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very excited to be at this phase so I will turn it over to them so I'll get started um like Gina said my name is Karen Eder I'm the chair over at South um she said we're proposing Earth and space science but we're also we're proposing two classes actually we're going to propose a course for Earth and space science and we're proposing an honors option of it um so the state of Illinois and District 99 have a two-year graduation requirement one for a life science and one for physical science this would be categorized as a physical science option for students to take to meet that graduation requirement we would make it available to freshmen sophomores and juniors and it would be a year-long course this class actually aligns to State learning standards for science so it is a big section of the standards that Illinois states that are important to student science learning that we have an opportunity to address the three main uh driving questions for this course as outlined by ngss are about the formation of our universe right um the formation of our particular how the Third Rock You Know closest to the Sun formed into this place that's suitable for life and then what our place is humans on this planet and in their universe is and in how we have an impact on that and so that will be the the main focus the driving questions for our students in this course that's the part about the Earth and space science another change that you will see in science in District 99 is this has been our traditional pathway for students and many of you have recognized this as biology chemistry physics um because of the structural changes that are happening within the district and to our courses we're going to change an opportunity to move away from a sequence model to go to the next slide um changing the name of some of our course so we're going to get rid of the physical science course at North are you keeping physical sciences out just for one more year because there's a population of students need to be served there and this idea of moving away from an idea of science sequence one more slide please um good as Karen said there is one life science course and one physical science course for graduation requirements in the state of Illinois uh there are two or two lab science District 99 requires one life science one physical science that's not going to change what might change is the order that students take their courses in with the Strategic plan in the district where students have more choice and more agency with putting this in we think that giving them a choice when they are able when they are ready and based on interest we'll open up opportunities for them to take more of our AP and electives as they move into Junior and Senior year so you'll see our course option model next this is the course option model that's each column is 9th 10th 11th and 12th grade you have a copy of that and it's also on the web uh Mr Davenport as you said before messaging is key now we've made a video for each of our courses that we teach that includes our teachers speaking to the topic in each class what type of student exchange class and students engaging in the activities in that classroom we in science don't think that the word laboratory is quirky at all contrary to what Jerry said earlier and so if you're right messaging is key because now families will have a choice for example when students come in from eighth grade to ninth grade as we know with moving forward they'll have an honors distinction maybe based on standardized tests now it still goes back to the the course recommendation by the eighth grade the honors and and course level will be based on their abilities but then choice will that be honors Earth and space science or will that be honors biology is a choice that students and families make so to messaging what those courses are about and what they're looking forward in their future is key to us right now and that's what our teachers took them through in the course recommendation process this year and we too each had about an hour-long conference with counselors to explain the changes that are happening counselors looked at this model before we implemented in the district so they're well aware of what's coming in the prerequisites for each course now and that's that's think that's the that's it that's it yeah any questions so this is uh I notice um it seems that this is really an alternative foundational course it seems like that you can the sequences all start with Biology I know we're getting away from a sequence but there's there's just multiple sequences right so you're either starting with Biology you're starting with with this new this new class right yeah so the two options for freshmen would be biology are Earth and space science neither of those classes have a math prerequisite so we really do feel like all of those course offerings are open to all students and all of our classes biology chemistry Earth and space physics um yeah uh they're all aligned to the high school level these are the core areas right um they're all going to the high school level ngss standards right so you don't have to be 17 to take physics yeah um and you don't have to take biology to be successful in chemistry you really give students an opportunity to kind of explore those fields that are of interest to them and that gives them an option to take all of the fields of science not just the you know historically this is so overdue this is great um uh can you go back to this to those different paths um this um sorry yeah right here so um so it is possible uh no it is not never mind it's going to say what so it's possible a student could go so it's chemistry is what gets dropped right it is possible to graduate and without ever taking a chemistry class yes sure just like it is without physics for students to graduate without a guitar but you haven't well chemistry is actually pretty cool I think that I mean if I just wanted to speak for I mean but chemistry I think it's a really bad rap I think you have to take the mic test right you know that's true taught by me that's true if you would have been taught by Micra you would have thought it was the best classic I'm trying to be on your side here I'm saying it's pretty cooler than what a lot of people think it is and and what a lot of students might think we have students who take biology and physical science and and don't advance in further in any other of the core science classes okay so that is currently something that could happen for our students right got it so we think we're opening up more options yes by adding this Earth and space branch of science offerings to students at both of these levels that we're not diminishing any of those opportunities no right so it gives students four options instead of really three yeah it's I think it's exciting and I think there's going to be just a ton of Interest too it's so tough so topical right it's opening up key and importantly options for students to go down you've heard it a bunch of times tonight Pathways of their interest tailoring their experience for what they want to do Post high school that's right in line with our strategic plan this this mirrors that same kind of work being able to get to physics earlier right so students had asked us speaking with their teachers about recommendations and speaking with 8th grade teachers about their reputation setting in here and they've already expressed lots of interest and gratitude that these are options now for them so yeah I definitely think that the the student interest factor is an important piece of this and we're excited to see a number of sections of both levels next year I'll have to go back and just you know just it's just curious why and how we were where we were you know why we've been where we've been this this sequence that we've always it's the same sequence I had in high school you know I mean why when you think back it's like why it's alphabetical yeah we've been Karen went to quite a few of the middle schools I've just I've been to Herrick just because of time Factor so we're talking to the eighth grade teacher directly in regards to this as well because it's new for them sure placement or recommendation of students coming in so we've had those uh and sent videos out to the eighth grade teachers as well as the eighth grade parents um why can't singers take environment why can't seniors take the new course so what we did with the core classes is you know we're running a class called principles of biomedical science that we have open to everybody right and uh the design of that class to be differentiated for freshmen through senior Learners right is considerable right and typically we haven't had that level of openness in our science programming so we've limited all of our core classes to a three-year kind of segment of students so biology and Earth and space science are open for ninth through 11th graders and then chemistry and physics are open for 10th through 12th graders right and just kind of just to kind of see how this lands for students with options right and then certainly something that we could reevaluate in terms of how many options we want to offer incoming students or things like that right but to start you know this is a huge shift for how we've traditionally sequenced students through their science learning and so we think this is a good model for giving students the most access that we can to all of these course options and then we can still cater it kind of to particular student levels with their math abilities and their Readiness for science very cool terrific stuff two courses I want to audit now yeah right thank you and this also wasn't dual credit so that like tells me fantastic thank you both thank you very much thank you thank you all all right uh all of those are up as an action item as a slate of an action item later on this evening as just curriculum exposes um the next one I need to uh switch over and bring Ryan in Ryan's going to join us virtually here I'd love to go through high school now not be a high school student oh yeah just go to high schools yeah all right hey Ryan look at that technology technology works all right before I turn it over to uh Ryan here uh Ryan will share some screen with you here in a second uh as you all know Ryan is new to the central office this year we stole them from North High to bring them over here and he is our director of student experience and obviously a major part of the student experience this year is the change in the new schedule uh 10 weeks into the school year we sent out our first survey uh and you can see from this slide up there not to steal Ryan's Thunder but I will a little bit that a lot of information came back Ryan has led the charge in processing all of this information making sense out of it uh coming up with some ideas of what should come next and then has met with all kinds of groups especially staff and students to try to process it move recommendations forward and to prepare for today's presentation uh about I don't know four weeks ago he realized that he has about two and a half more years of doing this as we continue to develop the schedule so you'll get to hear a lot from Ryan over the next few years about how it's going with this so with that intro oh God so is that is that the sample you sent out to or is that the response that's the response wow yeah so there was a lot of data for and there's a lot of open responses that Ryan had to categorize so uh Ryan isn't able to join us in person today he's going to be virtual uh I've asked Courtney and Arwin to be at the table as well because they've spent a lot of time talking to students and staff about these changes so they might pipe in now and then with uh some of their experience with all of this and with all of that said I'm going to turn over to Ryan all right everybody I I apologize for not being able to be with you in person um I'm probably only a stone's throw from you um I live in the neighborhood uh so um as Hank said this is the beginning of about a two and a half year process for me so I'm excited to get to the end of the first hurdle ironically I'm I'm starting phase two uh tomorrow I have a meeting with Josh and Chris Nelson Gina tomorrows to uh talk about some of the recommendations that you're going to hear about tonight so uh just to connect to the Strategic plan a little bit um you know we really wanted to make sure that we got feedback from a large group of people um you'll see um on the next slide um the number of people that we met with um and it's the diversest perspectives that are super important um that our student voice is just important as our family voice and our staff voices and our administrators um and so you're going to see some samplings of comments that led to some of our recommendations and then also at the end some things that we're going to work on second semester with some committees to see how we might adjust the plan so mid-october um as Hank said 10th week of school we sent out the survey it happened during access and we prompted families I think four or five times to see if we can get as many responses as we can we had uh some connectivity issues on the day that we gave the survey and so we left it open for students as well um and then early November so uh very first well I think Halloween actually we started digging through um at this point I just want to thank Vicki miles she's one of the administrative assistants at the district office who came with me from North she spent countless hours with me reading through every single comment uh categorizing it um coming up with different themes so that we could develop a workshop presentation with the committee right it's not just enough for me to read all the comments it's how do we put it in a digestible format for people to see the range of comments because some students love the schedule some students are struggling with it there are aspects about the schedule that people really like there's aspects that they're struggling with as well and so making sure that we're taking into account all of the voices and all of their experiences before moving forward so we um the protocol that I used was putting together packets by theme the committee was able to read through the packets and then we'd go through some of the quantitative quantitative slides um some of those like I present or provided in the supplemental packets so that you could see when people were given an option of choosing where they felt you could see that but then also how they felt what what their thinking was behind some of those responses and then the reason we did it by theme was to make sure that every time we were going through a topic like access that you could hear the student voice the family voice the the teacher voice all of the voices together to be able to come up with what the teachers and our support staff and our administrators our department chairs felt like an actionable step moving forward through this process I'm starting in December after working with cabinet exec Council the committee and DLT I started meeting with students we met with about over 250 students whether or not it was in Access in resource I was thankfully invited to a couple of classes I got to meet with Senior English and the senior stats Class A Band an orchestra so we got a wide variety of perspectives from students in a lot of different locations um and so I'm going to start going through some recommendations but again next steps I'm meeting with some people tomorrow I'm meeting with Aaron and Sarah some of our building APS next week and then we start moving forward with the committee looking um doing a deeper dive into some of these recommendations and how they actually hit the ground as we move forward also I'll be providing the raw data to an outside consultant so that they can look through and make a determination about you know my analysis versus their analysis to make sure that we are really hearing every voice and that we're not bringing any bias to that data so I wanted to give some context for some of the data um so again we gave it an October 20th both schools reported some connectivity issues which is why we think um we were just about 56 of the student body ended up responding I also you can see I've broken it down by grade level um obviously our freshmen were great about responding 61.6 percent of our freshmen across the buildings um and you know some of our seniors reported when I went around and talked with them uh that uh they're like yeah if you're making changes for the schedule I won't be here so I did not fill out your survey okay well there we go um so uh we also have families uh we had 16.7 percent from North and um we had 18.9 from South um and you also can see the staff breakdown I also gave a little bit of data about what has happened in the school year at this point because it was fairly early in such a significant change in order to elicit feedback but we wanted a baseline right um anytime you're going to make any kind of change we need that Baseline data because we've never given a survey about how people felt about the eight period day um so we don't really have any Baseline data for schedules so at this point there was one student support past day for juniors and seniors versus five for sophomores and freshmen um we hadn't started autonomy and access yet and for our grade level presentations with our counselors only Juniors and seniors had had their presentations at this point in the year so some of the data on how the Freshman felt about it well they didn't seem to have a high opinion about the presentations because they hadn't had it yet so um there is some data that is skewed by what has happened in the year at this point so um we're going to start talking about the recommendations uh one of the first things that um I wanted to make sure that we did was to see some of the voices that led to the recommendations right this isn't just we read through the data but separately we're going to make this this recommendation so you can see um from the top student voice staff voice and parent voice I took some representative voices um and then again there was a pretty big range of people that were responding so um for our first recommendation it's about access and one of the themes that came through uh the feedback was that it was too complicated the schedule the seniors have a certain schedule the freshmen have a different schedule I have a sophomore access but I teach mostly seniors and so the ability for staff and students to connect without a lot of hurdles came through probably the loudest and the clearest across any of the feedback back um so um we have decided to make a consistent day um once a week making it easier for students to either plan their study time or to access their teachers for help because students said listen I understand that there's sometimes programming but also if I know that in advance I will plan my time differently knowing that I won't be able to do some homework or to meet with a teacher during access originally we thought Thursday would be a good idea but as I met with students they all said Wednesday that they wanted the ability to meet with the teacher on Wednesday and then they'd still have Thursday in order to meet with a teacher again if they needed to or to finish their homework based on that help before they had their class on Friday so we took the students advice and I'm currently working on a schedule with Aaron and Sarah to see how that will map out but can consistently there will be student support with a pass on Wednesday's second semester so that when we survey again in March we'll see how that's going and that's pretty easy change you're going to hear some other ones tonight that not so simple to make right away that might involve more moving parts we might need to do some coaching up of our students or providing time for our staff to figure out kind of the direction we're going in or to build a pathway forward for what's being recommended so you're going to see a blend of those today as I introduce these to the staff over this next week we'll kind of lay out some general time frames that we're looking at for each of them but you'll see these are all of the recommendations then we'll start working forward to get these in place so I you know I don't want the board or students or staff or anybody else to think like all of these are happening tomorrow right it's over time these will get implemented as we roll into second semester just a quick question so is our goal we're going to take a look at what the feedback was and then try to fix the feedback right try to fix it respond to the feedback yes where we get and then we'll take another pass where we are yep and what direction we need to go in yep so we'll do this another time in this well Ryan will lay out the path forward in a little bit but yes there'll be an aspect of these big kind of post holes Where We Gather a big chunk of data all at once um that will be these major points in time moving forward but then Ryan will talk about a little bit his plans for in between those those major Benchmark uh in between going forward so just had a tangential question how does how does this relate with the study White's doing that's what Ryan's talking about so Ryan will is going to turn all of this over to white and they will take an independent they'll be like an independent auditor of Ryan's work thank you yeah all right Ryan thank you for clarifying that yes that um that some of them are a much cleaner recommendation and others we're going to have to work through with different committees um and again one of my meetings tomorrow is specifically about a recommendation that I'm making tonight so um our next big chunk of data is on March I believe March 20th is when we're going to be doing um our next survey for students during access um but as Hank said I'll be meeting with people all throughout the way not only getting feedback about how things are going from uh the beginning of second semester but also working on some of those larger changes that are a little bit harder there's a lot of nuance that some people um may feel a certain way about a change and others are feeling a different way and so how do we come up with the best modification in order to better serve students within the schedule so our second takeaway is here in Access we had a lot of programming to start the year right um we have to do our drills um we do executive functioning lessons so teaching kids about time management how to reach out to your teacher and the feedback was pretty strongly that there was too much programming to start the year they needed more time to be able to meet with their teachers so they would have loved for it to spread out a little bit and that also providing the that those lessons in a video format was a struggle so you can see um as a senior some of the kids felt like the video was too too much of an orientation and if I have to watch a video on my own I'm not gonna watch it um and um some of the staff reinforced that with making sure that we need to differentiate between what is a skill that we need to teach our freshmen and sophomores that maybe our Juniors and seniors don't need and so making sure that we have a clean schedule where we're only doing essential lessons and that we're trying to do it in a non-video format so that we can interact with the kids making sure that it's appropriate specifically for their grade level not just something that all students need but how all students need by their grade level a third recommendation is uh based on conversations with kids when we talked about how do those lessons look um that a lot of kids said that the differentiation by grade level is great but even across seniors some students are really great with time management other seniors are not some students have all of their work in and some students feel like I've dug myself into a hole I don't know how to get out of it and I don't know who to talk to about it um those things can't really be taught in a group lesson so um one of the things that we have talked about is being able to give access teachers the time to have one-on-one conferences for academic help so that students can figure out how to better use some of their free time also how to manage their stress um and then those one-on-one conversations will lead to more positive relationships and access uh one of the things that came across loud and clear from the students was that they didn't want teachers to get a list of five questions stop at their desk pull up their grades and say why aren't you doing your work um that they really wanted to be able to have a sort of problem-solving conversation if they needed it and if a teacher comes up to their desk and says um how are you doing you're like great I have nothing to talk to you about but I do have some homework to do that that's also what the student needs and so um we'll be working on this with um you know the committee again I'm meeting with Chris Josh and Gina tomorrow about this specifically to talk about how does this look um and so this is something that as Hank said isn't something that's starting the semester but will be rolling through sometime during second semester as we sort of better form how that looks for teachers and students in Access a fourth recommendation um is about autonomy days during access there was a lot of conversation or not conversation a lot of feedback from parents about the amount of free time that a student has during their day now students have absolutely said I'm just sort of like uh Courtney White said in his PE presentation right sometimes you want to work out during the day sometimes you're doing it eight o'clock at night students feel that way about their autonomy time during the day that um their autonomy time is for them and whether or not they're going to be productive in those 30 minutes maybe they need to manage their time to have conversations with their friends then because they're not going to see them for the rest of the day or after school or have ability to check in with them at night that's when they're doing their work and so students feel pretty strongly about maintaining that autonomy time but some of the adults that we've heard from have said that you know they're not college students they're 14 or that some of their students they wish were making better choices with that time so one of the recommendations that we're going to work through is reducing the amount of autonomy days during access and restricting it to senior only um to begin the second semester and that as we work on strengthening positive academic academic behaviors with our freshman sophomores and juniors that we start to build those autonomy days back in as students are better able to use that time this uh next recommendation is about the counselor presentations and access and we didn't have a question specifically in the survey regarding the the presentations other than did you find them valuable and again at this point Juniors and seniors were the only ones that had these presentations by this point and we did a lot to make sure that counselors have the ability to present their material to students who are on their caseload because it's really important that counselors have their students with them so they continue to build relationships with their through them with them through their four years students have said they really valuable they really value meeting with their counselors and parents have said that they really want their students to have access to counselors during access and so right now we have them in larger spaces some counselors feel like that delivery time is cut into because of students traveling there and other counselors say no I if I have to choose between traveling or having a little bit less time I'd rather have all of my students with me so this is one of those that we're going to be working through with C Triple S on what's the best model my recommendation is that we move it into access classrooms for second semester and problem solve around making sure that counselors have their caseloads when they're presenting and then see if that's the best model for moving forward next year also that that we have a lot of connectivity issues with larger spaces that we worked through the tech team was great about working through those larger spaces um and so um possibly would this help with that um and but um we'll be working on this one with C Triple S through the beginning of second semester the first presentation for seniors I believe isn't until March so we have a good couple of months to figure out how that's going to look the final recommendation that I'm making for second semester um is specifically around allowing teachers to have more department and course team time second semester to apply their professional learning that um we provided a lot of professional development um each week throughout the fall and sometimes the staff felt like they didn't have enough time to actually dive into the topics or to apply those topics students have said that from September to November they've noticed a pretty big difference in how their teachers are using that black time but we want to make sure that we continue to capitalize on that and that as teachers are working on applying some of that learning to better utilizing black periods um that the the idea of a student being able to focus for a 78 minute period um should improve and so um the families have felt like teachers are working through it and one of the big things that they've said was that they like that their student has more time to ask questions in class that they have for bigger assignments um that on testing days they have a little bit more time but it's also challenging with that imbalance of their classes um and so um you'll see in a future recommendation um that uh I'll start talking about some things that we need to work on further that's going to take a little bit longer to unravel so those are the recommendations for um us to start looking at either at the beginning of second semester or working through during second semester um and here are some recommended areas for future Focus so taking um all of the the data and all of the comments here are some themes of concerns uh that families staff and students have asked that we work on and so um number one uh definitely um in a very close number two is the imbalance of academic courses um students having all of their rigorous courses on one day and then having uh uh free time or too much free time on the other black day and then the other hot topic was see lunch um students have asked that we determine a way to offer lunch earlier in the school day so that um see lunch on in case uh your unaware starts at 117 on Black Days um so students have asked that we work on ways in order to move that up earlier in the day um also improving communication about access and resource programming some students have felt like um they don't know where to look for it or by the time that they knew something was happening they didn't have enough Advanced planning time so we're going to be working on that um and one of the things that came across from both parents and staff was connecting a student's autonomy and access to the commons with their accountability for being respectful responsible engaged in class how can we make sure that students who are not using their free time that were able to coach them into better use in their free time for students who are missing too many assignments or have too many absences how are we helping them during this resource time to get back on track um also looking at ways of increasing academic support so how can we have more teachers available during resource um some creative ideas from staff and from families about developing enrichment courses that students could sign up for um uh you probably have heard of service opportunities that were starting to increase I believe a student board member talked about um operation gratitude that happened in November and we're looking to increase those opportunities and engage in clubs um and asking their Club sponsors if you're doing a service opportunity outside of the day how can we bring those into resource to engage more students in it and then finally we want to investigate some ways to offer um some group study sessions during access that students would be able to sign up for so instead of one-on-one help with a teacher with a pass that teachers might be able to say for example before uh the AP testing is there a way that we'd be able to have students sign up for an AP study session during access so that um all students would be able to access that during that time that is a rundown of the recommendations um again uh I will be continuing this is just step one of a long journey um we'll be again giving a survey in March and throughout January February and before the survey in March I'll be working with groups on specifically these recommendations um and making sure that as we're moving forward we're not just waiting for once or twice a year to get people's voices but as we're implementing them that we're constantly getting feedback on it so I'm happy to take any questions okay that's what I thought but we also there was we also talked a lot about Connections in the in the presentation yeah no it was actually no connection yeah so I wasn't so I wasn't sometimes I was a little lost on that um I also I didn't see um I didn't hear any conversation about our tcd students and how this is impacting them are there any adjustments we're looking at making uh for our tcd students particularly anecdotally I know you know there's been um the some of the senior tcd students missing out on information in an access period because they're gone so how do we how do we make sure that they're getting that same information in a meaningful way and we've talked about trying to provide greater access to resources from access periods for students who attend morning tcd traditionally we've had more students attend afternoon tcd but the board may recall we are an all-time high for many years I think we're just over 170 students this year and we've had years where we're under 120.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
sorry 23 let's try 23. sorry I discovered it's like okay I'm getting ahead of myself so in 23 so um notices will be going out we'll have a reception for our two individuals and we're very excited on who they are so thank you all right um the Bartholomew County Redevelopment commission actually met today reviewed budget they're starting to accumulate some funds which means they need a lawyer and a Financial Services Group to help them manage that okay so so I think they're going to vote on those contracts in the next meeting January 9th if anyone's interested in that okay thank you anyone else districting and Facilities committee met recently uh we have two main agenda items one was to review the Parkside School renovation program in progress and then the second was to continue our work looking at the demographic study that was done and looking at capacity and plans for in particular elementary schools I think we meet Dr Boseman said we'll meet again maybe before the end of the year maybe in January awesome the bcsc advisory committee met on November 18th it was an amazing presentation thinking about um what is special about bcsc it's really hard to name one thing but we had an excellent presentation by Rhonda Laswell and Tina green on udl and they've come up with this fabulous way to integrate all of the issues all of the approaches that we have to our Learners here in bcsc thinking about udl PBIS our inclusion efforts all of these things you've already heard this evening and they've put together this very effective graphic that is just wonderful in how it speaks to Maslow's hierarchy Bloom how all of those are integrated and and how udl and all of our work here at bcsc integrates that for those of you who will be new in these leadership roles I highly recommend that you learn about these things and everything that's going on here in bcsc and I noticed in my notes that um It just fits what we've been talking about so far one of the last quotes that I heard in the meeting was you can't teach the Mind whose heart you haven't touched we get to hear our transportation report next I will turn to Dr Bozeman good evening thank you for making some time periodically from the operations Department we like to bring our individual departments to you for a presentation and an update on happenings tonight we'll hear from our transportation department from our director AJ McKean and our safety coordinator Lisa Wheeler who will highlight uh what they're focusing on within the department and how they work with more than 100 of our employees at tnm as to keep our kids safe on the way to and from school as those are extensions of the classroom so I will turn it over to AJ thank you for the opportunity to come speak this evening I would like to quickly recognize these folks these 16 folks work in the office building they're behind the scenes every day working diligently to make sure our 8 500 kids that we transport every day get to and from where they need to safely not to mention the 140 bus drivers and monitors that work every day to transport those students safely so I just want to recognize these folks that do an outstanding job just these 16 folks in the office have over 200 years of experience in student transportation so that's it's a huge huge deal for them so what I'd like to go over first and as Kathy stated earlier Bartholomew was the first School District in the state to get three point seat belts on school buses and we continue that today and I'll have you to report that we only have five buses left in our Fleet that do not have seat belts and those buses will be going out of service shortly they're on the spare line right now so we have been able to replace all the buses and have pretty much the safest buses that there are available to transport our children every day this 360 view camera system is something we've had put on the buses here in the last couple years as you can see from the picture on the left it's an overview there are four cameras around the bus when a driver pulls up to a stop extends their stop arm it will show all four cameras at the same time in the rear view mirror of the bus so as the bus drivers stopped they can see if a student is walking around next to the bus it will actually show up in that camera that could possibly be in a blind spot while they're doing that also while they're driving down the road if you're making a right-hand turn the right hand camera will light up same for the left and if you're backing up the rear camera will light up as well it's it's pretty neat feature you can't really make out what the person is you can just tell there's something there moving so it's really hard to see but you can definitely tell that there's something there we did a very big upgrade over the summer for stop arm cameras uh to help eliminate drivers running the stop arms or the buses are picking up the children every day as of right now this was put out in August when we started the school year you've had 60 plus tickets issued and this number goes up daily it's kind of been a learning curve with the bus drivers too as to when this system records the the entire stop so if the bus driver doesn't properly do a bus stop which that doesn't mean that they're they're breaking any laws but if they have not come to a complete stop before they extend their stop arm or something that's that's minute it's not when they say somebody's ran their stop arm that's not a submissible stop arm violation in court so they have to the bus has to be completely stopped before they extend their stop arm and at that point if somebody proceeds to their stop arm then they have they have broke the law so it's kind of been about training issue on our end but it it's worked out really well and it's a officer Q has got her work cut out for we've actually had so many violations that we've had to actually hire somebody else to just deal with stop arm violations and that's what she does every day one of the new technologies that's on the buses it just came on the 12 that we received last month is a collision avoidance system as you see the picture on the right it's a little black box it's in the front bumper and this actually will break the bus for you it will take control of the bus and to avoid a rear end collision if you get too close to the vehicle uh in front of you the screen to the left is part of that system I mean it can actually tell you the speed of the vehicle in front of you it can this system also has rollover control so if a bus driver is entering a curve too fast it'll actually take the the bus take control over the bus and make the transmission go on free fall and it will put the brakes on on the bus to keep the bus from rolling over we have also upgraded the internal cameras this summer the new buses have the cameras on the pictures to the left that are actually in the side curtain of the bus we've decided to go with a different setup for the cameras because as you can tell with this the seat height and the bus we don't have that you can't there's no way that you can get all the dead spots in the bus so we've decided to put them down the curtain which face across the bus that way it shows all the seats you can look down each Road seats of the bus and so there's no dead spots so any issues that we can see on the bus or happen on a bus we can see at this point and we do have forward-facing cameras now and windshields at the buses so if there's any instances any accidents that happen on a bus or any of that sort it also helps with stop arm violations at this time I would like to introduce Lisa she's in charge of our safety for the school buses and she's going to talk about our safety team and what they do with the kiddos I'm in charge of the safety team and our safety team visits each Elementary and parochial schools each year to do bus safety with a pre-k through sixth grade we've been doing this now for about 20 years maybe a little more than that our goal is not to show the students why the rules exist but I mean we want to show our goal is to show students why the rules are there instead of just telling them this is the way it is there's a reason why every rule is put in place on the buses grades pre-k through third we watch they watch a video or a puppet show some of the puppeteers skits includes the bus rules the point in motion signaled across the street if a child has to cross the street we want him to be able to cross safely and that point in motion is something that we started several years ago that not every school in the state of Indiana they don't do it that includes the point to the student and the direction to go across the street if a child does not see the point and the motion they do not cross the street so we instruct all of our drivers to do this there's our new little friend Buster this is our puppet show here that we give to the students grades four through six have classroom time learning how to properly wear the seat belts why we shouldn't eat on the bus and there's a lot of reasons why we shouldn't do that where to stand at the bus stops is going to have a wreck and then all grades uh pre-k through six go out to the buses and we do a bus evacuation and learn how to get out of a bus safely and the children really enjoy that and this is some of that um going on here with pictures this is bustered the bus he's new to our safety team the kids are going to absolutely love him um he's um he's going to talk he's going to move around sometimes he's going to sit quietly and just listen like we asked them to do on the buses he's going to make funny fun he's going to make learning safety fun and that's what it's all about because if they're having fun they're learning and that's what we want him to do buster will interact with the students giving them information about safety and give the students to us a chance to ask questions [Music] foreign this is him he can um of course he can move around he can spray water he has like a gun in the front not a gun but a a little spigot in the front that will squirt water on the children to get their attention oh there you go he has a speaker on him so we can actually put a headset on and we can give our bus program instruction through the speaker to the to Buster and the speakers on him are in the wheels so we're really excited because not everyone has this and I know that the students is going to love it [Music] I think the adults are having a little fun with this too yeah yeah so anybody have any questions awesome thank you thank you I don't think I have really a question I just want to commend you both and Dr Boseman on continue keeping our kids safe during transportation to all the events that we go to I know the first year that we had discussions and my kids and husband hears this all the time of the safety belt issue you know it was one of those that it was kind of going south and then I mentioned about I see the bus as the game Yahtzee and our kids are the dice and if a bus should be hit or rolled over when they're unsecure in the in the bus it's like playing the game of Yahtzee whatever dice comes up could mean that that's your child either ejected from the bus or under the seats wrapped around somehow and it would not be a very positive event right and the other thing is we were having double standards we wear safety belts in our vehicles personal vehicles on airplanes and such and that there's some reason why we shouldn't have belts on our most prized possessions and we should set the standards and I'm glad to hear we only have five and I really like the cameras and look forward to hopefully less tickets because people will pay attention and if not then I think the fines for the tickets should go at least three to four times higher than what they are if they don't get it the first time so thank you thank you there are other questions I have one sure on your uh Collision control device does the bus have to go a certain speed you know even if it's more like it's just moving it will stop okay thank you AJ who gets to drive bus the Buster that's curious hey you guys have a tough job 60 tickets that's scary is that super scary I don't know how much more that would be before we had the cameras you know obviously I think the cameras hopefully make it an easier case but that that's that's pretty scary um and and I'd also say you you have a tough job rules are in place safety rules are a place to keep us safe and we can all appreciate that but kids don't always appreciate it and having to discipline on things like that is not easy like you guys end up having to be the bad guys it's not a fun job it's a very important job I received a ticket for my kids not wearing their safety belt so you can imagine the conversation I had with them um when I got those tickets home and my youngest daughter who had been through one of these safety talks she's in third grade got to tell her sixth grade brother what she learned and why he was doing the wrong thing too so your message is reaching some of some of this kids so thank you for that every year wonderful Instagram just yeah just super quick yeah thank you for the updates very informative from the you know the 360 view to the internal cameras and just to follow up what a couple others already said you know it seems pretty sad or maybe unfortunate is a better word to have so many stop-arm violations that you have to devote a person um just to keep track of that on a daily basis and you know hopefully as time goes on that will become um less necessary sure we had a car the other day that ran the stop arm come around behind the bus ran the stop arm and did a uni in front of the bus came back and run the stop arm again so we see it all I guess Buster should have been out there shooting water around here thank you so very much thanks for sharing Buster with us hahaha all right it's time for our list of approvals Dr Roberts thank you Dr shitz so you do have a list of approvals in front of you so minutes of the regular school board meeting of November 14th that was our last regular meeting you did hold two executive sessions last week December 5th and December 9th you have supplemental contracts field trips and professional lease as well as school fundraisers additionally a set of claims from December 12th dated today that's almost 1.4 million dollars then a pre-run for the month of November November 1st through November 30th that was about 4.4 million dollars the payroll total is about 7.6 million dollars and covers check dates of November 18th and December 2nd covers the work periods of October 24th through November 20th and then we did have the additional check last Friday for the teacher appreciation Grant stipends each year you approve the policy in terms of how we distribute that amount of money and so once we get that those dollars from the state we were able to get those out to all staff members on this past Friday December the 9th additionally we have a other approval of the guaranteed maximum price for educational improvements Dr Boseman keeps bringing those to you we are asking also for permission to declare some C4 equipment obsolete that is a a process we have to go through just from from getting that approval from you than to do other stuff with that equipment and then also we do are asking to reduce the expulsion examiner's determination regarding student discipline you have that information that updated information in front of you this evening on that particular item as well I believe yes those are my list of items thank you very much so I'll entertain a motion for a proven items three a through H as they are presented to us so moved thank you Dr Bill is a second thank you Mr Grime so there any questions my colleagues have about a through h there are none all those who are approving these items a through H has they've been presented to us if you'd signify by saying I I those opposed there you go past unanimously thank you sure before we go to board input review I did notice on the agenda we do not have the second set of HR recommendations so we do need to I was just gonna wait yes so we just did the administrator ones um at the beginning so we have another list of those and you had that information in your packet as well yes I do request approval of the HR recommendations as president of your packet this evening thank you so much is there a motion for approval so moved thank you Mr hofdwire is there a second second thank you Mr Bryant any questions there won't be a quiz on what we read um all right so if approval if you do approve those Human Resources recommendations that we've read in our packet if you would signify by saying aye those opposed there you go Dr please thank you all right an opportunity for a board input review for Brian I Dr shed Kathy you was here when I got on this port unfortunately you all made a mistake in voting me on but anyway I'm going to miss you the laughter the funds that we have had to stand up and doing the right thing for not just our students but for our teachers it's been fun it's been a joy and it's been my pleasure Dr Bells the four years that I have with you sitting next to you 've been a pain but it's all right thank you um so thank you that um oh well it has been a good four years I've learned a lot and it's been a pleasure it's been an honor to serve the community for the last four years and get to know all of you I don't or anything but um yeah I would just say keep up the good work for the students for the teachers for everybody in bcsc and that includes those that are going to be on the board starting the new year everything's about the students and that's what your bottom line should be so thank you everybody and it's been fun great thank you your turn thank you ladies I appreciate it you've been an awesome role model for me as a newcomer I really appreciate it good luck thank you Mr Grimes um yeah um well first of all thanks to the presenters here this evening the leadership team at the East transportation department the department congratulations to the spell Bowl team at Central um congratulations to to new administrators approved here this evening and uh thank you to C4 for the very nice Christmas card again this year and the uh had an opportunity to drive by North and listen to 91.9 in the Columbus landmarks display that C4 put up in front of in front of North good luck to the wrestling swimming and basketball teams at North and East this week as they could be compete against one another starting tomorrow night through Friday night and congratulations and and best wishes to Dr shed Miss stay off the wire and Dr bills and thank you very much for your combined 35 years of service it's it's been a real pleasure to be on the board with all three of you these last two years thank you very much thank you well thank you uh for the reception this evening and I would just like to say it has been a a very humbling experience as far as serving on the board I've learned a lot I came on hot I thought I was going to conquer the world especially in the world of special education and Dr Van Horn taught me very quickly that slow and easy is the way to go and we and I didn't think I was ever going to get my next to the youngest graduated from high school and he told me that we go slow and and pay you know and work as a team and that should happen if James decided to do that and uh he certainly did um I would just say that I think we need to change the name of accommodations to Todd grimes's uh report so we should have the Grimes report and lastly I'm going to miss everybody on this board and I expect the ones to remain in our new ones that I will be around and hope that we can continue moving forward with several projects as far as with special education and Mr Bryant I am passing you the uh the torch for the um um help me out Dr shed Sergeant sergeant of arms so I will pass that to you and uh you can carry the safety and all the things that are near and dear to my heart so thank you very much thank you Miss you thanks I'd Echo it's been a wonderful meeting as Mr Grimes pointed out that lots of exciting things happening and appropriate recognition I've enjoyed thank you to the three retiring board members I've enjoyed working with you I think I I saw three incoming board members were able to join us tonight I look forward to working with them and thank you very much sure sure all right my last one let's pray I get through this so I just wanted to say that I've thought about um I've thought a long time about what to say tonight and then I decided to keep it very simple I've been honored that the Columbus Community sorry provided me with the opportunity to serve this work has taught me a great deal both professionally and personally professionally I know that bcsc is one of the best school corporations in the state of Indiana and Beyond Dr Roberts and the entire leadership team are remarkable you are committed an Innovative individuals the list of advanced creative initiatives in bcsc during my tenure is endless in academic facility Finance transportation technology Health Care wellness and human resource efforts something remarkable has happened in all of those areas during my tenure the Columbus Community has much of which to be proud the leadership team in each of our schools along with their entire staff are passionate and caring individuals for each and every learner and staff member in bcnc it was so fitting and I was like why did you do this to me that this evening's presentation was about Columbus East for that's where it all started for me Bill Johnson at the time the principal at East invited me to be a part of a parent Advisory Group and my involvement with bcsc grew from there as you heard this evening East is a very special place the board colleagues with whom I have worked have been wise and talented individuals the compass Community has been smart to elect individuals with an array of skills and expertise the varied talents and professional skills among the board members are true assets to the guidance this board is able to offer May the community continue to elect wise broad-minded talented individuals the multiple Pathways that are bcse provides to Learners the focus on the whole child and learner and the commitment to the central role that public education plays in our democracy and the development of Civic minded citizens are important foundational efforts to continue so thank you so much your turn I don't think I can follow that thank you again Dr shed Dr vilts and Kathy for your service it is greatly appreciated thank you of course so you all get to mark your January calendars for our next meeting um our next regular reorganizational meeting will be January 9th at 6 30 here in the administration building Terrace room and the following meeting in January will be on January 23rd so with that I wish everyone made the school year you make it through the end of the semester it is uh finals week at IU it is so much fun there um May you have lovely holidays in the start to a great new year so with all of that this meeting is adjourned foreign
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15 that's right 15. um and they worked really well together and their job was to take all the applications that come in all of them they get them all all the completed ones narrow that down to a number to invite people in for preliminary interviews with the search committee and then their job is to narrow that down to three to five names and those names would be presented to the school committee the search committee cannot send more that cannot send less than three well they they can't send less than two um they can't send one because that usurfs the authority of the school committee as far as hiring goes but by sending two names you run the risk of one person withdrawing or accepting an offer somewhere else and you end up with one so the committee is kind of left without a point of comparison it's always nice to be able to choose between a couple of different people by saying no less than three meaning the charge to the school Community being no less than three no more than five more than five is way more cumbersome on you than it needs to be um but three to five allows you to be able to function get through the time get the timeline for that process effectively and efficiently efficiently and then be able to make a decision at the end so does it that's identified in the timeline when that would have to be done that membership should be completed by your February 13th school committee meeting if you're going with the second and fourth Mondays that's where it would fall um so that I would have an opportunity to work with them there are certain things I have to do with the search committee by law I have to train them on the open meeting law I have to train them on conflict of interest law and they have to complete the online if they haven't already done so they have to complete the online ethics test um and I have to I have to provide them copies of the open meeting law uh what we need to do is find out from your town clerk is if they have to do they have to go get sworn in um and that I'm not sure every town every Community is different uh so we would verify that and they before they could even get information from me they'd have to complete all those tasks the idea being all that training is done before the application deadline so that they're ready to go as soon as the application deadline occurs we do it intentionally on a Thursday is the deadline so that we have Friday to kind of put everything together and get that information out to the search committee members they would review it and then come together um uh [Music] uh March 6th is the date um it's the it's a Tuesday after your I think it's a Tuesday after I think it's Tuesday um and um that way we would be able to uh have them review all the applications identify who they want to bring in and then on the week of March 13th to the 20th that whole week um they'd be conducting preliminary interviews and then making that final determination as to who to which candidates to forward to the school committee as a recommended finalists um so while this whole beginning part is going on uh starting from today through um the uh January 30th date um there's two things that need to to need to accomplish one is I provided you a copy of the brochure from 2014.
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so These funds only come in when they have Student Activity and those are understandable it's just the the groups with with nothing on them no funds in addition to no activity exactly I know there's I guess my question is are these inactive groups and should they be you know should we take these off the books in effect are they just new groups that have not yet done anything I can get back to you on that we can contact the sites and make sure what's going on okay it's a more curiosity than concern and something like the yearbook Club a lot of their anytime they would sell and correct if I'm wrong uh Mr Levinson and they sell something goes into not this account it would go into an auxiliary account Ballard and Mark Metz started that so it's just new they just had their first meeting and the art Honor Society had been active for several years and just started yes they're all new okay yeah well John knows me well enough that when I see a table with blank lines uh I got to ask the question I it was not worth a phone call but I appreciate the uh that actually brought up a couple of questions for me I didn't realize there was all these other funds that go with everything so when we give money to the FCCLA how do we know which fund it's going to unless it's a tax credit question so these usually and is Miss Wilson tonight [Music] operative so if it's going on this sheet in Student Activity how do donors know as compared to going into the donations fund how do they know where it's going or the auxiliary or any of the others that you mentioned well everything on this on this chart is student generated funds so fundraisers okay so anytime that it's the hot chocolate sales that you'll see next it's it's the you know the the cards at the football team series usually like booster club snack bars or nothing like that or gate receipts in some cases one of those auxiliary and you know how to get into tax credit and then donations are supposedly a check written to the donations of 530 donations account so I think the the confusion might be between you make a donation does it go into 5 30 donations or does it go into Student Activity and that's my background it doesn't ever hit Student Activity unless it's with the fundraiser yes it's actually kid money and the kids actually have to vote as part of the club in order to spend the money so we are just you as a board in the district are just the character the caretakers of this funds it is not theoretically District funds it's student funds did it mean to open the case no you're fine that's we're educating clarification so these these have their own bank account okay and we don't track them in our financials office they're just they're are purchasing or tracks them with QuickBooks and with Excel but they've got their own bank account the Auditors don't necessarily want them well I hate to say it this way but there's the there's been other districts in the country that sometimes merge These funds for different purposes with operating funds which we certainly don't want and then they become much harder to travel because your own bank account is much easier great question any other questions thank you moving along to tonight's consent agenda agenda item seven a through J we'll need a motion to approve the consent agenda points improve the consent agenda as presented thank you all in favor aye item 8A um Mr Shaw edition of four permanent substitute teachers as of November 30th we have had a 66 percent fill rate when it comes to our substitute assignments which is miserable that's horrible and so what happens in those other third so is that we have classes that get combined we have um that happens a lot at the elementary schools where they'll take that class and spend spread them out into three or four other classrooms um at the the elementary or at the the secondary school they can do that but we've had I know Mr Breda how many classes have you been subbing in the last a month or so I'll tell you last week I spent every class period in the teacher's classroom I just have through the entire week right and before that uh Wednesday and Thursday the entirety as well so right so we're using people that aren't that should be doing their own job or using them as as substitutes and so um we have been working with this at on Solutions and this will be this one and the next agenda item that we'll talk about in just a second on how ways that we can help alleviate this so one of the one of the ways and I know Prescott Unified School District has had some success with this is to identify one person in each School that would be the permanent substitute and so they don't get assigned any job until they come into work because it's to filled jobs that haven't been filled by the normal subsystem and so it's not going to solve all the problems we've had but last week 10 unfilled positions one day eight and it's horrible now because of the illnesses but we've had you know way too many that four is not going to help or it's not going to cover it but it's definitely going to help and so this position would be paid on the teacher salary schedule would not be eligible for classroom site fund money because that's they're not in the classroom as the regular teacher they're not having to talk to parents they're not having to um plan things like that but they are that's a way to bring somebody in to cover and they'd have to have a substitute certificate in order to be eligible for that um we have identified I think somebody at the high school and the middle school already I know Brandy's had some interest in hers I don't know um Dr Moody if you've had interest in yours but we think we can fill this fairly quickly actually one of the positions for the middle schools on the Personnel report today that you may be approve so um we we've had some interest we're hoping that this at least helps alleviate part of the problem it's not going to solve all the problem and this is not a Chino Valley issue um it's not we get our subs to the county school's office it's not their issue um it's just a lack of people wanting to be substitutes and county-wide so press kits have the same problem humbles have the same problem thank goodness we're in this at least close to where there's lots of people I can't imagine what what like Seligman or ashfork or mayor are going through they're probably a lot rougher than we are so um one possible solution we think it's going to cost between 200 and 260 000 but we'd be spending not as it's going to be a little bit more expensive than a normal sub assignment but we need to do something to get somebody in those classrooms because it's causing disruptions campus-wide these are full-time positions these are full-time positions on the same calendar as the teacher calendar they would participate in the professional development they um these new ones to the district would go through the new teacher training that we normally have in the summer um so this coming up Summer they would participate in that and and we want to embed them in the the school so they become familiar with the kids the kids become familiar with them higher chance of success for those substitutes in the classroom I think it makes sense and if it comes down to a day where we just don't need them we'll find another position for them but I don't see that happening anytime soon Mike do you have any questions or comments on that I do not that you feel all right they know they entertain a motion to approve the addition of four permit substitute teachers who to approve the addition of four permanent substitute teacher positions all in favor all right item 8D to designate pair of professional starting as substitute teacher teachers so in our self-contained classrooms we have a teacher that supervises one or more paraprofessionals when we get a substitute teacher for those classes typically what happens is the paraprofessionals continue to run the class and the teacher is not really doing a whole lot being helpful not you know they have to be there we need a certified person in the classroom but they aren't really doing a whole lot not that they could they're not familiar with the Specialty Care that goes on and the instruction that goes on in that classroom so um what we are proposing is that we identify a person in each self-contained classroom and we're talking about our centers classroom which is our profound kids our profoundly disabled kids our EDP classrooms are extended resource classrooms and I think those are the three that we're talking about um that we identify uh what we're calling a designated paraprofessional that person would have to get a substitute certificate so they would become they would be able to be the substitute in the class formal formal substitute in the class and then we don't have to bring in somebody else that would come in and just be there there in the corner on their phone or whatever um that person since they are acting as a substitute rather than the paraprofessional we would give them a 75 stipend on top of their normal pay um we normally pay 130 dollars to a substitute that comes in so that's a savings of the district but they're going to make more than with their pay and their stipend they're going to make more than 130 dollars so it's good for the employee it's a savings for the district we get a certified person in there and we're not putting substitutes in that classroom that could be going somewhere else in a regular Aid classroom so we're hoping that we we increase the number of of fills in our regular Ed classrooms because of that so um again it's not going to solve the problem but it's going to be between these two um recommendations we hope to at least help alleviate the problem someone what a clever maneuver I think it'll work efficiency okay [Music] a few dollars here a few dollars there right anything else okay again I'll entertain a motion to approve that okay Mike smile with me so I will move to approve paying a 75 stipend to designated paraprofessionals for serving as a substitute teacher second all in favor all right tonight's Personnel reports we do have a supplement so please refer to the supplement as well um we have two new certified two new classified four new classified Subs two resignations uh three certified changes nine classified changes two coaches and of course 141 timesheets for your approval um I want to note a couple on here I had mentioned that we have number one is the new permanent substitute teacher that we just talked about for Heritage Middle School uh number eight you might recognize as me this is just my notice to you all about my um going on to the rehire a retire rehire program through ESI this is the formal notification that was required as part of my contract last time you approved the contract and this is the the notification that I have to give you um and I'm trying to think was there somebody else and that's about it on on this Pro that I just wanted to point out is number nine on the supplement coming back as a teacher coach but I was just wondering no this coach all right any other questions like to make a motion but tonight's Personnel repo Report with supplement as presented and all in favor aye item nine a safe dates curriculum [Music] um you'll remember that last summer sorry got a potential product in my throat you'll remember that early last summer we talked about the Family Life curriculum for Heritage and the high school and that you approved um about three months later or so after the materials had been on preview for the public the health department who teaches the courses forgot to include um one piece that goes with it and we wanted to bring that back and put it on display again prior to the potential of that folding into what they're doing it's just another like a unit of study with the program but because it hadn't been on display I didn't want to say oh yeah let's just do that because it's not supplemental it's really part of what they're doing so there's additional materials yes that they didn't provide for us at the time and then later they're like oh yeah we forgot to give you that so um anyway oh yeah I have it um so what I just want to let you know um and Miss Bryce has a piece back there too the three these three pieces will be on display it's part of the family life curriculum that you already approved this unit of study is called safe dates and it's about safe healthy respectful relationships among peers so that's what that part's about but we did want to put it out on display play for so everybody can see and go through it if they have an interest in doing so it'll be on review and for public comment for 60 days yes ma'am and when does our family life curriculum start so not until quite a bit later this year than normal because um yeah we got lots and lots of time okay Okay the reason is I asked that too the reason is that um you know we have when we approved it they'd already started booking and we were sticklers about wanting to get it approved but they hadn't gotten it to us soon enough to do it earlier in the school year so it's just going to be closer to the end than the middle okay it'll work out so I just that was information just wanted to let you know we're putting that out so just a quick question that the materials that we've previously approved the physical materials yes are they here now or will they all come with this additional material so those kind of explain I understand that but the the order quantity has not yet been shipped if it is we don't buy anything and they don't ship it here um they bring it okay but it will include this this additional material when it after it has gone on display and it has been approved and the county brings it all the health department so we don't have to buy anything like they do it for us for free okay sure thank you so we're okay so anyway um this is really geared toward um Team to team preventing team to teen abuse of various kinds building healthy relationships so that's this component of it so that'll be out on display the one thing I did want to note when we had the other pieces available for public review there was the option of posting a link so people could access it from the website this is actually not available that way so they have to come in they have to come in there is no link there is no website that exists that people can preview the materials that way and we keep track of the numbers that we have a sign-in sheet yep that we put with the materials so we know how many people have come into view and I think we had the other materials they were on display for over 60 days gone well over and I think we had three okay so I just wanted to let you know that so that's information and we'll bring it back after this 60 days have gone by thank you okay no action I'm sorry it says all right item 9B social studies materials pilot and materials recommendation okay so um over 60 days ago actually um starting at after September 12th the morning after that board meeting we had the materials on display they've been out in the hallway here um and with some links on the website ever since and we have had an opportunity to use them at Del Rio and at Territorial and the teachers are recommending the purchase they've found the materials to be thorough and easy to use and engaging for students at we are recommending the purchase of print materials which also come with full digital access not just digital materials because like one of the things we found at Brandy school during the pilot um it's you know little kids have a hard time with just digital materials they have to have stuff in their hands and um at Ed's campus they've actually done pretty well one thing that teachers have commented on they like that it's the same platform as their math and language arts materials so they're very comfortable with the platform the students are comfortable with it and as a reminder one of the things that the materials are consumables the digital students can work in the digital platform offline which is pretty amazing so McGraw-Hill is the only Textbook Company that was very opportunistic during covid and push their product line to on and offline use so what that means is a teacher could make an assignment and say to a kid we have a lot of kids with cell phones that aren't cellular enabled but they're Wi-Fi enabled so when they come onto our campuses they get their phone out it has Wi-Fi access they can actually log into the system download assignment X Y and Z and they might start it in school on paper or they might start it in a Chromebook when they're at school because we're doing a lot of that so kids are comfortable with technology you know so what about the State Testing business right so let's say they want to keep working on how to read something it's downloaded to their device they don't need internet if they use their device a parent's phone a phone a tablet whatever come back to campus with it log in again it syncs the work they did offline Tom to their online work so that was a phenomenal build out that makes it so even our kids who don't have internet if they have some kind of a device there is that potential now those would not be required things because if kids don't have devices although we have a lot we can hand out it's an additional opportunity so Cindy let's see if I understand so what you're saying in the classroom they can download to their phone the material use their phone to take it home to then re-download it to their Chromebook and work on it don't even have to they could work from a phone it once it's whatever device they want it on offline it has to be downloaded to that device sometimes a bigger screen keyboard and everything easier but if they would need some kind of internet or Wi-Fi to get it from one to the other okay so either internet or Wi-Fi at home Wi-Fi at home or cellular okay but she's saying she doesn't we don't they don't need that in order to do the work if they if they download it at school yeah right or a tablet right the other thing that I think she she pointed out was that we have devices that we can only give the kids to take home they can't and and we have a and you know with this with the sleeve delay day today uh there's some information that went out that we're going to have the at-home learning days if we do have a more serious storm we want to push these devices out we have devices that we can't give away because no one's asking for them but if someone doesn't have internet at home and or does not have a device we have both available to parents okay we started to deploy them um our we some of our homeless students have a hot spot and a Chromebook and some of our language Learners um where they're sort of they were our first kids that checked out a hot spot and a tablet because they were so enthusiastic about learning English they didn't want to stop when they got home at night so we've push devices out already about a month ago with those kids and you are making hot spots available for any family that does not have either Wi-Fi or cell service yes wonderful we do have those as well so and like Mr Schultz said information about how to obtain those has gone out we've been talking with the staff at different schools as we've been making our rounds and promoting it through the staff and I filled an email from staff who said hey I have this kid they need a thing so then I hook them up with the right person who has the things and in addition we have the same materials to give to teachers that may not have yes internet or device at home themselves they can get a Chromebook I mean and or they can get a Wi-Fi device that they can take home use and keep it home so in this instance for this agenda item what we're asking for approval for is to spend money to purchase social studies curriculum for grades K yeah I was a former that's right you betcha the purchase of social studies curriculum materials for Tech and yeah TRS but I will enthusiastically and I will ask enthusiastically all in favor all right so now we get to talk about some other fun stuff science so I'm making the rounds Brandon and I had a chit chat today um Mr Moody and the teacher and myself will be having a little chit chat tomorrow or whatever day Wednesday and tomorrow you got that one and um yeah before the band acquire concerts so the science materials how it works is this science materials are all to the module these materials have also been on display since September 13th they're still on display out in the hallway out there we're all excited that we can take them down because it's a lot um and the teachers have been using them I've had a lot of really positive feedback I want to talk a little bit about it so for example you'll remember that just not too long ago a few years back Arizona rolled to the Next Generation science standards so those became and those are national standards those became Arizona's official standards with a little bit of massaging for things that are important to Arizona or aren't important to Arizona okay so that was all fixed up and they the State Board of Education adopted the standards because the standards for the most part are next gen at the middle level for example there are 12 modules of study over the course of the three years of Middle School some states do module a and eighth grade some do it in seventh some do it in sixth so no module of learning is grade specific it's uh yeah topical content type could be like a life sciences you know or something like that so they're all made so they could be rearranged to the grade levels that are applicable like to your own scope and sequence so it's like that for the middle school and it's also module based in um K5 because you may not have time to do for example every experiment or every module and so you're identifying the most important standards you know you've heard Miss Bryce talk about things like the power standards or things like that standards that are assessed more heavily or or are a larger component of the standards than some other things some things take out more space on the standards at certain grade levels than others of course so they're all arranged that way now in addition to consumable materials digital materials so for example a kid could take all their lab notes in their textbook because it's a consumable textbook those lab manuals are also online so a kid can practice their writing skills online they can practice answering assessment or classroom questions and they're in the same format as a standardized test so like you drag the answer you highlight the thing like all that okay the other part is that they come with well you have to buy it right because and wait there's more um they come with a science kit for each module that contains all the little things that you need to do the experiment so those kits have an inventory sheet and what I'm going around figuring out is because we can buy kids like for eight years right but it's a lot of stuff and it's a lot of stuff and in the kits are some things that are reusable like I'll make it like a scale you know or something like that you only like you don't need a new one every single year you can get by with the old one and a lot of the stuff in the kit for little kids cotton balls Q-tips a seed packet you know whatever like little things that you could get cheaper at Walmart so what we're what I'm figuring out is will buy the kids the very first time and then we'll do so it was one of the things we're deciding is will we have somebody who inventories the kits and then we order all the stuff from Walmart and we pay that person to come in in the summer and rebuild all the kits to save some money because then we're spending money to help somebody like have a little summer job for a week or two and then we don't have the storage issue right of like gazillions of kits everywhere um or like last year we needed six first grade kits on this year we only need five first grade kids or whatever so now we got kids coming out our ears so anyway we're in the process of figuring that little piece out because the science kits you can see like the Social Studies books were about 150k science it could be half a million it was like a big difference right so we want to be very wise with our money we want to only purchase the things that we're going to use but we want to make sure that every single teacher has every single thing they need to do their job and so that's why me with the principles before we finalize the order what's the best and smartest way to spend our money and the other thing is if we have a bunch of kids laying around we're just going to say this could theoretically happen one of the kits has cotton balls in it and a teacher goes oh I forgot to go to the dollar store to get the cotton balls for my other thing I'll raid the science kit and then I'll replace it but then they forget to replace it right so then Brandi has to centrally store the science kits and then she's like I need a shipping container and I need shelves and I need the things and I'm like we should have just you know whatever so that's what we talked about today because we all know the things happen right so we're trying to come up with a way to not make it a huge job and not run out of space and not overspend when we should be being smart with that one so the number you see on here is a Whopper but that's really if we bought every single thing every single time we can spend money that's what it would look like it's going to come in less than that we're proving up to well we're approving purchasing it this gives us a ballpark how's that I like that because we're not really approving the money we're approving the materials sure so yeah all right again more clever efficiencies trying you want to be the cotton ball please Mike that's exactly okay all right I was thinking retirement jobs googly eyes maybe I'm all for it yep all right okay emotion please okay all right Mike oh no Peter Peter's a science guy you're just a scientist oh okay no he's excited about his cotton balls okay agenda item nine c I moved and we proved the purchase of the science curriculum materials for the three schools as noted well thanks we're all happy about that we're gonna try to get them here pretty quick cool great item 10A Board calendar for 23 and 24. this is the recommended Board calendar the typical date is the second Monday of the month um can't really go any later because we have some some mid-month uh deadlines that we have to meet so for for typically Financial stuff AFR and budget um any earlier sometimes it interferes with Mr Livingston trying to get that work done um and so we want to try to be typically later rather than earlier um there are some some notable changes we talked about January is a Wednesday in March it's the first Monday because the second Monday is Spring Break um in June we have June 7th and that's because I am gone the 12th to the 23rd um my daughter's getting married in Hawaii so I'm I'm gonna be off yeah that would be I apparently have a role so I have to I can't opt out um October like we did this year is uh the fourth because the next week is fall break and that gets us through and then January 10th I think we're doing that's a Wednesday also it's kind of at the bottom in yellow um that's of 2024 believe it or not we're talking about board meetings in 2024.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
so we so we do have students that are missing access it's very difficult to navigate and have students here for Access because they need to have a set amount of time to be a tcd many of those courses have certain number of hour requirements many of them are democratic and so that is one of our challenges we've engaged in conversation the last few years with tcd about possibly sending all of our students just for example in the afternoon unfortunately we're not they're not able to meet that need for us and I am concerned that if we do that we will lose some students because they there will be classes that are only offered in the afternoon for us and they'll want to be here for those classes and so we could see students not attending tcd because we've pushed tcd in just into just one part of the day so this is a real challenge I hear we're working on it um but they're Mike there just might be with some students some just trade-offs that naturally have to occur so that we meet that student's individual needs so it might be that what this student's pathway really calls for is tcd and the trade-off for that will be they're not going to get the same access experience that all students will get but that's an a known trade-off that we're making as we make those course selections yeah and when I spoke with students uh for example um seniors were I think probably the most vocal about please stop the videos um and I did say uh seniors by the way um you've earned yourself your first video so we offered a FAFSA um sort of a financial aid um uh presentation during resource and um while we did have a good turnout I wouldn't say every senior um attended that um and so senior started asking counselors like hey can like can you how can I see the FAFSA so the very first um presentation is a video when we get back from break and it's FAFSA so that is something that we then can put on the Google Classroom all freshmen have a Google classroom for if there's something that we need to push out to them that's only freshmen same thing with Juniors uh sophomores Juniors and seniors and so for that presentation they that's something that we can push out if you missed access today because it's not just for kids in tcd it's also for kids who just happen to be absent that day um that we can push that out to them through there really good but I have concerns because what I'm hearing there is that those kids who I was afraid were going to fall to the cracks are falling even deeper in the cracks when he said you know they aren't using that time they're getting further behind than they already were I go how are they going to get themselves out of this hole I mean I I don't think that that's a true statement that kids are falling through the cracks what we're saying is that there are greater opportunities to help students in that time but I would say based on the work that we're doing we are far better at meeting the needs of each individual student than we ever have been during this time between the access periods the data that we're looking at to make sure we're we're catching the students before sometimes they even reach out we're reaching out to them because the information says that we should be I think this is about how we can get better at what we're doing I don't think we're seeing I mean Arwen and Courtney are in in the buildings but I I don't think that we are seeing kids fall through the cracks I don't know Courtney Irwin no I mean we've been taking a very close look at our gray data for the whole semester and because that's obviously a really big part of this too you know that plays directly into that and I would say we haven't seen any spikes or different major differences than we did last year and I when we've looked at that I know I can speak for North that in every single one of those cases there are logs for all of those students particularly our freshmen who we pay very close attention to and for seniors who are ready to graduate we're really looking at that to make sure that and I would say that in most if not all cases there are logs that somebody or multiple somebody's have met with those students to figure out what's going on so I wouldn't say that kids are necessarily falling through the cracks I think what we talk about is really just enhancing and tweaking some things that we can do a little bit better based on some of the comments that we are seeing here and you're saying they're showing up equivalently to you know I mean it's hard to tell until you hit the end of the semester right but we've been especially ninth grade on track data have been following that really close you know students that are fail that are ninth graders that are failing or in danger of failing uh we have paid very close attention to that and week by week grades have improved over the course of the semester and we're we're likely going to do better than we have this year when we we had some of the best ninth grade performance last year that we've ever seen in the district okay then the other question I had so I'm just trying to figure out we're going to make these changes how much of a heavy lift is that to be prepared for the next semester for instance I'm looking at slide nine and we talk about which recommendation is that one um it's the days doing access and restricted seniors so tell me what that means where I think we're saying we're going to take that economy away from everybody but seniors so what do they do then with that time if they can't make a decision on their own how do you make up for what's going to happen I I can comment on that so and just to to Ms drexler's kind of thought from before too so students have autonomy remember in resource which is the one time a week for 78 minutes and then they also have their access period twice a week for 30 minutes and I think one of the things that Ryan was mentoring mentioning that as adults we're looking at them some days and thinking Hmm this isn't maybe how I as an adult imagine them using their autonomy because they're having their coffee and they're playing on their phones and they're chatting with each other but when we dive in and talk to them um a lot of students will say I'm taking this time with my friends and I'll do my homework at home and as of right now um our great is showing that our grades will be on parch where they're at before as a way though to pull that in a little bit or have that maybe hindsight 2020 that none of us actually have the student autonomy students will still have in resource same as they do now right now in Access it's a blend in some days a whole class like freshmen or sophomores or Juniors or half of a class if they're not at their counseling presentation we'll have student autonomy and access and then on that same day they also have autonomy during resource so what we're saying is this dude autonomy piece and access for second semester would be for seniors for seniors only to have their time with their whole senior class we know seniors have more of those skills um but for our freshmen sophomores and juniors they would stay in Access so they would say an access class and instead of having student autonomy we would increase the amount of time they have student support with a pass to go and get help from their teachers in a structured way they'd have more time and access to build those relationships with their access class kind of what Ryan said we wished we'd done less programming at the beginning and focus more time on relationship building this gives us a nice time to do that so like the the answer I guess to like what would they be doing we would be increasing what they do in Access Ryan is also working with our APS who develop this calendar but I would also point out that one of those recommendations that we're working towards um is it number three that would be something that would be another activity that they could do while they were in that access class so getting those one on one conferences for academic help and conferencing with the students and meeting with them individually that would be another example of something that they can do but Ryan and our assistant principals and he can talk to this too but they work very diligently on that schedule and in terms like of a heavy lift we have some things that we would be able to plug in pretty easily I think maybe I have a place to buy checks yes you would be so I'll check chat with you afterwards yep so in so in that vein how are we tracking kind of for lack of better work caseloads so we have teachers who are reaching out to students we have counselors who are reaching out to students I realize it's a fine line you know between using our resources fully and overusing using our resource are we doing any kind of tracking of how many of these inter how many yeah we do yeah interventions that we do okay yeah so yeah it's being tracked and then when Scott showed you five Labs one of the aspects that we've added in five Labs is that simple student report and one of the data pieces on that report is all of these check-ins okay whether it be student support with a pass whether it be with a counselor an individual teacher a phone call home all of those things so when data says to us whoa this kid hasn't come forward and asked for help yet but the data says that somebody should reach out to the student for help a lot of times the data is showing the student is struggling our teachers and staff I have made these kinds of interventions but now we need another level on top of it so that's where you hear Scott talk about like mtss where we have these tiered supports you'll see a lot of the tier one supports a counselor reaching out a teacher reaching out you know calling home bringing them in for extra help but then we're going to have a group of students where though that first tier of response is not enough now we need to move to the to some more strategic coordinated responses in that tier two or ultimately maybe even the tier three response where we're getting into very specific personalized interventions uh for a specific student that is good to hear so we're looking at the student level are we also looking at the teacher and counselor level [Music] do we have enough staff or we have staff that have that are overextended do we have staff that are stepping up you know kind of like I hate to say productivity there's productivity statistics I think you yes because you would see it when on a student by student basis like when a if a student who showed up on our radar and then we went looked at the student notes and saw like whoa nobody's intervened with this student or repeatedly that this this teacher has not intervened with their students then our team would step in with that individual staff member but I'm following Nancy's thought a little bit but what I I'm trying to figure out as we think through this is this driving potentially teachers to be have to be even more productive or it will not be some will be some will not be you know I guess so to your point about productivity is this change driving of drastic changes for teachers to be overwhelmed or well I think that Society is driving teachers to be to feel overwhelmed right now absolutely you know the amount of students that are in trauma and are in need and the number of student absences that are going on right are the the factors teachers intervening and meeting the needs of the student that's across from them has been our expectation District 99 for a very long time and tracking of interventions has been in place since before I was a superintendent here so these are strategies that have been in place here the number of students that are needing more tier one and tier two interventions I think has grown post pandemic but the expectations the teachers do this is is not changed I concur so you're right I I'm there with you on that however is this one additional an extra but the question is more around is this in addition to the fact that things have changed basically how we have to intervene in different components of society that is making the students already and teachers staff deal with more so that's all I was asking so no I agree I agree we are there already but there's this pile on top of that can we put the question to Ryan I mean Ryan has Ryan has looked through read through all the comments sorry um the uh the surveys uh teachers teachers have had a voice in the data that we're we're you know that we're putting together here in the decisions that we're making going forward so Ryan do you can you comment to this at all based on the on the survey responses you saw well I mean I do think I do think that the that staff you know they are getting used to the change um that it has not been an easy Road for every staff member some staff members have adapted to it much quicker than others um some classes just generally lend themselves to it some of our lab classes are you know they feel like um they're getting a lot out of that time some other classes feel like you know I'm I'm trying to I sometimes I think one of the comments I had up there was sometimes I feel like I'm teaching two periods in one period um and so that's why it's really important that we get half the time to grow in it and the students you're growing into it as well um that students are being very honest about like I've never had the opportunity to even figure out sometimes what to do with my time during a school day because I it is Belle five minute Bell five minutes and the one thing that they would try to think of is what am I gonna use the washroom um that now they have time to uh senior athletes talk have talked pretty openly about this is the first time I feel like I've been able to manage and keep up with my classes during height of season um or students that um some families have said like my students don't bring homework home anymore some of them are happy about that some of them would like to see more homework from home um so there's kind of a wide range about it so I would say after 10 weeks um that there that you could feel the stress in a lot of the comments and so that's why I think it's important that from January and February that I'm still checking in with people and working through the committee on some of the recommendations so that when we get to it in March it should be a natural growth right anytime we're trying to basically show important any kind of change dip that you get because status quo there's a change it feels a little chaotic how do we bring people to the other side as fast as we can and that's through being really open honest and transparent um with what people are feeling and how do we use some of their experiences to shorten that crunch time so um definitely you could feel the the pangs of growth in the comments for sure switch a little bit the other way um looking at the one comment on slide eight from the staff that says this is a lot of time for a student to have with no structured instructional time if they don't have anything to work on then they're simply on their phones not doing anything productive there's I mean there's clearly a there's a section of students who you're monitoring and reaching out to and logging there's other students who are who don't need that level of attention and do you seem it's I know it hits a lot on one or the other of the Wednesday or Thursday for most of them but you know two hours is a lot of downtime um you know is there any I mean I know it's hard to balance it out but yeah and so that one of the reputations [Applause] um that we can reduce some of the free time first for students who have like an imbalance in their schedule um that you know how can we try to prevent someone from having more periods um back to back um you know like what would you rather um but that definitely some students uh one of the other things that we're starting to hear from students and teachers as well is teachers are getting better at accounting for the resource time and pushing expectations into that space you know this every we have to remember every week right now is the first time that teacher is taught that week ever in their career right so every teacher on Wednesday and Thursday is a first year teacher right now so and every week they're getting better and and more comfortable and being able to anticipate what's there part of that is also teachers anticipating what their students experiences like over the course of the week so understanding like on Tuesday when students are heading out into those two block days over these two days if you're struggling with this this is what you should do like here's what you should do on your own or if you need to come see me or like they're getting better at anticipating how to structure that time for students so that when students have that time they can go down their list of oh yeah my teacher said that if I did you know if I was having trouble with this I should be that or to get ahead for next week I should look at this right but that all comes with time as we learn how the the flow of a week Works a semester works that I'm starting here more and more from teachers of oh I've kind of cracked the code now and I know how to take advantage of my time and their time on those two days and that will accelerate as time goes on so there are other programs there are other schools that have hybrid are we working with any of them to to that have had more experience in here than we are there's one question to this year okay yep but will we are we like continuing with this information are we continuing to say hey this is where we're experiencing what have what have you founded it's something different as you look because yes other schools do hybrid but other schools have not necessarily been intentional about the student time as we have or in Block many schools just that is the feature of the schedule the student free time they aren't investigating how students are using it or how we're pushing into that space and because that's that's like the feature of the schedule right so we're not going to worry about students free time during that time this is what many schools will tell us we put it there for students to have that time that is the feature the feature is students have choice they determine what they're going to do during that time and they do it we're far more intentional with what we offer during access what we offer during resource how we offer student support during that time and the data that we keep during that time than many other students are or other schools are for those students that are intentional the things we're experiencing I mean when you were building this when you were building this you as you said there's some schools that are unintentional but there are some that are so do we use do we do we Garner that experience from those schools that are intentional are we talking with them about some of the problems we're having and so we need to kind of dust up a little bit I I I don't know if we're really having problems I think we're having the experiences that have as Brian said the implementation dip as to as you go into this um we had a lot of conversations heading into the school year about what it was but there are a lot of things that you could address to people in theory but until it hit practice and an experience it it wasn't discernible or understandable until we got to this point and maybe problem isn't the best word I'm just saying there are certainly has other people have yeah hopefully I would think heard some of these voices before and have had some sort of response that worked or didn't work and that we would learn from those people well those went into our planning for this school year yeah and now Ryan's doing the work of how do we make those things better for us in our setting uh I think you know by getting all of that authentic staff student and family voice is how we take these things and tailor them for us but what other schools do fed into how we started right right this year how we get better is really intentional based on that that voice I hear some students Nancy's saying though is that you know we can't be completely Reinventing the wheel here and and and that maybe there may be a point in the not so distant future where maybe after this year we've gone through this year that there's a moment where you might be able to collaborate with some others that are more intentional and just just compare compare notes that is going on with the other school districts that are around us the deuce we do talk to them and Gina's in those meetings with those other curriculum directors and our assistant principles and principals are meeting with their peers all of the time and I'm meeting with mine all of the time and that's influencing the work that we do inside of here but there it isn't like we're throwing away what we're doing and just going and grabbing off the shelf what are another school that wasn't suggested yeah we're saying why reinvent the wheel you know something has worked or more importantly sometimes something hasn't worked that they've implemented so here here is kind of my thoughts on of course anytime we do change right this is going to happen you know we're going to get some feedback because we're working through it to try and figure it out the the thing that when we were talking about this when I couldn't decipher is because we've had so much change with the pandemic is this the right time was it the right time to do it because are people looking for more normal now you know because we've dealt with so much change and was this going to be you know un you know you know not at the hands of our own selves right the pandemic happened none of us so that was the piece where I know this is going to happen I just struggle with it was this the right time based on there was so much stranger where people looking to get back to our normal life looking to have more change to deal with and that's you know just kind of seeing where we are where we are though I mean yeah we know we know that we know there are people who didn't like it like it do that but we did it so like I understand why you you know it's still in your mind but we're here yeah no and I'm I'm I've moved you know past that I guess the point is we've got to have this but is it is it what is it driving you know was this the is some of that driving it but we're gonna have change I mean we're gonna I mean we're gonna have concerns because we did something different yeah yeah hey things are changing yeah I think you think you can get rid of the sea lunch oh for next year yeah I don't know if we can get rid of the sea lunch but we're looking at what are some things we can do with the schedule and make it happen earlier yeah we still need three lunch periods okay yes um but you know are there some structural changes that we can make and what would be the best ones to make yeah you know uh moving at a half hour yeah right that's what we'll have something like that is what kind of and Ryan's Ryan's mocking up some different things for us to talk about with the leadership team to talk with students about you know what they would prefer with with those you know how the flow of their day goes and know that like sea lunch only happens twice a week yeah and not every kid has C lunch on both those days like a student might have an a lunch one day and a C Lunch the other day right so but students that do have sea lunch feel like it comes too late in the day for them they would prefer to have the meal earlier in the day and then manage with snacks throughout the day rather than manage with snacks eating up to to see lunch right so but that's I mean until you live it that was not a concern the time of sea lunch that was raised by any student as we talked about this last year right it just didn't come up as a thing this is just an example that until you live it and you get into it and you see what your body feels like waiting for 117 lunch you're like I I don't like this okay well and that's you know Ryan doing all of this work is what helps us make those long-term changes and and the kids have been really open with some really creative ideas so I do want to just reinforce that um as we come up and I may mock up an idea and I'll float it to a classroom of kids that oftentimes they turn around and turn in a slip of paper saying I like your idea but I like my idea better um and like all right let's go um so uh you know it's it's been great to meet with classes and to have them say like well if I had my choice of sea lunch where it is now or an earlier a lunch I choose earlier a launch some kids have said can't we just do a snap like a stop drop and roll snack Break um that you know that they have a lot of really creative ideas um can't we move access to behind this period that would move this up so they have a lot of ideas that we're kind of going to work through um and and see which one checks the most boxes right reduces kids with large gaps of time during the day and moves up sea lunch and so trying to get the most ants into a solution you know foreign that we're going to make for next year and we'll go through a round of this next year and then we'll probably have to make some tweaks for the year after that but that's how we model for our students that you grow and get better and improve I had a few summative comments to make you hit on on two of them good hey so no for sure uh I mean the fact that we don't have that we never looked at in a period day we never did the surveys with that and and we didn't have that as a baseline because we didn't have that information um I so I thought that was that was an interesting Insight that I hadn't really thought about before um uh and then the feedback isn't current if we did the survey today I mean it'd be different than it was almost two two months ago yeah but it takes time for it takes time to process the data so we have to remember that we're working in you know in arrears here right you know and and then um no matter what we're data driven we've been data driven and we continue to be data driven so we're looking at results we're looking at what's going on we're looking at how the grades are are shaping up um we're you know it's we're going to make decisions based based on facts not feelings and and and then the last was that um I sat with an American government class last week and uh they had a invite invited local officials to come in right yeah celebrities when you were the celebrity I was just sort of yeah so um but I mean I this came up and you know when I when I shared that hey we're looking at data and you know we did a survey and guess what we're paying attention to everything that you're saying and you need to continue to participate in surveys because they're going to be more going forward and that information is going to be used to make changes and if something's not working right we're gonna we're gonna make it work right we're gonna correct it we're not going to keep doing what we've been doing you know the reason for doing all this was for improvement I mean this was this is not something just fun to do I mean so much easier if we just left it all alone so uh you know this is a really challenge a real big Challenge and and so part of this is about keeping promises we we said that we were going to look at this information we're going to continue to look at this information and we're not going to stop doing it we're going to continue to ask tough questions right and and that's what we're that's what we're here to do because we all know what's at stake no and I I would say I appreciate the work yeah it's been done here and the fact that we're working to make it work is for many as possible on a positive I think it's good that like with the new course offerings and things I mean I I've I asked my daughter like do you wish you you know I think as this is the real thing that when you're planning your schedule you'll have you know I said don't you wish like you would have had time to take culinary arts or you would have had and I think that this in the long run builds builds that gives them that feature you know that they would have it and especially like a PE alternative like that that kind of gives you yet another opportunity to take an elective or something that you didn't get to take I think that was the drawback of the eight period day was you know either I have to take a study hall or I have to take an elective in this model you kind of get some built-in time you know total of both yeah and so I you know I think you can sort of see it you know evolving and and getting them you know that you don't have to have you you can have some of those classes that are an interest or something that you're passionate about and you know and have lunch like you know I think it's at 1 30 in the afternoon yeah and I really appreciate that you said that um 17 of our freshmen said that they're likely not to take a study hall next year and pick up an elective instead um because they do see that they they're able to get their stuff done and they're able to and now they're going to make conscious choices 13 of our sophomores and 10 of our Juniors all said that they'd pick up another class um and so just the idea that they'll find some time for enrichment in their day because they still know that they have the time in order to get their studying done or get help from their teachers um is huge and to be able to see um North and South as a place to explore rather than I need a study hall to get through um that's an exciting thing and um and what you said is right like if they can pick that up and keep a lunch um because I I hate when I hate when kids don't take a lunch um my niece doesn't take a lunch though so I'm you know so yeah I think it's it's good in that regard and I I think you know as you get eighth graders and people that are on this their entire this this is what they know you know it'll just be better you know and I don't think we can underestimate you know Ryan just talked about taking more courses he talked earlier about what our athletes said with this schedule is doing for them and their day remember one of the goals under Essa one of the College of career Readiness standards is every student being involved in two or more school activities well a lot of students are like well I'm not going to do that activity because I don't have time for that or then I can't go get help when we create this time during the day now students can Flex their time and now I might be willing to go join that club or that sport or that activity because I know I can still get my homework done and not have to go to bed at one in the morning as a result of that so there's a lot that we're trying to do as a district effect to make the student experience more positive more Future Ready but we have to think about how we use time differently and that's what this schedule ultimately allows us to do all right thank you Ryan for all of your work thank you thank you keep it up good night oh moving on to the lovey request oh we're still here we've got a visual going up there oh sorry yeah I think that was an easy one this is a complicated one oh all right there we go mark so we've already talked about the taxes Levy during the fruits and Taxation hearing and the actual initial request to have that hearing to get this done this is to maybe give just a visual of what's happening and why I think is that very important that we do try and maximize our Levy even beyond the what the tax caps gives and unless you have new construction so the key lines here are first all these orange bars are with the CPI factor is for each year for the last 10 years orange line here is a 10-year average which is just just under three percent and the green line is a 10-year average for all of these and if we go back another 20 years this is the first time in 30 years that the CPI has crossed the five percent bar and the the tax caps are the lower of five percent or CPI of the year and so now we've crossed we're two percent higher put in a and this it's already been calculated it's already been this is based on the levy that's already been checked so this is a known Factor we're going to have five percent only on the to increase on the tax cap and very likely have two percent or more in expenditures because that's Consumer Price Index that's a inflation level that we have to also expect right now it's it's trending between seven and eight percent it's already the seven percent is already in the books and the next one coming to December I'm really happy I've seen gasoline prices coming yeah it is so it may actually come down a little bit lower than that it's still going to be higher than five percent which will be the lock-in for our Revenue so we're just being very you know I think farsighted here trying to think of in the future years that we don't want to go below our maximum that we can and one thing to know that the this year the following year coming through it's going to be five five percent is the cap for basically existing properties the only other money we get is maybe up in this extra area for up to three percent perhaps of new construction now I I don't think it's going to be that because it's been we were going to be assessors were going to let me know if it was going through that I didn't get anything so um it just will fall away so we will probably just have five percent maybe another quarter percent of 50 of new construction that we've already identified we won't have decades you know I don't think a lot of taxpayers know that we've been keeping our uh our Revenue stream down to this level and you know they might think you guys get five percent a year or whatever no we've been below you know two and a half percent for the whole run of the tax caps so the only the only changed our addition to that is new construction and so we're just trying to make sure we don't leave anything on the table for that yeah all right we have an action item to approve the lobby and a couple other forms along with it yeah yeah thank you Mark thank you Mark [Music] Freedom of Information here uh we've received them and we have responded to them and they are all available on our website at that link okay well we will move into the approval um first we uh recommendation for actions first we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the 2023-2024 curriculum proposals as presented so moved second Chris and Terry Mr Espinoza hi Terry pavisich aye aye Mr Christopher that's right Fuller hi Jenny hagstrom aye and Nancy Governor I the proposals are approved next we need a motion for the Board of Education to approve the certificate of tax levy the certificate of certificate of certificate of certificate of tax letters certification the certificate of compliance with the truth and Taxation law as presented enough certificates so moved I wanted I think Joanna and Chris yeah that's fine okay thank you 200 Vasquez Drexler aye Christopher Espinoza aye Gerald Fuller hi Jenny hagstrom aye Gary pavisich aye Mike Davenport aye and Nancy coverka aye the text Levy is approved we have no I have no no forms okay I meant to discuss and it's it's a new law that's in place saying that when you have your tax and truth and Taxation or your Levy requests that you indicate you you give the board information on what your total fund balances are what's your statement of position is we've been doing that for 30 years some districts I guess had to be legally pushed into it oh but we'd like to have that in a minute so it's always been the first thing in your financial section you'll see the statement of financial position assets and liabilities sorry to get out of order no thanks for clarifying because also we have that in our in our documents but somebody watching yeah sure so thank you oh yes Mr Berg you'd like to speak for public comments okay I got it second reception of visitors which is intended for audience members to address the board on any topic pertaining to Community High School District 99 comments are limited to three minutes to provide all visitors equal opportunity to address the board if you need more time submit your thoughts in writing to Mrs neidek the board secretary um we're dispensing with the comments look for tonight uh prior to addressing the board please State your full name the proceedings are being tape recorded and are being live streamed they're being tape recorded for the purpose of producing accurate meeting minutes and I reserve the right to modify these protocols if circumstances warrant thank you for observing them thank you thank you again my name is Colette Berg again appreciate your having me here as a guest and the honor to stop on our family uh I just wanted to add a tidbit on the survey and for all of you and Ryan um for over 40 years I was an HR and training leader okay in the corporate world and Ryan has a daunting task it's unbelievable yeah the amount of work that he's had to do to put it all together so kudos to him uh 50 to 60 percent response on an employee survey or I'll call it an employee survey or survey any of kind in his first year is Not Unusual so you've had a pretty good response the success is really determined by the people who spent the time completing your survey seeing results the sooner they see them the better the faster they see them the better the greater the impact the better so I would suggest if there are some quick hit things that you can do as a result of the survey whether it's the board The Faculty the school district would have jump on them because uh you'll get great satisfaction and they'll see it as all being worthwhile the second thing is do a follow-up survey I don't know if you plan on doing that but I've done probably 20 to 25 years worth of employee surveys and everyone wants to see another one because they want to give feedback on the changes because it's not just what they live with for 30 40 years it's what you changed a year ago that now they want to give feedback on everyone in today's social media World wants a voice so I offer that up it's just a couple of little tidbits so thank you again thank you thank you thank you okay moving on to Communications and announcements uh anything online Jenny no I'm sorry we don't have a meeting until the end of January okay uh for the per the board of controls request uh we asked for Sasa to provide comparison data showing member districts enrollment for the school year of 20 to 23.
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now this was state of the art at the time and of course my color printer decided to die so all this was guess what color all this shaded area was that green okay um and it was a tri-fold because we mailed them to everybody I also included a copy of the sandwich one which was one of the more recent ones that I've accomplished and this is designed for online publishing um it ends up being two pages but it's an eight and a half by eleven because this is typically if someone's going to print it out this is what this is how it would print and again they have their colors and logos and pictures and so forth and we can do all the same thing for Dartmouth as well but what we need to do is update all the information on it obviously on the on this one because things aren't the same since 2014.
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that's the same thing a Wednesday just like the one uh next month I might I just recommend that maybe we asked Mrs silborn to make sure she doesn't have any thank you any conflicts with that January 10th is my son's birthday you're gonna have a party here I have to say that as my son's birthday all right then any other conflicts that we need to be aware of guys all right then um Mike my turn yes please I moved to approve the dates and time set for the 2013 in January 2024 so USB board meetings second all in favor all right okay now remember I did hear from she's not going to make it this is uh Mrs Hubble so maybe say something and we can say about and then we have lots of Cake for people to eat absolutely so we were going to celebrate Penny tonight it was all about Penny it was Penny's night penny has served on the board for 11 years um so tonight would have been her last evening she has been a great leader she has served in every role on the board that there is president vice president and board member she's also active in our community she's not leaving the community just the board time to settle down a little bit and ride that Sunset a bit we wish her all the best I know I personally thank her for everything she's taught me she's been a great leader and a mentor for me personally and I believe for our district also with that you're here come up and get cake motion to go into you know let's take a break and then motion right okay come on up get some cake bottle of water look at her plaque yes I don't know you are not allowed to leave without a piece of cake how about that we can we can cut the video I think we're done there thank you we'll just go to my office yeah please okay
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the data showed a trend of decrease in enrollment throughout our member districts as well as sassad however sassad is anticipating a slight increase in enrollment beginning in January 2023 Administration continues to look at programs and services offered to CSM membership as well as classroom usage throughout the program the board also discussed variables that impact a change in membership of the border control in discussion a change of the name from Board of control to board of directors at present the board of control consists of more superintendents than elected board members and I believe there's only two or three superintendents are privy to more Communications it seems between districts and see I said so it's very hard for board members to keep up with what's going on this would eliminate whoever the next board member is who is appointed to Beyonce I said only be required to be on the board of governance um thus fewer meetings to attend those are going to be quarterly right I think it was quarter I think that's what I said yeah and then again as needed you know yeah I have to get more of the cliff notes on there because I read and I couldn't quite understand I figured that right you already got the communication on it but thanks Trina uh 99.
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and the other component using a SurveyMonkey we develop an online survey and it's different than the one we used in 2014 because we've gotten better at it this one um and again the the copy I can show you online has the D in the upper left hand corner of The Branding you know the Big D that's on your website and that Banner is green too but basically it asks people to self-identify although they do not have to put names in fact there's no place on this where we ask for someone's name but we ask them to identify as either a parent guardian of a Dartmouth public school student or students an employee of the Dartmouth Public Schools a resident of the community without children enrolled in the Dharma schools a student in Dartmouth Public Schools or Dartmouth local official or town or town employee and then there's always other and sometimes other is I'm a parent of a student in Dartmouth schools and a employee of the Dartmouth Public Schools so that that's typically what happened or I'm a parent and I'm a school Community member or something like that then the second question and I'll explain why that's important in a minute the second question is select the most significant current or future issues that the new superintendent will need to address and out of this list of things this five you pick five meaning I'm asking people to prioritize what their most important things are here and that list includes strategic long-range planning collective bargaining Facilities Management curriculum development financial management communication with parents and community staff relations professional development school-based technology academic standards student assessment diversity of staff and student body of Staff evaluation social emotional well-being of students and staff School District culture and District Community Partnerships and then there's another so out of that list we asked them to pick the five most important to them them as an individual and then we further try to get them to clarify that to with the question three it's kind of open-ended what do you believe is or will be the most important issue facing the next superintendent um then you go on to the next question a list of positions that superintendent candidates may have held in the past which prior positions do you think would prove most valuable for the next superintendent of the dot my public schools to possess and you can check up to three again we're asking them to prioritize assistant superintendent in another District assistant superintendent Human Resources Director Finance director business manager building principal teacher curriculum scholarship the curriculum specialist special education director leadership position outside of Education all prior experience in education doesn't matter as long as the candidate has the right skill set um so that's again that would be up to three so we're asking for priorities and question five listed Melissa below specific areas of expertise the superintendent candidates May possess find it from your perspective how much weight should the school committee place in each of these areas and you you would check critically important above average importance of average importance below average importance or relatively unemployment for the following categories budget development management curriculum development evaluation goal setting strategic planning facilities management and development Human Resource Management staff evaluations public relations school-based technology and digital learning data analysis special education collective bargaining so out of each so that basically they could put them all critically important that's okay that's what their opinion is and that's why we capture number six listed below are specific experiences and skill areas that could be important when evaluating the superintendent candidates from your perspective how much weight should the school committee place in each of these areas again critically important all the way down um in a list of categories there and the last question uh listed below of personal characteristics that different superintendents could could possess and again the same ranking system it would be problem solve a Visionary strong communicative risk taker collaborative approachable empathetic assertive goal-oriented culturally competent or inclusive and then the last question is just open-ended any comment additional comments you would like to make on this question and the reason we ask people to identify the category that they're representing is we can then separate it this out filter it based on all of the parents all of the employees all of the in find out what the priorities are of each individual group because nine times out of ten is like four parents for every employee that fill out one of these surveys and while that might overall skew the total by breaking it down into subgroups we find out what the priorities are for each of the subgroups and that would include students that would include staff that would include parents each of the categories that are listed in the document and those would be all presented to you and presented to the search committee say here's what your stakeholder groups feel the most important characteristics to look at so when you sit down that day when we present you all the applications what are you looking for when you start looking through them well this is what you're looking for these are the characteristics these are the skill sets these are the past experience and these are the personal characteristics of what all your stakeholder groups have said are the most important to be successful in Dartmouth and that's how the survey is used is it's applied to all the applications it's like a lens that's applied to the entire thing it's real important that this starts as soon as possible so this is unless you want to make any changes to it and I'd more than happy to incorporate them but once I launch it it's really it's complicated to make changes to it because it skews all the people who might have already completed it because it's now it's like two different surveys but I can launch this to tonight when I go home um it's actually it's just one click of a button and it's live and I could send the link um I guess I would use Dr biscalius as the as the liaison because he's the one I've been communicating with with the Erp and you could get this up on your website and send it out with all your regular communication methods the one thing I do ask though is someone reach out to the town and see if it can go out through any communication method the town uses to get to the resident side who may not have children in the school system because the more data you collect the better off the entire process is um first of all thank you Mr Kyle Kylie Mr hardy yeah Mr Kylie's over there Mr Hardy's over here um we've had the opportunity to work together in the previous uh search committee uh with everything that you just uh brought up besides the online surveys anything that you need from this committee tonight um any other the brochure do you have some it looks like we're based on this timeline that you presented there is a little bit of time for the brochure right anything else that you need from this Committee just the permission to speak with Mr Keely to try to get the the data necessary I don't like to go to members of the staff without be okay to do so whether that comes from the superintendent yeah referring to the um updating the brochure updating the brochure and you get the data in that so that I can have that brochure ready for you at your at that meeting in January where you can take a look at it and say no let's tweak this we tweaked that and that way it's ready to go when we want to advertise okay uh besides that if you don't mind I have a couple other questions Mr Nunes besides that in your experience what are you seeing right now is if our candidate pulls um uh are we seeing multiple searches are we seeing um School committees going back to the drawing board how has that because I know you've recently launched some launched some searches on your website so I'm just curious what what are you seeing as you know this is the important most important decision this committee the school commit any school committee makes so what are you seeing I'm not gonna lie to you it's it's not great um the uh the the searches that have uh successfully completed didn't see the overall numbers but they had the right person in the pool they fell um while you may not have 35 applicants you may have 12 or 15 that that are good then that's what the aspect is okay so smaller pool still qualified it's still there's still good quality out there um the it's simply a matter really of a match someone who wants to come to Dartmouth as much as you want them to work here and that's what worked last time um and you know any other search that the superintendent see I don't consider research successful until the superintendents contract's been renewed at least once um because anybody can kind of fool their way through an interview and get a three-year contract not well I shouldn't say anybody but it's it's not uncommon that that's happened and then there's a quick realization that this was the wrong pick and people part ways but when you get renewed that tells me that that the relationship is working between the school committee and the superintendent the other dramatic change that we've seen that's really kind of um more uh telling on the future is that the turnover on the school committee is even higher than the turnover in the administration um you know last couple of years have been brutal on everybody involved um and uh they just in on everybody involved I'm not leaving anybody out and uh it's you know teachers are retiring at a higher rate um you can't buy you can't find bus drivers there's a lot of you know there's a lot of things that were impacted over this last two-year period and um um it's it was not funny but um before my mom passed my mom's a retired first grade teacher and um but she watched what her some of her colleagues some of her friends that still were still working during 2020.
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uh we haven't met uh we're gonna meet Monday okay then I will just mind people that we have a January 9th Workshop meeting at 6 30 pm here on January 23rd regular business meeting at 6 30 here everybody should enjoy their holidays and uh calling for an adjournment move we adjourn my second Mike and Joanna all those in favor I suppose thank you all for your service
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and she said thank God that didn't happen while I was teaching um because just because of that and um but the uh I couldn't tell you I couldn't never guarantee a number to you of course sure I just couldn't do it I appreciate it you know it's challenging it's you know we we take extraordinary steps to get the notice out to as many people or many Avenues as possible um yeah uh the administrators could tell you the mail they got and the emails that they've announcements of vacancies that sometimes it's like go away leave us alone kind of thing if I'm happy there um but we have to do it because we have to let people know that the vacancy exists and then you know if they you know if they Peak an interest and they send me an email asking about it then it's like we start talking about it but sure um just as you know once once we work on a district and bring a superintendent in we would never actively recruit them away number once did I call Dr Gifford and say hey are you ever interested in this other position because that's unethical and I would never do that and it's just as much an interview for us as it is for them that's an important point it's one I try to stress with search committees is it's a dual evaluation process um a candidate is sitting there going I'm feeling successful in where I am and did a pretty good job is this a place I want to come and a lot of it depends on the interaction with the search community members that are the search community members engaging are they hostile they uh horrible body language communicators like they sit the whole time like Mr Nunes like this and and kind of shut down or are they are they more open you know they do they make eye contact and it's kind of a misnomer people are afraid to make notes during the interviews like oh I can't write anything down I have to keep eye contact now if you just sit there and not write anything down the candidate's worried so yeah take notes be engaging just be personable be yourselves so to speak well hopefully and um you know in if it's if they walk away from that experience that's a great group well you made a very positive impression on someone so when if in fact they are a good fit for you they're excited about the opportunity to come go into the next step um if it was a horrible experience um it's like you know what that Shanks but no thanks uh this they have a lot of options um you know one challenge was um I was doing a superintendent search in Scituate um in March of 2020.
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and we had just started the preliminary interviews and the world came to an end and we very quickly had to transition from in-person interviews to online platform and we it took a while for the my both myself as a facilitator in the search committee to get comfortable in that format and we did a couple of practice runs before we actually brought candidates into it and it was just a whole new whole new experience that way I hope I never have to go back to it thank you Mr hardy thank you Dr Jenkins no thank you very much thank you welcome a couple of cool questions I have for Jim uh you talked about uh if we get the if we were able to get that brochure and send it to town hall to have them put it on their website would that work link to the survey it's well that's what I'm saying initially if I can I could send Mr guilds yeah that's the link tonight when I get home because it's ready to go um and the sooner we can get that out there and talked about um each school could put it on their website just put a little blob on superintendent search survey click here and it brings them to the Survey Monkey um the website which is the host of the survey I do I will say that you know while um while the survey is live I'm the only person who's going to see it um the people who complete the survey won't be able to see the results like some surveys do because I don't want it to influence any future people I did make sure I shut off the the feature where you can only take it once from each computer because I know there are people who might be at home and they have one computer and there might be four people who want to take the survey and the same is true uh you know maybe in the schools too but um so and yeah I mean that sets me up for maybe somebody trying to sit there and fill the survey out 40 times and try to skew the results but on average it takes about six minutes to complete this survey so if you've got you know four hours to fill it out 40 times go right ahead okay um I know one of the things we talked about the last time was the fact that each applicant is a complete separate application the other is a five apply if someone's applied XYZ place and they you don't transfer they apply to Dartmouth yeah they start apply to mesc they apply to the Dartmouth Public Schools so each application is individual to this District and other than that the only thing I would when you put it all together is uh and having done this numerous times you see somebody with a letter of reference from 60 years ago type of deal I would like I don't know instructions are no more than three years old okay three throws a reference no more than three years old if they can't follow simple instructions on them and the other thing too is we ask her for a personal statement on how they feel their management staff would fit given the information that's included in the brochure about the Dartmouth public schools and if in the second paragraph it says I really think I'm a good fit for XYZ community and they forgot to change the name you know do the search Global search and replace and change the same letter uh personal statement again that's kind of one of those things that you make note of it you don't automatically discard it but you make note of it and you know that's when I talked to the search committees about it says you make note of something like that and it may or may not influence your decision on whether you want to bring this person in or forward the person to the school committee but they they'll see it you know very good I don't edit the the only ones I don't send are like because we go online we get a lot of like one page resumes for building superintendents like no apartment building superintendents or business building superintendents because of the words you know the keywords yeah those I'm not going to waste the search committee because they didn't fill out the rest of this stuff right that's very good I'm good everybody good I'm good so all right all right so I would like to entertain a motion that we uh go about and hire masc as the consultant of record for uh the new super the superintendent search so moved second moved by Mr Oliver seconds okay I apologize in this uh second by uh Miss Wade on the motion any discussion Jay Herrington all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you Jim much appreciate it thank you thank you thank you very much yep uh Mr noons oh my goodness something out there tonight Jim something in the air [Laughter] under under superintendent search Mr chair yeah are we are we ready to take up interim superintendent piece here yes please Perfect could I uh just do you like to go first oh go ahead oh there you go it's all right never mind no problem so you know I had some more opportunity to to think about what I brought up at the uh at the last uh one of the last meetings if it wasn't the last one the meeting before um I also had uh I also had a couple of um emails from from District staff members that uh that supported um my recommendation of um Mr Kylie uh is interim superintendent uh through June 30th and for all the reasons that I I previously stated at my meeting someone that is clearly vested in this District someone who knows our staff knows how we operate and you know I'm starting to come to the realization and concern for that matter that I don't know if um this uh if our bargaining unit contracts will be ratified before Dr Gifford leaves so I think it's very important for consistency purposes that we have Mr Kylie in that role and he's just respected all around all around respected and with that I will I will make a motion that we a point Mr James Kiley interim superintendent of Dartmouth Public Schools effective March 1st 2023 through June 30th 2023.
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I'll second that okay excuse me we have a motion by Mr Oliver a second by Ms Waite to appoint Mr Kiley who is our assistant superintendent of budget and finance as interim superintendent March 1st 2023 through June 30th on the motion Dr Jenkins so I'm in support of the motion I just want to be clear about this this is not about the content of the motion it's more about the process and I'm just a little bit concerned because we posted superintendent's search on our agenda we didn't really post that we were talking about the interim uh the interim superintendent appointment and I I do like to be a little bit of a stickler about that because I do want people to be able to comment on that I'll also note that Ms Amaral is not here and I would like for her to be able to have public input I'm okay if the rest of the committee wants to vote on that tonight I do intend to vote in favor of this I just want to be respectful about open meeting law in the process okay one of the things that we had talked about it though thank you Dr Jenkins I understand where you're coming from one of the things we had talked about at our last meeting was talking about an interim superintendent so that it has been on the table the past couple of meetings and I did state it was you know we were going to have you know continue that discussion tonight I'd like to look at Mr Kylie and get his look at you his his comment his thoughts if you want to wait till January especially we're good with I think no disrespect Chris understand understanding what Shannon's saying type of deal so I I just say Obviously in terms of the the particulars of whether it's on the agenda or not um it doesn't matter to me if it's postponed that's fine um I can understand that I I can just say that you know it's an honor to be considered and like I said at the last meeting I'd be happy to help in any way I can I will say that it's not going to be an easy task for four months to do two jobs um so uh you know that's that that's that's it's going to be a big Balancing Act for sure and I just want to make sure that you know the committee understands that um that uh you know it is two full-time jobs so um it would be something that I would consider in terms of trying to hold down the fort for four months and make it a good transition to the to the new superintendent I think you know what we have going for us is a very good group of individuals in our in our building that Dr Giffords you know been working with and and so I mean it wouldn't be a one-person thing I mean and I have talked because you brought it up I have talked to some other people in our office and I know that they would you know Assist and support um through that process so you know that that makes me feel more confident certainly in trying to do both uh both tasks but um but at any rate whatever you decide in terms of the uh the formality of it is uh fine by me we have until March so um leave my committee how you want to handle it I'm good either way I am um you know my only con continuing with the discussion my only uh thing concern would be is you know I know we're getting the next meeting is until after the first of the year so as long as the committee is okay with that I appreciate uh Dr Jenkins um you know comments on procedures so I I could withdraw I'm happy to withdraw the motion um or just move forward with it I'm I'm good either way yeah I am as well I mean I understand I mean if you want to wait for and again I totally understand I would personally like to wrap it up tonight I think for everyone for everyone's sake yeah that's fine all right so we have a motion we have a motion and a second on the floor any other discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you Jim thank you thank you Mr Kylie okay that takes care of that okay moving on I'm Cass IE there's Katie presenting that I just couldn't see them back there yeah I thought maybe they left so I don't know if we should congratulate Mr Kylie right now but congratulations to Mr Kylie um I just want to we want to thank Dr Gifford and the school committee and members of the community uh and all of the educators of the Dartmouth Public School uh tonight's presentation really um reflects the hard work of so many individuals our students but certainly our dedicated Educators as well and so we want to make sure that we you know thank them for their efforts because as we've seen from or heard from a number of speakers tonight already covid-19 has really upended a profession over the last two and a half years and I think tonight's presentation kind of speaks to that so we want to make sure that we give credit and thank those folks who are on the front lines each and every day and doing great work with our kids so we thought we'd just real quickly talk uh briefly about what MCAS is and why it's important and so as you know we all know the Massachusetts comprehensive assessment system MCAS is a standardized assessment uh administered annually in English language arts in grades three through eight and then again in grade 10 mathematics in grades three through eight and then again in grade 10 and science at in grades five eight and then 10.
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and so it seeks to assess whether or not our students are exceeding meeting partially meeting or not meeting standards in each of those content areas according to the mass curriculum Frameworks while our students are progressing as compared to other students in the Commonwealth it's also used as part of the accountability system for determining how well a school in a district is performing and I will stop here though for just a moment and reiterate that MCAS while it is important for the reasons just mentioned is only one point of data and therefore should not be viewed as an end-all and be all and that's something that we've always appreciated the acknowledgment from this committee we know that much we get a much more complete picture of student growth in real time from regularly administered benchmark assessments as well as formative and summative assessment data that's collected in our classrooms throughout the year what MCAS does do is it provides our families our schools in a community a snapshot from a moment in time on how our students our schools and our district are doing at that moment as Mr Tebow likes to say MCAS has never cured cancer it will not put a man on the moon and most importantly we know that it does not help ensure that we've developed good human beings but what it does do is it provides us one Vital sign one piece of data that can be used to see a larger picture and to that end not to be lost is that final bullet on this slide which reminds us that at the high school level our students do need to pass the MCAS in order to earn a high school diploma and so just in thinking about tonight's the trends that we're going to talk about tonight Statewide as well as here in Dartmouth we thought it would be important to really take us back to the timeline because MCAS has shifted over the past several years so we'll go back to when things were normal back in 2019 before covid prior to last year that was the last time a full MCAS was it was administered to all grade levels that was our last normal if you will whatever normal is but that was that last normal school year and then in 2020 as we all know you know March 13 2020 schools got shuttered across the state there was no MCAS at all if it wasn't for the pandemic I'm sure folks would have been happy with noemcast but um you know the the pandemic is really quite disruptive in 2021 as we got back into the swing of things half of the MCAS was administered meaning a shortened test right show and exam was administered in grades three through eight again our high school students were held to a full administration of MCAS but again I think it's important to note that during that school year you know at the high school level alone there were six transitions six different variations of the schedule between fully remote hybrid learning in-person cohorts of kids some kids coming every day so it was extremely disruptive and I think that that's important to know and then last year finally pull him Cass was administered to all grades and also for our science students at the high school level it was the first administration of the Next Generation MCAS assessment for biology so with that note um the state is using uh the results from 2022 as kind of our new Baseline for moving forward so before getting into looking at our performance at the district level we're first going to look at some Trends from across the Commonwealth um MCAS Trends across the state mirror what's been reported Across the Nation covid-19 most definitely had a negative impact on student learning despite and I think this is the really important part despite the heroic efforts of Educators from across the country in fact without that that effort and without those Educators especially here in Dartmouth I think that the data that we are about to look at would have been even more drastically impacted so across the state um in ela our scores across the board declined from 2021 writing scores were lower than last year in grades three through eight uh and the steepest declines occurred in grades three through five which really just um reiterates and emphasizes to us that the challenges are occurred in early literacy so our littlest Learners who went home and experienced learning in a completely different way were absolutely impacted in math and science the data across the state is a little more encouraging scores actually improved across the state in the area of mathematics compared to 2021 the percentage of students in grades three through eight who were scoring in the meeting or the exceeding category actually increased by six percentage points grade 10 did decline by two percent which was the smallest decline in the first year of the pandemic in science again scores improved since the 2021 administration of the test then the percentage of students in grades five and eight scoring in that meeting or exceeding category increased by one percent and um as Mr Tebow alluded to 2022 marked the first year of their high school students were taking the Next Generation Um exam in the area of biology and so another reason that we lead with Statewide Trends is because that the data in isolation when we're just looking at our town really holds less meaning so um when you're looking at our Trends in Dartmouth um we look at in the ELA 48 of our students in grades three through eight are were meeting or exceeding the standards and that was seven percentage points above the mean for the state uh it is a five percent decline from 2021 which we said across the state the the ELA scores declined in um grades three through eight but it was a slightly smaller regression than the state in our high schools 67 percent of our grade 10 students are meeting or exceeding the standards again that's nine percentage points higher than the state um and the regression really was identical to the state trend for grade 10.
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shifting over to mathematics if we had 53 percent of our students meeting or exceeding the standards in grades three through eight which is 14 percentage points above the state and it was a 12 percent increase from 2021. so we outpaced the state in our increase by six percent which is a lovely statistic to share 57 of our grade 10 students were meeting or exceeding the standard which again seven percentage points above the state it is a three percent decline from 2021 but that is um only a one percent change difference between the state differential and in the area of science we had 43 of our students meeting or exceeding the standards in grades five and eight again one percent above the state that's no change from 2021 um at the state and District level and 57 of our students taking the high school biology MCAS were meeting or exceeding and that is 10 percentage points higher than the state and again in the first uh administration of the Next Generation science MCAS so we've provided kind of Trends in the state and here at Dartmouth but we thought it would be interesting and um you know important to kind of consider how are we performing comparable to like school districts so the Department of Education in Massachusetts provides a tool known as the dart tool which is the district accountability and um I'm sorry it's want to get it right um where is it here I'm sorry it's the district analysis review tool Dart um I know we use acronyms in this profession and I don't want to confuse anyone so Dart what dark does is it Compares Dartmouth to 10 other districts that are similar in terms of its student enrollment data so similar percentages of students with disabilities similar percentages of students who are experiencing economic disadvantage and so on a similar ell population for example and so this chart here shows dartmouth's performance for grades three through eight in terms of meeting or exceeding standards which Mrs paveo just spoke to grade 10 grade 5 and 8 for Science and then it also shows the student growth percentile and at the bottom of the chart you can see the mean as well as the median for all of the districts that are considered like districts you can see that Dartmouth you know performs quite favorably when compared to similar districts in a number of the uh areas so we thought we would speak to some of those to again honor the work that our educators are doing with our students into and as well to honor our students performance so looking back at that grades three through eight Ela and math data when compared to our Dart schools only in ela we were only outperformed by East Longmeadow and again our very strong performance in math is really shown here outperforming all of our Dart schools and that percentage of students who are meeting and exceeding the expectation um and Mr Tebow alluded to our growth percentiles so I think it's really important also to highlight that our growth and comparison to these other schools looks good um you remember that growth looks at students who so who score similarly on past exams and how they perform with other peers who have who have scored similarly in a past test so I think for people who don't live in nerdville like I do and love numbers like I do it's hard sometimes to think about our kids declining but still growing and when we talk about the student growth percentage we're saying I'm comparing how kids who have performed let's just for round number say around an area of 500 on the MCAS last year did this year and so while they may have declined your growth percentage can still be higher if you declined at a slower rate or at a lesser rate so when we look at growth growth is really a basket where we put a lot of our eggs because we want to know how our children are performing compared to those who performed similarly to them in past um administrations of the exam so when we look at our growth data in ela and in math again remember that expected growth is 40 to 60th percentile so we're looking at a 52 percentile in ela a 58 58 growth percentile in math so we're on the upper end of that typical growth scale which is encouraging as we move forward so for grades five and eight in terms of science meeting or exceeding the standards you can see from this from this graph here dartmouth's performance is right it's more in line with the median performance of similar districts so we're right in kind of the middle of the pack um and again grade 10 was not included by the state in this comparison I believe because it was the first year it was Baseline data so that's why they didn't include the grade 10.
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but um as Mrs devayo and I kind of looked at these numbers Mr Beverly will talk to the importance of looking at the elementary level how are we prioritizing science um you know we know that um you know unfortunately when we have to provide intervention to students at the younger levels oftentimes science and social studies are the areas that we pull for some of those interventions to take place um you know so just kind of having an ongoing conversation about um how can we tweak that because we want to make sure that our students are getting the interventions that they need but we also want to make sure they're getting good quality tier one instruction in all areas including science and social studies in terms of our grade 10 Ela and math meeting and exceeding standards again compared to other uh like districts you can see dartmouth's performance is extremely strong um that 67 meeting or exceeding standards for ELA for example while slightly um a slight decline overall you can still see that in those 10 districts we are still performing at the top of those like districts for math again 57 puts us second in that uh in those 10 like districts so that's again we think a strong performance by our students and our teachers and um you know should be honored an area where we wanna take a closer look at and kind of dig deeper into the data and ask some some challenging questions in terms of why is around our SGP for English and math at grade 10 because it is um you know lower than what we would hope for it's in in both cases it's in the middle to high 30s and as Mrs paveo alluded to you know typical growth should be between 40 and 60 right so we're just outside of that typical growth window and we do want to make sure that you know not only are our students achieving but they're growing at or either at or higher than like students from other districts as well that's certainly an area we want to kind of dig in on so part of our presentation tonight is to really think about learning loss and think about you know how covet has impacted us and and quite frankly what do we what have we been doing about it and what are we planning to do about it and so we'll just start with kind of where we've what we've already done um and when I say we I mean all of the Educators in Dartmouth um you know especially none of this work could take place without you know all of our teachers and and the Educators um but you know it started with last year streamlining our school Improvement plans and that work and really adopting that accelerated roadmap that the state had promoted and so at the elementary level what that looked like was creating and and the other thing I should know is that these strategies we're talking about might sound familiar because they're they were highlighted by the building principles two weeks ago or a few weeks ago when they presented their school Improvement plans and talked about last year's highlights that's where this these strategies are coming directly from so lots of Indian uninterrupted tier one instructional time at the elementary level in particular in particular with designated time for intervention for ELA and Mathematics at the secondary level really focusing on implementing Blended personalized and project-based learning is core instructional strategies leveraging existing structures like at the high school Pace to provide intervention those are all parts of uh part and parcel of the strategy to kind of accelerate learning and to recover some of that learning loss strategic leveraging of Grant funds is an important note here as well the state has provided significant additional support to districts Dartmouth applied for and received several acceleration Academy grants again staffed by teachers during things like vacation week and during the summer as well but but where we think these academic these acceleration academies really impacted MCAS for example would have been during February and April vacation of last year where we ran mathematics acceleration academies as well as in the summertime A literacy one but we served you know 93 students I believe it was during the first mathematics acceleration Academy in February of last year we served another 63 during April vacation we served 71 students at another one of the acceleration Academy so significant numbers of students were able to take advantage of additional intervention through those acceleration academies we've also though you know we think it's important to highlight that this is not just about preparing for a test though right it's about really building a school system that encourages a sense of belonging and so we've used Grant funds for that towards that end as well with the creation of the after school programming at Dartmouth Middle School to help create that sense of belonging we've also continued to kind of grow and expand after school activities here at the high school I want to kind of give a shout out to one of them our Esports team that start started about two two and a half years ago now just this past weekend competed at Gillette Stadium I'm sorry at Helix at the Patriot Place in the finals and so examples like that where we can continue to provide plug-in points for our students and create that sense of belonging when they feel committed to a school system Beyond just the traditional day they're more engaged and they're more successful academically so we see that really as part of what we're doing to address learning loss as well and then finally um focused on monitoring for understanding the use of pre and post assessment data to Monitor and inform instruction as well as the use of a variety of data sources to provide scaffolding and just-in-time supports and again leveraging existing structures like the pace period here at the high school to provide intervention and support as necessary so what are our next steps so tonight we're really talking about a high level 30 000 foot view of our District's performance on last year's MCAS but we always want to dig deeper into the data because it's where the impact occurs uh where the impact occurs as we all know is in the classroom level and it's between the teachers and the students and so we continue to review student results on all of our assessments by subgroup this work is important as it takes into account the issues of equity in education are all of our students performing similarly or do we have subgroups that are not performing as well as the student subgroups and if so what are we going to do about it our mission statement is about a quality education for all and this step of examining the data when it's broken out by subgroup is important to us because it keeps that promise to all students so we've talked about the aggregate all of our data tonight is our aggregate but when we really dive deep deeply into the data we need to really make sure that we're not leaving anyone behind right so when we talk about that quality learning for all just that that all means all in that it doesn't matter how small this a group we make sure that our kids have what they need to be successful and we're going to continue to monitor for understanding so I talked a little bit about those foundational literacy skills that our kids we know our kids lost out on so we're continuing to try to make sure that we are putting evidence-based curriculum materials into the kn2 class okay to two classrooms to address phonemic awareness that's been done across all schools our L3 teacher team is piloting the foundations program to address direct phonics instruction which is another area that our data tells us we need to work on we're working with our coaches to identify the gaps and the changes that need to be made in our tier one curriculum you know if we have a large portion of our kids who are not meeting or exceeding the standards we always say like that's a tier one problem because our tier one our tier one program really should be reaching you know 80 of our kids if we're if we're maximizing it and getting out of it what we need to in July of 2023 the Massachusetts dyslexia guidelines become law they are no longer just to suggestion the good news on that is that we are already meeting the requirements of screening of our students in k-3 and it's really the first step in the larger multi-tiered system of support you'll hear mtss mentioned a lot throughout that guideline and that's where we're talking about identifying and preventing struggles with with reading in our our youngest Learners so it's the catch them early not responding but rather being proactive and really trying to identify those students early and get in there as fast as we can to clean up some of those gaps um and it just you know the obviously that the point of data analysis if you're not someone who just loves a spreadsheet like me really is to identify Trends and to inform and adjust our instruction so that we can give our munchkins what they need with that we're happy to answer any questions we throw a lot of numbers hey Mr Oliver the first spot so feel free you know I was just going to say thank you and also like in addition I do want to say that this is you know we have so many of our staff here tonight and I do think it's really important to say that this is a testimony to their hard work and dedication to our kids so um you know there's there's been a lot of hardship over the last few years and teachers keeping that everything going in the classroom and and being really creative and you know the fact that our students are continuing to grow and grow in different ways um you know and they've been our students have been flexible our staff have been incredibly flexible so I think we all as a community I mean part of this is community hearing this too is that uh we're really lucky with the staff we have and the kids we have so so So yeah thank you again this is really good data the only thing and maybe Dart doesn't do this but I would love to see him a little bit of broken record on this um per pupil spending um in that table to comparison districts because again is a little bit of a broken record we're in the bottom 10 of the Commonwealth in terms of per pupil spending and so we do a lot with a little here in this district and so I would I would expect that a lot of those districts that are getting similar or not as good results from us are spending more a lot more money than we are and I think it's important for us as a school Community to continue to reinforce we get really good result Returns on what we invest and we should be investing more in our kids and our staff foreign [Applause] first of all thank you I appreciate the data I appreciate the presentation um with that being said we spoke a lot about learning loss a lot about the acceleration academies and you know I'm not sure where the district is I am on the budget subcommittee so I kind of have an idea but are we is the hope of the school department to continue to offer some of these learning loss programs we are well I'm well aware that Esser is coming to a close pretty soon we're hitting that financial cliff so has there been any discussion in in the in the district around these types of learning loss programs continuing so just to the acceleration Academy I will say that it's been a very historically quick turnaround that we don't find out about them um the August one that we ran we didn't find out about until the second week of July so my my supposition would be after the first of the year we may hear about some of those grant opportunities for um for like the for the vacation acceleration academies which we have run the last year um and if I could I mean speculation of my part but when we saw the commissioner speak at the mass mask conference one of the strategies he did tell was the acceleration academies so I'm hopeful that the state will continue to provide those grant opportunities um you know it does provide uh for a pretty intense intervention for our students and again we're fortunate to have staff who step up because it's during their vacation weeks as well absolutely and so we're fortunate for that for sure I think the other thing to keep in mind is that we are very fortunate um that we have instructional Specialists um at our levels who do provide some of that intervention work and that that's not necessarily something that you see in other districts where you have interventionists um who are who really dedicated to providing that intervention that's we have separate coaches a lot of the districts that Ross and I um collaborate with one person holds a dual role in that in that regard but we do have interventionists who are providing some of that where I work for our kids um especially at the elementary level and I think we're we're very fortunate to have that agreed no absolutely one last uh just point as far as the MCAS scores go you know I I have no concerns about what what Dartmouth posted this year um you know once again Testament to to all the staff um with that I know that the state has coming out with new MCAS graduation their graduation requirements for the MCAS could we just could the committee just hear and maybe this is more of a question for Dr Gifford when do those take effect um is my understanding that it's not going to be for several more years so I I just want to I just want to hear that that's my understanding too is that it's a it's a couple of years is there a date set in stone yet I'm against it I will say that right for 2025 please don't quote me I'll have to look it up but it's it's in one of those years I believe um it's disheartening that the state decided to go this way at this point and at this point in time but I think yeah and I think it highlights the importance of staying on an accelerate you know staying on and in an acceleration kind of mindset and continuing to your point to look at leveraging funds to provide these interventions because they're going to be necessary because just getting back to where they were where we were in 2019 is not going to be good enough um you know and again while I'm not a huge proponent of MCAS it is a requirement particularly at the high school level to earn your high school diploma and so if for no other reason than that we owe it to our students to make sure we put them in a position to be successful thank you both thank you very much thank you you're fine thank you all right takes care of that all right new business sure so I guess she wants to give it a brief overview of some of the changes they're making to the program studies in the highest we'll be very quick I understand we've got some music shows going on tonight and a lot of stuff um first if everyone introduce uh Miss Bridget Silva she's our director of guidance she's done all the yeoman's work on all of this she's met with all the lead teachers she really has been the face of this so as much as I'm going to talk a lot more Bridget's done a lot of the hard work um we came to you today because we wanted to talk about some changes that we're doing and we want to just inform you as well as the community and keep people up to date about our thought process and what we're still doing at Dartmouth High School and some of it is to help support the MCAS learning loss some of it is just to help that student experience and help our students make decisions that are proper that's not what I want to do Rob told me this was going to be easy top I see green got it it hurts yeah okay all right we might have to go from this side can we go from here do you all see it all right um so we're just updating our program of studies this year we've done a lot of work behind the scenes we met with all the stakeholders um like I said Mr Silva met with um each Lead Teacher they put together their class offerings they met with their departments and their cpts and really discussed it so it's kind of been like a trickle up effect almost where the teachers and the cpts Met then we met with the department heads and went from there and a lot of the feedback was on where what classes were offering and how we're offering classes and the number of classes we're offering talking about some of that balancing out those 30 classes to like those 12 classes and help balancing that out to make that a optimal learning environment for all of our students um as you can see this is um this is we're going to be changing our credit requirements for graduation um you can see on the far credit that's our current one and I'm going to examine I'm going to bring it bigger for you to see the major changes we had but with the development of our bit Department that was kind of one of the input like the first steps to make these changes so the real changes come in three areas um our unified Arts are going to go from a half one and a half from a half Credit One credit to one and a half credits we're increasing it all of this will be from the class of 27 and above so our current 8th grader so we are rising freshmen and above so we'll be working on two credits for the next four four years really or three years as we introduce all of our students um we had a computer science credit with the Innovation and business technology department we actually added another half a credit into that as well so it's a one and a half credit on business Innovation and technology and one and a half credits of unified arts for a total of one additional of required credits for our students so if we go back to here here you'll see our minimum credit requirement is 24 credits across the board we want to help structure some of the choices that our students make and see the wonderful offerings that we have at Dartmouth High School and especially in like our areas of unified arts and I use the example we talked last week month about um if I want to go to Bedford revoke and take a photography class I'm paying a lot of money now and we have a we have a photography studio here that's pretty impressive so we want to help our structure our decisions that we made with our students um the basis was we met with the stakeholders we updated significant language in the program too we wanted to use a Common Language where that's some of the things that we're trying to do in our schedule and in our program of studies for everyone we really want to Spotlight all that we have to offer and we're going to help understand their progressions through High School one of the things that um we're going to talk about in our next the steps is on through our students course of study plans is really we want to help our students understand how to navigate High School a little bit more supported um the basis of the decisions were um focusing on our students needs focus on the students emotional academic Health again some of that unified Arts can really help in our students across the board as well we want to emphasize how our students think critically um and the choices they make and we use Mouse core as a foundation so that was where we started from so most of those requirements are straight from Mass core as well because that's where what the state is telling us they want us to use um you to for sake of time those are just our program of studies that we offer and what the course trajectory students can take in in all of the classes that we offer um but what else do we have to offer at Dartmouth High School we have 26 AP classes we're adding two additional EP classes next year AP music theory and AP pre-calc um our Sila by literacy and um our AP capstones are some things that we take a real pride in uh we're actually celebrating both John and Abigail Adams Scholars and our syllabi literacies on Friday um and that's what 170 students so I keep getting the number wrong every time we met I change the number it's 70 it's 70 students that have achieved those honors so we're really excited about it um what's helped me through this year is our Partnerships with mass Q Mass insight and Project Lead the Way um they've been a really strong partner of us and we've been all of those have really helped us through this the redesign bit department is with that computer science pathway and really focusing in that language um side note I didn't realize it until way too late but I love that it's like it's our computer base and it's called bit and it took me a little while to realize that but that's okay um and then our science department has really started to focus the conversation on sustainability and what does that look like and how are we going to continue with that um so the next steps that we're going to do with this is um our guidance department and we have a really strong partnership with the middle schools we've talked a few times so our guys our whole guidance department is going to go down to meet with the eighth grade students go over the course um course catalog with them and really help structure their choices that they make um and then the other part of it is our guidance counselors are really going to work with our students on their own plan of study every student will be working on off of their own plan of study what their plans are now they can they're they're a live and breathing document and that's the biggest thing about Google Docs is that they can grow and they can change and I know who I was as a freshman was different than I was as a senior but we're giving them a we're giving them a path and some answers to what do I do next and how do I do that next and if I want to get here how do I get there um we're going to use our advisory of course to help promote that um the course offerings and we're going to encourage students to take classes outside their comfort zone I think one of the things that I truly regret is I never learned of like my um my artistic side of myself until way too late in life and I think we want students to step outside of that comfort zone and really see what every what courses have to offer and maybe help some students find different career paths that they never thought they would find like I said I didn't want to take too much of your time but we did want to update you all on what we're doing and why we're doing it so if people ask you why or you hear why we want to keep you all in the loop of like the changes that we made they're not massive significant but they're enough that we felt it was really important to inform you as a committee in the community as in general so we'll take any questions thank you Mr Shea thank you Dr Jenkins oh I get to go first this time so this is I this is great I don't have any objections to the the changes that you're making I just want to say is having you know had two kids recently go through this and also working in higher ed you know I found when I was working with my kids the program of study was sort of my main entry as the parent to understanding the curriculum and one of the things I would like to see us maybe to think about not my for now but moving forward to more clearly communicate that these are the graduation requirements but in many instances the expectations for institutions of a higher education are more than that right and talking about getting kids out of their comfort zone well I've done my three Sciences I'm done I'm good right well yes but good schools are going to be looking for four years of science right I've done my two years again yes but right and so I'd like to see some of those expectations about that pathway maybe put into the program of studies because I knew that because I work in this industry but I feel like there's a lot of parents who might not realize that and only see okay check you've met that and say not maybe push their kids to do some things that are outside their comfort zone um so I just that's something to think about but otherwise I think I think it looks great I appreciate that thank you Mr Oliver yeah thank you both for your presentation thank you for all the hard work that you've done on you know putting this together and and playing working behind the scenes uh I'm just thrilled I'm happy to hear happy to see the communication just being open transparent with the committee what's happening the pro the steps that have taken place so yeah I have um I have no other questions so thank you both uh just uh the same I think you know this is excellent I also like the fact that marching band is actually going to count as a you know is this a credit for you know I'm gonna be careful with that that is out there there's room is out there I I want to be very clear I was just looking on here yeah um so marching band there is a law in Massachusetts that there are some things that can count in replace of P we're only doing that for students as a last option and we're telling our right now we think it would affect only three students in our building it's usually a student that is um traditionally might have academic support and band that really crams their schedule so we're talking about right now it's three students in the entire building that might even impact that um and and we're doing that for the sake of that I I believe in PE I was I wish I was a PE teacher and I think it's really important and again on the mental health side of things I think it's a really great outlet for a lot of our students so we want to be really careful with that so when we say this and we've we've communicated this to our guidance counselors who are doing the career path with our students is that this is not an option for every student this is a last resort and like I said we're talking three students at Dartmouth High that this would impact this year okay I appreciate that clarification now I know it is tough for those kids just to find informative because it's a fine room in their schedule for some of their electives that's sometimes where you know I feel for them you know yes it's just the I mean again they have a huge sacrifice and I'm like happy to do that and then again I value certainly value as well absolutely no and I'm glad for the clarification on that as well thank you because this is not a this is an option where we're gonna have like it would be approved by admin like this is yeah so it's you can talk about it but the admin has to say yeah thanks thank you very much for for everything good question that I have uh on the courses you know when you went back and you had you didn't you get with glance over which is fine but you know when I look I look at it I look you know for discussion purposes English and it's in all of them it says uh ccro honors what is CCR yep College and Career Readiness okay yeah thank you so the the three I don't want to use the word levels but the three the three we can you a student has to to take is a CCR class which is college career ready recognized by universities as preparing for college honors than AP God bless acronyms yep exactly I still haven't learned them after all these years so I I appreciate that uh and again I think I agree with my colleagues I think the uh the communication down you know the eighth graders and over the next couple of years is going to be uh key for everything but thank you very much for all of this thank you and just to jump on something Dr Jenkins said like even here it says two years for foreign language we encourage three at the minimum like you know we talk about getting into that pool yeah it gets you into the pool what makes you stand out in that pool yeah I just like to see it I think you know as a parent we're not part of those conversations with guidance or whatever and you know I have two boys they're not always best about communicating what conversations they have high school boys so writing it down somewhere you know for parents to see is part of that communication effort might be great yeah thank you thank you okay thank you no I know that yeah okay next on the agenda is uh school choice vote and discussion I'll turn it over to Mr Kylie thank you Mr news so I provided um a sort of financial summary of what the school choice program has meant to us from a funding perspective um I I think you know the future with Federal funding um being uncertain moving forward you know the school choice funds offer a potential way to buffer some of the some of the reductions that might be ahead so certainly hopeful that that's the case we've focused on a number of things through the years it's it's uh the biggest item that school choice has funded through the years has been technology so it was originally our primary source of funding for our one-to-one initiatives uh thank goodness we did that because it it allowed us to get ahead of of of things and allowed us to transition when we did have the disastrous pandemic to sort of support support kids as best we could with remote learning and without that funding I I don't know what that would have looked like but it certainly wouldn't have been nearly as successful as it was uh we also fund stipend amounts for programs that we likely would not otherwise be able to fit into the budget to support the music program after school programs strength and conditioning programs it's been a major source of support for Teacher develop professional development um and we've also used it for instructional materials and capital Improvement projects like the Dartmouth Memorial Stadium project several years ago I set up with a preschool classroom over at the Potter School The Innovation lab right here and the improvements that are to come in this room right here with with the library and media center overhaul that we're going to do so it's it's been valuable um right now we're projecting approximately 685 thousand dollars of Revenue this year so significant amount of money uh our projected expenditures are about 386 thousand dollars for this year so we'll we'll Bank a little bit of uh a little bit of savings there that can be used in the future so that's um sort of a a summary of what we've used it for I'd be happy to answer any more specific questions questions Chris thank you Mr Kiley so I'm thrilled that we're you know we're at a point in which we have school choice in Dartmouth especially with uncertain times I think the money that we've spent um you know for the most part all one time one-time expenses uh with the exception of a couple of the uh I don't know about the strength and conditioning program that's been reoccurring or not I would just add that I would be very cautious you know as far as using and I know I think the the committee said some kind of limit as far as what you can spend before coming to the committee about ten thousand ten thousand that's what I thought that's what I thought it was as far as using this for anything other than you know one-time costs that we you know you're certainly very very cautious moving forward during these times so I would just ask you know I think this is great I think we should continue it it certainly fills um fills a need in this District I wish our budgets I wish we were funded in a proper level but this certainly gives us the flexibility to offer some of these programs and some of these devices such as the Chromebook so thank you Dr Jenkins yeah you know I would agree with Mr Oliver I think our policy has been good so far to to not use these potentially non-recurring revenues right to fund recurring costs but you know quite frankly if things don't change I think we're going to have to revisit that to help ease us off the cliff um you know I don't want to I don't like to do that I'm reluctant to do that but I mean if the choice is to fall off the cliff or to use this to help us ease our way through that I think I think we will have to revisit that in the future agreed Mary um no I didn't you know I can't say that I have anything you know else really that is something I feel like we need to continue just um for fiscal reasons I guess I did have one question more if we look at just the towns the sending towns are we seeing now that westport's built a new high school did we see any change in their numbers coming in or is that above consistent the number of applications we get okay all right okay thank you that's all thank you yeah I uh and again I'll be a broken record but I'm the one I won't they'll disrespect to my colleagues it's fundamental for me I don't vote for the school choice I don't I like the money don't get me wrong but I'm just not one and I did that rant a number of years ago so I won't do it again but uh you know I I think this is this is great and yeah I I agree that uh Federal uh Ursa funds and everything is uh Clift is coming real quick so we're gonna need to be ready for that so with that being said any other questions okay Mr I guess before we take a vote uh what are we thinking for for our enrollment or what are our Roman numbers looking at like and are we going to um stick with the um I think approximately about 30 new students 30 to 40.
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we have around 140 students right now it K updates me on we get we lose one we gain one that kind of thing if someone moves out of the you know they leave things like that so it's around 140. that's what we've kind of had over the last week do you know what the enrollment is currently that's what I'm saying it's a route I thought I said I thought I saw her somewhere oh there we go thank you 42. 142.
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so you're comfortable making that recommendation that we stay right around there Dr Gifford yeah same numbers as previous years and and to be honest when we get our application then we go through our lotteries and a number of folks will back out I think you know they're covering all bases they might want to see if they can get into a private school or okay vocational school so it usually ends up almost everyone gets in so far right we'll see okay all right so you need a motion to continue with the school choice if we so desire move by Miss White second second by Dr Jenkins on the motion to any discussion so that is to carry forward with school choice for school year 23-24 with approximately 5 30 to 40 students and everything whatever it turns out to be okay chairing on all in favor aye aye opposed chair will opposed just because I said I do thank you so it passes three to one all right just come back on yeah okay uh yeah Dr jenk uh my apologies Dr Gifford that's fine so at this time I just want to recognize Rob perrotti he's coming on to give us a little update on a couple of things that the department has been engaged in yeah he said he'd be quick now from behind the scenes tonight so all right so I just want to announce that uh we're congratulating for the um CS leaders award um you left your post oh yeah I had in the back room [Laughter] yeah all right so um on Monday December 5th we started out with the press conference uh there we go you got it done thank you we got Ben in the back working the controls all right so on Monday December 5th we started we had a press conference where our department was awarded um the 10 000 Grant from code.org uh in that meeting we had um two visitors on that night uh on that day rather Hannah Wiseman who was the director of policy from code.org and Deborah boysberg the executive director for computer science from Mass Inc uh came down to the high school and uh they were given a tour of our facilities they took a look at how students are using uh computer programming coding whether it be a robotics computer science courses and then Ryan Aruda also had them on uh his episode of ryanology which will be out this Friday and he talked to them about various aspects of what the department is doing with computer coding um during the week of the hour of code last week Wednesday and Thursday we had a school-wide hour of code event where students actually participated in learning how to do various coding and they had uh about seven uh experiences that they could go through and learn what computer coding was all about and it was a great success and you can see our big check also went around to all the classrooms uh also during that week our bit Department had several presentations one being with the robotics team where they talked to all of our students in our classes about how computer coding works with our robotics team and what they have to do to actually code the robots to actually work and drive and compete and it was produced by the media program and all the bit classes actually watched the video and then we ended the week with a school-wide survey where we got various data on such as uh what our code activities were the students favorites um what classes have they taken here so far for computer science and what classes would they like to take in the future so we got a lot of great data here for the end of the week that we can use in our department other events that occurred in our department last week this past week for the first time our media program hosted a live filibust Telethon which we partnered with Dartmouth Community media and the Dartmouth police department and we actually broadcast four hours of a live Telethon at the Target store here in North Dartmouth and we were able to help fill two large buses full of toys as well as this year supplement that with um with funding we had a QR code where people could just go go right to that QR code and donate money to the program and so far we raised over three thousand dollars that actually will be in addition to the toy acceptance at the Target and uh it was a great success we had entertainment from the high school bands we had the High School dance team performed we had various singers throughout the event perform we we had various interviews Dr Gifford was there as well and it was just a great success the kids all did a wonderful job and uh we couldn't have done it without them and again we had an after party afterwards and they were they were quite happy of how well it went uh other other things that happened this past week we had uh an Esports team that that won the semi-finals for the State uh and it was their Super Smash ultimate team that ranked second out of 52 teams in the playoffs they Advanced to the final four were able to compete at a lot live playoff event on Saturday at on Patriots Place and uh it was this was the first time that our team had gone this far so that was a great thing um our engineering students built a state-of-the-art news desk for our media program so I'd like to congratulate these students that you see here Aiden Medeiros Argy Ben Azevedo and Sophia geosa built our brand new news desk that we actually this is from today we actually use this today filming today this is our holiday edition of our Dartmouth High news program and as you can see it looks great we actually have a video wall that will be put behind them we have a six panel video wall going up in the studio uh within the next couple of weeks that will replace the curtain that you see behind them so it's going to be a state-of-the-art look for our new new set at the DHS TV media Studios downstairs uh also in our media program Bob's Discount Furniture donated two thousand dollars for new comfortable seating uh the students spend countless hours editing uh and we want to give them it was this was actually the student's idea to write to Bob's Furniture to see if they would donate some money for new furniture and lo and behold they agreed we got two thousand dollars and the students picked out all this furniture and you can see they are now quite comfortable for when we uh edit in the classroom so that's it for this week that this was predominantly all this week in the bit department and that's only one week we have much more to come but uh I don't know if anybody has any questions I don't want to take up too much of your time um I do have to get back to behind the scenes work fantastic anybody any thank you Mr President excellent yeah great job okay thank you thank you thank you Miss perrotti oh that's great I think it's a pretty much guarantee that we would not have a media at Dartmouth High School would not have a media program as well respected and well run without Mr perotti and I mean if you think about it too when uh just go back to the tail end of the Fall Sports Seasons with us students Ben being one of them you know doing the doing the broadcast with the volleyball games or the uh the basketball not the basketball but the volleyball and you know field hockey and soccer and that type of deal so it's been wonderful to to see them do that gives them you know it's gotten them out of their comfort zone I guess is where I'm looking and they've done a fantastic job uh the only thing that I have the only thing I have is uh you know our athletic department is uh back with their uh went to sports the basketball girls and boys basketball team has already started and they both won their first game so congratulations to them so you know more to more to come on that I know the hockey and uh track teams will be uh hitting the uh the athletic complexes very shortly so wish them well all right well okay so what I'm going to do is we've got I'm going to give you 10 minutes for public comment and that's what hey well that's the way it is I'm sorry I apologize I didn't mean it that way okay but that's what we have so good evening my name is Catherine golub and I'm a teaching assistant at the Quinn school I have been a resident of Dartmouth for over 35 years in September I marked 25 years as a teaching assistant in Dartmouth I began my career working at the Demello School library then I moved to gidley and eventually to Quinn when I began this job I was the mother of two elementary school children and the hours in my love of literature made it a great fit last June I received the distinguished ESP award from the DEA I speak from experience I'm here tonight because I am worried about our schools at Quinn we currently have two fourth grade teachers who are both Tas before finishing their teaching degrees hiring Tas who are working toward teaching roles is a win for Dartmouth schools as we get intelligent and invested Tas who learn our curriculum and are ready to hit the ground running as teachers last year however we lost two of our rock star young teachers I'm at Quinn to more money the sped teacher to more money and a smaller caseload this year I've seen promising future teachers come and go in ta positions they couldn't afford to work at the pay rate what goes on in the day of it what does a day in life of a TA look like I am currently assigned as the third grade ta at Quinn and I spend my day moving between six classrooms I begin my rounds with fluency drills in one classroom supporting foundations in the next a reading group in the third Ela support in the next followed by fourth grade lunch duty in the afternoon I support math centers then two classes in writing I conference with the students then I support science and social studies in my last two classes this is the schedule my team worked hard to plan by identifying where they needed my support the most in reality I'm rarely able to follow this schedule for more than three days a week in practice my real job is to support the school's Administration wherever they need me I expect to cover for my third grade teachers when they have meetings and this seem a seamless transition because I know their classes and their curriculum I am often pulled to cover for teachers and other grades as well in the past two weeks I have substituted in the fifth and the third grade when I was covering the fifth grade there was a conflict as I was scheduled to administer a test to a third grade class whose teacher was absent that day without coverage while the sped co-teacher had to pull her kids that meant that another ta had to cover fifth grade each time that I am pulled there is a reading group that doesn't meet there is there there is one I'm sorry a pile of work to address with students one-on-one that is set aside and one less person at lunch duty last Monday 50 percent of our cafeteria staff was out so I helped serve lunch that is what Tas do each day thank you [Applause] each day when the FYI email comes out it is a roadmap to who is being pulled to cover for which teacher these Cascade down to whether we have enough staff in the cafeteria at parent pickup and dismissal Staffing at the schools is tight and this is what worries me I feel as if our coverage is lace and it stretches to meet the needs of the school there are more and more holes to fill a co-worker at lunch told me that she had been contacted by a principal in a local Town asking her to change school systems with four more dollars more an hour as she is a single parent we may lose her I am worried for the Dartmouth schools that they will not be able to compete in the market for staff money that's what it comes down to years ago my husband and I sat down and decided that we were okay with me working for less money that to me the gift of my job was the lives that I touched today I see a system that is on the edge we are stretched to the limits of time I worry that we won't meet the needs of students on IEPs and Bible Force because we are short of staff I worry that a child May choke in the cafeteria or have an allergic reaction and there are only two sets of eyes in the cafeteria I challenge this school committee to say not on our watch for you to take the steps to turn the tide on the outflow of talented staff and return to a school system that nurtures future teachers thank you and please any one of you come and spend a day with me at Quinn I would love to have you just show up thank you foreign my name is Kathleen Baldwin I'm an occupational therapist in the Dartmouth School System for over 25 years I have been through four superintendents in first bed directors so I have a lot of history and a lot of knowledge of where we are right now I'm going to address Mr Kylie Dr Gifford Mr Nunes Mrs Waite Dr Jenkins and Chris Oliver by name because I want to see your eyes looking at me in the hope that your attention has been secured on this topic when I first started in Dartmouth in 1997 we had three programs three special education programs one at the elementary one the middle one at the high school you know anyone guess how many we got now nine that doesn't include all the code talk classrooms every grade level has a code talk classroom or two at every grade level in every building and we also have a pre-k program that house fifty percent of disabled children the needs of these students in the programs are severe these days severe from academics to life skills to self-care I know you've heard the needs of the Tas in those programs the social and the behavioral demands one fact that I don't think many parents know and I am reaching out to parents today through this media through my social media and I will continue to campaign to get as much parental support on this as I possibly can before I retire in June one one thing that I don't think many parents know maybe staff doesn't even know and maybe some of your school Community Committee members don't even know is that I'm the backs of therapists the occupational therapist the physical therapist and the speech and language pathologist we bring in over four hundred thousand dollars a year to the town I know Mr Kyle you and I have had discussions about this where does that money go I've had discussions with Finance people at Bush Street I get it's that and a straight line item to the schools it doesn't really work that way so I'm not sure where the money goes but when I ask the Medicaid coordinator if we can use that money directly for the school the answer since Pat demanche was the special education director is unequivocally yes we can we don't we still struggle in Fight to get a TA for one two one for a non-verbal very artistic child who needs a one-to-one who has life skill challenges who has self-care challenges we need help and we need these positions filled the other time this year I wrote a a letter in email to a technology coordinator or sped director in our building people to ask for three iPads I'm kidding you not three three iPads with some software we got one I think the four hundred thousand dollars maybe could have covered two more maybe I'm sorry to be quite I'm frustrated to the fact that the so uh the public comment was so Dishonored by you Mr Nunes that you just pushed it aside [Applause] the other issue that's coming up and I know has been in our negotiations and thank you to our negotiation staff who have been working tirelessly with you I've sat in those chairs myself it's not pretty um looking at Walter Smith over there it's not pretty and it seems almost not respectful at this point a hard no on language that cost you nothing our time is your dime Dartmouth our time is your time we are negotiating to receive back this 8 45 to 905 time that we had we have had that time for between regular education and special Educators to consult between therapists to consult with the special Educators now many of those Consultation Services are in IEPs in quite frankly we're not we're not doing what we should be so we're not in compliance with those laws so I would ask you to reconsider that I understand that there's been some miscommunication and misinterpretation of what principles think is working okay or not okay that's all that's all in the weeds I get but I wish that you would reconsider us getting back the 845 to the 905 time that we so rightly deserve yes Mr Nunes I will thank you for your consideration tonight please reach out to me please come see the sped programs at Quinn school on a day sometime and even look at an Eiffel for sure thank you good evening my name is Corey Diaz and I'm the occupational therapist I've been in the Dartmouth schools for 17 years hi my name is Erin manafo and I have been an occupational therapist in the school system for the past three years my journey to Dartmouth started when I was a student here I was overwhelmed by the dedication passion and effort put forth by the staff who taught and mentored me some of them are still in this room today it made the decision to come back to Dartmouth easy now that I'm on the other side of that dedication passion and effort I'm disheartened in the lack of recognition resources and compensation we receive for our expertise and knowledge I stand in front of you tonight as one of the staff members who did not cover Dartmouth extended school year program this past year for the first time since being employed here instead I put my dedication passion and effort into a school system that compensated me over ten dollars an hour more than what Dartmouth offered for the value I brought to their students what's even more concerning to me is the willingness of this Administration to hire external contractors who are not familiar with the families staffs or students to fill those positions rather than reasonably compensating the staff that's the same position that I could have fill not given the disparity in compensation but if reasonably compensated would have been proud to do so this is only a sound bite of a systemic problem that this 10-minute open forum is not adequate to cover if your lack of conference concern for your staff's benefits and compensation is causing your staff across the board to question their value and worth how do you think this model is sustainable for retaining Talent how do you plan on continuing to advance the Dartmouth education system and support families if you can't support your staff [Applause] my name is Sandra alpum raposo and I have been a speech pathologist here in Dartmouth for seven years last year I had the experience of supervising two other speech staff members taking on this additional responsibility of supervising these staff members medicos to me and to my students but at a cost savings to the district the current contract does not have additional time or language allocated to adequately meet the ethical and Regulatory supervision requirements which would allow therapists to maintain their current caseload and fulfill their other professional and contractual duties to comply with state federal and credentialing regulations and mandates for all involved the speech pathologist must take on additional weekly duties which may include direct and indirect supervision observation of their therapy sessions assisting in the development of clinical skills conducting performance reviews co-signing and signing documentation and ensuring and this is per the regulation which we stand by ensuring um that all the laws and regular regulations governing the practice of Speech Pathology are followed just to name a few by choosing not to include language within the DEA contract that acknowledges the increase in workload and provides adequate time for supervision all those involved suffer within the when the supervising speech language pathologist or any therapist it can include otptm the rbts when they don't have adequate time they must choose between providing adequate supervision or providing adequate therapy to their own students ultimately the students of Dartmouth pay the price as they are being provided Services by a service provider who does not have the time skill or supervision needed to provide their services with efficacy and fidelity the district currently provides stipends for Club advisors Building Technology coordinators and other positions that are not responsible for the direct supervision of other staff members how can the school district feel it is reasonable and just not to also compensate speech-language Pathologists who directly supervise staff with a stipend for an increased workload which not only allows the district to fill high demand staffing needs but also Saves The Districts The District tens of thousands of dollars it should also be noted that most of the contractual language we were we're seeking would come at no cost to the district um Dartmouth students deserve better and so do the hard-working therapists who work day in and day out to make sure that their students have the highest quality services to meet their maximum potential thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] there we go all right our next meeting is set for January 9th 2023 Dr Jenkins I'm sorry so you know I know it's not common for us to address you know public comment we take a public comment um but I want to be clear this is probably one of the hardest parts of the job right um I want to be clear that I think everyone sitting at this table everyone on this committee is sympathetic to the demands that you're placing let me speak please you had your turn you've had your turn we are sympathetic to the demands I have worked so many overrides in this community to try to get more funding for our schools we are at the bottom 10 of all districts in the state of Massachusetts for our poor people funding right I keep bringing up the word override and everyone tells me no no I'm not going to be afraid to talk about that because that's what's it's going to take for us to be able to do this and we need to work together to put that message out to the community because we can't get blood from a stone right there isn't a big pot of money in the town of Dartmouth that's hanging out that is not being spent right I am the child of teachers I am a teacher myself right I am sympathetic to this I just don't know where to go and it's hard I know you it's hard for you it's hard for us too we are sympathetic to what you are saying we hear you we're trying that's all I can say Mr Oliver thank you for your comments Dr Jenkins which I wholeheartedly agree with you know what what's really frustrating to me is 10 years ago when I first came on the committee that we had this type of rhetoric going on we certainly have this rhetoric here today it's been going on for quite some time and like Dr Jenkins said I'm in education my students went through the I have a junior at Dartmouth High School I started off in this profession as a paraprofessional 20 years ago I was a paraprofessional that's how I started that's how I got my foot in the door so I can certainly appreciate that for those of you who are Tas esps I know the language is looking to be changed I can certainly appreciate that and I respect all of you what I will say is that there's no we're not career politicians up here not one of us is a career politician up in Beacon Hill whereas sitting at this table looking to do what is right for not only number one our students and number two our staff I hear you I certainly hear what you're saying I respect in value what you do every single day covid has just made it twice as worse but what I am seeing across the state is I am seeing a lot of ramped up rhetoric that I don't think needs to take place that almost just becomes counterproductive I am here tonight saying that I will do what I can to work with you and work with the members of this committee and the members of this town I reached out to the vice chair and the chair of the select board I want to sit down with them I want to have a conversation to understand what is the story with health care in this town why can't we support it why can't we look to Alternative means than what is currently being offered this is all I got in this role because I wanted to I wanted to do what's best but this is all just volunteerism this is what it comes down to I am we are working I know some some of you may not believe it and that's perfectly fine but believe it or not I can at least speak for myself that I am working on this town your behalf especially our parents and students behalfs so I'm optimistic that moving forward together we can only do this together that we can make things happen it's not going to be easy at some ex to some extent we may have to talk about is that a change in split and I'm I I have no place no business talking about this but is it a change in Split is it a change in health insurance or is it employees or staff I don't have the answers I'm willing to work with you I'm willing to work with my colleagues to get the answers but in closing we've got to do this and work collaboratively together that is the only way that this school system is going to come out on top which I know we can we have a nut we have a top-notch school system and it's because of you it's because of all of you so thank you I wish I could come to negotiations we I'm I can't I would love to come spend the day with you I don't have enough vacation time to do that I'm sorry I have to be honest with you to Mr Oliver's point this is a volunteer job for us we have nine to five jobs I can't I'd love to I'm sorry but I have to work to support my family as well all right okay so do I so does Mr Oliver so does Miss wait we're all working we're doing the best we can okay so that being said okay anything else I would like to see on the next school committee agenda a discussion about related services I'd like to I'd like to hear what our current related services are our case loads um I would like to I'd like to have an update on related Services that's fair thank you thank you we can do that no problem all right so our next meeting is January 9th 2023 at 6 30 here I wish everybody a happy holiday and uh we'll the chair will entertain a motion to adjournal Executive session for the purposes of uh collective bargaining with Union personnel and not returned by Dr Jenkins second second by Mr Oliver on the motion any discussion roll call vote please yes yes yes all right thank you and merry Christmas happy New Year safe holidays [Music]
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order um welcome to the Wednesday December 14 2022 electronic meeting of the Ann Arbor design review board this meeting is held electronically to protect public health and safety due to the covid-19 virus and to comply with the orders issued by the governor the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and the Washington County Health Department we intend to conduct this meeting similar to an in purpose an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues like my ability to read from us uh public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call 877-852-5247 or 888-788-0099 and enter meeting ID 974-6174-9412 and I think CTN puts that up on the screen for people don't they Courtney uh I believe so I'm not 100 certain though all right well I'll repeat it again when it's time I'll repeat those numbers again when it's time for a public comment um this information is also available on the publish agenda in the Public Notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on CTN Channel 16 a t channel 99 and online at www.a2gov.org forward slash watch ctm the design review board is a volunteer resident board appointed by the mayor and confirmed by city council the purpose of the design review board is to Foster excellence in the design of Ann Arbor's built environment and to advise applicants on how to project how a project can meet the spirit intent of the downtown design guidelines first the applicant will have 10 minutes to present their proposed project to the design review board then the design review board will hold a discussion on this on the design of the project and then following the presentation discussion members of the public are permitted to comment for up to three minutes and with that if Jeff you can call roll yep uh board member Singleton remember Mitchell here remember Perkins here remember Ramson here John katarski here remember Burns member Cooper member Kinley you have quorum thank you first starter business then is approval of our agenda um if everybody's had a chance to look it over if I could um have a motion foreign moved by Laurie seconded by dick um any further discussion about our agenda all those in favor signify by saying I yeah hi opposed same sign agenda is approved and then on to approval of the minutes of the um looks like we're approving minutes from the July 13 2022 design review board meeting not not the October meeting I'm sorry that's incredible that's a typo it's the October okay meeting okay um which I wasn't at um so for those of you who have had a chance to read them uh if I could have a motion to approve second somebody I think Bill Bill seconded okay okay moved by uh Lori and seconded by Bill all those uh any further discussion about the minutes all those in favor signify by saying aye raise your hand I pose same sign approve uh the minutes for the October meeting are approved and then looks like our first item of regular business is um Dr 22-2008 350 South Fifth Avenue um do we have somebody uh do we have the petitioner first present or does staff give their review first the petitioner is going to present first they'll have up to 10 minutes they'll be able to share their uh screen and describe the project uh after that members of the board can provide comment and at the very end staff will offer a few nuggets of wisdom and I would like to recuse myself from the discussion as an employee of Smith group who will be presenting today all right thank you Lori um so if the petitioner can take the opportunity to fill us in on their project I think Mr Kinkade was going to share his screen if I'm not mistaken there we go I'm I'm still working on promoting panelists okay yeah this is this is the 18K it should be up to ulc yep okay and my colleagues will be stepping in here to to start it up great yeah this is Michael Johnson here um are we all are we ready to go are we waiting on folks still I I believe we're good to start perfect well so I'm on Michael Johnson I lead our Urban Design Team um that cuts across our Detroit and Ann Arbor office from Smith group uh Lindsay and I are here in Ann Arbor today and um excited to uh you know spend a few minutes with you all today presenting you uh some of the updates on the 350 South 5th project uh certainly a continuation of the process that um uh was a Community Driven process um and um many of you uh were partooken various iterations of the conversations uh that we've had today so keep scrolling through the slides Dan uh just a quick um uh snippet of the of the uh kind of where we are next slide I wanted to just really emphasize as we kind of get into this presentation uh that that you know obviously an important piece on behalf of the Housing Commission the city and various departments um of a larger plan to build affordable housing units uh in Ann Arbor and in downtown uh you know as part of mitigating one of what we think uh and many of you uh know is one of our important existential crises in in the city next slide um you know the the as I alluded to earlier this the information you'll see today is is very much in line with and a continuation of the area plan and uh the Pud process that was presented to you all and this body and unanimously um approved by City Council in April next slide and then uh just real quickly as context and we're not going to get into all the details here but you know I think many of you know and are aware of that this is part of a larger four-year effort uh to change the narrative around affordable housing and mixed use development uh in downtown uh but also you know I think we want to emphasize um a great example of what's possible when the community City staff the Housing Commission the DDA the transit authority OSI and others collaborate to achieve outcomes that we haven't been able to achieve in our in our downtown before so with that as a background I'll pass it uh over to my teammates to kind of get into the details today hi everybody we're having trouble hearing Lindsay oh yeah can you hear me okay A little better okay I'll speak up really loudly um so here we have just some project stats um things to note here um we've got two 18-story towers uh the west building has uh 95 affordable units in it and the East building has uh approximately 220 percent of which will be affordable the other is market rate um I'm gonna flip to the next slide I think you know as Ann Arbor residents we're all pretty familiar with the site uh formerly known as the old y lot um I think you know currently it's obviously a parking lot um and feels pretty underutilized as its current use um especially given its proximity to the transit center uh the library and Main Street um flip to the next slide uh so you know is the surrounding context um I think the design team has been um uh taking into account uh the surrounding context as well as the um residential units to the South that you can see here in letters d and e H next slide um and then here you can see you know the neighboring parking structure um letter G and then H is the a new high-rise building uh pretty much kitty corner to the site at Maine and William I didn't go to the next slide please um so I'm gonna spend some time here on the slight plan and this is uh uh you know we've obviously been working since we submitted our application um at the deadline a month ago and so this is um an updated site plan and what you have all seen in your packet um I'll be going over it briefly but happy to get into uh more detail um and discussion but here you can see um the first floor uh shaded in dark blue um there's a white dash line is the building or a canopy overhead um and then you can see the site's pretty much divided into halves we've got the streetscape first floor of the building um you know really trying to activate activate this corner between fourth and fifth Avenues um we have pretty standard streetscape in terms of trees and curbed Planters and bike parking uh residents will be entering the building off of Fifth Avenue I don't know Dan you can point to the entries um well there's a doorway there and then um to the other Tower along East Williams Street and then residential or excuse me the retail um faces along William Street and the entry to that will likely be along William Street um but to be determined um so moving North on the site you can see there is I believe it's like a 15 foot maybe 18 foot wide service Lane in egress um so this will be used for a waste collection and deliveries all back of house for the the building um and then moving to the other half of the site um you know we have a unique use where we're trying to accommodate um AAA ta operations and we want to make this feel very uh deliberately designed and separate so the ridership doesn't feel like they're you know waiting for buses at the back of a high-rise um and so we've been very careful about how we're designing this and this is where you'll see most of the updates um in your design packet um compared to this slide here um we've been working very closely with triple A Ta on the design of this and hearing um from them you know we really want to be careful about uh designing these two sites so that the bus platforms feel as one and writers can easily hop off a bus coming through our site transfer to um a bus on 4th Avenue or just north of the transit center and so we've provided some connections via steps uh a ramp and then um to the far left side of those plan we have um a plaza where the grades kind of flatten out and we can do some trees and grates and benches but we want to keep it feeling like a plaza so that there's as much uh flow through a pedestrian activity as possible um I think I'll keep it brief on this site because we know where short end times so um I will hand it to the architecture team great thank you very much Lindsay and thanks again to all of you for for coming on the call with us this afternoon what we want to do now is transition into a series of views to share with you the look and feel of the building we know you've had a chance to look at this relatively closely we want to first of all though set this in context so what we're looking at right now is a perspective that's looking Northwest you see on the right side the 18-story East Tower which was mentioned in market rate and mixed income here about 200 units and then over to the left you can see the fully affordable Tower at 17 stories uh split by a vertical strike of the stairway here the notable things here that we want folks to understand is as we set up the overall project to deliver on the really important mission and vision here to to have affordable housing and housing in General within Ann Arbors to begin to set the stage to align with the context so well we're delivering a range of of units here we're also paying close attention to the adjacencies including a two-story Podium that's stepping down at fourth and fifth along William aligning the height uh with the adjacent library that you can see here you know to the right with the brick masonry existing homes also uh to the South paying close attention again to the materiality there uh and then activating the ground plane with active retail and Resident lobbies to really bring life into this space uh where we know uh today exists of parking lot we also want to make sure that we're framing the entry um wave into the Blake Transit Center for triple ATA here which you can see on the right side of the base of the of the uh of the building um and to bring that into a covered space to house that and provide a great Rider experience here again providing dignity and access to to Riders uh who really who really need it so this is a great illustration of the impact we think the project can have and the way that it can align with the existing context so here's a reverse view for you actually looking now um Southwest and in this case now the Blake Transit Center is in the foreground and you can see the relationship between it then and and the new proposed building you can also see that canopy element that comes across framing that entry point for buses and Riders and really um creating a strong relationship between the brick masonry Podium that's outlined on the new building and the library across the street as well as the houses uh to the South there one minute remaining okay okay so we'll speed through these okay um first floor plan I think was well covered the purples retail yellow are lobbies let's move on and second floor is an amenity level the only interesting fact here is the generators in the left-hand corner and that's due to site constraints we have that inside the building the third floor is when the units start to be placed so the green hair is representing the units and the yellow is an amenity space for the West Tower and there's a small amenity space for the East Tower but the towers are actually separate so that they can function independently next and then 4 through 16 this is your typical arrangement of dwelling units we've got seven units per floor on the fourth uh um per floor for the West Tower and we've got 13 per floor for the East Tower that'll give us 95 units in the West Tower and 199 units in the East Tower with 152 one bedroom and 47 two-bedroom all the units in the West Tower will be one bedroom and that allows us for a total of 135 affordable units back to you Dan great and we'll give you to close here a few quick glimpses of the project again down on William uh looking toward the west again seeing the podium configuration the relationship to the street and streetscape kind of coming back on the other side toward the north looking back over the Blake into the building again with the context Beyond and then a close-up here in the facade looking at the the southwest corner here uh into the the affordable Tower with a really nice amenity uh at that top level of the of the third floor and a representation here of some of the materials that we're considering natural materials warm colors warm tones uh and materials that will provide us depth from the facade both for Relief and texture but also for sun shading on the south facade you can see how some of that kind of forms up here with the adjacent balcony space facing on to William uh and then to close out one higher level uh outdoor Terrace at the top of the West Tower uh as you can see from from the top here so we will close there and uh would love to jump into discussion thank you all right thank you for that um I guess anybody that wants to comment from the board please feel free to jump in I have some comments from Tamara that I will share then I will share those now um and I happen to share the same concern it's not really a concern but Cameron's comment was that we keep hearing this being referred to as two towers and they don't really read that way um when we saw this project a couple of years ago I believe the West end of the building that Tower was 13 stories in the section of the market rate housing was higher and um what we have now other than being separated by the stair Tower and some changes in materials it doesn't really read his two towers and I'm not sure if that's really important or not but um it from from a from amassing standpoint and from an architectural standpoint it's not reading as two towers that was her comment and I happened to agree with it um other than that she is very supportive of the project likes the idea that um uh it's happening on this site the affordable the affordable housing component and also the interaction with the uh Transit Center um those are all positive things for the community so she's very supportive of the project dick go ahead hi Jeff um I see Jennifer Hall has joined us and and I was curious in if you could explain Jennifer the it is the difference between the West Tower and these Tower both ownership and management and the type of unit or all three well will a private developer own the East Tower um ownership um yes separate two different ownership entities uh Property Management to be determined how that would be worked out um and the tenants it'd be a different legal entities and the Tenant population be different and the way it's financed would be different so they're they'd definitely be I guess maybe not from the architectural perspective but from all the other perspectives we're designing it to be a two different towers with a with it actually has a it when you look at the hallways and it looks like they're connected they're actually um separated by doors that allows them to share a um freight elevator to move large items up and down but other than that they'll function completely separate from each other they each have their own Waste Management they have their own separate elevators they have their own separate uh Property Management staff you know Services whatever's on each site that part of it'll be completely different from each other foreign you're going through the planning process now and then we'll solicit proposals from Developers for these towers that do I have that right yeah we originally planned on going from PUD and supplemental regs to soliciting a uh developer to work with to get through site plan process and as we were literally writing the Erp and thinking about the project we knew there were so many public purposes that we wanted to accomplish um that we really wanted to make sure we designed those into the project particularly related to working with the triple ACA working towards the city's a230 uh um goals working on our affordability goals and how we designed the building so it felt like we should make those kinds of decisions first and then we'd have a RFP that we could present out to the private sector to get us through the financing and development component that was that answered a lot of questions didn't have you know questions that were still um uncertain as a respondent to an RFP and um like mitigated that risk as well and so that's why we ended up switching the order of of the way we're approach approaching it thank you I understand so the goal is to get the developers something that is as close to shovel ready as possible without needing them to go through the planning process but they won't be at the table for the planning process okay thanks will the developers then be bound to this design these materials so to speak um I mean how bringing in a private developer that you haven't identified how will they how will what we're looking at today translate into what they build I was gonna let my uh architecture team talk about that I I think that the exterior of what we're looking at shouldn't change unless we had to come back and ask for an actual change that gets approved um by the Planning Commission or whichever body would have to approve that what we've left some flexibility in is although we've designed um the interior you know they will have some more flexibility on the interior of the East Tower um than on the West Tower that's all affordable does that describe that right Dan yep yep and I would just uh just add by saying I think the way we've tried to approach this from a design perspective and your your question is is right on point it highlights an important factor in this process um what we're trying to do is make sure as we move through the design process and particularly lead up to schematic design um that we can Define um the shape and form and materiality of the building its performance characteristics so that there can be a better understanding of of overall cost uh both capital and operating going forward and the ways in which the project can meet some of the larger objectives of the planned unit development and supplemental regulations that were laid out in the start of the effort and so we can use those as real guidelines for us going forward to make sure people you know can anticipate what's going to come out of it uh but also really important that we hit the market in a good way so people have a good frame of reference around what we're trying to achieve with it we have another person on our team that hasn't been promoted if you could promote uh McKinnon as well just in case we need him to respond there it is thank you very much foreign comments from other design board members I think Bill had his hand up Bill I did I have a couple physical questions uh one with the um the buses under a canopy I assume until the buses are are electrified you still have a fair amount of exhaust how has that handle it is that was that taken into account that there'll be quite a bit of exhaust trapped under that canopy coming up and over what what I'll leave you addressed that if it is a matter of concern yeah that's a that's a great question and maybe I'll jump in first and my colleagues can come in as well I think the the big objective for us of course is to make sure that there's a really good ridership experience here the canopy can we think can help support that uh especially during inclement weather but at the same time um as you say before the fleet can fully change over to lecture electrified we do want to make sure that we're thinking through microclimate and ways the prevailing winds flow through and so actually during the Pud process we did have conversations and did do modeling on that to understand where Peak winds are coming through where low winds are coming through both seasonally and at different times of day and so we've we've started to map that out here we what we want to do is also look at what we've done most recently including the canopy and model that again to better understand what's happening down there and to see if there's any supplemental uh wind movement that we need to that we need to provide in that location are there service doors on the back side of the first floor of the building there's other entries certainly not pedestrian entries I assume but are there service entries that if I'm just saying if there is a micro climate there it could be a pretty trapped amount that could come rushing in if they're service Vehicles bring food in or whatever of that side right right see I can speak there's there's a like waste collection and there's loading and there's exit doors for the stairs so that would really be in One Direction but we've added exhaust directly for the waste and loading in order to make sure that that can be their air exchange can be um more than what you might typically have I guess is what I want to say but they've been working on that to include those so the plans actually show that in the packet you have is that on the upper floors you'll see that there's an exhaust shop next to each trash you to to help exhaust those spaces thank you one other question just curiosity are you thinking of using mass Timber Construction no that'll be allowed up to 18 stories on Center spacing for Wood Construction would really play Havoc with our plans at this time and would become an impossibility for the bus lanes to get through so um we weren't able to to make that one a win thank you I'm just I'm excited about the whole concept from what I've seen so yeah we're with you foreign it's a little confusing I can't quite tell what's happening on top of the canopy where it's not covered by the the towers and some of the the North View and some of the other views you get a sense that there's a railing around it and there's a covered portion that's maybe related to the units but is the whole canopy treated as a roof deck or is it you know some of it's just not finished yeah you know I think in the design process that's something that we're we're moving through right now as it stands uh we're looking at that to to be a basically a ballasted roof or a green roof potentially uh there that we have thought about that as a potential um amenity but we're kind of working through that it's it's a kind of main point that we're reviewing right now in the design process I assume that you've at least considered maybe skylights they'd have to be fairly large but but skylights is a possibility to get some direct light down into that we we have actually and with our with our Lighting Group and on our design team we've looked closely at large-scale roof monitors that could bring light through and we're trying to evaluate how that works with the structure overall and what amount of light we could bring we could bring down it is it's notable that with or without the canopy this side of the building is the North Face right and so it's you know it's perpetually shaded uh in a way so we're trying to kind of figure out what that ambient light delivery would be on the ground okay thanks I have a question about this doesn't really relate to the design of this building um but I guess wondering kind of where does AATA stand in all of this um I mean in effect the city is giving a huge gift to the transit um component of This Town by allowing them access into the site and so forth and I know we talked about it two years ago in the meeting about and dick brought this up uh in detail was a way to make the transit center then relate to the lanes that we're providing for the buses here and I'm not seeing that being addressed in any and I know you're not designing their building for them but where do they stand in participating with this basically this gift that's being given to them hey Jeff I mean I can chime in here from a design perspective and I think Jennifer can chime in for more of the you know kind of um other things if we need to but uh from a pure design perspective um the triple ATA has been and continued to participate in our weekly design meetings um and has been a key member of the design uh coordination here to make sure that both uh you know the adequate space for bus and pedestrians and that's in that area is is in consideration uh as you can imagine still very much in progress and a lot of questions um and you know uh I think Lindsay did a great job of kind of laying out you know what we hope to achieve knowing that that partnership is going to have to continue on both sites and through a DTE easement and so I think I wanted to just kind of raise uh all of all of those things that are uh you know continually we'll have to push on to achieve some of the goals that I you know laid out at the beginning the other point too is uh this is also happening in a parallel with a redesign for fourth uh fourth right which is a dda-driven project again um you know in totality uh kind of reimagining the complete Transit uh experience um at the downtown station so we're very much coordinating all those efforts you saw kind of the in progress notion of those uh today but they have very much been uh active participants in in our in our meetings today okay so I'd just like to add that I like to joke but it's true that it's a public Public public partnership that's the city of Ann Arbor the Ann Arbor Housing Commission the DDA and the triple ATA so that was also a reason why we want all of us in the room trying to figure out how this will work uh it's very complicated and complex as you can imagine the first floor in particular yeah related to that I noticed that one of the City objectives was to increase the number of bus spaces and I know we're losing some on fourth or two or three on Fourth and we're losing the air ride on on Fifth and it looks like the most recent site playing Lindsay talked about uh shows three new spaces so is it a net loss or is it a wash or are we gaining something let me let me time in first then you can get into the details I mean dick we have um uh We've added four off-street bus parking spaces which um are we're looking at as uh transplanting existing on Street spaces to off Street spaces so that's a net neutral number of spaces but as we're understanding from the triple ATA uh still very important for them to complete that uh Island and the the notion of a of a double-sided transit station uh for their ability to you know um think about transfers in different ways wind then added to new plans for fourth there's opportunities to add ads significant um bus uh bus staging areas and so um again this project specifically is it would be neutral from a number of spaces but but I think we need to continue to think about this as a continuation including fourth redesign I really like the new mini Plaza between Blake and and the new drop-off stations that's that's a good idea the connection between the building and and the new bus spaces to the South is difficult because all of the non-window species in Blake are on that South Side the bathrooms and the offices and so there isn't a good visual connection so moving around the west side of the building makes sense and I like that Gary I think if you're talking you're muted I did I was just asking if you could just clarify where the different materials are being used I'm not sure where there's terracotta versus concrete but the brackets yeah sure um let me uh let me grab a screen real quick second okay can you see that floor plan floor plan yep so why don't we come around here really quickly on the materials um as we're you know moving through the design process so things are still in flux for us uh what a couple of things to highlight one is the wraparound uh brick masonry that we're showing here both a darker and a charcoal tone and a lighter one that matches uh the uh kind of adjacent contextual brick that comes over and up on the West Tower and then on the East Tower uh where we have uh the design it kind of opens up a little bit more this is where we're introducing uh a stronger kind of framing element in here uh we're looking at a range of different uh components right now um everything from uh potentially a precast concrete element to uh a machine generated metal covering here or something that starts to move toward terracotta uh overall we're you know we're conscious also of weight here we're trying to lose a little bit of weight in the process if you will to make sure we're also not beefing up all this the structure we need which also adds a lot of embodied carbon in the project and so we're weighing all those options back and forth thinking through those materials their performance overall and particularly uh when we designed this component here that we start to think about speed to installation so that when we do this the project can move quickly and we minimize the total dimension of construction time to limit the disruptions on site and that's something we're really Keen uh to think through so that the elements that you see maybe pre uh pre-combined before going on uh and then allowing us to kind of move around the building of relatively rapidly on that uh Dan if you could talk about the windows they look to be floor to ceiling is that just a starting point or is that really part of the design uh it is part of the design we don't come all the way down to the floor it's just shy that we have an edge on that um uh but we do we wanted to kind of can consider this piece a kind of more open uh facade and we're looking through it again the depth of our of our facade so make sure we can find ways to mitigate of solar gain here while also just really providing those big open views we're also what we want what we do here too is you can see uh some of the infill panel that's present there it shifts around to give some dynamism to the facade but it also helps us end partitions so that where we have demising walls between units or you have partitions on a say a one bedroom unit they can dead end into that rather than hitting the glass so that we can keep that nice open kind of glaze look while then balancing it with uh brick masonry or terracotta infill foreign like the uh essentially floor to ceiling windows and I like the inset brick panels which give you some variety and uh um you got an awful lot of south facing equipment yeah decide to deal with and the shading might be an issue at some point yeah it's a great point it's something we're really conscious of in working really closely with our lighting designers and our Engineers to make sure that we're we're creating something that's that's viable here while also not kind of creating an overbearing facade it's a great point Dan you talk about uh light shelves in the narrative and um uh some shading devices and Rain screen and you probably haven't gotten to the detail enough but the detailed perspectives don't show any of those and I share Gary's concern that there's a lot of south facing glass and the Heat game is is going to be pretty difficult yeah we we are like I said we are studying that right now and and at this stage of the design we know we're going to have to make some moves along the way uh but we are trying to think think that through and to really determine what those those um uh kind of divisional members you see in the facade where they put where they're positioned as outboard so we can get more depth there and in our cross sections we're studying that right now and uh thinking through okay if we have the infill piece uh that's on those panels uh you know we can run a rain screen there that can stand back we can have the frame kind of stand proud of that and particularly the horizontal components um and actually make them so they're not uh symmetrical in the bevel but actually the bevel is deeper on the top giving us a greater projection outward and we're studying those those angles uh right now as well as uh even potential members that could be closer to the floor elevation so that where we may have more sunlight coming in there we can actually block it uh there which to the points that have been made here would minimize some of the visible uh you know see-through transparent glazing that would be present um one of the comments that Tamara passed along that just occurred to me is the potential to turn that turn that stair Tower uh into something that is more of a glass element um yeah using that as a better way to separate the so-called Two Towers um was a thought that she had that's a it's a great it's a great point and it's it's really one of the the reasons we have this feature here um if you can see my cursor yep um it provides a nice kind of striking line between the two the two towers themselves um and it in that division it also kind of helps us come step out to that that um Frontage of the zero lot line and roll up honestly what we've talked about a couple times is you know are there is there an art component to this is it a an expanded mural uh is it something that they even incorporate uh you know photovoltaics on it where you know those are those are things that are in play at any we would look at in any design process so it is it is fluid but we do like the element itself as as a kind of component that breaks up uh that facade and obviously handles uh important egress for us because it's it's noteworthy that we recognize the building is is large overall but I think everyone on the call can appreciate just how tight that floor plan is on the ground floor that Sandy was presenting earlier in particularly when Lindsay was putting it in the site condition um so we're we're putting a lot of stuff in a really Slim space and it's kind of forcing us to push some things out like the stair and allows them to step back the full facade and let that stand proud on that on that South facade so I'd like to talk about the street level but I don't know John were you wanting to talk about no go ahead go ahead okay okay um so uh we know that the crossings between the library and the AAA Transit Center have been a problem in the past and I understand I think from Jeff that there's some work being done looking at that can you talk about it's my sense that that corner is pretty abrupt at um Fifth and William uh about any thought of bringing the entrance to that retail there uh at the corner or sometime somehow uh cutting that off or providing an opportunity to try to draw pedestrians to that corner rather than going straight across in advance of the crosswalk in the intersection yes I'll jump in and then my colleagues can come right in so we do so there's a couple notable things here is as you look at in the model it tends to make the ground plane look flat of course it's pitching down from here over to here and my team can correct me but I think this is a nominally a little north of three feet Delta as it comes down um yeah thank you um and so as we as we do that we're trying to find key locations along that facade where we can actually have entries for for retail I can tell you right now we're contemplating uh two or three along the South facade here because we can imagine independent uh retailers here and one here at the corner exactly to your point we feel like this corner in itself is really important this this is a key Corner obviously relationship to to the library and the context around um um the the bike pathway and it's just it's important so we're making that a kind of primary feature here just as it is on the west side but in this case this could be more retail driven whereas on the west side that is going to be uh resident Lobby and entry right and the west side is a whole different character but this corner is super important and um you know to the extent that you can try to pull people in there and not you'll still now with the additional Lane you'll now have maybe three three lanes of tre or three uh pedestrian Crossings along uh along division there or Fifth Avenue excuse me to try to get in so it seems like that's a natural to try to draw people there at the corner um the other comment I have and question I have is um the the bike um the protected bikeways are different and new in the town and it's really you know how do you see the retail Frontage along that where most of the downtown has a parking Lane for instance right next to the curb um you know or is that going to be free space is it how are you going to treat that maybe differently than we might traditionally in other parts of the downtown I mean Wendy I can chime in just from a design perspective um but I want to um you know maybe caveat my response as to you know we haven't done any market analysis on you know uh what the demand might be for for those kind of spaces and the and the retailers I do think um you know um we think it's important space we think it's viable space from an interior perspective um and um I also think it could be quite um uh quite lovely space even with uh you know the protected cycle track adjacent to it um I think the the way that um the standard has started to address William Street turning the corner on Main just down uh the street and you know we'll see how those those spaces start to fill out and um you know retail is in a different place than than it's been in the past and will continue to shift and change um but but we do see a lot of potential uh for space there to to blur inside and outside uh boundaries to kind of continue the activity down uh William uh adjacent to the the library and and frankly you know we're uh we're a couple blocks from Main Street too right so um I think it um we're thinking about the scale of that space from a pedestrian standpoint on the curb similarly to how we would if there were a if there were a traffic uh you know a parking Lane there um and and I think from a kind of continuation of the streetscape uh that's that's already been started yeah I think the thing that puzzles me is um with the parking Lane it's pretty static in terms of as a pedestrian you expect those Vehicles not to be moving in the parking Lane and with the the cycle track with bicycles going there are people going to be like just casually hanging out and you know using that space in front of stores I don't know it's a it's an interesting question that you know whether you put up some type of um not barrier but some type of indication that that's something that they don't want to step into if they're using the sidewalk remember landscape perspective we do um get it that and I mean the nice thing about not having cars in front of your site is uh you don't have to worry about car doors opening up uh so we have curbed Planters instead of tree grates which is I think cookery asset um and we can add in perennials and other Landscaping there and then we also have um quite amount a large amount of bike Hoops lining that street so there really isn't much um uh room for pedestrians to move from the sidewalk into the bike lane I mean they can if they want but it wouldn't be a natural movement necessarily other than you know hopping out a bike lane probably and parking your bike um but I don't think people will just be like walking into the bike lane for any reason um great and just one last uh observation personal observation I love it when there's glass and lots of transparency at the street level but I've noticed there have been some retailers that have come in and then put their equipment and blocking and sales whatever and it looks really horrible um so I you know hopefully there'll be enough flexibility in your design to you know put some uh you know opaque components there not have it all glass along that retail Frontage thanks Jeremy John you got your hand up and you've been very patient that's quite all right you know I might divert it to public art Gary did you have a thought you wanted to bring into the conversation no not me uh okay um well first of all I absolutely love the project uh and and won the um you know we've been trying to increase Workforce housing uh for a long time I've been in town for just 20 years I'm a new kid uh but all the time I've been here it's uh that has been a conversation so uh Applause to to Jennifer and and and her team uh for doing this this is awesome uh that um I'm not an architect but I'm looking at this and the massing seems great um I I see it as two towers only in this respect and my understanding and reading the material that it has two entrances and two separate lobbies so the communities in those particular areas are coming into that structure in two different places and uh so I can see how from the ground you can see it as as two towers but looking at it it doesn't really look necessarily um um like two towers but I I think that the massing of it is is just awesome um I don't know whether the example of the precast concrete will continue but I love that uh and uh it gives a very elegant feel to it um that um and I mean I think the most important thing is that you know 95 low-income people will will have a place to live here in Ann Arbor and I think the uh the mixed use is going to add an additional 40.
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and foreign [Music] to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty justice for all [Music] thank you Governor D is our weekly business number one is the approval of December 15 2015 to the board which is to pull from consent agenda whether I number three [Music] Amendment enough but if not that's the only request that I had an emotion to approve 30 seconds all those in favor of motion one point Annemarie Stevens hi Sylvia Hendricks element Greasewood aye Kathleen Vance motion carries motion carries number two our approval of the November 8 2022 regular board meeting minutes or if we can go ahead and approve as well in the motion November 15th November 22nd 2022 special board meetings second by Mr Catholic events all those in favor of the motion Juan buendia Anne-Marie Stevens aye Sylvie Hendrix elemate Greasewood all right Kathleen van motion carries number five is our cotton diamonds no call the audience received but I reckon we have no cost of the audience this evening we'll continue with our agenda later information items number one is our complicated Unified School District school district students of the month ideas good afternoon first of all I want to welcome our staff members appearances convinced and Minnesota Community um before we start for the student of the month and all the staff please stand up and please give a hand to our parents and students that are here today [Applause] please celebrate our students yeah okay okay thank you board member um I am excited to announce our students of the month for November um our first one is this week excuse me Leo's from his teacher and Mr class um they stated that he has grown so much from last school year going simple working for you to become more independent as well as becoming more interactive with his appeared we enjoy having data Marine code in our class [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] um I have missed black for first grade so he will come up and presents [Applause] good evening everyone um you might see another month was Joshua Miguel um Joshua is so hard working and kind to all he's always he always comes into class with a smile on his face ready to learn he really enjoys helping others um and that's what stood out to him being in Michigan he's very helpful when it comes to the beauty and running um okay foreign thank you so much history one two three yeah [Laughter] you did it [Applause] the first second grade spell Francisco [Applause] is an excellent student at Hawaii's comes prepared for class he has a joy to have in class other students he loves to perform independent work it is very inquisitive he is genuinely interested in everything that they do in class he demonstrates responsibility daily by caring for the materials in the classroom carefully and he takes his costume drops seriously and demonstrates responsibility when companies constructive suggestions work and he accepts their recommendations of peers and actual memo congratulations [Applause] all right thank you [Applause] all right thank you this is my friend [Music] yeah Celia is a kind and hard-working student she does her best at everything she attends she has a very positive attitude and encourages others she is thoughtful patience she's grown from being very very shy person and being very very quiet to being more confident and independent she can run my class hello she knows what's going on and she is becoming leader in the classroom so when I asked earlier what she wanted to be when she grew up she said she wants to become a teacher because she wants to learn and she wants to go congratulations Delia [Applause] parents you want to come up for a picture Transformers experience kebabs for a picture come on see 23 we're all gonna give thumbs up really thumbs up ready one two three [Applause] with kind to everyone in the class she has an amazing student leader and friend when he was asked what does he want to be when he broke up he said I want to play soccer for the US [Applause] everybody please come over for a picture ready for the picture and at three we're gonna show a heart one two three and come right we love your work and last but not least um our kindergarten student was okay um Iliana will you please come up with your family [Applause] I'm a very knowledgeable incentive and is doing an excellent job at learning from Language by learning the numbers and she's very patient and considerate individual when she is with her classmates teachers teachers she wants to be a police officer when she grows up [Applause] one more picture ready one down all right [Laughter] okay [Applause] thank you good evening so I don't see any of my students here today um most of them were not feeling well so they were not here in school today so I can really really quick um what they were nominated for so for fourth grade from Lister lotus's room Camden Cody he demonstrates kindness good manners empathy and respect for his classmates and teachers that leads to positive outcomes like gaining love and respect from his classmates and teachers and for fifth grade is Mr Poopy student Aurora Rogers Aurora displays positive academic characteristics and sets goals and does events in her academic learning for sixth grade is scuya velasso she is from Miss tubala's class and Mr Bowen says it is my honor to present school year for the student of the month she has been consistent since day one she is kind respectful and helpful to everyone especially to her teachers she listens attentively and participates in passing discussions and activities she works independently and stays on tasks with little supervision she also participates in extracurricular activities such as basketball and just recently their group volunteered to do a dance presentation during the Miracle On Main Street I'm very proud to present Scalia Velasco and she was she was um she was really being a leader among her her friend because they all came to my office when one day that and they came in all professionally knocked on the door and they asked and they could um dance at the Miracle On Me event and so it was really exciting to see how grown they looked to come in and come in all professional like that and so if you see those sixth graders who are dancing tell them that they did a good job um for the specials Miss Gowan nominated Anissa Rojo um Anissa is a very sweet caring young lady she feels kindness to everyone and is always willing to help others she is very um conscious of her own work while helping others when they are confused she reaches out to her classmates and shows them kindness without bringing attention to herself or expecting anything in return academically she is always attentive in class and has excellent participation anesia is a model student and we are proud to have her as our new members so those are an intermediate student of the month [Applause] all right good evening poor president assistant superintendentians so we board members I'm proud to present and secondary students seventh grade is the only feeling great [Applause] her parents are Tia and Melvin Felix but she lives and sells and she's from Monterey in the triple cook District Zoe is a strong suit who plans to play volleyball and basketball for the Lady Cougars she enjoys her social studies and art classes for graduating high school she had plans to attend college do you have many possible careers in mine which you would like to become an artist the people she most admires are her parents and if Zoe could have one superpower it would be teleportation so she could travel around the world and still so congratulations our eighth grade student of the month is heartbroken days [Applause] Hart is a student of the month for November for parents lots of the croquet and cherasal a Roque her hometown is Bacolod Philippines she is a wonderful student with excellent grades and perfect attendance she is an athlete playing volleyball for the PMS Google her hobby was include writing and listening to music after graduating high school she plans to go to college she's considering her career in medicine as a doctor or joining the military keep up the great work Hearts congratulations [Applause] um doesn't matter all right we love them we love the words two and a heart for you very hard yeah you wanna give up again all right our freshman consumed of the month is yeah Chasity is a freshman class to another one his Guardians are Jeanette Francisco and Chris Francisco his village is Como Barbie from the district he has a good hard-working student with strong attendance and a good attitude after graduating from Bobby Hebert high school he plans on calling the chasmine is considering many different would like to learn where we're working a person that he looks up to is his brother brother Rodney Kalima who works hard and puts Family First congratulations our next student of the month is Juan Martin Juan Martin is a sophomore class student of the month for November his parents are Valentino his feel that she is sells in the he is a prize dude and an athlete he has plowed to play basketball for BBQ Warriors after graduating from barbecue high school he plans on going to college and consuming his foreign video games music and being outboard foreign ER Carla's mom is Karina Gomez and his grandma is Kathy McGill his home Village is Felton sells District he is a strong student with excellent attendance and a great attitude towards he is also an athlete he planning to play baseball spray this spring for the BBQ Warriors after graduating from Bobby heaver high school he plans on going to college he's continued his hobbies are dry and healthy congratulations some of our students are on trouble and Miss chanela Garcia is one of them she has a senior costume of the month her parents are priest Garcia and marlinda Francisco and she is her home Villages of the cells and her home district is probably Kingery District chanola is a strong student and an athlete she has played basketball for our lady Warriors every year basketball has been played [Music] where she will be studying nurse nursing we are so proud of you congratulations [Applause] [Music] board members for all of you we're going to do the high school first because I know she's not going to be here so miss Isabella Garcia I hope you are watching I asked you to do that you said you would she's our high school student month Mr Garcia is besides being able to do online learning exclusively and doing it very very well she also comes in and she does Mesa Club so you'll see in my video coming up that you'll see your Capital so we're very proud of her she's acing me online she gave it an apex she's now doing an Edgenuity she's just a learner she's amazing so Isabel come Mason today come see me okay Middle School Alex please come up here [Applause] okay so Alex is no one's new to us anymore because we're in December but he's kind of new to us because I didn't have him last school yet so he's proven in a very short time to be everything that a student everyone should be it's not just that he does his work it's not just that his teacher's hands down said Alex Alex and Alex you only have three he went three for three good that's bad in a thousand it's the character that this young man is he's a kind compassionate parent and some guys don't like to be called a sweet person but he's an Academy of a gentleman he holds doors for people every morning he comes and checks on me what's up boss or just something simple and I appreciate that so I've been very proud of him as being a very good student but even more importantly he is a fantastic human being [Applause] and then come on up for pictures [Music] so nice what do you want you want to dive a hard 20.
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