around to her sister Grace guile gray sky open another shot and it just stays out off the crossbar and then out I mean good color commentary Blue Devils down the sideline over some good some good defense by the grace Howard [Music] oh blowing down once again foreign what's up Owen how's it going good Jeff morno here welcome myself to the booth for the semi-finals of the East Long Meadow versus Northampton field hockey game Islam Meadow out to a commanding 4-0 lead here to start the fourth quarter they've been dominating play for most of the game has been spent in the offensive zone which is a good thing as we try to make our way here to the finals of the western Mass tournament oh what do you think who's been the uh star of the game so far in your mind I think it's got to be Emma Gosling she's got two goals on the game I think she's been pretty much dominating the whole the whole of these first three quarters of this game yeah it's just been fun to really watch you know they've been a lot of great plays coming down the sidelines I've seen Weiss come down there quite a bit and then slap it across to the middle presenting a lot of potential opportunities making the defense really be awake down there the entire game they've been on their heels yes the ball now macarini back over to Macarena with a good pass in front shop by Sears is bouncing around just hang out into the back of the net what a play a lot of players touching it there and she jams it home for the fifth goal of the game for East Longmeadow what a day goal scored by number 13.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
they also offer free workspaces and internet access promoting Equity through access to space and internet to build people's resilience they offer re-skilling resources think Innovative Recycling recycle Ann Arbor's zero waste focuses on the highest and best use of its materials you can see this is their highest and best use analysis for glass they focus on local end markets that are less than 200 miles away and full-time living wage jobs with benefits they also hire formerly incarcerated citizens and support them with finding housing and transportation while also providing them meals as you can see on this journey we have discovered a lot about the circular economy and how it recognizes and builds equity and resilience while reducing greenhouse gas emissions we know this and now we want everyone else to know it through a branding and marketing campaign we made this map so people could find circular economy entities almost four months ago as of last week it had 719 visits people are really interested in this map and utilizing it it is an unramped to the circular economy this work has the support of many organ local organizations that will help move it forward we are working with economic development agencies including spark the entrepreneurship Center and the Michigan Small Business Development Center we're working with business groups and with social services including the Community Action Network we have created connections with about 20 other entities through our one-on-one engagement and several of them are willing to be featured in our stories of circularity video series the first one to be featured will be El Harissa a local restaurant and boutique shop we'll either show that presentation that video after this presentation or we'll send it around afterwards and then finally through the fully staffed office of sustainability and Innovation we have links to over 100 other sustainable Community organizations this is a preliminary budget for investing in circular economy branding and marketing you may recognize this from a different um project at the city we want to change the way people purchase and value goods and services we want the circular economy to be the first option instead of a quick online purchase or a big box store we are looking for funding for this work through grants Partnerships and the upcoming a20 millage we've already done broad one-on-one engagement our next step is to hire an independent consultant to design and insist assist with the next phase of Engagement that will further ground this work in Black indigenous people of color and lower income communities as well as with residents and consumers at Large following that work and informed by it we want to kick off branding and marketing imagine these entities in the circular economy being advertised on billboards and bus stops across the city help us make the circular economy a household phrase there is demand in Ann Arbor there's support in Ann Arbor we need funding for Branding and marketing as well as Workforce Development and map improvements thank you thanks Jenny and I don't think we're going to be able to share the video because we weren't certain about the audio but I'll share that out with the commission right after this meeting before we move to the C students why don't we see if there's any uh questions for Jenny on her presentation just now okay yes John Mercy great to see the progress just in the last couple of years on this I mean compared to just a couple of years ago it's really fantastic um one of the things that I was thinking about in advance of the meeting is a um a way to sort of look at a at a high level of what kind of progress we're making on circular economy and I think um John in the same group um councilmember Edition others were working on metrics um for circular economy and it seems to me there was a presentation that you made I don't know if it was a final one but just one of the thoughts that I had and I I just looked up some numbers um before the meeting just to get a sense of what or Herculean task we have in front of us is I looked up what is the typical annual sales value for typical stores and it would be interesting to compare that to the sales volume of the stores that we have that are involved in the circular economy and the typical grocery store I couldn't find a number but I could I found the total number of grocery stores supermarkets um and divided that into um the total sales so this might be off but it's roughly 20 million dollars a year but a typical Target a single Target store is 50 million a year a single Walmart is 80 million a year in a single Costco is 220 million so when we look at the circular economy competing with all of that and then Amazon and everything else I mean it's it's it's it's it's daunting but it's something we absolutely have to do um so I think the the seeds that you guys are planting and the idea of branding and everything like that is fantastic so I just wanted to share that and maybe we can think about how we measure our progress um the other question that I had and it doesn't have to be answered today I know that the climate millage uh a lot roughly one million dollars if it's passed to Circular economy zero waste and you showed 150 000 so it'd be really interesting to see how we might spend that uh additional money and I think some of that might have been for some collection services and things like that but at some time it would be really interesting to see um how that is going to be allocated so just to plant both of those seeds and I'll turn it over to Kathy well okay thanks um I'm a hundred and ten percent behind this just to make an incorrect statistical comment for John's benefit here um but this this is wonderful this is absolutely something we have to do um I'm 70 years old I started shopping at the Goodwill store when I was 10 and then would have my grandmother sort of uh alter whatever I was buying um and so I I one word of caution is that there are many people who have been committed to this um I belong to Kiwanis for many years I uh was a merchandising chair at the Ann Arbor Thrift Shop I'm still a member and I have watched people retire from their careers and spend more hours dedicated to making the Kiwanis Thrift Shop a success and for anyone who hasn't been out to Kiwanis on a Friday or Saturday afternoon you need to look at the operation they have more customers than a Walmart they have probably 20 uh credit card machines they use Square going at the same time the average age of the volunteers there is probably close to 80 years old so it's really funny you know it's just so wonderful and so what you're reporting uh a lot of it is already happening and maybe we need a little boost but I think you have to be sensitive to the idea that you're coming in and taking credit for decades of work that's already been done and so how do you bring in the concept of a circular economy and branding without while at the same time enhancing the operations of the Ann Arbor Thrift Shop Kiwanis and those other organizations so again I want to be positive but I think that there is a delicate balance there and please go out and see the operation that that Kiwanis runs we used to be downtown Ann Arbor and due to real estate values and a lot of other reasons we move but it really is an Ann Arbor operation so thank you oh thank you very much for that comment you are spot on this work is here we just discuss we rediscovered it and we and we want to promote it is kind of what we're saying like we know it's already here we know a lot of people have done a lot of work and and we want to showcase that and and help other people see it and be part of it we also want to do business incubation to help bring in um fresh people into it um younger you know people who can continue on um so I hope I hope that helps thread that needle a bit and I'd also just add and also to what are the opportunities definitely to recognize and acknowledge the the volunteer efforts in this but are there also opportunities to create waged employment uh through the circular economy so that's part of where we're going with our ideas around a circular economy business incubators oh okay and uh Kiwanis also has a number of employees and they tend to be people who um I'm going to be critically try to be politically correct people that they're trying to uh support entering the workforce um and so people that need more support than the average employee so there's there's also that going on right now um and so I guess just to summarize how can you um really acknowledge and support all of the great work that has been going on so that the people who are doing that are going to join you rather than see this is just the city of Ann Arbor taking credit for what's already been done with with a new logo no and I don't believe that but I believe that there's that risk out there in the community definitely I'd say our approach with this from the beginning has been one of partnership and co-production of work and what are the ways we're just starting an inventory the students have mentioned it a little bit but an inventory to get at what are the things that businesses would or or organizations would need to help you know promote their activities so it's definitely not kind of taking credit for what they're doing but how do we promote we've got video series stories of circularity but uh what you've identified Kathy are definitely things that you know we've built an awareness around and are trying to think about strategies to promote organizations so um why don't we shift now to the second part which is the the student presentation uh these are the students from the school for environment and sustainability a group of five Master students and Zao is gonna get things started and introduce us to the group yeah hi uh good evening everyone yeah I'm going to share my screen here yeah um so yeah we are these Master project team from University of Michigan we work with the CT Security economy team on the circular economy but today um yes so first uh we are introduce our team member so we have a very like diverse team um so we have Brooke Naya tariku uh and me so today Anaya Jing and me are going to present to you so first let's go through a watch we'll present today um the first thing is the pilot uh case studies uh we've done with the city team this summer uh the one is another series shock another is recycle and number and the second thing is uh we're going to present the enabled circular economy locator map ancestors is the circular economy actions tracker and we are also going to present the buy Park business inventory and communication a community outreach and stories of circularity video series so I'll get things started with the pilot study of the Ann Arbor Thrift Shop a thrift shop serves the circular economy by changing the experience of thrift shopping and also reducing the carbon footprint as we can see this is a floor plan that we created after one of our team members visit and also interview with the shop um here we can see everything is set up just as a department store and those pictures in the circles shows um some of the beautifully displayed and arranged sales area of the thrift shop as a customer you can go and easily find what you want in your designated area and then we're going to the next slide to talk about the potential environmental benefit from operating a thrift shop um so this pie chart shows the annual sales number of their number Thrift Shop we put the numbers of every items that belongs to the industry of manufacture of textiles wearing apparels and leather products which is the like the most part of what is cost drifted in the strip shop and after running the environmentally extended input output model we can see the result is the potential annual benefits from a thrift shop is around 250 000 of apparel production avoided and nearly 9 000 kilograms of CO2 equivalence reduction and also since the apparel industry is of a great potential of employment creation there's also a nearly one employee equivalence increase and we're going to the next slide here what we want to highlight is the thrift shop is actually a circular economy in circular economy from what we can uh see in this pie chart which shows for those items that is unsellable for the thrift shop they actually got recirculated through different channels um apart from 20 going to the recycling other items um got sold online by different channels and they generate the revenue to cover the daily operation of the surf shop and then I'll hand over to Zao to talk about the recycle Ann Arbor so our next uh next uh case study is recycle another so when talking about recycling center you're missing is just like handling with the recycling stuff actually the recycling this is the cycle and number is doing more than just recycling they are aiming for highest and best to use so you can see the pie chart here so the majority resource resources of the recycling materials are curbside recycling which is the single stream recycling and I is having 17 soldiers and seven administrators um to run the uh merge and small uh and they are also having the returning community members also they focus on the regional markets which means the markets are like are not far than 200 miles and then we take a deep into the conversation by Community that's our a is dealing with so we can see here um so around seven percent of the recycling materials are actually paper the one is cardboard and mixed paper and the news so and and uh we can see the mixed glass so this pouch is quite interesting because uh re aims for the highest and best use so they can deal with the clouds by the uh handle it to the third party to do the bottle to bottle recycling in order to make sure uh the recycling process is in the highest and best use and we can also see the residual rates um here is around 10 percent and the residual rate means the materials that can't be recycled so the 10 percent residual rates shows that actually uh in the city uh people are well educated and they have good environmental awareness so um everyone is working hard to make the residual rates very low and we also look at the environmental benefits that ra can offer so here we do a multi-community analysis by using EPA World model we created two scenarios one is recycling scenario which is uh what I is doing now and another is landfilling scenario so the landfilling scenario that means all the materials are going through landfill so you can see the total row here if all the relaxed recycling materials are going to landfill instead instead of recycling center it will actually generate 500 more metric ton CO2 emissions but by doing the recycling another HPR reduce around 14 000 metric tons JG emissions uh so I want to mention that data is obtained from December 2021 to April 2022 so that's the j3 emission reduction for five months and let's hand over to an area to talk about the locator Max so another element of our circular economy locator man and so this map shows places where we can advance the circular economy and uh on the city's website it's getting a lot of hits so a little bit about how we went about creating it is that first we identified the potential uh circular economy sectors within the city and then collected and organized the data including names websites and address as well as categories of each of these organizations or businesses and um so we later categorize them into all of these categories that you can see here in the legend of the map um after that we kind of uh collected special data that is the latitude and longitude of each of these places and uh created this map using our GIS and if we click on the map yes so if we click on the map and toggle to each of these uh places or organizations we can see that there's a bubble that pops up and we can see information about each of these places and uh we're also working on updating what kind of information uh could be included in these um in these small apples about each of these places the next kind of element that we wanted to add to the map was to kind of incorporate environmental justice so we added another layer uh using the Washington opportunity index map and uh that actually that tool actually measures the access to Opportunity by looking at access to health jobs economic well-being Education and Training as well as Community engagement instability so when we kind of added or superimposed that layer onto our map the CE locator map we kind of understand how it um it can help us identify certain areas or places where we can focus on incubating the circular economy within the city of Ann Arbor and one of our group members is also working on adding a access to Transportation there as well and here we are also utilizing this action tracker to keep track of the ideas from all the interviews and partner meetings takeaways those actions are categorized with 7R and they are also ranked um based on its influence level from local to National we've got 30 more circular economy actions planned so far and we're keeping updating it uh then the Bible business inventory and so there are 146 winners in Ann Arbor and surrounding areas in our bipolar business inventory and the inventory also contains the discoveries from our community outreach and we also plan to add the bipolar business inventory to the map also the city has secured funding to hire an equity consultant to help improve the bipolar business imagery another key element of our project is the community outreach and so uh this is one of the examples of such an event so project grow is uh it provides Ann Arbor area residents with space know-how and inspiration to grow their own fresh organic food and there are Gardens that are located throughout the community many near public transportation so one can choose a site that's closest to their home and so in this event as an exhibitor for project growth 50th Anniversary which was on August 20th we showed our concept of circular economy kind of showed our promo video that we created and the data visualization or the locator map that we went over and this in turn attracted new people to be enrolled in the mailing list for circular economy and we also got to meet Chris mayor Christopher Taylor uh the other part of our community outreach is the stories of circularity video and we're showcasing different organizations and businesses that are already involved in the circular economy and so El harisa is a family-owned restaurant in Ann Arbor that participates in uh Ann Arbor's returnable container program which is the a2r3 program so uh we created this video kind of by interviewing the owner and uh collecting footage uh at their restaurant and kind of compiling uh both of those elements so our our group next up the next steps through the end of course have uh we have five vaccines to do one is We are continuing uh creating the inventory survey to create uh turkey Economy based on uh the second thing is that is uh we are also going to upgrade the gis map with other layers and details and at the end of the course we're going to do the final project reports also uh we assist with the community outreach and next month we are going to present our work in American Center for livestock life cycle assessment conference that's all thank you thank you Zhao zi Jun and nanya um Steve and Rita do we have a couple minutes for questions Steve I see your hand up go ahead you're muted yeah I have just one question and that is I know this you know this this is wonderful work um it's it's absolutely fabulous but um what's going to happen when the Seas project ends um and uh is this uh all gonna get transferred to the city for maintenance and uh future use well it I'll I'll take that and if anybody else wants to add on um I think that's part of kind of the intention from the beginning is that we've been working directly with City staff so like the gis map the students are heavily involved in it but it's being done by City staff so we've got kind of the continuity plan for it and Jenny has been you know involved in leading this project from the beginning to make sure things will be continuing Jenny I don't know if you've got other comments on that or continuity yeah John you're you're spot on um the the circular economy website it's a City website and um the gis platform is hosted on the city's website as well so there's the continuity there foreign we could also say that the Outreach we're doing is is going to feed directly into the city's circular economy strategy so um everything is we're we're just getting a whole lot of momentum going and we're hoping that uh so that that uh with the millage there will be more funds to have uh people to work on that in the in the city um thanks and one of the categories on the map was social and environmental um and I was curious what's an example of one of those organizations Jewish Family Services got it thank you okay well thank you uh so much uh for letting us share this this work with you and I am going to shoot off that email with the second video on El Harissa so you can kind of see their work and that's we plan to continue there could be a whole series of them but we've got a general overview one now which is on the website and then uh alvareza will be posted soon okay oh and just help yourself day um done by Sister Lakes Association will be done also very soon the next one's coming up will be Bryant's uh just help yourself day and um common cycle and maybe a maker space are all hands active that's great thank you oh this was really very good um so that ends our our presentation part of our meeting and we have um actually about 10 minutes left for for this meeting as scheduled um our agenda next item though I would like to present and or have a discussion of and that is the topic of the resolution to improve transparency of City uh the city of Ann Arbor performance um and I hope that you all have had a chance to look at the resolution that's in our packet um and I would ask if John would you like John mursky would you like to leave with some comments of yours um so briefly uh what happened after the last meeting is council member dish spoke with administrator dehoney uh and indicated uh to me then that um he'd be willing to further engage with me on the topic um we had an email exchange I can read some of the detailed comments uh but summarizing them he indicated and by the way um Rita Steve council member Griswold and council member dish were copied on on these exchanges um so they've seen them um he indicated that uh that he sees that this resolution would strengthen the organization he indicated that it's not one of his current top priorities he mentioned hiring and onboarding key new staff members um implementing uh performance reviews um and uh I then responded to him and indicated that the dates in terms of actions in the resolution uh are the end of the first quarter of next year which is basically just linking existing information to the existing performance measures web page and then updating that webpage for the remainder of the year so that by the end of the year things like format is improved that chart that data is trended that goals are also included and things like that which is not currently um available on the on the measures page um and um the last response that I got from him today um just second let me pull it up and read it um he indicated he said thanks for your feedback John I understand the process you are following and we'll look forward to the discussion once it reaches city council um so the other thing is um reading Steve I don't know if you want to talk about your thoughts on this but um both of you have agreed to co-sponsor it and so maybe I'll turn it over to you and I'd be willing to comment anymore answer any questions but maybe the two of you have something to say go ahead Steve yeah I just want to remind everybody that we had a reading of this resolution um alongside our September meeting and we had some discussion um so I'd like to advance this to a vote during this meeting um so and John John outlined a little bit about the background here um and so he in the city administrator Mr dehoney has not pushed back on any of these dates that are in the resolution and when uh which is the end of March the end of the first quarter next year and the end of next year so um so there's quite a bit of time to accomplish these and so I think I think it's important that we send this message to the city administrator and the city council has a sense of what we feel collectively as a reflection of the community so that's all I wanted to say at this point and uh we should open the floor for discussion could I just say something first just for for framing as well I see this as something that actually can support our success in the city that that it will strengthen almost any project that the City Works on to have the kind of goals that are discussed um and I think from my perspective it would be something that should be um motivating for staff to accomplish goals and and to show progress or to redirect as needed given whatever circumstances may come forward and certainly I think of it as a positive kind of measure that's it thank you foreign Kathy I'd like to be listed as a co-sponsor um I've had previous corporate experience where we used metrics uh extensive training and quality uh Improvement continuous quality improvement I've seen the benefit of this and I think it's very important that we sell it in a way that encompasses many of the information requests that are being made right now uh usually when someone asks for some data or information they're not thinking about performance uh measures they're not talking about metrics and so we've we've got to make sure that that it's integral to what people are thinking about for example today the chair of the Transportation Commission requested um some crash data pedestrian crash data and that data is actually included in the city administrators monthly newsletter so we get it monthly uh I requested it probably a year ago but there's no automated way to produce it so it's very labor intensive for for staff to use other reports like the ud10 crash data and in order to prepare this um and so let me see what I'm I'm sort of tired this evening but I just want us to be knowledgeable and sensitive to the fact that some of the resistance is not that people don't want to do it it's because we don't have the systems in place to produce this data and it's just it's amazing in this day and age that you've got to have someone look at a bunch of pieces of paper or screens and then transfer it somewhere else uh but that's actually what's happening and so again I'm a hundred percent behind it I've seen the value of it but some of the resistance is not because people don't want to it's just very very hard so and again I'd love to be a co-sponsor foreign yeah to follow on uh council member Griswold's comments there that was my one of my questions here is that are we aware of at this point in time if the city has the technology that's oh um that facilitates uh publishing I mean both collating um kpis from various organizations within the city within the city uh different departments and then packaging them in such a way that they're easily published to a website I come from the tech sector so I know how challenging and um how many different types of software packages are out there and how costly some of these software systems are and so um if the if the city does not currently have the A system that facilitates this um that will have to also be taken into account and budgeted for um I I also I I want to also say that I I am behind this uh this effort and I think the the rewarded um resolution is certainly an improvement um but uh a couple of things that um occurred to me in reading the what what we have for us right now um in the third whereas Clause um it it reads as though we're equating goals with kpis and when it says that you know uh uh policy objectives are best expressed in terms of smart goals also known as key performance indicators I think kpis are not the same thing as the goals that they support I think the the work that we're asking the city government to do here is taking our policy objectives and our strategic goals and translating those into kpis that we can then publish and make available to everyone and I think that's important that distinction is is important to make and should be reflected in the wording here um and then also just in that Clause where we say that policy objectives are are best expressed in terms of smart goals I think it's a debatable statement I I almost wonder if the use of smart goals I mean maybe just you know right now the city government thinks in terms of policy objectives and strategic goals um you know how they're phrased how they're how they're constructed like that's maybe more of an implementation detail that's best left to the the organizations that are tasked with taking what city council delivers to the city government and um and turn that into key performance indicators um I I feel like I personally feel like that would make for a stronger resolution um John Cowart yeah thank you um support the the kind of objective here of having more kind of like smart goals and key performance indicators I have just a lot of uncertainty though with some of the timelines based on what we've been doing with a circular economy and trying to get to specific uh metrics with that and the timeline and also kind of seeing just a little bit of what the OSI is trying to do around the sustainability dashboard it's it's really complicated work yes to be moving towards it but I really questioned of how this could be done in a year um and the kind of work that needs to be done to go through everything and identify it and figure out a platform that would support all of this um the timeline just doesn't I I don't know how that can be done thank you um John mursky just to respond to some of the comments first of all one of the reasons uh well first of all I recognize that the dates that are in the current resolution will likely be discussed further between council members and City leadership and potentially be changed one of the reasons why the dates are as they are and one of the reasons why I think it's important to act on this resolution now um maybe even with some of the imperfect language is what this does is it identifies the desire in the community hopefully hopefully it's supported also by council members um that this is needed um it would be then approved prior to uh the December uh meeting that Council has every year when it's talking about priorities that feed into the budgeting process so if if indeed resources are needed for this then you know it can be any number of different resources whether it's staff whether it's Consulting whether it's I.T platforms that can be included in the budget the budget then would be approved by May of next year and that then provides the resources necessary to meet the Target that is currently set at the end of next year and frankly I would be fine that I'm just speaking for myself if that was pushed out another half a year or whatever it is but that at least there is a time-bound expectation that something is done in terms of providing transparency on performance so I just wanted to to respond to that as far as the language and kpis metrics smart goals these are often used interchangeably perhaps incorrectly so um but what I'll I'll give you just a couple of examples of what I would call Key outputs that are impossible right now to really find on the city website um that was as was mentioned by council member Griswold it's impossible at least I can't find any public safety data I went to the police site today the police department I went to the performance metrics site the data that's posted there is 2018.
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foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign thank you foreign thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign [Music] foreign thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign thank you foreign foreign foreign foreign thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign I would like to resume this meeting of the Evesham Township Board of Education would you please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of God thank you at this time board member Mr lanzalotta will be reading the mission statement the mission of the Evesham Township School District is to provide excellent I'm sorry to promote to promote excellence in an environment that engages students in meaningful learning experiences in partnership with students dedicated staff families and Community the district provides a strong Educational Foundation that will Empower our students to achieve their unique potential Embrace self-directed lifelong learning develop the skills necessary for appropriate risk taking and responsible decision making respect themselves and others problem solved individually and collaboratively become contributing members of a diverse Global Society thank you Mr lanzalata as you end the towards the end of your tenure on board thank you I appreciate you doing that at this point in time we are going to be moving into presentations we have the annual School self self assessment and annual state of the school's presentation um Miss magulic the floor is yours okay good evening everybody um so we are presenting first the annual School HIV self-assessment summary so basically this is a report that we do annually as a school district um and I'll talk through kind of the process behind it timelines uh what each of the Schools rated themselves how grades come across and kind of next steps for that foreign so in terms of process so we have in each of our elementary and middle schools we have a school safety team uh the safety team really oversees everything related to climate they also have other initiatives they look at as it relates to like wellness as well as green initiatives but climate is kind of that overarching premise but under the anti-bullying Bill of Rights you are required to have a school safety team so that safety team is made up of different representatives of the school and they meet at different times throughout the year and one of the things they rate themselves on is actually number one you have a team number two the number of times that you meet and what that team is doing when you meet are you looking for Trends and patterns that are happening in the school are you looking to enhance the programs or initiatives that you have so basically one of the last meetings that they have each year it is their responsibility to give themselves a self-assessment on this rubric that I'll explain tonight so that that happened basically throughout May or June depend on the school and they kind of again looked at patterns assigned themselves ratings based on this rubric and then from there we wait till the system that New Jersey uses opens and then they enter those scores or those grades for each part of the assessment so that brings us down to the second one this summer the state releases those guidance documents any changes they make to the rubric any kind of directions or procedures and then later on in the summer each School actually will then submit that school self-assessment that they took for the year and it's always reflecting back on the previous year uh basically that brings us to tonight so I always give a presentation just to kind of review and go over all those different rules requirements scoring and then we have to then submit that to the state so the board as preemptively will kind of oversee this presentation and then they vote on us submitting our actual scores we'll do that tomorrow once we have approval from the board and then it goes from there the state then will actually it usually takes some time it varies years ago they used to have a quicker turnaround time it might have been January we saw the scores or February but the last several years it's really come out more in like May and June so you know we don't really know when those great assignments will come out but they do come out eventually and they'll certify and assign us a grade and then once that comes out from the state we have 10 days to release those grades so then once the release I usually talk about them with like word curriculum committee usually there's announcement at a board meeting all of our schools have requirements in terms of posting those grades and then um and then we go from there and cycle starts all over again so that's kind of the process in terms of what schools are rating themselves on it's these eight areas so the first one being harassment intimidation bullying what are your programs your approaches or other initiatives that you have and there are five different indicators within that one strand that they're scoring themselves for the second one is any kind of training that they have on each on Board of Ed approved HIV policies and procedures there's three different indicators there the third one is other staff instruction and training programs so are you sending your school safety team or representative to training how often do you do that does your anti-blunk specialist go to training or have meetings the next one is curriculum instruction on Hab in a related information and skills two indicators there number five is really specific to just hit Personnel do you have an anti-bullying specialist do you have an anti-bull and coordinator do you have school safety teams in all your schools from there it's School level Hib incidents in terms of reporting procedures so are you following those procedures that are identified in policy in terms of number of days how long that takes making sure that the information is shared with families number seven is the investigation procedures so are you following investigation procedures and then the last one is actually reporting out and that is connected to the grades so once you've got those grades did you actually post them on your website within 10 days and things like that so they're the eight different areas and you'll see there's a range of anywhere from two indicators to five then with the actual scoring so just like a rubric you're going to assign each one of those either a zero a one a two or a three so you see the zero means you did not meet those requirements at all one means you partially met two means you met and three means that you're actually exceeding what the requirements are from the state and basically after each School gives themselves a grade A School District grade comes by calculating the average of all the total scores from each school so we actually get a district grade as well so for last year if we look along the left this shows us all the different schools are listed and then each element those eight that I explained are across the top so element one two three all the way up to eight on the right side this is the total score for each school and then down across the bottom we just put the total possible points so when we say five indicators if you think about there's up to three you can get for each indicator so that would mean for element one there's a total of 15. element two same thing if I look there's three indicators so that means possible point of three each so there's a total of nine so again when we're looking just kind of District Trends and patterns you'll see if I look at my total score a range of scores anywhere from 72 to 76.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above