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[Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right I called I called to order the workshop for the Bullhead City Elementary School Board on Thursday December 5th or first sorry 2022 at right around 5 30 p.m roll call Corey Burgess is on his way he'll be here shortly Amanda amen here Charlene Diaz here anna Boyd here Melinda zabroski here all right Dr Stewart uh Charter well we have the pleasure of a presentation this evening from Elena Hildreth and her team will let her introduce them and they're going to share I'm not sure what but it looks like fun all right thank you very much Elena and this is Estella and Sheila and we're with Chartwells we thought they would be nice to present to you a mood boost program and just kind of talk about some of the fun things we've done this year so far um so I'll start it off and then Estella will kind of jump in and then we have Refreshments as well homemade pizza and then a special recipe for mood boost so we have plenty we didn't know who would show up or what so we have plenty um it should be kind of fun um so the do you want I guess the slide there you go okay um so uh we talked about that of the introduction sorry the microphone really throws me can I talk without it no no we're recording yeah okay okay is there any any way there's some real feedback to it step back okay so um all right maybe I'll talk lower microphones okay and I'll talk softer I am a loud talker that's why it's um it's a little crazy right next slide um so basically we kind of we really haven't had a chance to talk about what's really important to you as a school board what's important to the staff and just kind of the overall wellness policy I know I'm working with Jennifer on the updating the wellness policy we kind of see the students every day so we kind of get an idea of what they like they like pizza so we're serving pizza and they like a lot of the other fun Foods so um this is kind of just a topic just to throw out there we don't have to talk about it now but um you know we really strive for fresh food scratch cooking as best we can in the kitchens locally grown produce which surprisingly there's a slide later on that we've purchased so far 50 50 000 pounds of Just Produce since the beginning of the school year and 66 percent of it comes from Arizona California and Washington State so just unbeknownst to us we're using local produce and so there are other opportunities as the season train transforms that we could probably take advantage of more um student voice which we'll talk about where you've done some student choice later on and then mood boost is another one all right next slide this is just kind of a recap of what the national school lunch and National School breakfast program requires we as Chartwells we strive to exceed what the minimum standards are we use no trans fat no sat fat all of our menus are nutritionally analyzed or recipes are are done by a dietitian in a box and then we just kind of use it here so that way it is meeting the exceeding the expectations we could Source the products that are there they're all low fat um and what was the other um 100 whole grain that's what I want to mention okay next slide now this is kind of the fun part um we have Innovation programs we are you could next slide rolling out starting next week actually at Diamondback in Desert Valley December is spice it up so we're doing spice workshops and fresh herb workshops for the after school program at Desert Valley in Diamondback Tuesday is Desert Valley Wednesday is Diamondback where the students are going to be able to make their own recipes their own seasoning Blends and be able to touch and feel fresh basil dried basil for cilantro dried coriander and so forth so it'd be it'll be a lot of fun so they'll have takeaways as well and we hopefully will be able to roll out more after the second semester with the other schools and then um that was spice it up next slide next I kind of went ahead and then mood boost is the big Big Show um Desert Valley has agreed to allow us to roll out mood boost starting in January so Estella is going to kind of give you an introduction of what the kids have we currently do it at Camp Mojave so Cassie's when we were setting up her daughter was here I was all excited we're doing mood boost we're doing mood boost so um it's a very fun interactive program and Estella take it away hello everybody and thank you for allowing us to do this presentation for you as she said my name is Estella she lives out there in the back with us and we are an awesome threesome team so I'm going to let you know what we do for the children we started the mood boost program at Mojave Valley Elementary School District last year and it was with amazing results I've been back for three weeks and the kids when they see me walking into the cafeteria or on the campus they are just delighted it's mood boost day they say so to me that means that the program is working they're listening they're understanding and we're educating them a little bit more on the foods that they eat on a daily basis and as I said our purpose is to educate the students on how the foods we eat affect the moods over a period of time by selecting fresh fruits and vegetables for breakfast lunch and dinner we're providing your body with the most nutritious foods that can also affect their daily moods our feature today for you to All sample is going to be a a spinach cranberry salad and that mood is calm and these characters represent the moods that we are feeding with the recipes along with the characters there are what we call swag and that are those are the bracelets that say feed your mood and then it also stays I am confident each character like I said represents a mood confident calm happy strong alert and we rep we present one mood procession the kids come into the cafeteria the Banners are up the trading card posters are up the display is set up just like you see it and they go through the cafeteria line they get their lunch I put characters along the cafeteria lines so that they can see the characters as they're going through the cafeteria getting their food they sit down they eat their lunch and then after they eat their lunch I go up and do a presentation basically like what I've done for you I explain the recipe that we're going to be eating today the ingredients and how those ingredients can affect their moves um that's basically the gist of the program and like I said it's it's met with amazing results I believe initially that the children want the swag the stickers the bracelets the uh trade the trading cards but once they taste the recipes and they are allowed to taste them Our intention is to put these on the menu so that once it's on the menu they have already tasted it and they're more apt to eat it there's a lot of different recipes in here that are featuring a lot of different ingredients that they may not ever see at home I had one child tell me that she couldn't afford to get these type of ingredients at home and I told her we would menu it so we are reaching a great deal of children who may not see these types of things at home so as it stated up there they do get some of their most nutritious meals from the school district so we're proud with what we do and we are very pleased to see the um the Delight of the children once we are and and how we have set up and established a routine for Camp Mojave it's every Friday and so they look forward to the Friday dates and that's it if anybody has any questions I hope you enjoy what's in front of you awesome um along the same lines as as giving the kids choice and seeing getting feedback we rolled out uh it's called another program called student choice at both Bullhead middle and Fox Creek last month where we did some sampling during launch it was a Lotte corn a Southwest black bean quesadilla trying to get a feel for some additional vegetarian options and the kids really enjoyed it and it was on today's menu based on their voting so they voted and they liked it and so we put it on today's menu district-wide so we'll continue doing more stuff like that because they're the the kiddos are our customer we need to kind of know what they want and and kind of feed their needs so it's fun the Fox Creek kids were really good and so are the Bullhead now they had a really good time with the with the choices um all right a couple slides down to the unwavering partnership sorry kids there we go um I just wanted to point out that again once again this year at all locations we scored excellent from the health department which is a huge achievement um and so it's something to be very proud of next slide I talked about the produce thing but um sustainability in terms of of limiting the amount of waste repurposing uh Foods using fresh versus as canned we're just along that that lines um but really just trying to stay local okay um this is um a program that we've had since travels has been here it's called nutrislice This is where all of our menus and our nutritional analysis and allergens are run through and families can download the phone app and you can even do it through the um the internet on the computer and you could find out the allergens the nutritional analysis of all everything on the menu any day anywhere so that's just another feature that we offer next slide this was uh just a picture of the finishing bar that we have at Bullhead middle and at Fox the plans are to roll it out District wide by the end of the school year Diamondback rolled it out this past monday it was a huge success the kids really liked it the littler they it was hard to even expect the littler kids knew what to do they knew exactly what to do they self-served their their own fresh fruits and vegetables they had a great time um and then we did the family Vaca the family Thanksgiving event which is an annual event at Desert Valley and that was um before Thanksgiving and so those are just a couple pictures all right next one oh and this was a picture of the bar over at Diamondback so Desert Valley seems to be the next trial so I'll hit Cassandra up on that next slide um and these the next ones are just a couple fun photos of the staff and the pride that they take all of our staff our parents in the district they've had kids currently have kids or grandkids so they're they're entrenched they have committed and they have it's not just a job to them it's it's to see their kids every day next slide there's another fun one um okay so good news is meal counts are up breakfast lunch and after school snack are up over last year same time so it's it's it really it it stands up um to that we're meeting the needs of the students um and that they have a voice so it's kind of good news um next slide okay um this is the next part where if they're sorry I don't this the whole microwave microwave microphone really throws me um this is kind of where we kind of talk about what's next so the next slide um the finishing bars like I mentioned we're going to continue it all the schools rolling it out just keep the wave going so by the end of the school year all schools will have the finishing bar which is the self-serve fruits and vegetables continue the programs like we talked about mood boost Discovery kitchen and student Choice another neat opportunity we have have been given is the University of Arizona and Illinois State we're looking for remote sites for internships now that students can study online they could study from home they need remote internships to be able to complete their dietetic programs so both Arizona State University of Arizona and Illinois State have a line partnership with us so as students come in that need internships we are on the list which is great they can help with Community involvement their internships would range anywhere from three to 12 weeks they'd be in the schools doing nutrition Ed helping with Outsourcing Community projects anything that we could partner with to keep them engaged and to get their their credentials done also it's it's free to us and free to the district so it's kind of a great resource um we're going to use them at all the schools and then that's really it thank you is there any questions I don't know what the format would be but certainly can answer any questions we have pizza also um pepperoni and a vegetarian Yes we made over at Bullhead and brought it over thank you so much oh no this is awesome and it's good to see and I'm glad that the kids are responding and and especially the literals I mean if you get them going at the littles then we got them for Life yeah they're going to enjoy it and they're going to like their especially if they get to finish it themselves with the fruits and veggies they really there was the the little picture the picture that I used was from the one of the first lunches at Diamondback and she was so excited too the yogurt parfait and she had the carrots and she was so excited she was more thrilled I think I was taking a picture of her plate you know than anything else she was very proud of what she created so we did notice that waste was down so by them choosing what they want they didn't throw as much away so yeah are we allowed to audit these student orange shoes where I came from before it was very often the board would come um and tour and have lunch with the students and sit with them so certainly with or without us at your side more than happy to thank you I was just trying to make a backhanded compliment that was very good oh good thank you thank you well the first we started January 10th no the first Tuesday second Tuesday in January we start at Desert Valley with mood boost so come and enjoy anything else come on well thank you very much and thank you thank you that's wonderful I'm impressed I mean if the rest of the salad suddenly disappears it was not me yes yeah we haven't had that happier crew in the front row a long time it's a good Friendly Smiles right there next Wednesday we are presenting okay we have a excellent this one veggie cheesy or pepperoni I know where you're going yeah I knew where you were going I'm sorry well we've got white pepperoni right here Ricky does anyone want this vegetarian one okay you got one okay so I think and then would you like pepper pepperoni she wants pepperoni it sure does look at the difference in the pizza I always work 1.3 all right motion to a joint or during the workshop do we get more salad too I'll move that we adjour in the workshop all in favor aye Corey Burgess I am in Eamon I'm Charlene Diaz hi Anna Boyd I'm Melinda sabrowski all right we are adjourned I think so Anna because there was a pretty big bowl out there Elena what's the what's the dressing Elena what's the dressing it's really good yeah Elena what's the dressing apple cider vinegar on the training part on the back of the trading cards it's really good I call to order the regular meeting of Bullhead City Elementary School Board on Thursday December 1st 2022 at 6 pm broke off Cory Burgess here Amanda amen here Charlene Diaz here anna Boyd here Linda zabroski here hello president please join me for pledge of allegiance of the United States citizens president if you please sign into the back item 2.5 presentations and proclamations Dr Stewart Mr President and board members we have with us this evening Terry Tomlinson from Legacy foundation and I'm sorry I don't know the gentleman's name but we will learn it and uh Cherie um Cherie Norris who is our apparently liaison because we have a presentation from Legacy so um if you all will come on up uh Cherie and Terry and come on up and talk a little bit and in the microphone and then we'll come down and get a photo up good evening president Burgess board members Carolyn I'm Terry Tomlinson with the Legacy foundation and with me tonight is one of our board members Scott Seabury and do you want to talk about why we're doing what we're doing sure okay we want to give two thousand dollars for the McKinney vento program we think it's a really great program that you guys are doing so we have this check here that we want to and we'll get you in we'll do that in a second that'd be nice if Cherie would uh remind the board of what McKinney had told us and why you're helping hello Sherry Norris here uh the McKinney Bento uh helps it's a program uh federally mandated in schools to help transitional families and youth experiencing homelessness uh there's four different classifications whether they're living in hotel motels if they are unsheltered living in shelters whether domestic or community and uh living doubled up more than one family to a home which is about 90 percent of our cases currently in our Elementary District Pre-K to eighth grade we have 91 students currently experiencing homelessness with an additional 20 siblings or yeah 20 siblings under the age of five that are not in school yet so with uh sponsorships like this and wonderful people of our community we're able to help our families this money will go towards stocking up a food pantry to help get our families through winter breaks Thanksgiving breaks things like that when they are not able to have access to food so thank you and I think you also provide clothing for them clothing hygiene products school supplies school uniforms jackets everything they need if um if you all were to visit uh the old Board Room in the other building that we used as a training room uh it is now her warehouse and uh and uh there are lots of things there but with this many families we need lots of things so yeah um and a food pantry is is a new addition so we are grateful perfect yeah thank you very much thank you Jerry did you have something else we just wanted to say you know it's it's our pleasure to support great causes like this in the community and I know Scott is all about helping out you know especially McKinney Bento we donated down to the high school district to help them out and we wanted to make sure that the Elementary District you know got some help as well but we're you know for me and I speak personally it's such an honor to be part of Legacy foundation and and to to work with great guys like Scott Seabury so um we're just happy to help be in the community yeah I'd like to how do you keep us in mind for future donations as well okay that is an open lineup yeah right that doesn't get any better than that not at all so yeah so let's go down and we'll get some pictures all right and here I'm going to give you that it's over here only because the table they all have a little more flexibility [Music] I know yeah okay here we go folks if you'll bear with me just because of the podium I'm going to move in a couple different angles just to get the best shot okay so we'll leave this on three one two three one two three and Ethan let me know if I'm blocking your shot okay three years one two three and one more one two three thank you everybody thanks guys foreign and we never run out of or we never become tired of talking about how much we appreciate our Community Partners because we have a lot of them correct yeah absolutely thank you guys for coming by yes thank you thank you all right item 2.6 call to the public this the time this is the time the public may speak to the governing board regarding issues within the jurisdiction of the governing board and a subject to reasonable time space and Mana restrictions is a governing board May establish comments will be limited to three minutes per individual unless specifically waived by the governing board at the conclusion of the call of the public individual members of the governing board May respond to criticism made by those who've addressed the board may I ask the governing board Mass staff review a matter or mass of the matter be placed on a future agenda however the governing board cannot take action on matters that have not been noticed in advance as part of the agenda we have one call to the public uh Fred Rushton good evening Dr Stewart president Burgess board members I just have a couple of questions and I wanted to make sure that they got mentioned they probably will be answered I understand Dr Stewart's going to make a presentation about this but I'm referring specifically to agenda item 5.3 regarding the reallocation of Esser II funding and I believe I understand the intent that Dr Stewart posted in her notice already but I I just did have a couple of questions how is the external vendor selected what are their qualifications and what is their track record like what what are the results that they have provided to other school districts in similar situation so I just was hoping to get those questions answered thank you yes we can right great that's our only call to the public moving on to 2.7 adoption and agenda agenda I need a motion to adopt I move to adopt the agenda as presented Amanda amen I'll suck in that motion Charlene Diaz all in favor aye Corey Burgess I'm at Eamon aye Charlene Diaz hi Anna Boyd I'm Melinda sobrowski so I moved item 2.8 donations uh we'd like to thank our community members who always step up and help us as we got to see this evening but we have a few others we'd like to make sure that we acknowledge Fox Creek Junior High received Turkey Trot ingredients for the 1117 event which included a box of stuffing and cans of cranberry sauce at an estimated value of 23.26 from Bullhead City Safeway pies at an estimated value of 25 from Fort Mohave Safeway two turkeys at a value of 32.21 cents from Bullhead City Smiths and two turkeys at 37 31 cents for Fort Mohave Smith uh thank you community for the how you help our programs out we truly appreciate it item 2.9 superintendent reports Dr Stewart Mr President and board members um I'll note first that you don't have student account and discipline information Jenny Becker who is our space coordinator and provides those data has been out all week and in fact was out part of last week so um and she is the one who she's the guru for the Synergy data so we'll we'll make sure that you have updated things for January um I'd like to actually do a couple of uh of these items rather than just refer to them um so um Cass if you would put up the work ticket report and make it plenty big there you go um you all asked said that the last one was confusing and it was um so I went back to the drawing board and went back to the data and um and so until all of the ABM work orders are cleared you're going to see our ABM report each month in addition to what's happening with our own work orders in those so in the first line you can see that when we took over on October 10th there were 1075 work orders in uh and during those 10 days before we took over 90 new ones had been put into the system for ABM during the rest of the month our our new facilities Department cleared 398 of those and if you notice on the notes on the right side 136 of those happen to actually be work orders that had to do with the high school district and not with our district so that left 767 of the work orders open uh from that that ABM had left us with on the next line then you can see what our facilities Department uh addressed in October so we had none carried over because we were just starting we had 255 new work orders in October and so in addition to the 398 uh that were closed for ABM our of our own work orders 214 were closed so we're talking over 700 over 700 work orders were closed and and that includes that 136 that really we didn't even do anything with so of our own work orders 41 were left open at the end of October for November you see that those numbers in the open column for October then carry start the the data for November um so no new work orders obviously for ABM 83 of those were closed leaving 684 open and um the 41 of that were carried over for our facilities Department there were 121 new ones 123 were closed in addition to the 83 from ABM leaving 39.
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girl yeah well good evening we're going to get started at seven o'clock thanks for being here coming out on a cold night I know there's a lot of school activities going on at different places tonight so appreciate those of you that were able to be here and learn a little bit about how we're accommodating growth in Avon schools we're also live streaming this on our YouTube channel so all of the information that you're going to see tonight is on our website we've done some short videos going through this presentation but really appreciate you being here and giving us your input on growth models as we look ahead to the future of Avon schools my name is Scott Windham I'm superintendent here in Avon and I've got a couple people that I'm going to introduce that will help with this presentation as we go through so Dr Dustin Lemay he's one of our directors of teaching and learning Carrie alday director of teaching and learning and then Dr Michael Sullivan assistant superintendent they'll all play a part in our presentation today so with that we will jump in and get going the goals for our president station tonight are we'll review updated enrollment growth and demographic information about projected future growth for Avon schools we'll review three models that we've developed to accommodate enrollment growth none of the models that you're going to see will take effect until the 25-26 school year building buildings takes time building schools takes time so in general they say it takes about two years to build a school or add on to a school renovate a school those kinds of things so we've got to give ourselves time to go through that process so we would be aiming for the 25-26 school year before anything would take effect and you'll see a little bit more about that timeline in the future uh in a future slide we have three strategic goals as a school corporation number one is improving student achievement number two is creating opportunities for students that develop critical thinkers and number three is to support the whole child and what we want to make sure we have is spaces in our facilities and in our buildings that accommodate those three goals that have been established for us by our school board these goals really Drive everything we do and Facilities do play an important part in what our teachers are able to do on a daily basis with their students so if you're like me when you um your your first place to live as a family may be in an apartment that was my my wife and I when we got married we lived in a park in an apartment that's where many of us start our families and then over time maybe you decide it's time to find a home your family's starting to grow you decide to find a home and hopefully uh looking in a great Community like Avon what ends up happening and maybe the family just keeps growing and keeps growing and keeps growing that's what is happening in our schools right now we just continually are adding students and continuing to grow in a home what you might do as your family grows is you might convert the office into another bedroom you might Park your cars outside so that you can use the garage as living space you maximize every nook and every cranny and that's really what we've done in Avon schools and you'll hear a little bit more about that as a family many times our goal is to pay off our house be debt free our kids go off to college our kids leave the home and and we no longer have that debt that's really not a possibility in a growing School District where students just keep coming and families just keep moving to Avon and many moving here for our schools so as a school we need to to continue to have space to accommodate students and and serve the growing numbers of students that we have I'll say this again in the presentation later most school districts in the state of Indiana are declining in enrollment we are we are one of the few that is growing in enrollment these conversations that we're having even though they're hard to talk about change and to talk about change possibly changing the structure of our school district as you'll see in a couple of the models those are better conversations than what most communities around the state are having which is our declining enrollment cutting programs cutting teachers consolidating schools those are really really tough conversations we get to have growth conversations and so uh that and that's just a testament to the hard work of our teachers and our staff that have made our schools a great place that people want to continue to come the last time that we built a new school and we opened a new school in Avon was River Birch Elementary River Birch opened in 2010 so over the course of the last 12 years we've grown over 2 100 students in that time since we built a new school so our school board has been very strategic over those 12 years to allow us to delay the need for a new a new school some of the strategies that we have taken to go 12 years without building a new school are number one expanding our smaller schools so over the last few years we have enlarged Sycamore we've enlarged Hickory we've significantly expanded Maple we renovated this building that we're sitting in tonight White Oak White Oak was built in the 1960s and really couldn't function as an elementary the size that we wanted our elementaries to become and an elementary of today's standards with as old as it was so what we decided to do with this building was make it a preschool Center that got preschool centralized in one building and freed up classroom space in our elementaries that were being occupied by preschool programs um so we've also redistricted some new subdivisions you'll hear a little bit more about that in just a second we've repurposed space we're maximizing every space possible that we have um there is lots of information on our website about Avon High School and the project that's underway at Avon High School that will grow that building to accommodate about 4 000 students plans are already underway for the expansion of pine tree that would be very similar to Hickory and Sycamore and we've been able to do all those projects with no increase to the taxpayer and no referendum funds and those are some of the key things that have allowed us to go 12 years without building a new school I'm going to let Dr Sullivan talk a little bit about our enrollment growth and some of the forecasts that we have as we plan for the future thank you Dr Windham uh this slide just confirms that Avon schools is the third fasting growing District in our state we've added 536 students from 2019 to 2021.
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very good interested um [Music] thank you yeah that's right foreign thank you and to the Republic for which it stands for one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for us I call this meeting's honor at 6 36 um separation for Brown County Middle School teacher Jonathan Stevens effective November 29 2022 and Brown County high school custodian James Woods effective November 18 2022.
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there's even more you know things that people want and then also I think it's survey question number two um downtown parks are the six where rated as the sixth most used type of Park that comes after neighborhood parks uh Farmers Market natural areas the B2B Trail and Ergo Cascades and after that came downtown parks so people are using it but we don't have enough of them so not having enough of them gets back to you know my request to put the table in there showing how what opacity of parks there are on the Central Business area and so I just I just would encourage you to request those two changes when you give your feedback back to the parks department about the pros plan thank you very much thank you Mrs Brower Heather are there any other callers Heather you're muted sorry yes we do the person with the phone number ending in 534 you should be able to talk now hello this is Tom stahlberg calling from Lower Town in Ann Arbor I'd like to support what the other two callers said uh by the way I'm on the bicentennial committee uh we are working uh under no no our city administrator along with the Ann Arbor District Library uh and uh pretty powerful group of people there and when I say powerful I mean in terms of capability uh so I'm really looking forward to being able to plan over the next year for the bicentennial in 2024 there'll be events scheduled throughout the year of 2024 and I'm looking forward to having some of those events in our center of the city uh something I'd like to re reinforce in terms of the need for park space downtown and have that reflected in the prose plan is the current density that's being developed downtown uh right now 616 East Washington's under construction that will be the tallest building built uh in over 50 years and uh on the old y lot right across the street from uh Library and that block uh we have an approval for an up to 275 foot tall building which would be uh much taller than 616 East Washington is about 205 feet and there's more coming and we know the standard was just completed there's plans to build uh the city to build on the polio lot uh I know the other private development downtown too and uh Council I guess is taking a look uh at least having a resolution to encourage the uh some other potential development on the Federal Building uh right on the same block as the old y lot next to the transit center all the people that might be moving downtown that are likely to be moving downtown are certainly entitled to a park space there as well as the rest of the citizens I just came back from Stratford Ontario uh my other home and we got one there it's a city of 32 000 people and it took a while and some couple of iterations of uh drawing up plans and having the citizens involved and looking at different plants and there's some brilliant ideas that were far out there and expensive and there were some more more modest ideas and one of the more modest ones was selected um and it's worked out well there's a carousel right now uh in the back of town hall right there in their Market Square and there'll be other holiday festivities celebrated there so they can do it we can do it I've seen it happen and I'm really encouraged by the work that your committee has been doing so I hope that can be uh dovetailed and tailored into the prose plan and make it as strong as possible that we will have park space communal space whatever it looks like we don't know about in the heart of our city that we can all celebrate together during our Bicentennial in 2024 or at least the beginning of what it might be thank you thank you Mr Stoller thanks for calling in anyone else Heather that is it for now okay excellent thank you so much uh can I just say I'm sorry I got thrown off the Heather did you get me down Jeffy um oh yeah you were thrown off for a minute but you're back okay great I'll mark you is here thank you all right okay well we have uh uh robust agenda this evening uh and the first uh item on the agenda is uh to hear uh from our uh new I guess sort of new uh by comparison he's been around a little while in his current role uh Library director uh and I asked him uh we've had a chance to converse a few times and asked him if he would come and speak to us a little bit about the events that the library has done in particularly the outside events uh uh and they are uh they've been really um knocking it out of the park with things and so I just wanted to if I turn over to you Eli thank you so much for being here certainly thank you for the invitation Adam how long would you like me to speak I want to make sure I don't set your agenda behind it's uh you know 10 minutes or less I suppose that's great okay so just to kind of uh set the stage because often uh people don't necessarily understand the scope of the Ann Arbor District Library uh we are a organization operates seven locations we serve a service population of 172 000 people that includes the city of Ann Arbor and parts of seven townships so the jurisdiction of the Ann Arbor District Library is larger than the city of Ann Arbor we serve a larger population than the city of Ann Arbor does as well we operate on an annual revenue of about 20 million dollars a year we employ 230 employees across all of our locations and in 2019 our last sort of pre-pandemic year we produced 2500 events for the public uh just in the 2019-20 of the 2018-2019 fiscal year uh at those 2500 events we had about 170 000 attendees across all of those events and in that same year we had 1.7 million visits to all of our facilities including 600 000 visits just to the downtown library which is about the number of people who visit the big house annually if you can out the number of people that actually show up as opposed to what the scoreboard says so if you uh it's easy to say to somebody is a major anchor for the community and we have a lot of things going on here um so what we've actually done uh Outdoors on the uh near the downtown library uh back in 2017 when there was the uh near Eclipse uh in the middle of the summer we had a large event that uh took over the entire parking lot and uh it was we had easily a thousand fifteen hundred people there uh it was total madhouse it was a very underwhelming event because it was not much of an eclipse uh considering how far away we were there was absolute mad house attempting to get the eclipse glasses The Limited Supply that we had distributed out to everyone but once everyone saw that it wasn't really all that exciting to look at we had a wonderful time everybody had a great time out on the event but it was also um you know we were kind of spilling over the edges uh it was a uh uh a little bit too not quite enough space for the audience that it attended um we also just in summer of 2021 just when we were starting to do programming again and still very focused on doing programming exclusively Outdoors to minimize coveted risk we did a Richard Simmons sweating with the oldies event projected on the side of our building and we used the street itself Library Lane for we had an audience of about 60 or 70 young people who love Richard Simmons came and did a routine along with him that was not here live of course it was just watching a video but many of them were dressed up and it was a very successful event we had a good time there and those are really the only two events that we've done that use any space that isn't our property at the bottom of the ramp on the North side facing the center of the city we do have what we call the pad a fairly decently sized concrete space we set up a tent on that space uh fairly frequently for uh library story times particularly during the pandemic when we were trying to avoid doing those indoors that's a tent space that's roughly 10 by 40.
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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 2.4 do I have a motion motion by Mr canthan second by Ms Capello any questions or comments roll call please this is Capella yes Mr physicaro yes Mr Canton yes Mrs null yes Miss Lee yes Mr meekin yes this is Ryan Yes motion carries thank you we'll see you at approximately 7 30.
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and so you can see how those numbers now move down to the next month yeah they're just flip-flops oh you know what I caught that on when I was looking at it today and I did not come back and put it in here I'm sorry yes flip those numbers up please flip those numbers over so you can see this allows you to see then how many of the ABM old work orders are being are being handled by our folks in addition to any new work orders I also added for you this graph that is created by the little program that that we use to control that data and I thought you'd be really interested in seeing um the ups and downs of these and and so what comes in and what goes out I left the reordered reopened line on there we can put some of those others on but they don't really help us they just confuse the graph but the reopen because I wanted to explain to you that sometimes they go and they and they repair something and they've started the repair but then they need parts and so then they can't complete the repair so they can't CL they might or might not close the order if they left the whatever it is let's say it's a sink they've left it in working order but they need to come back later and replace say faucets or something so they open it was opened they did some work on it and closed it ordered the parts and then came back and reopened it to complete the job so you can see that there are some things that get reopened but you're also probably noticing that on some days there are lots of things closed and on other days not so much and that has to do with the nature of the work that's being done if it's if we have six work orders that have to do with changing light bulbs you close six six work orders pretty darn fast on the other hand the water heater in this building was having some problems and Mark King who is our new plumber it was a six hour job to uh to make the repairs and undo and redo some things that had been done incorrectly in the installation of that water heater and the recirculator so I'll give an example it has a recirculator which means that the hot water is constantly recirculated is supposed to be constantly recirculated through the hot water pipes in the building so that you don't have to wait when you turn on a hot water faucet well one of the things they found when they were working on trying to figure out what was going on with that water heater is that the recirculator was installed backwards which explains why we've never had hot water in this building since 2018 when that was installed yeah so so for instance on this graph where the Green Dot is like down at two it's because our people have had a couple of really time-consuming jobs to do on that day and didn't get so many done so I mean even if it was an average earlier where it says that they opened 121 but closed 123 in that same absolutely brain like that's the progress that we're looking for exactly as long as we're closing more than we're opening or having it reopen then that's showing that we're progressing and that's what we need that is what we need this is much easier to read for sure okay and I and I will each month give you this graph as well because I I find it interesting to see the the ups and the downs and the and the um those kinds of things as well so um so I wanted you to see the change and was hopeful that it was would address what you wanted addressed with this um if you'll put up the project tracker please this you saw last month and I've updated a couple of things on it and I will tell you probably the best update is that those several fence issues starting down with um and the security entrance at Bullhead City Middle School so bring your arrow down just a little bit past right there so those fencing things we put out the purchase orders today we got quotes and made decisions and those fencing issues all of them and the um and the entrance to uh the revised entrance to the middle school all of those purchase orders went out today I did put in front of you page two from my memo last month when I was asking you to consider excuse me to approve us using Capital unrestricted capital for these um for these projects very interesting to me that and I was using data that Mark had rounded up Mark Scott had rounded up for instance what the what we thought the cost was going to be per foot for chain link or what we thought uh a cubic yard of concrete would cost or whatever and so you can see in red what the actual quotes came in as so in some cases I was right on but in most cases I was either over or under the good news is that those numbers add up to only a hundred and two thousand dollars so um significantly under well the 160 that I had said there also included the work on the playground at Desert Valley the preschool playground but it saves us some money because it's even under it's under what these numbers say and I will come back to you next month with some more information about that playground because I don't know how it didn't even occur to me that there's going to be some labor involved in installing all of that equipment and I did not include that in the original request to you so I will bring that back to you next month with much better data but yes I'm I'm actually pretty pleased with these numbers I think that they're reasonable for the jobs that we're that we're having done and so those are now on the chart not just on the left side but they're also reflected in the middle okay the other piece of information that I wanted to share with you is the one that has to do with gym membership and um a little history for many many years in this District the district paid for gym membership at Bullhead City Health Club for any employees and uh two years ago I just rather arbitrarily thinking that it wasn't being used very much just stopped it understandably there was backlash because there were people using it and so we put out a questionnaire to employees about about using gym memberships and reinstated it but we also had requests at the time for could we also consider a gym membership at Planet Fitness so uh Kim at the time did all the research we got it set up and Bullhead City Health Club gave us a a corporate rate so it could be all of our employees and it was a lump sum and we found out how many of our employees were interested in Planet Fitness which was about 50.
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this colorful slide shows the areas we've redistricted if you can see the four circled housing developments they have the students who attend schools that are outside of their natural boundaries this is because the boundary schools are at capacity this means some students that would normally attend Maple will attend Sycamore and three housing areas that would normally attend cedar or hickory are now attending pine tree because Maple Cedar and Hickory are at capacity and Sycamore and pine tree have space to further illustrate our enrollment growth this map will show 12 new housing developments that are in progress there are three that are in progress in River Birch's boundary two within Maple's boundary one in pine trees boundary three and Cedar and three in hickory's boundary so again a total of 12 new housing developments this may be a familiar slide that shows our projected growth if you look at 2223 it says that this year we should have ten thousand five hundred and twenty students actually we have about 120 less but this is an aggressive forecast you can also see that by 2627 we will have eclipse the 11 000 student Mark and by 3132 will have more than 12 000 students this slide shows how we're currently capturing more space by using Portables at East West Maple Hickory pine tree and Cedar thank you so if you've been around to Avon uh over the last few years we redistricted when we enlarged Maple Sycamore and Hickory so that was going into the 2020-21 school year redistricting is not an exact science we have a large committee that's made up of principles and parents representing all of our elementaries that helps us redistrict you can see on here where we estimated uh enrollment to be at all of our schools our k-6 K4 schools excuse me when we redistricted and what their actual enrollment is so you can see there's some schools where we have grown more than what we thought we were going to grow two years ago Cedar Hickory Maple being three prime examples that have grown significantly faster than we projected they would grow during redistricting you can also see pine tree we underestimated the enrollment at Pine Tree which is why as Dr Sullivan shared we've redistricted three new subdivisions to go to Pine Tree in the near future as homes are developed there in some growing School Districts The approach that they would take to enrollment growth is to just make class sizes larger so instead of having 22 or 23 students in a classroom you might have 25 26 27 students in a classroom that is not the approach that we are want to take in Avon because our community supported a referendum in 2018 and one of the primary focuses of that referendum was reducing our class sizes so you can see on this chart we've hit our class size targets at the elementary Intermediate Middle School level exactly or under where we projected that they would be as a result of the referendum and we've been able to do that and decrease the referendum tax rate since it was approved in 2018 so the voters approved a tax rate of 35 cents in 2018 but our school board has never taken the full amount of that tax and it actually has decreased every year since the referendum passed to where the rate that we as Washington Township homeowners were paying in 2022 is 29 percent less than what the voters approved in 2018.
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[Music] Middle School teacher Jonathan Stevens and High School second discussions yes yes yes sorry next is recognition physician comments from the audience anything not already on the agenda at this time all right presentation that's just thank you thank you let's take a few moments just to kind of get more a few updates as far as what's going on um we'll start off we have a student's uh you know uh short this week but a few white decisions who is our community corporation uh she worked with our students foreign reviews on them Eagle manufacturing has both exponentially as a program and business as a student-one business participants are always busy and learning new ways to make the program Source legal manufacturing started in 2017 as a single student extracurricular Venture like we mentioned earlier it's since expanded and continues to grow so much so that the middle school started its own programs you have manufacturing you just said to be a foundation class for students with an interest in joining angle Manufacturing it's always fun to chat about you and Manufacturing and the other business related courses here at the high school the hope is that students find a path that they really want to use our early entrance thanks Madeline Eagle manufacturing students do really great things and it's nice to see so much success come from a program that's only been around for five years I agree it's great to see the opportunities students are taking advantage of during their time in Brown County Switching gears are always athletic programs offered here at the high school the last few years the addition of a student-run club and the programs has continued to become more and more popular the gift is not really inside Brown County offers many different sports throughout the year in addition to this Sports have sprouted student organized clubs and a development program set to prepare our athletes for the field mentally and physically I'm joined by Ava Sanders one of the organizers of the way of evil the student Bible club that house is also important to all sports hi Ava what is your reason for creating energy because there is a lack of student involvement within our school and we wanted more people to show two games and support us as athletes and we just felt like it was something that was in and for people who don't know what the way the eagle is how would you describe it I would describe as a club and it's kind of like a family that brings together all students to support our students and they know each other thanks the school has added programs year round to help build stronger athletes the athletic development program started as a way for athletes and non-athletes to get a pre-aid credit as well as get stronger in the up season we'll have more in that a little later but for now let's send it back to beyond the studio local Brown County students if they're more interested in staying in the field we're going to send things over to Joey Dennison for a look at what students can get into when it comes to Performing Arts Joey hi my name is uh Joey Dennison I am the technical director for the theater that you see here I just wanted to take a second to tell you about all the awesome things that we do here so first of all we have many great opportunities for our students both in learning and in leadership we have lights we have sound we have building and construction for the three Productions that we put on a year we have a musical in the spring we have a play in the fall and we've actually started doing a production for younger kids other Performing Arts that we have at Brown County include our band which has five different levels of band ranging from anything getting banned to Wind Ensemble jazz band basically any type of music that you would want to play when you have here at around County um it's excellent for leadership as well because you have to take the initiative to learn your parts and be part of a whole from the singing side we have a very well developed choir that acquired also a Rhapsody show choir where we sing and dance and we compete as well as participate in our musicals thank you back to you chase thanks Jerry London did you also know that eight of our main members were recently slided to stay in India and band Masters associations all Mr donor Dayton I did hear that I know they only had about six hours to rehearse the entire concert I also know the concert went really well according to band director Mr Finn just in the spring musical has been announced Brown County High School students will perform Shrek the new school this spring up next on our broadcast we're taking a deeper look into how Brown County is sitting well-rounding students to the real world well their next step is College of the workforce Brown County offers unique classes like business and marketing let's learn more about those classes hi my name is Anna and keys I'm here with Miss Crowell who teaches Business and Entrepreneurship Miss Kroll what makes these classes so unique for a high school these classes are so unique for high school because students get to actually experience companies in real life situations they get to do case studies they get to Deep dive into certain careers and in my classes I forget to take them into Nashville talk to actual customers and get to people watch and it's just really neat what can students take away after high school that they can use life well in my classes and two of my Pathways this is Administration and marketing their dual credit pathways through Ivy Tech and so the cool program about that is that to do even if they aren't college-bound then you step on their resume that they have some college and so that's going to put them leave the bounce ahead of someone that hasn't had that experience so that's unique to a Brown County student for these classes and then for entrepreneurship they're really complaint in these classes is that they get to create prototypes pitch those prototypes of their unique products that they've created and then also with that they get to then create multiples of those products and sell those products in the marketplace thanks Miss Kroll we'll send it back to you guys although we could spend the rest of the day chatting about other ways Brown County is soaring and for students for their next phase of their life we are outside we'll let our principal tell you more about the unique offerings here at Brown County High School thanks for joining us [Music] so last year I gave a presentation on our program to study I'm looking updates so uh remember we have all these programs to study construction engineering principal achieving visual design business administration Marketing sales entrepreneurship biomed computer science and urban Shadow and so uh last year we were working on these programs of study as far as developing them and also creating these Pathways for our students to be able to be a part of of these these courses and so the updates of this is that one goal we have uh this school year was to get all of our ninth grade students enroll into a pathway so I feel like it was very helpful for you to kind of see the work that we've done to get to what will the students actually chose and so uh of our 9th grade class this school year 37 of our students have chosen to go to Childhood 23 of course construction 21 in Precision Machining and biomed each 20 in business management 20 in engineering digital design 16 your science nine so it's it's a nice little uh offering for for our students and so we were both in the surprised to see some of our students really be interested in the childhood and construction liberal arts so in this situation that we have in the local pathway which we were working with developing which is the service art pathway it's still in the process of getting designed because if I don't I mean I wouldn't have picked any of those either now or then right so they're and I don't want to forget that liberal arts is still so sen is important but there are a lot of other paths too so I guess that was fine and so so you liberal arts will be considered with an instant guitars include uh theater uh band choir music I guess I can see that Performing Arts there where's history right well I think a lot of those things are invited they're embedded because again it's the situation you think about what you want to think about the history I think about non-fiction non-fiction the ability to be able to think critically and so that's what we work on with other District classes as being able to take you know those restricted thinking skills being able to take uh some of those sort of ideas and so you know that's all embedded in some of these courses and so but again we've got to remember that this is just step one of the work that we're doing to be able to create Pathways with everything we were doing right now is trying to relate as well and so so this is what we've been working with as of last year so within a short period of time of 12 months foreign doesn't like those choices I mean do we do we force them into account and is that like you're a ninth grader you need to go and choose one of these even if it really is you know your name we all know we've been forced into those choices or is it like you'd like you to choose a path here are the choices we have and they later and this is not limited to the C4 operations so let's say the students because we kind of use it for these courses as electives and so what happens is of course the students can also take electives and and you know art and um you know music other courses you just talked about but along with this is we're asking everyone of our students to please choose one of these classes to go one of these passwords to go into take a principles course and to get an experience so if a student enters in let's say into engineering they say you know what this is my jam I love this I want to continue on with content trigger a and then concentrator B to fulfill the Catholic rate but I think in the engineering and they did the principles course and they think you know what that's not for me and what happens is they can then jump to their sophomore year and go to a different uh pathway and just experience it begins of course with even Junior at that point in time they can then go through C4 which opened up more opportunities which be off campus so this is kind of like an introduction to some opportunities we were able to host in-house but then if there's something that they're not really interested you know in-house then they can go into the default path they're taking care right there's culinary arts welding criminals and stuff so let's just do a quick update as far as some work that we've done uh one thing I want to share with the board uh also that we're reporting them on right now to try to to improve so school safety is always one of the most important things we're working on uh at the schools and so um quick goal we would go to school that was really working well with our team and we're hopefully uh by the end of the school year we'll beat this goal but it has to reduce the number of referrals to the office for students using uh uh bait uh vaporizers or or downtons at the high school so some data to kind of share with me the report was able to pull um over the course of the last four Prime Ministers which would be you know a year and a third um we've confiscated um a total of 78 uh Vapes or dividends over the course of the last four four Prime Ministers now of those 78 deaths that we were based that we would compensate those belong to 57 students which makes about 90 of the student population so we're in the business of prevention and so one of the goals as far as prevention is is that we feel like that the number one area where we confiscate these things as far as you know delivering them in school that are being used is the restrooms locker rooms so one of the goals is by this January hopefully it may be push back a little bit uh people still doing research on the type of detectors we want to go with but the goal is to install install six uh Vape detectors in restrooms and locker rooms here to high school and the one thing that I we've learned with high school kids is when we advertise that we're able to to detect um these types of things disease detectors uh it'll hopefully the goal is is reduce the use of the school um you know or in this case with the big protectors they'll be linked directly to my cell phones and cell phone and we get a sense that a report to the the device that it is um then we can be there within 15 20 30 seconds to be able to check out the space and make sure it's um you know we I talked to uh several uh principals in the district uh District but in our conference and the one that they shared with with me is highly effective as far as being able to Institute or the tour on the use of these these devices within the restrooms and what groups so right now we're working with Performance Services they're actually working and testing some of these detectors to figure out which ones are doing the best for our situation so that's what we're working on right now and so um yeah so more information to come on that but like I said we're just trying to prevent and reduce the use they're really not yeah hey you know what looking with John 2 is we really try to educate students as well as far as prevention piece and so as far as adapt bins um we've seen a drastically fine since last year last year we we were able to confiscate uh nine of the defense last year which usually have a place of THC uh we have none of those this year and so right now we're still working on trying to reduce the amount of Vapes here at the high school where is it where is education provided to the students about uh we had um we had [Music] she came in and gave presentations to the students along with um would have been Liz was for that last year as well and as far as being able to put the students down to the auditorium and she just provided information as part of what happens two ones when you've used vaporizers and I think there was like the popular effect that really pushed they were kind of getting the students some information as far as what really happens because the kids are living this important I mean I think that the advertisement on stage that that is really out there is they really feel like there's no harm to the user to the use of these statements and so I think the biggest thing we could do one with the detectors is just education and so uh yes school safety Specialists so I am a school system specialist I have been for probably the last uh 16 years and so uh along with that Mr Rooter is also a school safety specialist Mr Hutchins he will be as well as part of three of us in high school and what that means is here and so for example this year uh in most years uh outside the pandemic we go up to Indianapolis and it's usually a two-day training uh every year and you actually go through the basic training first which is actually three days of training I want you to do basically you do entertainment training which is two days every every school year and so they take us through all kinds of different training on um you know prevention you know it can be related all the way from drug use to uh to physical disasters to make disasters uh all those different types of scenarios uh they teach them how to properly Implement table tops so we can train our teachers training our students and those types of things and so that's an example of what we do through these school safety specialist program which is sponsored by the individual education so actually I would say this that this this kind of strategy strong Martino speakers is India is a nation in education as far as school safety and creating specialist people in the United States so yeah it's one of our district um three to five year objectives goals under that priority of School Safety and Security so just ensuring that we've got multiple people across the entire District that that are Advanced Community Specialists so and then you know Mr Steele is our art district safety first so question how how do we align all of that with the service department I mean how's that well that's the great thing about the school safety specialist program is is that when you go to the training you'll see probably somewhere around 60 70 of the population as far as being a school Personnel but about 11 30 to 40 of the population are actually law enforcement and so I I really believe you know having an opportunity for Sheriff's Department also um so do you bring that information in back here and then are we changing our policies correct our education with the teachers and how does that what does that look like every year we're required to update the school uh all of our school plans the division to the district plan that's what we do is we bring that information back to be able to to update those plans and also to be able to change the way we train our teachers and so one thing that we do a lot now at the high school for sure we do a lot more table tops than we used to do and these kind of discussions with teachers as far as the mirrors what would you do if and so of course we're also a house school of relationship students so we've done that kind of work with our teachers as far as what to do in the event of you know you know being a human right are we doing else training to the kids still and I like nearly here twice a year uh drills through our drills and so we have certain materials we have to conduct uh usually have to do a maintain disaster uh once every semester and the earthquake tornado and the fire grills you know on a more frequent basis but uh we're really the big emphasis of course always is with the school safety school shootings those kind of things I guess I think there's code blue is the determine okay because it's definitely a lot of change I will say that um you know just the district being able to put some um procedures in place and protocols in place um even just starting with our district leadership team um and maybe one person to be the person for the district um and it's been organized everything that goes under the umbrella of safety so when we ask about what what is our partnership like with our local police departments um you know we have a accounting safety commission that will come in and meet with our school safety team our school safety team will meet our district team needs um so we are and that's why it's a priority right it's we after coming back from the pandemic we've got to go back to school the way it was and and you know be a lot tailored on it so um definitely across the entire district is absolutely a priority so these are school resource officer also safe discussions or is that not necessary for his role I'm not aware of these he is experience I have a question if you can hear me yes does our SRO carry a gun in school I believe the answer to that is yes good they do they go through and in the Gap if you want to add some words but yeah I just so like the the school safety specialist is designed more important administrative level in conjunction with what we can do operating within our building um sros are through the Sheriff's Department so they go through the academy there go through all that training plus they are required to go through a week-long um SRO trading which is much more intensive and covers more things than even what we would do at school safety training um so kind of the question about our connection with the sheriff's department uh we've already started the conversations with jobs the sheriff coming on board um working through that transition as well getting a new shared from the county um working with him and our SRO and making sure that we have everything in place to keep everything running soon the role of um [Music] protocol trainings those kind of things I appreciate again leaving their District and this SRO primarily at the high school yeah yeah option two because it is most of the high school assistance is needed at the middle school or working parents it could be there as soon as I came to Yankees but emotions thank you good information thank you okay next we have to specialize [Music] any discussion foreign yes motion Gary uh next is actually like and the recommendation to approve the donations Foundation of 700 for the week of people program at Brown County Middle School you have a motion to accept the reputation for a donation foreign yeah I'm excited I'm excited phone call Carol yes Amy yes if yes and the recommendation to approve the donation to appearance gratitude [Music] Carol yes baby yes baby and Stephanie yes Steve yes thank you as a recommendation to approve the second round of Transportation bus contract bids for the motion to accept the recommendations here with the second round the championship transportation discussion thank you a second any discussion do we have it all filled up now [Music] thank you thank you sir we're already working with that Carol yes Amy yes Vicky and Stephanie yes and Steve yes thank you I had the recommendation to approve the donation of 129 from Central Credit Union for the Brown County High School 2022.
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I'm sorry 20 by 40 and allows us to easily accommodate an audience of about 60 or 70 which is about two-thirds of what turnout typically for a story time at the library um and then also when we had uh this past summer uh one of our annual events is the Ann Arbor comic Arts Festival uh when we had that we had some vendors who still wanted to have outside locations due to ongoing Calgary risks so we did set up the tents we had a craft program as well as some of our vendors uh on the pad there at the bottom of the ramp at the downtown library and that's what we've done so far um I will say we don't have a lot of plans to utilize the space at present um you know as the organization that has put on the largest events on that space we don't find it a very suitable space for our needs for Library programming our programming Pro our programming uh professionals and the people who are involved in that um it's a very noisy space uh particularly in the summer part of that is our own equipment which is located right there our uh some of our HVAC equipment which is right there on Library Lane the other part is just the volume of traffic uh on Fifth Avenue uh particularly uh it's wonderful we love being so close to a Transit Center but it makes it hard to do outdoor events because of the amount of noise that it comes with the buses going by that will certainly improve as the buses change to Electric but at present it's there's a lot of times when it's very hard to have a successful event because of the amount of noise just associated with Fifth Avenue uh it also the traffic risk makes us very nervous when we talk about doing events for toddlers or preschoolers on our pad we typically have a gauntlet of Library staff standing alongside the curb to Fifth Avenue we can catch any runners before they run out into traffic so generally overall when the library does programs we prefer to do them indoors it's easier for us to control the environment it's easier for us to make sure that uh the audience is having a good experience all of our infrastructure is in there it's a lot less a lot more cost effective for us to produce events inside and really at this point I think the the major opportunity would be if there was uh another wave or another pandemic or something like that where we had a higher desire to move events Outdoors that otherwise would have been indoors but overall at this point we mostly uh you know with occasional things happening on the pad when something needs to be outdoors at present we don't have any particular plans for programming on Library Lane we have an excellent relationship with uh the Ann Arbor Summer Festival we do lots of programming over there it's a much you know it's not far away from us it's a much better more conducive location for the types of events we like to put on we have concerts over there we do uh uh trivia we've done Bob Ross paint along with Bob Ross over there we've done Enterprise printing under their tent and we find a much larger audience there than anything that we've done right outside our own door just because of the location and the comfort and the proximity to other amenities uh so that's kind of the in a nutshell the library's current programming what our plans are there's been some mention of the uh of the bicentennial as uh as some of you may know the library is running its own project called aa200 where during the bicentennial year we will release 200 New pieces of content uh all about the history of Ann Arbor over the 200 years focusing mostly on stories that people haven't heard before have been under heard underrepresented communities underrepresented stories uh everybody's sick of the apocryphal tale about how the town was named which isn't even really true as far as any historians can tell so we're trying to make sure that we are covering different stories and doing them in creative ways uh just to give you an example there's a wonderful story uh that also may be apocryphal about just before the second world war when uh Niels Bohr and another uh physicist were here at a nuclear physics uh uh conference in Ann Arbor and and the story was that oh I think it was actually a shoot what's his name the um I've forgotten his name the uh the physicist who the uh the the Michigan nuclear plant is named for um so the there was a conversation reportedly at the pretzel Bell between Niels Bohr and uh the other physicist trying to convince him not to help the Nazis develop a nuclear weapon and what we're thinking about doing is one of the 200 pieces of content that we'll produce for the bicentennial is to have a play written by some experts and historians about that conversation and then produce that play and record it so it's not all just about articles or photographs or things like that though there's certainly a lot of that we're looking to get artists and playwrights and uh creative people involved and have something engaging for lots of different communities the tell parts of the story of the town that haven't been heard before so that's what we plan to do for uh the bicentennial produce a lot of content that then we'll live in perpetuity we're very inspired by some of the things that were done for the sesquicentennial we have a lot of the documentation the newspaper they produced uh all sorts of the things from that time and we're looking forward to sort of building upon that uh for the bicentennial producing a lot of content that wouldn't have existed otherwise so that's in a nutshell what the library's up to if anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer them so Eli were you is Jeff Henny were you referring to Heisenberg yes thank you thank you very much yes I think it was a conversation between Heisenberg and Niels Bohr any other questions at all for director neighbor just a comment thank you that was amazing foreign yeah it was it was great I guess my question is we heard about the reasons why um for the for the library the that space doesn't quite make sense for your needs sure do you have thoughts one way or the other about what type of activities or parking or whatever is there do you have sort of views about what we would like to see I will say we absolutely hear about the parking when the lot is close to parking we absolutely hear about it from our patrons absolutely uh there's still you know from some people reluctance to use the underground lot there's still a majority of people who visit the downtown library come here in a personal vehicle there's just no getting around that reality uh it's we wish it were otherwise but that's definitely the case so whenever there's any impact to the parking surrounding the library we hear about it from the patrons you know we always want to encourage people to use the buses as people know during our summer game uh we negotiated a project with the uh with the uh and Ann Arbor Area Transit Authority so that people could board the buses for free on weekends all summer using their library card that later was expanded to include the Ypsilanti District Library so we're very pro-transit but the reality is that most of our patrons come here in personal Transportation so in the launch it's closed we hear about it you know it's just it's part of part of that equation but overall we have so much infrastructure for producing comfortable events 20 meters away uh it's not very frequent that we would have an event that would be better Outdoors than it would be inside you know some of the things that we do do outside like for example there's a tie-dying event that we do at one of our branches that's something that uh works well out there but then people want to have free parking right so the branches tend to work better for that sort of thing another example sometimes we do start parties after night it's much too bright downtown for that sort of thing to work we tend to do that on off-site locations so the few things that we or uh we have our big event every summer at the at vets Park you know and that's something that requires way more space than there's anything downtown or that even wet even West Park would accommodate so there's lots of uh programming and public engagement either we already have the infrastructure inside the building or the space available right next door isn't sufficient you know when we did the uh ours our event at vets Park typically draws 1800 to 2 000 people oh I was there so you know it's a big event it takes up a lot of space and uh so it's just about the infrastructure the proximity and having really also parking and places that people are familiar with you know we hate to have to think about parking but it's still something that we definitely hear about from patrons does that answer your question thanks yeah absolutely thanks thank you Steve Alice um I was just thinking about what what parking was there before the underground parking structure was available um wasn't that much I don't think it was a little bit more than what's there now on the surface you know the the lot that was there there's some you know it but that was the most common place that people would park you know there's still some confusion about whether people can actually park on the old y lot currently some people don't feel comfortable with that because they're not sure it's fine it's not too big of a deal I just remarked that it is certainly something that we hear about from our patrons when parking is impacted right do you think that uh free parking for the library in the underground would hope at all I need to help a little bit um but it's also not something that the library is interested in subsidizing okay um you know that's not uh that's not how Library tax dollars should be spent uh you know we prefer to spend that on infrastructure and access to public services Ellen Ellen you are muted I have a sore throat so I'm a little muted even when I'm not muted but uh I just do want to note that we've had events of Earth Day and peace day and other events there that have been quite engaging with the public and concerts and uh the space is accommodatable to uh public events and it's a casual use they place for tables and people to meet and sort of be a downtown park and Gathering area is quite feasible it does the surface was not intended as a parking lot it was always seen as temporary until a permanent use was identified and that's what indeed the voters did identify that having a place of gathering and occasional programs is a benefit for the city and their Wi-Fi and uh and such for Gathering would be a great I said and that could better be allied with the library but mainly it seemed like the library sees that as a Gathering Place is bringing more problems than the benefits and I think that is a problem a situation that can be dealt with in a more beneficial way than saying you know turn that back into housing or turn that back into a parking lot it's clearly not going to remain as a parking lot if the government somehow is you know undermined yeah the voices for a conference center or a a luxury complex or some sort or even affordable housing definitely see that as not a place where parking is the highest priority and the city's policy season parking is not the highest priority so that is something the library as well as all the institutions of the city need to deal with in terms of developing a non-motorized culture in the city it does not happen instantaneously but it does require the cooperation of the various centers of power and programming so I wish that there would be more sense of that cooperation and also some sense of how we actually see having a public space in the center of town as dovetailed with an improved policy toward the house of houseless people and transcends and and we see the center of the city as a natural Gathering Place so I just want to put from my experience and to be clear you know the library doesn't we are not asking for there to be parking on that lot I'm just mentioning that when there isn't we hear about it from our patrons yeah that's all I'm saying and the other thing I would just want to add is that if Library events had turnout on the scale of what you've had on the lot it would be very realistic for us to do events over there but when we have a library event the turnout is on a very different scale and what has happened so far on the lot and it makes it unrealistic for that to happen on that type of space all right thank you both of you uh councilmember Briggs and we're going to wrap it up here that's good thanks um talked long enough that I did think of a question um so one of the things that the commission has recommended um is to explore a and a kind of in a temporary nature a food court um on that on that space um and activating in that manner and also with kind of um events for you know small musical events and things like that and I'm just curious obviously this is something that staff is researching understanding what the sort of operational model and cost and all that sort of stuff are associated with it but just from your perspective is that I mean you've spoken to the sort of does a Patron's desire for uh you know parking which of course if that makes sense um but I'm just curious if you have any thoughts about that particular usage you may not have considered it it's interesting because we would love it especially our staff would love it for there to be you know a standard food presence on top of the uh on top of the structure um however like when we have had food trucks come to our own events they don't make a lot of money and it's it's like there's just not a lot of foot traffic um even when we're having a large event just to put that in perspective we have an event that uh we do every year called Visions which is a uh assistive technology fair for people with visual impairments and we get you know 500 600 attendees to this event but we have to pay raise RedHawks to come and sell hot dogs to it because they will not do enough business to make it worth their while all by themselves you know they're having the past been some hot dog carts that have uh uh set up shop outside the downtown library and usually the only last a couple weeks there's just not enough traffic currently with the current set of things that are happening on this block for those to become viable businesses that said we'd love to see it happen but I think that it's a a challenge for a business to be successful without subsidy uh on this block just because of the amount of foot traffic that makes sense yeah very good any uh other questions at all or we can did the direct to the library for a while this evening okay that's a quick one maybe it's not quick and sorry sorry if you said this I was having huge internet problems before but am I misremembering that there is going to be a new library built soon that'd be awesome there is no current project yeah okay there's no current project for a new downtown library we've done some feasibility studies uh there was a bond issue in 2012 which was not successful uh but they're not currently plans for a new downtown library that said this building was first built in 1958 added on to in 1971 and again in 1989 and we are just about out of what we can do with this building okay okay well when there is plans for a new one depending on where we are with this I have some thoughts but we will just leave it at that I don't know where I can thought that maybe it was a feasibility study thank you so much my dreams that's for sure hopefully they come true thank you all right very good thank you so much Eli have a wonderful evening thank you yes thank you all right we're gonna move on to our next speaker uh and that is uh Jeff Crockett who's going to present around some of the volunteer uh gardening activities that are going on and have been going on quite some time now and he did include a slide deck uh in the agenda I don't think he's going to spend time on every slide it's but uh he he definitely included a lot of things uh there as well and so Jeff uh same amount of time or so 10 or 12 minutes uh if you wouldn't mind we really appreciate you uh being here thank you very much can you all see this um slide presentation okay can you hear me okay you can hear me okay great uh first of all I'm just static uh because we had I think I I reported to this group last year about our first year and at the during the first year we had two garden plots uh started to plant a whole bunch of beautiful uh perennials but we also documented over 400 volunteer hours um and it is easily surpassed by what's happening this year and I would Hazard the guess that there were at least 80 separate work events over the past two years so I can say with great certainty that the act the commons has been activated quite regularly over 80 times over the past two years and we've we've spent a lot of time on the commons and it has been a blast while we were there people have come up asked about the plants and flowers it's been a ball but what I would say is that before I get into this and I'm not going to go over every slide is that what we're doing is not just about planting plants really what we're doing is building community and we're building Community by supporting a20 by offering educational opportunities that will grow and the other motivation for us is just giving back to Ann Arbor and we are very excited about the prospect of expanding the gardens but I will go through this presentation I'm not going to go too much into the timeline uh these are things that you can read but basically we've expanded from two to four garden plots this year uh working through uh the DDA uh we have uh at least 15 volunteers uh who have uh actually probably over a total of 20 over the past couple years some people have dropped out but we've added new people this year uh very active you can see in the right side of this slide that the green team has taken over four plots while the DDA has the remainder of plots uh around around the site um so here is the leadership team Elizabeth Smith odile Hugo Haber Rita Mitchell uh myself and joema from Project grow I'm not going to list all the volunteers but it's interesting because I put together a meet the Green Team presentation that I'll send you at another time but it's amazing the variety and depth of the backgrounds of the people are involved in here and I think it's important for you to understand the people and the motivation why are people spending has spent over 800 hours in the past two years toward developing in a garden I think it's important for you to know that and I hope that will become clear once we get through this uh presentation partially this is about building Community Partnerships and we have done so with project row and we attended the 50-year anniversary of project row and you can see joette and our leadership team there uh and wild ones is in addition this year with the thanks of Rita Mitchell uh and Robert Griese and his team Wild Ones have been involved in planting plants it's been uh it's been great and they have educated all of us on the importance of native plants to attract pollinators we're developing signage because part of what has to happen we're planning we planted probably about 65 to 70 different native plants all right so the long-term vision is for people to understand what these plants are so that they can come and then say hey I really like that plant this is what it is I'd like to plant that at home and frankly this is what has happened to me personally and I have adopted the ethic and mentality of uh Wild Ones and I've already enlisted help for Rita to taking our front um extension and turning it over to native plants uh that's going to take some time but we're committed to doing this so I mean it's not just about doing something on the commons it's about taking the information and applying it at home and when you get a whole bunch of people doing that that's going to significantly support A200 in terms of attracting pollinators around the city we also got help from wab John and Julie Ritter owners of your factory donated this wonderful sign um we started off uh last year we harvested some of the sunflower seeds and I went ahead and put them in watered the seed pods and grew and we ended up harvesting over Sunny 20 sunflowers from last year's seeds uh uh for as evidence of our belief and the importance of sustainability uh we had a spring planning meeting uh and basically we ended up uh cleaning up the the lot but also planning for what plants we are going to have it takes a lot of time to do this and uh other people are very enthusiastic irrigation it was a significant Challenge and um and Erica I added this to uh the slide here it wasn't in the initial slide because I realized I admitted your I forgot your help you and and Lisa did a great job of working with the PCA to help develop a very simple irrigation system you can see in the middle right here uh basically it's a spigot it is in one of our plots that we have used to attach hoses to not only um uh irrigate the the plots next to it but we figured out a way to extend the hoses to to go ahead and irrigate C2 and what's important about that with native plants native plants are pretty resistant pretty tolerant and Hardy after the first year the first year requires watering almost every day and we did it uh but it was a group effort we'll talk about that in a little bit but we appreciate uh the DDA for providing that spigot that was critical uh we also developed some um uh art you know banners it was this one was designed by Robert black and Amy Rowe that we used at our booth this is a banner that we printed out and used at the front of our front of our table to promote uh the Green Team and the community Commons uh we participated in Earth Day as Alan discussed before but notice uh the people who were there I mean I uh we had Yusuf Robbie uh council member Kathy Griswold uh Lisa dish spoke at that time we greatly appreciated that and there in the middle is our booth um and then uh we had a big day in May planning a whole bunch of uh Native species uh thanks in particular to Rita Mitchell and Elizabeth Smith for doing a big-up job of planting um and it took a while a number of different work sessions to do it but as you'll see it turned out very very well uh we added more plants in in June um and uh there uh is our savior Alan who is turning away uh Native I'm sort of joking here invasive species but in truth last year we took this over there was poison ivy in a number of different locations and we cleaned that up the poisoning Ivy is gone uh so I think we were able we've significantly improved uh the area and then we participated in the mayor's green fair in June we went ahead and Joint Romo went over and got some uh wood chips and we had a work session to spread the workships all over notice in the back how the the wildflowers are going like crazy there um at that particular time and then in late June um uh flowers are beginning to grow you can see the new growth and the interesting thing folks is we did not lose one plant that we planted it's quite remarkable it was because of the irrigation it was because of the volunteers and the staff coming out on a regular basis um and then uh in July you can see that uh the wildflowers are really sort of taking off the cosmos uh and we'll I'll go into the details of the individual plants in a little bit but you can see that it's everything is growing like crazy and it's gorgeous and we had people while we were there coming over all the time asking questions about what these uh flower varieties are so there's a real demand for learning about native plants that was evident from the from the times that we were there uh and then Robert black and Amy Rowe developed a handout that we passed out when we were at various events uh like the progress project grow event we are greatly appreciative of both of them and Robert and Amy do not live in Ann Arbor uh Robert lives in Vermont and Amy in North Carolina so why are they involved think about it they're involved because they're passionate about the commas the notion of the commons and about sustainability and about Community Development very impressive uh and then as you can see in August the plans continue to grow and are looking very healthy uh I want to acknowledge that the Downtown Development Authority has about 12 or 13 different plots um but we offered to help clean up the these plots that had been overgrown with weeds but we went to Jeff Watson and said we can help and he found the money and about a week later they were all cleaned up and they look great but they're not all native plants and we are hoping to encourage the DDA to look at what they've done and to coordinate with the green team to focus on planning native plants that will attract pollinators uh and so we're hoping to work with them to sort of change um change the direction of what they've done they planted these plants maybe about eight or nine years ago but the landscaper who initially planted them is no longer there so they're not really familiar with what these plants are and in line with our goal to be educational we need to identify these plants too so visitors coming from all over we'll see a circle of native plants and being able to know what they are um and this is uh for your information is sort of a list of the individual plants and our our main area N3 and just look at the result I mean when we went there in August it's just spectacular and I just love going over there and um uh I would at some point next year invite you to come over and take a look during the the Prime season I mean it's fantastic uh and that other plants and and look at the The Wildflower mixes that are down on the bottom a number of these plants are reseeded from the previous year but did that involve in adding new plants at all they were receded uh and which is what we want oh and you'll notice that uh there are bees in this uh sunflower so uh we saw evidence of bees and and rabbits and birds all the time while we're there so uh the native plants did attract the pollinators it worked and here is the uh area in area one these are mostly Replacements of turth grass and different kinds of of grasses that Elizabeth Smith uh put together how am I doing for time you got about can I do five minutes or you can you can yeah you can go ahead and do five more minutes okay I will promise I'll be out of here in five minutes okay here are some of the other uh plants that you can look at later the entire list of native plants in area C2 the photos of the result uh more beautiful photos and then in October this was our winterization and basically what we did is we cut uh we took down a number of the plants that were annuals and we cut off the sunflower stocks and put them over in compost which will deteriorate over the winter and we can spread that for mulch uh the following year with another set of uh volunteers it was so much fun and we have over 30 some donors not none of the plants involved money from the from the city these were all individual donors and two of the donors here were dead set against the commons until they came to the conclusion that because of the affordable housing building across the street it made sense now to have the comments and they completely flipped and they donated some plans and I was absolutely thrilled about that but notice the organizations and the local nurseries who donated uh it was it was wonderful uh planning for 2023 we've also already talked about this we would like to have signage on some of the different plots not just for like an overview but also to identify plant that is going to involve a conversation with the DDA and I'm hoping that we will have the support of the Council of the commons or providing signage to indicate what all this is um we would we think that this site would make a perfect would be perfect for a mural murals are going up all over town this is a public space we have secured ten thousand bucks in donations uh to have Mary tiefels put a mural on that wall over to the left but we need approval from the DDA and they've expressed some reluctance about that because they're not sure what the direction of the the commons is going to be I would encourage you to support putting art on some of these walls as part of the plan to activate the commons I would appreciate that consideration um we also want to expand the number of volunteer Gardens if you go to Kellogg Park in Plymouth you will notice there are 20 or 30 different organizations that have adopted different garden plots why can't we do that here it will really help with activation and buy-in and by the way when uh businesses uh do this it's promoting their business as different kinds of organizations I just think it's something we really seriously have to consider and not just consider but actively go out and uh Court participation from various groups uh we also want to reach out to other gardening organizations like the Michigan Master Gardener Association and get them involved and finally we would love to promote eco-friendly events on the commons there are cities that have uh an Eco an Eco Fair where in the springtime you have uh different landscapers you have nurseries come and have displays and people can come around and uh basically get information on who can do this work and and and see all these different choices in one spot we think that this would be a one uh one great idea for activating the commons but we want to support others as well okay and I would close with this uh it's my favorite quote I do this with almost all my presentations never Margaret me never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world indeed it's the only thing that ever has and that's what drives us every day thank you much thank you very much for your attention are there any questions thank you Jeff any questions at all Jeff if you could uh take your PowerPoint down we could probably see everybody's Facebook oh okay oh just a minute I have to [Music] excellent thank you so much Jeff any uh any questions at all for Jeff thank you very much for your attention I was just going to say thank you for all the work it looks great I've walked through there a lot and uh the as you I like the pictures you had of all the flowers I really didn't look spectacular uh through the through the summer so thank you thank you Steve uh Rita go ahead I just want to say that one of the um thoughts related to native plants in particular is that the first year your plants sleep the second year they creep the third year they leap and so what may seem somewhat spare in some of the planting areas will look different in the next year or two for certain because they establish themselves and they require less maintenance so that's one of the really cool things about native plants that's all thanks and and I do appreciate the the strength um of support from from Jeff and the other members of the Green Team it's been great thank you everybody take care yeah thank you so much thanks for coordinating and speaking about all the wonderful volunteers and the activism in the community thank you thank you thanks okay all right we're gonna keep things moving here um if we could go into the next agenda item is the working groups and these are just updates tonight and we kicked these off at the last meeting by consolidating the uh working groups uh into a couple of broader ones and uh so I I think uh I could go uh first and then we can turn it over to Rita and we didn't have a specific uh uh item yet so I think I'm just going to provide some updates on things on the future space design um we have been continuing to meet around the fundraising aspects in particular and um have had some really good engagement most recently with the Community Foundation and some prospective donors we continue to build momentum around some of the fundraising and I think uh I think we're off to a uh a good start here um for closing out the year in a really strong position um there hasn't been any motion movement yet around the RFP but we have previously had conversations with Park staff with whom we're going to work around uh the draft team that RFP I think we got a good commitment from them around that engagement uh earlier um I think probably last month sometime and uh and so I feel confident that when we get ready to kick that off providing we continue to build momentum around the funding that we'll be able to kick that off for the at the early portions of next year and so I feel confident in that um you know we have uh when we get a little bit closer to that we'll have more engagement there but um that's where we're at on the future space design and I will have um more formal update around a charge and other things um at the next meeting so uh Rita why don't we turn over to you and then we can do any joint questions if there are some sure um so in the uh act short term activation work group we're really just getting started and I appreciate the support from uh Heather uh and Adam for um looking at some initial discussions of Greater detail with Jessica black and other people in parks on on the process that they used in their their observations of activities at Liberty Plaza which I think will be very helpful for us in terms of of looking at what we can do what we could possibly share um and what uh kinds of materials we might be able to um share at that at the sites um I want to also thank Steve borgstor for walking through and and thinking about things as well and I think we'll we'll be working together more on on um pulling in other people um some of you uh um council members as well as other members of the community that have particular expertise or interests and I think that we're going to find some really um interesting kinds of things that we can do and have some some good ideas from the community that we among ourselves right here have not thought of yet and I'm looking forward to that so um updates to come but we're starting work um this month for sure thanks thank you Rita any questions at all for uh Rita or I I think we'll have more uh to discuss at the next meeting on these topics for sure Alice go ahead yeah I just want to mentioned today I was reading something um in in some uh I think it was um the Ann Arbor Observer online and there's talk about events and stuff like that and the date that struck in my head was um like late January or things that were starting to be planned and announced as events and that's why I think we really hope to be moving ahead quickly so that we are not delayed any way just by we need to start really getting those contacts and engagement with the other people planning events so that we can make sure they have these potential use of this site or any part of their program and lately the the date of late February or April 1st has been mentioned in in other aspects and so it just kind of wanted me to put a little pressure on us to get things moving duly noted um and and in that regard actually I think there was a article recently I don't know if it was in The Observer M live around some of the success the city has seen uh at Liberty Plaza around the activation and some additional activation that we're going to be seeing uh uh over this month and so uh it's exciting to see the block activated and the popularity uh clearly uh based on uh some of that uh funding that was invested by the city uh Alan and then Rita you do what you want to know yes excuse my voice yeah I feel that this process has gone on much too narrowly in particular the initiating community that was set up specifically to carry out and explore the recommendations of the center of the city task force in terms of programming and physical development has not been consulted in any way whatsoever and while there's discussion about the need for some Conservancy of management as nearest I know the library green Conservancy another from the bottom-up group has not been consulted at all and this is devolved in two ways largely staff driven a sense of process and just one element of that the task force you win with Liberty Plaza has to my knowledge Not Included the people who've had some concern in Liberty Plaza and I think perhaps I mentioned that the tables that were very beneficial their conversations as for instance the conversation I was having with the director of the Downtown Development Association there was to be renewed that table was disappeared that was also the table that had a long history of chess games and other you know recreational activities it was like taking out the uh a one of the central you know in physical elements that allow people to make that into a social space and I wish that this process would move much more into the public and the public ideas there's yet to be any real consultation with the public and even we'll talk later about the pros uh report but of the consultation that reported in the surveys of 28 2900 people yeah maybe two percent of the population mostly white mostly Rich this is not a representative process of how to make this area actually a center of the city that is inviting and the part of the invitation is to invite people to put their ideas and their time and talent into it the commons being commonly pooled Resources self-managed by the People by the users and yeah and some of those resources are what some of it is the land that the city owns it has been designated for this uh Commons purpose that also it's the talents the enthusiasm the experience of people who want to do stuff together and the idea of working groups of people who want to work on Child Care on playgrounds on energy issues on performance and music and art and so on that whole aspect of inviting the people who want to do things there and create a very diverse space of both Liberty Plaza Library Lane itself and the library lot that whole element of public participation has been overlooked I think because the urgency to somehow get it by him from the city Administration and the park advisory commission and and so on but the rule of the volume that is needed Is the participation of people who actually want to come and do stuff there and so I hope that the next stage of this development will involve much more Outreach and invitation a much wider participation and I think that actually there should be a message sent out to the entirety of the Ann Arbor people yeah to the extent you think about this what are the ideas and the commitments and the energy the talents and perhaps the money or the stuff the tables and chairs and plants and so on that could be gathered together as commonly pulled resources we think of all this too much in terms of what do we need and where do we buy it rather than what do we need and how can we create it so that's uh you know I'm on that that end of the spectrum you're through the comments of the people and I'm I'm actually uh re redisturbed that I have not seen in the development of this process people reflecting on what they've learned in their study of what is the commons and how it functions in different places and uh we see what a few other cities have done to the instrumentation of the air their ddas and so on but the commons is not by the DDA it's by the people who use it so I just want to re-emphasize that until the next months that we are involving this plan to see what much more to the actual what is the commons and how do people become invited into a process that for the most part we see the public activity being exclusive and done as a service to the people either by the government or by the corporation and wants to make some money out of it this is a service that people create for the city for themselves and for everybody else out of some kind of love and caring and all that kind of wishy-washy stuff thank you thanks Alan Rita got the last word here okay I just want to call everyone's attention to um tomorrow night at Liberty Plaza that there is a a holiday pop-up event of um various vendors that will be available in part of the Midnight Man yeah midnight madness um uh holiday weekend so um lets a call go out there and and see what it's like that's my risk for everyone thank you Rita thank you so much for much more eloquently describing what I was trying to allude to um so there is an article I think it's an M live uh regarding that event if I recall correctly so neat thing coming up um all right so that is the working group updates uh we're gonna move into the pros plan and um there is uh there's an updated link to the uh Pros plan I think we've got the latest and greatest draft uh attached to the agenda um I'd like to before we get into it because I I think that um you know part of the desire in having a discussion around this tonight Heather is going to help guide us through that discussion is to provide some feedback uh to the parks department uh during the public comment period now we had uh originally uh uh believed that public comment period extended into January a bit and it does not um it ends a little bit earlier and we flagged that so um what uh what I'd like to do this evening is take some time and discuss people's initial thoughts and then I'd like to um uh call a special uh meeting of this body prior to the close of that deadline to formulate and approve um a group recommendation um and uh and thoughts to send to parks um I I would prefer not to do all that in one sitting tonight because I'd like to give us some time to think about it uh in between but um but I did want to just flag that it's clear from a number of other pieces of feedback that folks have provided that um it would be uh it is there's a strong desire to provide some of that feedback and uh so I would just like to note that and ask um you know for a level of support to just call that meeting and bring us back together and sign off on something at that point so uh with that uh Heather would you uh would you uh what do you have in mind for this part sure well I think it might just be fair to um just take some initial Impressions that people have because I can't imagine that people have had a whole lot of time to read through the document it is a lengthy planning document um so you probably didn't have an hour or two to spend you know reading it um bit by bit but hopefully you've had a chance to glance um at it and so I thought we'd just kind of open it up with just kind of initial Impressions and then I can also answer questions about what the Pro's plan is um I do want to make it clear though that I'm not speaking on behalf of Park staff I don't work for Parks but if you just have some basic questions about what the function of the parks plan then I can provide that information and then possibly Stephen wants to chime in as well being a member of Pat um please feel free to jump in if you'd like to and I say that Rita has her hand up please go ahead thanks Heather I I do want to call out um particularly two things that I noticed uh and as did one of our callers tonight um the the comparison or the the specificity of um population within each of the Park's planning areas and the acreage of parks available is a kind of a standardized way of looking at um Parkland is my understanding and it is really important I think given the density that's being planned for Ann Arbor that we include that information it'll make it a really stronger document if it's Builds on the way it's been approached in the past and I feel like um that is a really essential thing so there's a instead of uh the table that was described um there it would be multiple columns for each of the planting areas and the appropriate data elements would be filled into that report and I'm assuming that the information is relatively available since it's has a model the other thing is I I think the the overall look at um how the community responded to the survey is really important also as called out earlier we really need to say we're involved in this project and so let's get it moving and and our project in downtown Parks were rated highly so I think that gives our our project some strength and I'd like to see us build on that thanks thank you Rita anyone else have thoughts on Pros Alice uh there we go um I keep trying to do it in the frame and it's way down in the other Corner um I yes I agree with um with uh what Rita said and and um sort of expanding a little bit on the previous columns um Linda Bar hours comments on the prose plans of the past we need to have some continuity and because that's where we can start building and one of the thoughts I had without having much look at think bro's plan of of the moment but having looked at several in the past um I think that by looking at the options for integrating so the Liberty Plaza as a park a designated Park camp house is a special property in the center of the city that we're working on to find a an appropriate category I guess to um that would be compatible with those properties and really increase the the well it would integrate these properties in the cohesiveness would help everything that happens in the block so instead of just looking at the center of the city we look and look at the center of the city as we were charged for the whole block and how that that fits into what exists with the park and the special properties maybe this some someone suggested that we have a park um by the ordinance but we don't it's that's a whole different process of designating a park or Park land that's a zoning issue so I just wanted to make clear that we have to be we have to look at every aspect of What kinds of changes we'd like or what kinds of emphasis would like and I really appreciate what Linda and Rita have said so far but that was one of the thoughts that I thought that if we do this kind of both data driven and desire driven and we everything will be lifted by the what we intend to do with the center of the city thank you Alice uh Frank yeah I think the only point I want to make and uh is that it's my impression that being properly uh you know profiled in this report which comes out every five years uh it's really important that the center of the city be appropriately um mentioned and and recognized uh for a very important practical reason uh granting organizations uh want to see uh activities uh you know reflected in this in this type of report and so our uh our opportunities will be greatly enhanced if we are reflected and profiled appropriately in in this report going forward and this is beyond the funding for the study it's uh it's it's making the study a reality uh its recommendations going forward so this is this is critical stuff definitely and and by the way you know of course because we're able to record this this evening we'll uh we'll capture these comments too and bring them back uh for uh the the discussion on the recommendation Steve you're up thanks I just wanted to it's gonna be odd if I said nothing during this part of the discussion I I have not had a chance to digest this draft such that I feel comfortable making any discussion about the current draft but I did want to make a few comments about the Pro's plan I perused it enough to know that it looks like the ones that came before yeah these are documents that follow a certain a certain pattern a certain structure and what I'm going to look for what is most interesting to me is sort of towards the end uh of the draft there's all of the the data about the community feedback um but there's a wealth of fantastic information in the prose plan and every Pro's plan um that explains the budget process that gives a good out you know the entire inventory of all the parks exactly what's there the acreage so and that can be very instructive I mean I've got my old trusty one from back in 2015 handy um when we're talking about the space or the spaces that we're working with to have context as to like other spaces that are similar size in this in the town and so forth so I commend it to you as a wealth of information um and think that at least you know more to come as we as we digest it but from my view a lot of the a lot of the fun stuff is at the back as you get to the uh to the community feedback thank you for that Steve uh and and uh certainly appreciate the Insight too uh you know I will be I'm in the same boat I've got to digest this a little bit more um and so I think uh you know coming into this meeting tonight and talking with a few of you offline it was clear that um that uh strong desire to uh provide some feedback and uh but also want to spend a little more time on it so that's why we uh made that suggestion earlier about coming back uh prior to the close of the public comment period yeah I just want to chime in a little bit um I think it's speaking of the the data that's gathered specifically from community in this one there's um you know one of the the big themes around um what's been gathered as a real desire from the community to see greater investment in our um in our existing Parks a sort of a recognition of sort of the the level of investment that's needed um in our in our infrastructure and and that and so that's one of the big themes that the parks department has seen within this um um which speaks a lot to me oh dear which speaks a lot to the public-private Partnerships that we've been talking about for um the future of of this so I think there's a complementary nature to that um I I do think it might be useful to um be sharing some of the the research from the comparable communities piece um forward that would be helpful um and it was there was one other point that I had thought that I might make in this um but I just slipped my mind off remember for the next conversation all good I think those those are important points too and uh and of course you can provide any other points too to Heather and others and just have to make sure we abide by the the laws of the open meetings act in terms of conversation offline so um but but uh certainly would encourage others to do that too uh Alice okay I agree and in that respect we need to um uh repeat the critical dates I know we'll have to set a date for that additional meeting but to know exactly what the deadlines for what what part of it they are so that we're not putting uh extra pressure on somebody to pay attention to facts and recommendations when it's really kind to be you don't want to miss the boat absolutely Heather will you I believe it's December 23rd it is December 23rd so we'll have to find a meeting time before then um and I'm sure people will be taking vacation time and other things like that so we might have just a few options to choose from but it'll need to be before the 23rd and I do want to mention that you can send me your individual thoughts if you wanted to and I can pass it along to park staff you can also reach directly out to the um to the email address that's given on the website if you just want to make a direct um you know set of suggestions um the meeting for us to have a collective conversation would really be about making a statement as a whole as the Council of the commons you know and and presenting that to park staff as as something that's coming from your body as a as a whole rather than individual bummers another when you mentioned the website what website were you talking about um it is the parks website and let me uh see if I can pull that up for you while I'm sitting here and give you the address Heather while you're doing that we'll uh Alan go ahead and then uh Sarah thank you again I imagine before a concerned that the Pro's plans did not give any reference to the community group seeking to develop ideas that would be contributory to the overall City policy but more than that our conversation has focused entirely on the first element of The Proposal a resolution to develop a Central Park and the other element is a Civic Center and there have been less circulated you know of 20 some activities that people consider desirable in the Park Place and a comparable list also of 20 some elements of social services and Civic Center functions Meeting Hall Cafe gallery and a place for the ambassadors of the park to have office that I don't have to go through that list specific sensor function is not simply a redundancy like there were too many words in the resolution you know it is a element of what makes the center of the city there are many Central functions that should be aligned with the development in the Central Park and similarly allied with the neighborhood institutions particularly the and downtown District Library so when we were looking for the request for proposals there are multiple ideas that have not been it seems to me forward into that process as to what the Civic Center look like I consider that it looks like some kind of building or collection of buildings that might be part of the be built uh Martin place the Noble House the uh increased functions in the library and some new building over Library Lane those are all elements that we should have evaluated in terms of their benefits and their cost and how they can be financed which is a significant matter but to ignore it because it is a significant matter and not just a park is not appropriate and I wish that all the people on our Collective Council here would look to the wider definition of what would constitute the center of the city not just a part but a park a Civic Center organizes a Commons where the users of the services and activities have a significant role in determining their management that's what a Commons is and there's much literature to help stimulate the beautiful imagination is what we could do in the center of the city because that element has been you know sidestepped or neglected for various reasons they were just trying to get something done and keep some momentum or whatever it is but it is a park in a Civic Center and it has a variety of indoor and outdoor functions thank you thanks Ellen uh Sarah and then we will turn it back to Heather just so that folks can make sure they get the website she just emailed it out actually um I just wanted to quickly mention that uh Park staff came and presented the Pro's plan to the Planning Commission a month or so ago and one of the primary discussions that we had was about integrating um the 10-minute walk campaign that the trust for public land leads so I think they're going to look at creating maps of like 10 minute walk sheds around the existing Parks but we might want to reinforce that um in our comments because I think that would really help illustrate um you know particularly if they could note some of the like new housing areas downtown I think that could help us sort of see where we're lacking park space in the city overall um I also have not really dug into this even though I probably should have for that meeting but um as you're going through it they're they're numbering like because I was trying to use their table of contents and like don't look at that because their numbering was all off they need to fix that and it was driving me crazy trying to like find certain sections so just do a search and find I guess if you're looking for something specific don't use the table thank you for that um and I think the 10-minute walk idea is a really really neat one uh certainly I'll speak to some of the uh relationship between housing density and parks that Rito's mentioning earlier so um okay uh Heather uh turn it back to you close us out on this topic sure I just sent the uh website uh to your email because that'll be a little bit easier for you than me reading it out loud here but um that should be a link in your email so you can go to that website and get a link to the plan it's also linked to our agenda um so you can find it in both places but there's an email on that website and that's one of our parts planners so you can write to her if you have any feedback that you want directly again if we want to provide a statement as a body as Council of the commons then you can send that to me after we talk about it you can send that to me and then I will send that along to park staff um so with that um yeah again the there there's a couple cleanup things you'll see in the document that was just mentioned um some of the numbering and typos and things like that so you're welcome to provide comment on that but really the more important thing is the substance so and really just thinking about what um what Frank was saying uh you know how you think um the center of the city should be appropriately characterized and um addressed in the plan so that's what we want to get at with our statement back to them so I I think certainly obviously folks are more than welcome to provide personal statements we do want to get uh you know back together and and do a collective statement so the feedback to Heather in particular um uh please do that so that we could try and work on it beforehand but then we will come back and have a discussion um and uh prior to the uh the close of that period so um why what does it depend on when we have that meeting uh when we should get the um our own contributions into Heather I would say why don't we try and uh give ourselves a deadline of about a week or so to uh to take a look through the plan and provide some feedback to Heather um and um that will give us you know we if we shoot for a week to 10 days for that that'll give us plenty of time uh to uh work on scheduling that meeting um ahead of the holidays I imagine we'll get pretty close to the deadline but um but um you know we'll still uh still be able to uh to meet it I should also mention that this group is not required to make a statement it's just that if you want to so you know I do want to emphasize this if you don't have any anything that you you know feel like should be said then that's fine too yes and you did mention that our individual contributions to the comments are are just fine right but I think it will be good for us to have some sense of of Our Own uh our own discoveries and uh and help that will help us move forward more quickly totally yeah I considered the individual statements as well deadline is actually yeah the December deadline is the close of the open comment period December 23rd um and then it goes through a series of approval processes so we integrate our Parks plan into our comprehensive plan so it actually does go through our plane commission which Sarah mentioned so and that there's a public hearing that's required for that and then it goes up to city council so and it has to be in Michigan Department of recreation um or I'm sorry the Michigan Department of Natural Resources in February so that's the ultimate deadline it has to be to them to be approved by them to be eligible for the funding sources that they provide and is it still true that uh it has to be sent to the local governments around the county correct and and that's been that's this comment period right now so at the beginning whenever you do a comprehensive plan there's the neighboring jurisdictions as well as utilities and railroad you know other entities you have to um provide a notice that you are starting a planning effort and then once you get a draft of the plan you provide that back out to all of those entities to review and so it's that's where it's at right now it's out there with them and then out to the general public to provide comment yeah two hands up here council member Briggs and then Frank yeah it's just um since there's discussion of a another meeting I know that sometimes those those meetings can get a little unwieldy um at times and if really the point is to have a very brief um I guess I guess there could be lengthy comments from the commission but um you know very sort of specific guidance around this commission's desires I it seems like it might be more helpful to have a smaller you know having new and Alice for example you know taking a look at this and providing a you know something that that the commission could react to or something like that um rather than having sort of everybody send their individual comments into Heather and having her have to sort through that and figure out what is really you know just because somebody sent in comments that doesn't mean that's necessarily how we should spend our subsequent meeting because it seems like our individual comments um should probably go directly to the Parks Commission um into that website and then through that forum and if there's some very specific reason for us to meet because there's some major Gap in this then I would guess I would hope that as leadership you know you're able to identify that and bring us back together only if that's really necessary right yeah and I I agree the the wordsmithing as a group is not a good way to spend the time totally agree with uh both of those sentiments I think the the thought would be that um you know it's probably a good idea to um create a straw person document if you will and and then make sure that there's some eyes on it in the public sphere um and uh but but certainly hear you around the uh group word spreading it's uh understand your statement there uh Frank and then I think we will try and wrap it up unless there's anybody else uh basically I just want to Echo what uh Erica just said I think it's important that uh some work be done uh between now and yeah like another gathering so that we have something uh you know substitute to react to rather than to try to create it during that meeting yeah I just think it's uh critical that that this Council uh have a a statement on this document and uh in in some detail how we feel we could it could be improved by our suggestions now I'd like for us to be able to view it as a contribution rather than a statement or demand um because we need to be listening as well as selling I agree with that too excellent point good way to good way to close us out and take us into that next uh next part so please do provide the feedback you could send it to to Alice myself Heather we do want to be conscious that we're not conversing uh over it but we will take it and come up with something for you to react to and get back to you as well okay all right with that uh that takes us to the next agenda items uh appropriately labeled I think we've kind of got that for the next meeting unless there's anything else that folks like to add okay and with that we will go into public comment and see if there's anybody else from the public who would like to add anything Heather yeah Robert black go ahead Robert's name is is transcribed as Rob Robert luck [Laughter] Robert are you uh able to we cannot hear you if you're salute unmute the unmute he appears to be unmuted but maybe having some technical difficulties oh wait three is oh yeah okay Robert any uh any luck there Heather is there anyone else uh maybe we can come back to Robert and that'll dislodge it nobody else with our handout at the moment Robert we uh let me try muting you and then unmuting you here does that do anything huh well by our apologies Robert um cannot hear you at all maybe he should bet his comments to the other as well yeah that works if you would like to send a comments in please feel free right so I thought I heard somebody um star six isn't that it star nine if you're on the phone okay and that's just to virtually raise your hand how do you unmute though isn't there a second comment Robert he is a muted yeah he's unmuted okay Robert if you want to go ahead and send your comments in please feel free obviously we would uh be more than happy to to take a look at them apologies that we can't seem to get you to get your voice recognition to work here okay well in that case we'll we'll close out public comment and um go to an adjournment can we have a motion to adjourn the meeting this evening three of them I've got a few um all in favor say aye any opposed okay all right well thank you everyone uh we'll get back with you around the date and the document Alice and I have our homework so we appreciate it thank you so much
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foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign thank you foreign [Music] foreign thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] I would like to resume this meeting of the Eastern Township Board of Education please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance the mission of the Evesham Township School District is 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 solve individually and collaboratively become contributing members of a diverse Global Society at this time there's no presentations and we are going to move on to item 5.1 public hearing on the amendment of the superintendent contract the state of New Jersey enacted PL 2007 c53 which requires New Jersey school boards to provide public notice at least 30 days prior to the scheduled action by the board to renegotiate extend amend or otherwise alter the terms of a superintendent contract and provide notice of a public hearing on the action with at least 10 days notice of the public hearing this notice was provided in the newspapers Courier Post and the Burlington County Times on November 1st however before we open up to the public hearing I think it is important to understand the backgrounds and responsibilities of the person involved Dr Smith is our district superintendent Dr Smith oversees the administration and coordination of the district's educational and extracurricular programs and assists and interpret interpreting the program's philosophy and policies of the district to all staff students and the community Dr Smith ensures a continuous professional development program for our faculty staff and administration to meet the state and federal mandates the curriculum requirements and the high quality Professional Standards expected by the Eastern Township Board of Education and the community Dr Smith serves the Board of Education as the administrative consultant and confers with administrators teachers students and parents on school matters at all grade levels Dr Smith has been superintendent in our district since July of 2020 and has served as an administrator in local districts for over 12 years combined in total Dr Smith has been an educator for over 26 years this is a public hearing and the board will open up the meeting to accept comments specifically regarding this position and the renegotiated contract the person whose contract is up does retain certain rights related to the fact that this is a Personnel matter as such the board will not comment on their job performance or evaluation or other areas of their employment rather the board may be able to answer only those questions which specifically relate to information which is otherwise public record however that information which is not public record under the open Public's record act will not be discussed with this introduction I now open the meeting this is public hearing and the request of a record to reflect at minutes of the meeting to reflect that the meeting has been so opened and it has been duly noticed as required under law at this point we're going to move to 5.1 public hearing on the admin Amendment of the superintendent's contract this meeting is now open to the public referencing Amendment of the superintendent's contract please limit your comments to three minutes per person please state your name and address for us welcome good evening good evening board my name is Evan Scott I live at 106 Williamsburg Court I'm here tonight to speak in favor of amending the contract of the superintendent uh first I think it's about leading with accountability leading with consistency so as a matter of accountability first I just wanted to comment that I I believe that this sitting board has the most working knowledge of the performance of the superintendent I would also say that as a matter of fiscal responsibility I would say that if we were to not do this or you were not to renew the uh or approve the amendment to the contract so first and foremost as a matter of fiscal responsibility going out and finding a new interim superintendent plus the cost of going to the open market and trying to find a new superintendent would be more costly than approving the amendment tonight I would also argue that as a matter of fiscal responsibility and consistency most important consistency we all know and I am truly aware of all the Optics surrounding this so we are you know we have a lot of State reductions let's just put it that way we have a lot of State reductions that are not born here in Evesham Township they're born from the state now we have authorized and approved salary adjustment salary increases for both the former superintendent as well as for teachers all while receiving state aid reductions I know that's a weird way to say it but we're taking state aid reductions so I would say as a matter of consistency that we maintain that consistency tonight if we were looking to claw back any kind of money from you know this approval tonight then I would ask the board to take again a leadership position and go back to the township and ask the township to fully fund the sros not partially fund the sros but to fully fund the sros because as we all know we're not receiving money from the state for our sros and that's a municipal initiative and I believe that they should fully fund that Municipal initiative so I want to just say once again that I fully support the approval for the salary adjustment to the superintendent thank you very much is there anyone else that would like to speak please come on up good evening please state your name and address please I'm Jonathan Schmidt from 13 Wayne Drive okay a wise man or woman once said stand for something or you will fall for everything each one of you signed a code of ethics form stating that desired changes shall be brought only through legal and ethical procedures I don't see doing a board vote 153 days in advance as being very ethical in my opinion I'm a product of Evesham public schools and then went on to Cherokee and then loved my public education so darn much I even chose Rutgers and saved a lot of money doing it I was always hold Evesham public schools in high regards however did John bigley ever try to push for an amended contract using a client attorney privilege to do it behind closed doors what exactly are we scared of why does your contract get special treatment sounds a lot like rules for thee but not for me I've seen a lot of dumb stuff on Facebook but this was easily on the Mount Rushmore for that month I don't know if you qualify for a 6.52 percent raise I would need more information for that luckily for the township of Evesham I don't have children causing a ruckus in the hallways of MMS yet that could be on the behavioral list that you guys discussed at these meetings I did notice that there are not even test scores due to covid as of 2021.
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we added 10 memberships and said okay we have 60 memberships and uh you know you sign up and if we get to 60 then you go on a waiting list and whatever okay so we uh we did that last year in the audit uh the Auditors asked us a number of questions about this the first being particularly related to Planet Fitness of why we had a limited number of of memberships there and I explained that whole thing but the real concern that they had was that the district paying for gym memberships is a taxable benefit and it's never been dealt that way in the district it's just been a benefit so I was told we either don't offer it or it becomes a taxable benefit for for our employees I was not comfortable with the idea of me just unilaterally deciding oh we're either going to do it or oh we're going to do it and everybody gets the you know gets taxed for their usage so I took it to the superintendent's employee advisory committee they took it back out to the to the people they represent and came back with the information about 56 of our employees wanted to continue and were willing to have if they were using the benefit to have it be a taxable benefit so I put Cass on this to find out uh what you know what kind of deals we could get with these two vendors Bullhead City Health Club has been sold to another company which is fine and we specifically asked for a month a member monthly fee because we don't want to say oh it's a corporate fee and then charge all of our employees with a taxable benefit if they're not going to the gym so you can see the uh the options here and and the cost per employee for 12 months if we have I'll just throw out a number if we have a hundred employees use this benefit it costs the district 34 888 dollars for them to do that and then they pay the taxes on that benefit that sounds like a pretty big amount of money uh but I'm recommending that and I really it's it's in my report so it's not really that I'm asking you for action but I would like to continue this for a number of reasons one it encourages our employees to be healthier and um two the expense uh is relatively minor compared to our whole budget if I were to take that same thirty four thousand dollars and divide it amongst our uh our teachers for example um and gave it to them as a raise it would be fifty dollars a year race um okay insignificant I think but more importantly is folks ask us when we're recruiting do you have a health do you have a health club membership and so it is probably minor but still a recruitment tool and I think it's probably a retention tool for some folks so uh you can see the form we're going to send it out to our folks and have them um you know say yes I'm interested no I'm not interested and uh and we'll do this so I'll answer any questions you might have about it yes ma'am any oh just thumbs up I mean the the correlation between you know going to the gym becoming healthier and our insurance costs I mean it's I'm in the same token it's the it's not the people that speaking you know myself I should be in the gym working out but I don't so I'm at a higher risk for those Health Care those health concerns um but you don't have to do it I know I'm just saying it's to me that we're lowering our health costs we're really not I know what I'm just saying there is a correlation it's for the people who are using it it's lowering yeah well and it's an option so it's something that we're using this is an option it is not something that they have to do if they don't want to do it they just or I just don't like spending that money I'm sorry a personally I loved it when Mojave had that as an option even though I never used it because no no I I didn't like the gym that they were under I used a different gem I'm just saying I preferred a different gym but my point being I just always thought it was really cool and I I would actually when people would like when I would try to get people to come to Mojave I would be like hey they have a gym membership you know what I mean especially if I knew that they went to the gym regularly so it is definitely a recruitment thing and I just personally it shows that you care about your employees I mean let's be honest right it's like honestly the reality is is that we do have a lot of teachers that are under a lot of stress yeah and so if we can encourage them to go even if they only go twice a week or once a week it helps relieve some of that um stress that I'm sure we've put stress on anybody I'm sorry I mean that's a 34.
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so we don't want to give up on our focus on class sizes because we're seeing the benefits that that has on students in many ways but one of the ways we're seeing that is in our academic achievement if you've been around Avon for a while we had a failed referendum in 2011. from 2011 on through 2015 2016 2017 2018 our class sizes grew larger and larger and larger to where classes over 30 was the norm in many places and as our class sizes went up our State ranking which is what this shows this shows our State ranking in the percent of students that passed both English language language arts and math as our class sizes went up our State ranking went down down down until we hit 55th in 2018. in 2018 the referendum passed our class sizes improved and you can see we're on a very positive trajectory over the last three years as a result of the hard work that our teachers are doing and the benefits that they're seeing in their hard work with our students in reduced class sizes so again we don't want to give up our focus on great class sizes for our students so we've been working over the last few months on okay how many classrooms do we need what does that look like so you can see on this chart we've broken It Out by Elementary intermediate at Middle School we've looked at how many teachers are teaching right now in Portables you can see we have 12 teachers teaching and Portables at the k-6 levels we've also looked at how many repurposed spaces do we have so things like an art room that's being used as a classroom or a stem lab that's being used as a classrooms that weren't originally intended to be used as a as a grade level classroom we have 18 repurposed spaces being used right now then we looked at what are the classrooms that are needed by 2627 looking at the demographic study that Dr Sullivan shared so you can see by 2627 we can expect to need about 22 I'm sorry 20 additional classrooms just for growth based off of the demographic study so total by 2627 we know we need about 50 classrooms based on these different factors so again looking at the demographic study if we go out to the the final year of the demographic study that's 2031-32 we would need about an additional 66 classrooms total to accommodate uh the growth that we're seeing and the growth that's projected in our demographic study so the big question is as we look at the need for more space it's not as simple as just saying we need to build another Elementary because actually our intermediate schools are probably some of our most crowded schools right now it's also not as easy as just saying we need to build a new elementary and a new intermediate because our middle schools are almost out of space so we really needed to take a step back and say how do we want to grow as a district how big do we want our intermediate intermediate and middle schools to become and is now a time that we look at reconfiguring our schools to allow us more capacity moving forward when we talk about school construction I'm going to give you a brief summary of school Finance but when we talk about school construction we are talking about the school's Debt Service fund the school and the school board oversees multiple funds to operate our school district The Debt Service fund is essentially where school districts pay for their mortgage on buildings and pay for debt that has been issued debt in The Debt Service fund is is a result of the taxes the property taxes that we all pay that live in Washington Township we are able in some communities when they start talking about building a new school or renovate significant renovations to a school they might also be talking about a construction referendum we don't need a construction referendum you can see we have a referendum fund that I referenced earlier it is a separate fund that's specifically for teachers and educational expenses we do not need a construction referendum and we won't be using any referendum dollars for buildings because our debt service fund as you can see on this slide this is our debt payments as a school district over the coming years we're seeing some Cliffs where debt starts to fall off we can issue additional debt out of our debt service fund to fund any of the models that you're going to see so you're going to see three different models we can fund all of those models out of our debt service fund with no impact to the taxpayer so you'll see these visuals on each model that we can do these any of these three models we can do with no impact to the taxpayer and and we can do them without any construction referendum funds being needed so I'm going to touch real briefly on the three models you should have received a handout that has the three models listed on them if you're here if not they're on the corner of that table I'm going to go over them real quickly and then our team's going to go into more detail on each of the three models so in model one we would maintain our current structure but in order to accommodate growth within our current structure we would need to build a new Elementary School a K4 Elementary we would need to significantly expand both of our intermediate schools and also expand our middle schools in model 2 and model 3 we change the structure of the district and that we no longer would have intermediate schools so that's why you don't see anything in in those columns so fifth grade in model two fifth grade would go back to the elementaries we would need to build a new Elementary School East would become an elementary school a K-5 Elementary West would become a six eight Middle School in model 3 fifth grade would also go back to the elementaries but we would we would do it in a different way in that both East and West would become Elementary serving grades K through five and we would need to build one new Middle School grade six to eight and then South and North would also be grades six through eight as well so we're going to dig into those three models in a little bit more detail here and Mrs aldays going to talk with you about model one thank you okay so model one as Dr Windham said is really keeping our same structure so we would be keeping with K4 elementary schools we already have six and we would be building another one to make seven k-4 elementary schools we would keep with our two intermediate schools grades five and six we would just expand both of those and again we would stick with two middle schools serving grades seven and eight but those would also be expanded all these models that you're going to see tonight you'll see there's positives and there's challenges to each of the model I don't know if there's any one perfect model it's just looking what's the best one to meet our needs so when you look at model one when we think about some positives first of all it's it kind of keeps our same structure and so it the least amount of change across our district when we think about our two intermediate schools I mean this one preserves them and we know our teachers have worked really hard and have built great educational experiences for our students and really those relationships with students and parents um when you look at these different models and that some will be constructing a new Elementary School some will be a new Middle School the most the most cost effective school to build in these models is an elementary school um so those are the positives of this first model some of the challenges is any time when you think about switching schools as transitions transitions can be hard for kids and for families and so the intermediate model creates another transition inside our school district additionally when you look across our conference around Central Indiana schools have different structures but a lot of the structures you see around Central Indiana and Indiana as a whole are middle schools serving grades six through eight and when you have sixth graders at the middle school it does give them additional opportunities for extracurricular events like they can participate in sports and um clubs and so the sixth graders would have that opportunity the one piece when I talked about like our teachers have really worked hard to build relationships it's also a lot of work if you think about an intermediate level and our Middle School each school year they're having half of their students leave the building and another new half join so every year they're getting a half of the new students if that makes sense so like if our Intermediate School serves 800 kids every year they're getting new fifth graders and so they're getting 400 new students every single school year and that's 400 new students and families to try to get to know to build those positive relationships which we know are such impactful in education um another piece with all a challenge is when we look at curricular resources in our standards a lot of our curricular resources are built like companies building for kindergarten through fifth grade and then sixth through eighth grade and so an example what we're living right now is math in our intermediate school right now we use Bridges math which they stop at fifth grade and so fifth grade uses Bridges and then sixth grade in our Middle School uses CPM for Math and it just creates some disconnect it's not impossible it's just a challenge um another piece would be um because we have a great um you know as we're known in Avon for our band choir and Orchestra and all of our sixth graders participate in that because of that we almost run two schedules at our intermediate schools because we have um fifth grade is more like an Elementary schedule because they have the typical related arts going to music art PE where at the interim at sixth grade they also have some of those plus they go to band choir band choir orchestra each day um if you've been at East and West during arrival and dismissal you know it's a busy place we have lots of cars in there it's a it's a tight footprint I mean it's manageable but it's tight and we have we're utilizing almost every space but you will see um soon that we do have space that um to increase the size there so with model one you'll see the slide for each of the models this shows um kind of what some projected enrollment would look like in this model so again if you remember K4 we would have seven k-4 schools we would have some schools that would be six section schools and what that means is if you think of first grade we would have six sections of first grade and so on so we'd have four six section schools and we would have three five section schools um and you'll see and you see that projected enrollment overall it just varies kind of school by school and then you'll see 3132 we get almost up to 4 000 students across those grades so about a thousand a grade level or I guess a little under that I'm sorry that's five grade levels and then at five six we would stick with two schools and by 26 27 we would be looking at about 890 students per school at the intermediate schools and by 31 32 we would be approaching that 920 Mark based on our projections and in this model looking at grade seven eight at the middle schools I'm around 26 27 we would be a little over 900 students in each of the middle schools and by 31 32 we would already um hit that 1000 student Mark at each of the middle schools so this is a rendering that just shows like this addition we do have the capacity to do this model on this current uh on our current land of the intermediate schools so the turquoise in this um this drawing is Intermediate School East and that's the existing building and if you see this darker blue section and that darker blue section is where the additional classrooms would be built if you think right now where those Portables are at the front of the school that's where this Edition that's part of that where that Edition would happen the yellow school is West and you can see that brighter yellow towards the bottom of the slide and that's where you would see those additional classrooms and events on both sides of that and that orange color in the center of the school is where in the media center that we would maybe add look at a second floor added there to add some additional space and classrooms there so again we have we wanted to make sure we have that capacity which we do it just makes a tight footprint even tighter this slide really just illustrates when you look around our conference around Central Indiana what I mentioned earlier that schools have different structures and so some have that sixth through eighth grade structure and you can see those schools those districts listed and approximate student population that each of those middle schools again some have 7 8 and there's a few that have fifth through eighth grade and one in one building and so I think part of that goes back to what Dr Windham said earlier we have to say like how many students do we want at each of our middle schools like what are we comfortable what's enough enough what's not what's too many um students at that age group and this um this slide here shows like in any of the projects as Dr Windham said we have the capacity with um not there with no impact to our taxpayers and not using any referendum funds to fund these when you look at these numbers I mean these are large numbers um you know anytime you're hitting over 100 million that kind of makes you stop I mean School construction is is a big piece and that's a lot of the reason why we have not built a new that's not our first thing to go build a school where we've added on and really been thoughtful about our space but it comes a time where we do need to build a school so you'll see the estimated costs for building that elementary school on here um the additions we we would need some addition to some of our k-4 schools which that's pretty minor in the big scheme of things and then with the expansion at both East and West would be and the middle school expansion so again but it we CA it can be done and this last slide is just like a different visual way to look at this if you look at like the yellow at the one end of The Arrow that's ultimately where we're getting kids at the high school we'd have one high school in this model we'd have two middle schools two intermediate schools seven K4 elementaries and the one we didn't talk about was we would stay with the one um White Oak Early Learning Center for preschool so that is model one in a nutshell and Dr Sullivan is going to talk about model two thank you Mrs alday so while Mrs alday spoke to you about how model one kind of keeps our structure pretty much the same model 2 does not so I'll try to go slowly enough so I can give you some time to process but kind of talk you through what model 2 is about um this slide shows you that model two there are no intermediates all elementary schools are K-5 and all middle schools are six through eight West is converted to a middle school and East is a K-5 Elementary School this means we have eight elementary schools three middle schools a high school no intermediates positives as Mrs aldays spoke about um there will be one less transition if we went to this model with no intermediate schools more time for middle schools to build relationships with families curriculum alignment as she said usually curriculums are k-568 and then your high school more extracurricular opportunities for Middle School students specifically sixth grade students East-West traffic would be similar to the current structure some challenges impact on the feeder system we'd have 8K fives three six through Eights East will still need kindergarten classrooms and a playground up update West would need additional classrooms and flex spaces there'd be some crossover between elementary and middle school for example the elementary middle or music classroom and band and Orchestra space would be shared baseball and softball for South and the new Middle School would be at a separate location west and south will share a football stadium and track in this model you can see by 2627 the projected enrollment for all eight elementary schools would be 4 695 students by 2031-32 all eight K through five would have a projected total enrollment of 4 825 students for the Middle School projected enrollment for 2627 would be 27 2730 students over all three six through eight middle schools which is an average of 910 per School about 3132 there'll be a projected enrollment of 2965 students again over all three middle schools with an average of 988 students per School this slide gives you an opportunity to see what East and West would look like once the conversion took place one of the things to look for is if you can see the thick black line that kind of separates underneath the six kindergarten classrooms that are in East you can see where East and West would be separated so after noting the thick black line of divisor two schools East would have six kindergarten classrooms that are in gold West would add new or seven new classrooms West would expand the main office and the kitchen they'd add a gym a locker room and a new restroom this slide highlights the additions to West including the new practice field and east's new playground the tennis course will be rebuilt and parking will be reconfigured and expanded this slide shows a possible location for the new Elementary School our school board has been has had the foresight to buy land north of Sycamore for such an occasion we own more than 38 acres on Dan Jones again north of Sycamore another possible location for an elementary school the school board has purchased already in 2009 is at Whispering Pines where we own over 32 Acres this live shows the cost estimates for model 2 and reminds us that all these models can be built with no impact to the taxpayer and no current referendum funds being used again this last visual of model 2 shows how white oak element or Pre-K feeds into our eight elementaries our eight elementaries feed into our three middle schools and our three middle schools will feed into our one high school Dr Lemay will talk about model three thank you Dr Sullivan as we take a look at model 3 like model 2 it does transition our district away from the intermediate model I did have the privilege of being a principal at our Intermediate West for nine years so as we look at this model what we do is we convert both East and West to elementaries and they would be K-5 and then we transition and for the middle schools we have current our two current middle schools north and south and then we add build a third middle school so some of the positives will go with the positives and challenges so the positives against a lot a lot very similar to model two um we do have uh elementary students though on the shared campus so instead of uh having middle school and Elementary share one campus this model has just elementary students on the East-West campus it would avoid the need to build an elementary school at this time there would also be less construction needed on the East-West campus as a model two we also have additional opportunities for extracurricular activities at the middle school and we also have more space for those extracurricular activities in this model it also maintains the property on the north south of our district for future elementary schools if needed Dr Sullivan showed you where those property or property would be near Sycamore and uh in the Whispering Pines area Mains obtains those properties for future growth for elementary some of the challenges at both East and West again they'll both still need work uh we need to accommodate kindergarten we need that space so that will need to be addressed at our both east and west and you know even when you look at the outside uh The Playground now that we have for East and West is not appropriate for a younger students so again things will need to be addressed to accommodate East performing arts space that we've worked on could be underutilized so we'll have to get together and find what's the best use for that space and then we look at baseball and sophomore Fourth South would be off-site so that's a a challenge for South and then uh in this model the cost to build a new Middle School uh is is greater than it is to call the cost to build an elementary as we look at this slide it really is identical to the slack Dr Sullivan shared in both structure and and and a number as far as the population in each model and each year and and K5 we do have eight schools six of the elementary schools K through five eight six would be existing and then East and West would become the seventh and 8th 8th Elementary and for grade six through eight are middle schools we have two existing north and south and then the third one would be uh our new Middle School this slide again it is hard to uh to see but if you look at that again that dark line that kind of goes through the middle so if you look to the right of that that is East uh and that would be our K-5 Elementary uh and and you can see in the yellow those would be six additional classes for uh kindergarten uh and then if you look uh down to the right of that dark line that would be uh the West Elementary uh named to be named later we might need a couple more tree names uh in the blue would be additional kindergarten classes and then if you can see those classes that are outlined in red those are already existing uh but those would need to be converted to Elementary or kindergarten classes as well so as you can see as we've looked at the other models for the East-West campus much less construction needed to convert both of those to K5 Elementary so we said just like uh for our elementary schools again our school board has done a great job of acquiring land for for future growth and Now's the Time we will need some of that land uh we we do have land that will accommodate uh a middle school a middle school takes more land but we have uh almost 80 acre acres and that's near the Prestwick area so again that not only accommodates the schools but it accommodates the athletic facilities and all the other facilities that go along with a middle school and again like the other models we break down the cost you can see the cost for the additional K-5 classrooms what we'll need to address uh you know in all of our elementaries uh several need uh touch-ups the transition of intermediates uh both of those to K5 elementaries that has a a little bit more cost still have some expansion needs at our middle schools and then uh the the most significant cost would be adding a new Middle School and then this slide does again a great job just like the other two that shows the flow from White Oak when students enter our school district and then as you look through there they work through the eight uh elementaries and then in this model you see the the three middle schools the existing north and south and then the new middle school and then finally when our students get to Avon High School thank you so as we start to conclude here you might be wondering well why didn't they think about this other option for school construction and chances are we probably did so over the next couple of slides and again this is all online we summarize six different models that we've tossed around over the last few months and then we also tried to give you a few reasons why we didn't feel like those options met the needs of our students long term the way that the three that we delved more deeply into did so you can see uh and look online to get a little bit more information about these things like well what if our elementaries were k-6 what if we converted West into a K-5 and East into a six eight so we tried to summarize some different scenarios that we have played out over the last few months and again give you some explanation as to why we did not recommend those as we've talked about all of these options would have no impact to the taxpayer and no referendum funds as I mentioned that nothing would take effect until the 25-26 school year so we've essentially got two and a half school years um before these changes would take effect so we know that there are questions that our staff have we know that there are questions that our parents have that we would be working on over the next two and a half years to get answers to so things like what would the feeder system look like what elementaries would feed to three middle schools how how would that look we'd have to figure that out what's the Staffing differences between intermediates and Middle School models what does redistricting look like for our students as well as our staff that could could be impacted by redistricting what would each of what would the models mean for school start and end times and for transportation we'd certainly need to study that and look at different scenarios and then also some of our teachers have had questions about just teacher licensing is a little bit different from fifth grade to sixth grade and we would certainly navigate that the way that many other school districts have navigated that our timeline we are at our final Community presentation in this format next week we have a couple of gallery walk presentations that will be in this same room where we will have some of the Architects that have helped us develop the models that you've seen here some bigger posters spread out around the room so that if you're really curious about what the different models would look like you can come and spend some time walking around and seeing what those would look like and give us some feedback based on those floor plans because we know that they're a little hard to see just crunched onto a slide so we've got a couple of those for our staff happening on the fifth and sixth and then one for the community the evening of December 5th our goal being that the school board would vote on our future structure at their December meeting so that we can get started in 2023 really digging into the design process the financing process and all of those things so that we can hit the timelines to be ready for the 25 26 school year basically also we can serve more students kind of going back to where we started we're in a community where people continue to want to bring their children to the great things that are happening in our schools every day and and we're honored to be working in a growing and thriving community and a growing and thriving school district and it's it's great that we need more space to serve more kids we will wrap up now and do some small group input sessions here for those that are in attendance if you're online there is a survey you can take a quick snapshot of this QR code that you can also access this survey through the website directly we've had great participation so far in in the survey where we'll ask you what what's your most important factor that you value in this conversation and then also what are some of the strengths and challenges of the models we've listed several here but I know there are some others that that maybe we have we have not listed that are important to you so your feedback will really help us and and we'll get all of that shared with our school board prior to their December meeting so with that we'll stop the live stream and we'll move into our small group session
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Governor's Workforce ethics certificate program thank you for saying with that afterwards yeah and with that do I have a relationships Central Credit Union to the Brown County High School 2022 in Jefferson any discussion with that football Karen yes baby yes Stephanie yes and Steve yes thank you very much person carries starting with the separation of Brown County Schools bus drivers Stephen Douglas pain affected December 31st 2022 through the transfer of Van Buren Elementary School general education teacher Emily Gaither to Van Buren Elementary School special education teacher effectiveness do you have a motion to accept the recommendations uh we're starting with separation um and ending with the transfers of Emily engford from the general education teacher to the special ed teacher at Van Buren effective December discussion trying to cry about Mr Lane but I'll walk over here don't worry Amy I already cried and we're not really losing Steve uh yes Stephanie yes and Steve yes thank you motions Kerry thanks um just superintendent report today is it's short I want to thank Trent um for all of your hard work every time you do a presentation on pieces of the high school it is um very informative and um you have just worked really really hard in such a short amount of time so thank you so much um I just want to highlight this week for our ambassador program was Wednesday um was Athletics and extracurriculars and then the high school presentation so it was well attended again it is one of my favorite days of every month that we get to leave these meetings um so I I'm just really really proud of the program and our team that gets to uh shine and show everybody what we're doing so um very excited it was a great meeting our next one will be January and our Focus area will be wellness and safety and we will talk all things School Safety and Security we will talk um SRO we will talk about Wellness whether it be physical social emotional um all of that so excited for that meeting in January do I have a motion to adjourn ing second discussion thank you thanks good night all right thanks again thanks Jackson
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so how exactly are we grading your performance I noticed math did not even meet the federal standards in 2019 and there was no covid then I don't know what is driving that score and maybe you could said shed some light on it but that seems unacceptable to me so with that I will leave a little math lesson for someone I do not approve of the 62 000 increase in salary from now until July twenty thousand twenty thousand twenty seven I wish everyone could get a raise but unfortunately there were budget cuts in Evesham good evening's name and address please good evening Bruce Albright 582 Hopewell Road you know it was my understanding that the current superintendent already had a contract for the 2020-23 school year and I'm wondering why this contract is being renegotiated less than six months after the start of the current contract and I've never heard of such a thing before Additionally the extension of a contract for four additional years should not be considered by a board that has less than a month left to its term why not wait for the new school board to be sworn in and let that school board make the decision about negotiating the superintendent's contract that is who we voted for isn't it and I don't understand the rush with the current District budget crisis why is there a renegotiation of a contract that was already negotiated it seems to me something nefarious is occurring when a board whose term is expiring is making decisions that will saddle a new board preventing that incoming board from the oversight that is essential to the role of the Board of Education and was voted upon the residents of our town I mean it just sounds like cronyism to me thank you thank you their comments I can address some of the questions and concerns of the public the first of why some feel it's being rushed through um the action hasn't been rushed rather we've been discussing it for several months and there's a process which has to be employed and um the executive County Superintendent needs to approve it which he received it and did approve we felt that this board was also in the best position to make the decision since we were the ones that have been working with Dr Smith for the three years that he's been here as opposed in relationship to the 2019 test scores Dr Smith wasn't here then um we are not opening up his contract to amend it six months into it it's two years into it so um this is a decision that we felt would be the best per his evaluation and things that we discussed in executive session nothing nefarious is going on we're not trying to hide anything it's been public knowledge that we've been discussing his contract in executive session as we do all Personnel matters as well as new administrators and new staff um that is where Personnel is discussed an executive session away from the public that's stated in my executive session statement at the beginning of every board meeting that's what we do that's where we go matters of the personnel and staff are not discussed in public unless they so feel that they want to that's why a rice notice was issued I'm trying to think of the other questions um oh he is not getting a 6.2 percent increase I don't know where that information came from oh that that's a timer for myself but um I will say that we have negotiated the etea contract we've negotiated the superintendent contract and we're in the process of negotiating the etaa contract and I will I will tell you that um Dr Smith's um comparison of bumps and lumps will be come out to 3.4 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 for the entire five years starting in 2022-23 um and that is a 3.08 over the five years um whereas the etea over the three years is 3.15 if you take out the bumps and lumps um his contracts starting with 23 24 will be 3.0 3.0 3.0 3.0 when obviously that averages out to a 3.0 whereas etea is still 3.15 so um I just want to make sure that everyone is aware that I don't know where the 6.25 number came from but that is inaccurate um okay so another question um according to the potential or all the cuts the district is facing um these are trying financial times we understand that um all the District employees have seen yearly increases I think could I personally think and I'm just speaking for myself I think it's appropriate for Dr Smith to receive the same consideration in particular given his leadership and steady guidance for the district during which has been like two of the hardest years and we've suffered a pandemic and everything like that um this action is in line with all the what all the surrounding districts are also doing I'm sorry that the public feels that this process has been rushed and hidden from you we've tried to be as transparent as possible it has been on the agenda for at least two months and Personnel matters are discussed in executive session if there are no other questions from the or comments from the school board Madam president I would also add that the contract was available first I went to the notice that was in the newspaper for a month that the contract has been available for you upon appointment so anyone could have came and taken a look at that contract thank you is there any other questions or comments from the board huh I know at this time I'm going to excuse me I think Mr Fritz oh I'm sorry Mr physical sorry I just want to clarify on one thing in terms of an expiring board uh the board itself is not expiring uh in fact in the presence of who we are right now of everybody on this board only one board member will be leaving by January the rest of our terms are still going at least for two more years so I just want to clarify that this is not a lame duck session um nor usually ever is is it a lame duck session for us our business continues from January 1st or January 3rd all the way until the very end of the new of the of the year so there is no such thing as an expiring board we conduct the businesses we conduct business in our ability and authority to do so goes throughout all year we don't take months off we keep governing thank you Mr there's a Cairo spoken like a true history teacher appreciate it any other questions Miss Noel so in contrast to Joe I just want to express my apprehension about this vote tonight um as you know Dr Smith's contract does not expire until the end of this school year so I do feel it's premature to renew now from the information I was given it appears as though past precedent has been to renew in February or March when the superintendent's contract was set to expire in June the only time that I am aware of in recent history when a superintendent contract vote took place in December was when the board voted on John scavelli's first contract in December in um I can't remember the year 2009 maybe but and that was only because the superintendent Mrs Pat Lucas was retiring earlier and that was going to happen in March so um amend opening his contract and extending it tonight for five more years also with a retroactive increase in pay I feel is not appropriate um I know it's within this board's legal right to do so but um I just it feels too much to me like just a clever way doing it retroactive is clever to kind of circumvent that well-known principle that an outgoing board should not bind the hands of a new board when it comes to big decisions like this and here we are doing this in the last month of the year so and a third of the board will be replaced but I want Dr Smith to know that my vote is not a reflection of your performance so thank you for all you do for this District I just can't support the timing of it right now thank you Mrs Noel I just want to clarify one thing um this isn't this meeting was supposed to be in November so it's not the last month of the year but I understand your point I just want to clarify any other questions or comments from the board and I would also add that we will have questions and comments when we actually go to the motion after this too so okay all right seeing none I need a motion to approve um the 2022-27 annual salary schedule for Dr Justin Smith superintendent of schools as recommended by the negotiating committee and approved by the executive County Superintendent can I have a motion Mr canthan second it Mr physicaro any questions or comments from the board okay seeing non-roll call please Mrs Capello yes Mr physicaro yes Mr Canton yes Mrs Knoll no Miss Lee yes Mr Meegan yes Mrs Ryan Yes motion carries this this meeting will now be open to the public referencing any um any agenda items sorry now we're going to public comment just in case anyone is not aware we have enough to additional public comments first public comment is for what is on the agenda and the second public comment which happens later in the evening is for anything you wish to discuss the meeting will now be open to the public referencing agenda items only however if your questions pertain to student or Personnel items or negotiations we ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public we ask that you limit your comments to three minutes per person and it's also crucial please for you to give us your name and address before you speak up and also limit your comments to one time per public comment period is there anyone that wishes to speak hi good evening Mindy Crawford 25 South Maple Ave on behalf of the Evesham Township administrators Association I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome our new colleagues Beverly green welcome back and Tracy Bowles Beverly Tracy we look forward to working alongside you to support the amazing staff families and students at the Macy middle and elementary schools at Marlton Elementary School please do not hesitate to reach out to any one of us for anything we welcome you and look forward to your collaboration and collegiality thank you any more public comment anyone else wishes to speak okay seeing none we're going to close that portion of the meeting there'll be another public comment session at the end um at this point we'll move on to move forward with the approval of the minutes I need a motion to approve item 6.1 and 6.2 do I have a motion Ms Capello second Miss Noel thank you any questions or comments regarding the minutes okay roll call please Mr Ashanti Mrs Capello yes Mr Carroll yes Mr Canton yes Mrs Noel yes this is Miss Lee yes Mr Meegan yes Mrs Ryan Yes motion carries thank you at this point we'll move on to item seven superintendent's report and administrative items do I have a motion to approve item 7.137.6 motion Miss Capello second Mr canthan before we get into questions and comments I'm going to give the floor Dr Smith for his superintendent's comments thank you Mrs Ryan at first I'd like to highlight a few points of light among our schools since our last board meeting our district-wide Winter concert schedule started today with jaggered followed by our other schools throughout these next few weeks leading up to winter break I'd encourage all our families to attend I'd like to thank our District's entire music department for their efforts in making these events possible and absolutely so wonderful today was also the opening day of our full day kindergarten registration big day the deadline is February 17th more information is available under the parents welcome tab on our website and just a reminder that our District's number one goal for the years from this year 2022 to 2025 is to make free full day kindergarten that is no more tuition-based kindergarten to make it a reality for all our district families for the start of September 2024 via a ballot question next fall in 2023.
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34 000 investment 100 did it yes in our employees and you know keeping them and you know allowing them some benefit to working or it's not even a benefit I mean still they're paying for it let's be honest like we're just supplementing right basically so I mean come on the tax they'll pay on 348 dollars is minimal but it gets us legal and more importantly I will tell you the feedback from the members of our committee was that they were that teachers and employees because it's not just teachers it's any of our 300 well now 330 employees are eligible for this um uh they appreciated the fact that they they had input into this whole discussion in this decision so um I thought you might want to know so I'll answer any questions you have about it any of the items in my report no other questions okay all right thank you okay moving on board member updates do we have any updates at this time nope okay then our consent agenda do we have a motion to adopt the consent agenda as submitted I'll make a motion that we adopt the consent agenda as presented I'll second that motion out of wood all in favor aye Corey Burgess aye Amanda amen aye Charlene Diaz aye Anna Boyd I'm Melinda sabrowski item 4.1 calendar for the school year 2022 23 revision Dr Stewart Mr President and board members uh I'm a bit embarrassed to bring a revision to you a month after you just approved the calendar but when I was looking it over I realized that um on the calendar I presented to you last month the day before Thanksgiving was highlighted as a holiday and in our district that is not a holiday that is for the 12-month employees that is a work day so it does not affect the number of days that teachers work it does not affect the number of days that students are in school it's just correcting that one error in the um you know highlighting it as a holiday we have we have a specific number of paid holidays that are recognized in the policy and that is not one of the days so I didn't want anybody misled to think that that was going to be a paid holiday any questions okay then I would like to immediately approve the revision of the calendar for the 22-23 school year I'll second that motion Melinda hi Corey Burgess uh Charlene Diaz hi Anna Boyd I'm Melinda sabreski I don't know item 5.1 policy F JFC student withdrawal from school dropouts regulation jfcr and exhibit jfce Dr Stewart Mr President and board members following our discussion in your direction from last month to review the kindergarten the the kindergarten drop or withdrawal items excuse me uh the policy as you see it here uh the black is the policy as it exists the red is the update or the changes and I will tell you that I gave some thought to changing the nine days to back to eight uh since 15 since seven and a half is really half of our is really five five percent of our days of school but I also thought just leave it alone it gives a little extra wiggle room it gives it's just us just being extra reasonable about half of the days in a semester so I left that alone and then I really wanted to change the will kindergartner will result in withdrawal from school to May so that we could then have the the attached regulation and the exhibit so it gives some discretion to the principal uh relative to the circumstances uh that students might be absent and then I did add the other statement because these uh this is a required I mean it's not required in the policy but it is required by law so kindergarten students with physician documented chronic illness or with individual education plans are exempt from being withdrawn if they miss more than the eight or nine days of school me IEP and your exempt if you if a student has to be correlated to the absence to to why no or kindergarten students it's true for it's true for um any of our students but in this case very specific for kindergarten yes because we are obligated to start providing special services for students at three years nine months hence our special ed preschool program okay and and so we are required to continue to provide those services for those students in kindergarten even though kindergarten is not a required program for any other student in Arizona kindergarten is not a required program for students in Arizona but any student under the age of six who has an IEP we are required to provide those services learn some things huh yeah for all students yeah and this is this is I'll do a little bird walk here so one of the one of the new regulations from the State Board of Education for this coming school year is that we are to test kindergarteners in the first 45 days of school it is now a requirement to test kindergarteners in the first 45 days of school however kindergarten the State Board of Education will not they've discussed and they refuse to make kindergarten a required program and the legislature refuses to pay kindergarten programs more than 50 percent so we have all-day kindergarten we figure out how to how to fund half of our kindergarten program because we think it's in kids best interest to be in school at five and um so this is one of those things that leads you to scratch your head right uh but the the special ed law is that's a separate issue and we couldn't start providing services for a child at three years nine months and then suddenly say that from five to six we're not going to provide those Services because they don't have to be in kindergarten we must provide services for those kids okay okay um this would be first reading so we have to read it again but I wanted you to see the uh the regulation and the exhibit that we created I will tell you there's no other District in the state of Arizona that has this so we had to we had to start from scratch and so the idea of this is simply to give the give the principal some discretion some judgment and and still and still honor the intent of the policy um and so I'm not going to insult you by reading it to you um but um tried to think of all of the all of the possible issues that might might arise um John Jen help me go through this the principles the elementary principals looked at it this week and um and are pleased with these options I like it right okay and then the exhibit excuse me is simply the the letter that would go home to parents okay awesome and I'm not asking you to approve the exhibit and the regulation at this point in case in case you have any other changes you want to make in the in the policy next month or between now and next month all right okay okay item 5.2 authorization to award the bid for 30 additional HVAC units Mr President and board members we opened bids today I wanted this on the agenda as it says here we want to we want to get this contract done this month so that we can remain under that 25 percent increase in the cost of HVAC units and so that's why I put it on without a recommendation because we didn't open the bids until the appointed time at 12 30 today we had bids only from two local vendors that's good um and I'm recommending that we award the bid to air control for the amount of three hundred thirteen thousand forty eight dollars for 30 HVAC units the other bid by the way was 400 000.
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our district will share more information about the ballot question and the next steps in this effort after we finalize our tentative budget this this coming March another point of light since our last meeting was de Macy's first ever Thanksgiving dinner for the demisi ESL that's English as a second language students and their families right here in this cafeteria held on Tuesday November 22nd special thanks to our ESL teachers Allison Spence Sarah Smith and music teacher Rob Fox for making it happen as well as other staff including paraprofessionals and teachers such as Dr Maria crudslow for uh pitching in and huge thank yous to the demacie staff as a whole for generously donating the food to be there was absolutely wonderful the from smiles and togetherness felt that evening among the families was the best illustration not only of what Thanksgiving that special American holiday is all about but also a great illustration of what demisi and all the schools in our district are all about and that ends my public comment this is Ryan however I would like to reserve a bit of time for two later spots in the agenda when we get to donations and to personnel questions or comments regarding the superintendent's report so are you seeing none roll call please Mrs Capello yes Mr physicaro yes Mr Canton yes Mrs Knoll yes Miss Lee yes Mr Meegan yes Mrs Ryan Yes motion carries thank you moving to item eight curriculum and instruction I would like a motion to approve items 8.1 through 8.8 do I have a motion Mr physicaro Miss Noel questions or comments from the board about curriculum and instruction Miss Noel I just wanted to talk about the eve Education Foundation um I believe this is an item under eight uh this was a request for funding that Miss magulic put together to the Evesham Education Foundation and I just want to since this week was giving Tuesday I believe and it's time that's our reviewer they do so much for us and I especially love this um additional mental health supports we're asking for funding for that for our middle schoolers which is fantastic so anybody out there who's listening you can donate to Evesham Education Foundation if you don't want to go to their cigar party or whatever it else that they do I believe you can donate through their website at Evesham educationfoundation.org that's all any other questions or comments regarding curriculum and instruction seeing none roll call please Mr Cindy Apollo yes physicara yes Mr canthan yes Mrs Noel yes Mr Lancelot yes Miss Lee yes Mr Meegan yes Mrs Ryan Yes motion carries thank you moving to item nine finance and operations I would like a motion to approve items 9.1 through 9.12 do I have a motion Ms Capello second Mr physicaro any questions or comments pertaining to finance and operations seeing none roll call please Mrs Capello yes Mr physicaro yes Mr Canton yes Mrs Noel yes Mr Lancelot yes Miss Lee yes Mr Meegan yes Mrs Ryan Yes motion carries thank you sure can go ahead thank you Mrs Ryan I'm gonna I wanted to uh the donation on here I just want to highlight for a second it's from Jacob's music This is actually the second donation they've made this fall so September 2022 they donated additional equipment for our DJ techniques program and just he's to help make it more concrete the the very layered and long lasting positive effect of donations and a donation like this I just wanted to read a portion of a letter that Mark White who is um music director at MMS and mes wrote to Mr Rob Rinaldi who is um not only District dad but um you know plays a very important role at Jacob's music and here's what the letter says Dear Mr Rinaldi thank you for your generous donation of three brand new Mac mini computers and monitors to the Middle School DJ techniques class your generosity has made such a difference to the continued success of the program with these amazing gifts we will we were able to have three more DJ stations up and running the very next day this allows six more students to have more hands-on experience using the Roland 202 DJ controllers which were also donated as well that was part of the September donation just recently students were able to use newer technology with the DJ controllers and the use of stems in the Serato DJ program The increased development of the class has been single-handedly transformed by you and your love of music myself and the school can't thank you enough for your support and it's beautiful and beautiful donation from a very beautiful family his daughter Juliana is an MMS and his wife Kim she organized the October abilities awareness recognition month which our district was really uh uh to participate in and I would just add like we have so many amazing businesses in town um and sometimes the businesses even overlap with our district family and for anyone out there who um you know has resources either through the business or in some other capacity and is wondering you know what effects what positive effect it could have on kids please look no further than um this donation from Jacob's music and I would encourage everyone to imagine what impact your donation could have for more kids in more ways in our district and we would love to talk with you and partner with you and be creative with you about what that could look like please just reach out to me um and uh and we can we can talk and work so thank you very much one through 10.9 do I have a motion Mr physicaro second Miss Capello I know that there'll be plenty of comments and questions in this section so I'm going to give the floor back to Dr Smith as you wanted to say a few words okay okay so we're wonderful time for a personnel and I first just would want to thank when you look through the list and you see all those names each and every person listed there under appointments makes a huge difference for us you see staff shortage everywhere you've probably seen it in my updates you know just the needs we have from drivers to AIDS so I just want to mention if you look down that list under appointments you'll see new support staff members new ECC counselors new clerk typists new lunch AIDS new teddy bear staff members new classroommates new a new bus driver new computer technician new custodian we thank each and every one of you for joining our district and for serving others especially children in these important ways thank you now thank you tomorrow and Beyond and we're so glad that you joined with us that leads into two very very very important new uh folks joining with us which are um we have with us Tracy Bowles sitting over there and Beverly green sitting over there and um Tracy Bulls is going to be the new principal of Marlton Elementary School effective February 1st and Beverly green is going to be the new principal of the Macy middle school and Macy Elementary School effective February 1st and we're so glad you could be here Tracy had to battle through not feeling well to be here and to get to this moment just so everybody understands they had to shine their way through multiple levels of search and selection so first a paper screening then an interview with our cabinet then an interview with staff and parent stakeholders from demacie middle to Macy Elementary and Marlton Elementary I see Mrs Butch sitting there she was on our committee as well as well as um cabinet and other people here um the and right now just a little couple little bio blurbs and then I'm going to turn it over to the two of them to say a few words but I just um they both come to us with current and past administrative experience they're both currently principles uh Miss Bowles is in Lumberton Township and Miss green is in Logan Township and uh so their diverse range of experience working both in middle and elementary problem solving strong work ethic deep deep care for kids and staff and our community and so it's just a wonderful day and I'm so glad that Mr Manelli could be here too to sit next to miss green and we already have like the Baton passing underway for both of them so that's what we dreamed when we set out in that search process and I remember we talked about it as a board um is to try to be able to find two amazing people to be approved on this day so that they could have the time to overlap with Miss romanelli and Mr Feldman and because of the you know all the amazing work that they've done over the years and be able to make sure that that that work gets gets carried on and added to in the best way um and uh so with that I'll say Ms Bulls if you uh wouldn't would care to share a few words first I hope recovery protocols I'm so excited to be here and to be joining the team um it's it's an honor and a privilege to be here I was so thrilled when I got the news and so impressed with the process as I interviewed for Eve sham the dedication of the staff a panel of 21 stakeholders who came out in in order to find successful candidates for their school just speaks to the dedication of everyone and how much you care about your school district as intimidating as it was for me to be interviewed by such a large group it really did send a strong message about what kind of District this is it's been about a week since I accepted the position and as I share the news with people I I'm in awe of how many people have stories about Evesham school district and positive things to say almost every single person I've told has something positive to say about this District whether they're a parent with children currently in the school or they went through the district themselves or they've worked with Dr Smith or some of the other staff members and it just increase my excitement I'm so thrilled to be joining the team and I'm looking forward to getting to know all of you so thank you [Applause] and it is amazing to have two appointments of principal in the same night I mean that's may never ever ever happen again is green yeah if you wouldn't mind excuse me with my voice uh hello everyone I wanted to say um it's with great excitement enthusiasm and also humility that I am so glad to be offered the position of principal of the Macy schools I started my administrative experience here under the leadership of Mr Gary Hoffman who taught me so many things about the fundamental pieces of being an administrator collaboration professional development developing relationships with community and also teachers and more importantly spending time with students to get to know them I also agree that the process was rigorous but it was really it helped me to see that all voices are heard in this district and that was really important to me to see everyone represented there and to decide on the best leader who would be able to lead the school district moving forward the school moving forward I'm excited over the next couple weeks to be spending time here at the Macy schools getting to know the teachers getting to know the staff getting to know the students and also getting to know the parents in the community so thank you again I'm so honored to be offered this position here at the Macy schools it's full circle for me to come back so thank you so much again [Applause] okay um I just wanted to say thank you and welcome to Evesham Township school districts I wasn't part of the process of selecting you ladies for those positions but I will say as an outsider hearing the excitement and the support from the parents especially they were very very excited and on board with the decision for each of you to join our schools in in different in the two different schools and as a the mes PTA president is here she can attest to that too they were very specific and so it just is a very very good thing to see you both here and thank you so much and welcome to eacham and if there's anything I could do please reach out to any member of the board any other questions or comments regarding Personnel from the board okay Miss Noel I also wanted to say welcome we are so happy to have you here in our community I am an mes mom so I'm sure I'll be seeing a lot of you miss wolves and I hope to see a lot of you as well if you come to these board meetings because I'm never up this way and I also wanted to um say congratulations to Mrs cindoni um mes music teacher who was retiring at the end of this school year she really has touched so many students at Marlton elementary school so I want to just say I wish you the best in your retirement you have earned it and enjoy thank you Mrs Noel anyone else have a question or comment regarding personnel seeing none roll call please Mrs Capello yes Mr visicaro yes Mr Canton yes Mrs Knoll yes Mr Lancelot yes Miss Lee yes Mr Meegan yes Mrs Ryan Yes motion carries item 11 .
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314 313 048. did we have any out of area not this time okay it went um the offers went to all of the same vendors we had the last time uh when we awarded for the 61 and we had uh seven vendors at that time so yeah yeah that's right well and and but that includes installation and it includes a two-year a two-year warranty that the vendor must uh must service those hvacs for two years um so money this is SO3 money and I will tell you we still had in that uh in in that original budget for these HVAC units you know the that you can see over there we still had over a million dollars uh in that piece this will give us some leeway to take care of some things that have come up in the meantime uh in terms of priority uh from our original list and so this will help us you know the difference between this and a million dollars will give us some leeway to do some other things that that need to be done and I will tell you that we can't do it with us sir but well so I won't even go there we can't do it with us ourselves okay any questions about the HVAC and I would and I would or uh I'm sorry Mr Burgess I would add that think about what this would look like after January 1st with a 25 increase just for the just for the equipment you know yes absolutely yeah absolutely yeah because we couldn't do this without user absolutely not thank you yeah so uh I move that we approve the bid for the 30 additional HVAC units second Amanda amen all in favor aye Corey Burgess aye Amanda amen aye Charlene Diaz hi Anna I'm Melinda sabrowski so note item 5.3 reallocation of sr2 funding Dr Stewart Mr President and board members um I gave a pretty lengthy explanation in the public part of uh of the board agenda for this and and gave you all some additional information in the administrative part um uh I was reminded this week when we were when we've been talking about uh everything that's going on and the you know the school grades and the uh and then getting the surprise notices this week after we had specifically been told that we would have no schools in TSI uh to get the one school in TSI in all five schools in the advanced or additional TSI um so we did some soul searching and our folks work hard our teachers work hard our principals work hard we've been training our T our principals in instructional um feedback and those kinds of things so that we have that a lot more consistent and we've been doing all those things and each year our sites write a school Improvement plan and those you're all Educators so you've been you've been involved in those yourselves and and we make improvements in some areas obviously we've made some improvements in some areas Fox Creek Fox Creek's grade went up to a c from an f and next door went from an F to a d and um you know those are steps and we know it takes three to five years in the best of circumstances but clearly we're missing something and uh and so uh when we met with the uh instructional team yesterday and so that means the principals the assistant principals and the instructional coaches uh we did some soul searching and um and said you know we maybe we need some outside eyes you know when we do school Improvement um our plans we start in January each year it's internal it's us looking at ourselves um maybe we need some outside eyes and and everybody said yeah let's see if let's see if somebody if we're missing things what are we missing what are we not seeing in the mirror and it we all the time we get Jen and I get emails daily from vendors offering Services x y and z en explores them and um uh you know a little bit for each one to see if it if whatever that vendor has relative to curriculum and instruction might be of value to us and she had she had seen one that really kind of met what our discussion led to yesterday which is maybe we really need help with looking at ourselves and writing a plan an improvement plan for ourselves with some data seen from outside eyes just that piece and so one of those vendors had had those kinds of services so she spent some time talking with uh with their representative and so that's kind of how we came to this this particular vendor and then we learned this vendor is is is it approved gen or recognized or how how's that worded relative to the Ade they work directly with Ade so we know that this is one of the companies that that they recognize as being providing good services um I don't know that I can give you a track record because I don't know that we looked at that piece but we felt a whole lot better about it relative to the fact that Ade approved them and works with them just like West Ed we've worked with West Ed in the past but they since they're still recognized as a a an excellent PD Source that's why we continue to work with West Ed so um one in our soul searching and discussions yesterday part of the conversation was about and I need to make two Corrections for you one is in this public part um let me find it because it was just a typo in the third line Department of Education that all five of our schools fell below uh just a typo there in the information that I gave you in the administrative part and that is not a big deep dark secret is that we need to have these uh these deficiencies um cleared by April of 24.
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I would like a motion to approve items 11.1 and 11.2 do I have a motion oh there's no policy changes okay okay no new policies first or second reading sorry um almost had a heart attack there I know sorry it's the policy sorry president of the policy committee sorry I didn't mean to scare you um moving to committee reports any committee report chair wish to share with the best of the board Mr physicaro policy has nothing thank you I appreciate it you know Mrs Noel has already touched on what the Evesham Education Foundation does for us they have several great events throughout the year they donate a all their proceeds to our school district and we thank them immensely for all that all they do we meet once a week or once every other week and we've been meeting lately about the Double Down it's called the the Double Down fundraiser and it's held on in at the mansion in Voorhees it's going to be on February 25th you can go on to www easterneducationfoundation.org to buy tickets it's a night full of dancing and uh you know gambling they do have gambling but all the pros again it's not real gambling it's gambling for tickets that will end up in baskets and fundraisers and it's just a really nice event um and entertainment throughout the throughout the evening drinks and food so you know I encourage all everyone to go out and please uh you know have a good time that night and because all the proceeds go to our school district which is a huge help so thank you Mr lanzalotta and you've done an amazing job with community outreach so thank you for all your efforts anyone else wish to speak about their committee reports none okay seeing none um now we're going to move to Old business which we don't have any old business and we moved new business to 5.1 so at this um time we're going to move to open public comment the meeting will now be open to the public referencing any items of Interest however if your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or Personnel items or negotiations we ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public we ask that you limit your comment to three minutes per person and also that this section is meant for one comment per person is there anyone that would like to speak name and address please yeah my name is Evan Scott I live at 106 Williamsburg Court I just wasn't sure if the mic was still on so I come up here and flick it off uh so very quickly I'm still going to beat the drum for the municipality to fully fund its own initiative regarding the sros uh back uh earlier in the spring when we had the budget presentation it was mentioned on there that there was going to be land cells I think approximating six hundred thousand dollars and I do believe that the um the municipality was going to purchase that land to provide some relief to the board would you be able to give any updates on the status of those land cells and additionally uh I wanted to just speak about something uh a little bit different but the ties into a lot that we're talking about here and I think everyone is aware of two things we're experiencing state aid reductions simultaneously okay we're experiencing a huge amount of inflation how does this affect our kids so I think a lot of people in the room a lot of people watching don't understand the full extent of of how this all works and how we could maybe find some relief so that's what I really want to talk about tonight uh every three years the governor of New Jersey as a mechanism of surfera has to issue What's called the educational adequacy report and if you were ever to read that report you'll notice in the last time I read it CPI Consumer Price Index we're talking about inflation is mentioned 17 times now what does that document do that document establishes the Baseline per pupil spending amount now historically we've never really seen you know CPI rise above two percent which also happens to be why probably we are capped at the two percent mark because we really have an experienced inflation like we are now with that I would say and and request that this board increase its advocacy efforts in a joint effort with the township I think we need to amplify our voices together I think that the township with its voice I think with your voice ringing the right Bells we can actually affect some positive change that'll have a positive outcome on the education of all students not just here in Evesham but everywhere let's remember the governor announced that there's a 40 billion dollar Surplus that's a fact it's a fact that we are experiencing state aid reductions it's a fact that CPI continues to be held at that eight percent or above and we reach 9.2 percent over the summer but yet we're not seeing any relief as our costs go up I think that we need to have some kind of effort that requests that the legislature fix this structural issue instead of every three years when CPI rises above a certain threshold maybe we need to have some type of emergency you know relief so that we can help cover our costs and then a lot of these things that a lot of people you know want to argue about and debate go away because once again I don't think there's any enemies here in this room I don't think there's any enemies in this town There's No enemies in the state we just need to get onto the same page thank you very much thank you thank you thank you you want to I could if you want to okay thank you Mr Scott just to your question about the properties and where those are at so um currently uh Berlin County uh has done is doing and has done some appraisals on the properties and um as possible uh Green Space purchases and we are waiting for the uh the appraisal results to to be shared but that's it's still in process it does take some time but that it's at the county level at this point right now thank you and just to address one more thing our finance committee and the rest of the board as well as cabinet always has the best interest of the students and making sure that they receive and are not um neglected in any realm of like their educational um situation and success so we are always searching for creative ways hopefully to meet budget constraints so I guess we have to wait and see how that goes in the new year so thank you to the finance committee and the cabinet this time we don't need to go into a second executive session but I would like to ask for a motion to adjourn if there are no closing remarks from the board if there are please speak up okay okay well more from doctors this is my record for for talking but I I just as my last comment I just wanted to thank the board for their support in renewing my contract and I look forward to going to do together as a board as a district as a town over the next five years together it's been an honor and a privilege every day every minute for the past since July 2020 you know as some people say a covid year is like a dog year you know accounts for seven and we've we have navigated a lot of a lot of waters together through covid through budget true inflation through many many challenges and I just want the town to to know that um that when we say study said he you said study guidance you know um in your comments Miss Ryan and that guidance is steady when word is steady and I thank our board for being so steady and smart throughout and supportive thank you Dr Smith okay at this point I'm going to make a motion to adjourn Mr physicara with authority and quickly any second Miss Noel thank you all those in favor I will see you at the next board meeting
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not April of 23. we were initially Jen and I were initially a little apoplectic about the idea that it's it's December and if we had to raise those deficiencies by April testing and their sub-populations they're you know their sub populations and attendance well we all know what attendance has been like in the last three years do that by April of this year of 23 that would be really difficult so there was a typo There It Is by April of 24. so we have a year but we'd like to get started on this because if we don't clear those deficiencies in April of 24 then a program similar to this if not this exact program will be dictated to us forced on us well okay we've already done the soul searching and know that we need some work we need to do some things um we're not willing to wait around for somebody we're not willing first of all to rest on our Laurels and figure oh well we think we can take care of this but the other part is we don't want to risk the point that some point somebody's going to say to us you've got to do X Y and Z we want to take care of our own problems and the sooner we start the sooner we can make that happen we start that in school improvement process in January and we could get these folks to uh to come help us that early if if we go this direction and it's it's a pretty intense program they bring a team to each site for a week so Monday through Thursday they gather data hard data uh interview data they talk to parents they talk to students they talk to teachers they talk to other employees I would venture to Guess that at least some of them will talk to you as board members and then on Friday of that week which is already planned for PD for us to start the school improvement process the day that we look at data and historically we've looked at it ourselves at our own data and that kind of thing they come and present their data and then they come back in February when we do the next piece of the school Improvement plan and and help the teams at the sites start writing those plans to to respond to the data I don't remember so I need to have Jen because she's the one who's really talked with this gentleman do they come again after these two visits yeah please how long is the second visit it's the second visit a week also no no second visit they will come out with the data and they'll help use the data to write the plan and they're looking at systems fixing systems within the schools are they here for that second just for the day because they're I mean they're helping to write but they also do coaching like virtual coaching writing so they won't fly out every time but they will meet with them virtually coaching do you have a plan with you oh it's on my desk do you want to see it's on my desk this is just a piece of the program if we had the money which is probably going to blow you away um they would come out and actually help us implement the plan next school year as well they would actually implant someone into our schools for 96 days of the school year um be there as coaches to coach um and not saying anything against our instructional coaches at all but they're there to support the action plan um at the low rate of 375 000 per school so we just took a piece of that to help us start with the plan piece um uh let's see 10 things like three I think you're gonna know what this means more than I do I think it's like page three yeah you're gonna know better than I what this what this is saying it's pretty new I just met with this gentleman yesterday um well this has been done before in Arizona because the State of Arizona used to send teams out for a week because I remember being on a team so this is not an untried right procedure it's not a new process so they I'm sorry they um will be out for the week before um in January they'll stay on each site one day to help with going over the data and um they will spend two days on site per School coaching the leadership team and once again creating the plans and then they look at you know with with our plans we have to have Essa highly Sr rated strategies and so they help them choose the correct strategies that match the SR ratings that were all required to have and then five virtual coaching sessions um per school after that so essentially each school has its own team you know as opposed to one team coming and jumping around from the schools it's each school has its own its own team to work with them yeah but what I was learning about those extra thousand dollars and I've been seeing a lot of these um and there are a ton when did we have our enlightenment idea of I I'm just looking for right word or come to Jesus meeting that we're gonna yesterday yesterday and and I know that this sounds like we've hurried into this but the thing is that the the letters that came this week from Ade were really kind of the the stick jabbing Us in the back um you know and and um and kind of because we and we weren't trying to rest on our Laurels we knew we had things to do but those sticks poking Us in the back Monday and Tuesday uh said wait a minute we really have we need to step this up so it was yesterday no no no I know of course but no and I want you to know though 2023 it's actually 20.
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no it's 20 24. so we've got more time um I don't want to spend three hundred thousand dollars on the first we're spending on the first looking for for others yes because there's lots of these out there and I'm not against doing this right if the money's in the grant that's what it's for yes to improve the education of our kids yes and heck we might find something that we want to spend 400 000 on I'm not saying that oh it's 300 000 don't do it I'm saying there's a lot of this stuff out there and we're only getting basically 13 days for 60 Grand a site yeah so that's a hard pill to swallow I get it you got to be really good and you said it's brand new so it's not even tried and true no no no no this is not brand new program no no no no no no no no no no no this is this is they've done this in the state in other school districts in the states no no this program this program this company has been in other districts in the state of Arizona because they are recognized by Ade okay I I just understood that I thought no no no this was a brand new program have we looked into their growth yeah we do a lot of research before I'd be willing to do something like that well because I'm okay with doing this but I think we gotta especially when we have till 2024 we're not in a crunch we got to make changes we need to move fast on those changes and I'm okay all I'm saying is even if it's more than a day to research a few I mean you said you've been getting a lot of there are we get them all the time yeah right yeah we do yeah there's I've seen just because the program a lot of this stuff that we're looking into and there's a well none of this stuff and you and you but you'll notice that I didn't not mention a specific company or anything in my proposal so you know the and I did that intentionally yeah so yes we've been talking with this company but yes procurement rules say that we have to look at some others um but we would like to move on it so we're not spending 300 Grand and then yeah no what I'm what I'm asking yes and what I so what I'm really asking for is your authorization to allow us to shift the priorities in sr2 to have as much of that as we can to cover up to three hundred thousand now Jen's been working today and and submitted right the answer to Grant and you had rounded up 275 265.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above