we did not know that the the West Park band show was going to the foundation was going to fall apart during this period and the two million dollar project set there it is not a situation where this plan identifies the only things that we do in the next five years um the goal of having this gives us the flexibility to identify things that we are aware of and want to focus on but also the flexibility in regards to what we need to do moving forward the inclusion of a picture into the prose plan is not going to determine one way or another whether or not we have the ability to do that plan that project moving forward our job as the as a staff and as the planners is to be to ensure ourselves that we're in the conversation and having these things in writing in regards to the Fuller Road Maiden Lane interchange the polar Road rerouting the Trailway using Fuller Park those are all things that are in there that are identified as ways that we're going to continue to talk about when opportunities come about we completely understand the need to move forward with the to improve the The Interchange of the bordered border at that section and it's in there as a way for us to support it when it comes about I mean as as number two on that part is the band of Mirror part of the band America tunnel that has been sitting in that that that that that map for the last 10 to 15 years and we're still working on that in the likelihood of us completing that in time for this this within this cycle is pretty good um assuming that everything comes together so you know I I'm not sure I mean I could I can come one way and say I'm not sure why having the plan that the map in will hurt us in this plan outside of the fact that there is a hard sense of it being out outlined And in regards to moving us forward with those to include it I think that with this with center of the city with a number of other initiatives we have we have left the door open for us to be able to to negotiate and to to do the projects that come about when they come about versus being tied to something that we can't that that's in this plan that that we can't get out of um and I know that Matt last part probably didn't make enough sense but you know we really just tried to keep this vague enough to support any initiatives that come forward can I ask Mr Deco question sure okay Mr deck can you come back to the mic um so can you help me understand like I've read everything I'm looking at everything what just give me another snapshot of what I'm missing for why it's important that these maps from 2016 to 2020 show up in this plan it shows a whole picture I think when you have some text you know it's really hard to see what the whole picture looks like so uh I think it was Frederick Law Olmstead said that you know it's important to have a visual design you can see to make people understand things and motivate people and I think that's the case here some some text doesn't really do justice to the seeing what the whole picture looks like so would the inclusion of The Proposal that the city is considering because they're gonna they're designing the widening of the Maiden Lane bridge and as a part of that they're also looking at the connections under the bridge the East medical Bridge yes yes sorry the East medical Bridge not Maiden Lane I don't even know which is part of this whole system yes with the inclusion of that proposed work accomplish what you want or is that still not enough that's one part of it but uh but it's not the whole thing if you look at the so that's one component that's one of the four bridges that has a pad underneath for trail connection so that would be one-fourth of the the plan of what's been planned for a long time um but it wouldn't be the whole thing and the you know there's a question by Hillary was saying that the the border to border current alignment is is not the same as what's been planned for a long time by the city and that's true they there's this temporary I mean I look at his temporary alignment now that goes up to busy intersection at at Fuller and Maiden Lane people have to cross traffic and deal with turning cars it's not what was envisioned uh you know decades ago in in terms of a trail system so what we have there now is a is not the the the the defining thing what we have planned for a long time is what we should do and the what we have currently is just an interim um adaptation to make it so people can get through but but not efficiently or comfortably or safely so uh maybe my last question to you then uh for clarity is is it your belief that by having that map that detail map in there that that directs the park to realize that vision and that's why you are advocating for that map to be there and not just the text um describing the connection well I think ultimately a lot of things on there would be implemented now there are probably things that aren't practical in the foreseeable future but things that definitely are like competing I mean the border border Trail complete complete and loop under the bridges there so those things could be done there are a number of other proposals on those maps that are are maybe a longer term vision for example a connection between the the Arab and the in Gallup Park and other trails along the Huron River there are possibilities and other Bridges and so on um so I guess it depends how the plan is seen I see that as a Visionary document and maybe these some of these things will be put in as as longer term goals and some could be for a sooner implementation and I imagine that the parks department doesn't expect everything in that document to be implemented in the next six years anyway so it's a matter of prioritizing what should be done what shouldn't okay thank you Mr deck all right so back to park staff your contention is you don't want to put them in because you don't have it's just it's something you want to see happen but you don't have a Clear Vision for making it happen and putting it in obligates you in some way that makes the plan not accurate and therefore you want to you want to make sure that what you're presenting is the most accurate representation of what you're planning I mean I I don't believe that the the maps add the value of these projects make them any more feasible or less feasible by including that the maps that outdated or even if they're updated with with singular projects make it any more or less feasible that they're going to take place in the future um the reason that they're there is that there's a there's a large number of proposed trails and things that go outside of city park land and then in the City properties that that that were included on there and what we did with the text is focus on the the intersections the the key components of that document that speak to the par the parks and recreations Focus for those that's that project that vision in the the short and medium term future um as opposed to having a 12 mile long map that shows multiple proposed trails and interchanges we focused on these one two three four five five areas of of issues that that we have identified as the key ones over the last number of years in the feedback that we have received okay anything you want to add Hillary to that um yeah I would say I don't want Mr deck to think that by not including this you know those plans that people worked on for a long period of time completely go away or won't be used going forward um you know again it's not that they're obligating us to do those specific things I mean really to us those plans were developed a while ago and um I guess you know as Park staff we hadn't updated them and it's not something that that shows kind of current thinking and that was really the main impetus um for not having them included um I feel like I'm repeating myself a little bit but um that's kind of the response here and I would also say um Mr deck you know when I'm talking about not current alignments necessarily you know the East Medical Center Drive Bridge or something you know I'm thinking even more um you know some of the areas that um boarded for a trail that hasn't been added um yet Westward beyond the city you know the area near the tunnel that we're working on currently um and so for us to just show something that's a historical document um that's a bit older just didn't make as much sense um in a plan update that we're going through right now about this um if the city does put in the connections when that bridge East Medical Drive bridge is widened uh would that impact your document so do you amend it or do you wait till the next revision cycle and then you would include that in I I think there's like a little confusion just that like the prose plan is typically not a physical master plan like it you know our prose plan doesn't typically include like a a map or plan of the city with you know all of the projects to drawn on it you know that was something that was drawn as part of the strong River Greenway um plan when that happened um but we don't all you know it's not typical that the pros plan has you know physical Master plans as part of it this was kind of a unique piece that was referenced in past prose plans um but it wasn't something that was created by the first time to my knowledge at least and and to the point I mean as we as we look to move forward I mean the parks department prose plan has a commitment to to to continuing to find ways to connect the the border to border the you know these these interchanges I mean Park staff the planners that's all our goals is to find better ways to make these work you know and a lot of a lot of this comes to this idea of if it's in this prose plan it makes for it makes for other agencies easier for them to fundraise you know center of the city has talked about that and and then this is talked about and that and that's important and these projects are in our prose plan and they are mentioned in there as ways for us to be a part of the park system and that is our end goal is to provide as many different ways in as many different amenities to be there in to support not only the city's desire to go after grants and fundraise and put these together but when there's collaborations outside of the city it's nice to have that as well um again I think that what we have provided gives that opportunity for both City staff and other agencies to provide a a a a an opportunity to to say these are part of what we're looking to do moving forward and the commitment to the border the border to the bike path within our system is something that we we fully supportive of and believe in and regularly done and we just we I mean almost every couple years we have additional increases to the board to the border border Trail where we are we're improving it widening it we're doing the tunnel at Barton the Bandimere there's no disconnect between Park staff this plan and the vision of making the border to border connect all the way through town um at no point is there anything within this plan that suggests otherwise thank you I have a question that perhaps Mr Lee might be able to respond to or Mr Leonard on this one is part of this really belong in the transportation plan I mean because these are taking part of what is being brought up are these things within rights of way and our connections to parks and I'm just wondering if that was at all part of the discussion with the the transportation plan that just came out last fall with some of these things I'll let you go first yeah so border supporter has I think it does serve as a transportation mode but it also has long had a lot of origin in the Parks and Recreation system and I think as it becomes more complete I think it's Vision as a Transportation Route becomes more viable um and and that has happened over time but I I think that both our Parks and Recreation Department the County Parks and Recreation Department deserve a lot of credit for the vision over time to start piecing that together so I think that's why and to go further out on an assumption um I think that probably a lot of the state the viable State funding sources for bicycle trails are recreational not Transportation maybe that's changing maybe that has changed but um per the discussion with Capital Improvements plans um the ship moves very slowly and making that change on the Statewide level about how to fund those so I think that's probably another reason that it's that the border to border has traditionally resided in Parks and Recreation spaces okay that's that's helpful and commissioner Lee was the border border Trail like within the transportation report too I just can't remember I don't know if you recall that as being part of that whole discussion that you all had in putting this together sure are you referring to Vision zero yeah oh sure I would say that there's definitely overlap right Recreation um and strengthening non-motorized uh Transportation has been kind of a core Focus I'd have to look back at the report it's been a little yeah I don't mean to put you in the spot don't you remember page 52 you know right right I'd have to probably look back at it um based on that overlap but I do have to give credit for again how much um connectivity and porosity we've talked a lot about this about connection on the last um development proposal that came forth on uh duvarn and Pontiac Trail and the porosity of Namor or as a Transit that it provides so I would say um as far as yes there's overlap between Transportation Planning and obviously recreational paths and they can act actually as you know again modes of transportation um this again I have also read this as well it's unfortunate this came to us at like what four 440 or something like that so I'm trying to really get inclusivity is obviously very very important um I want to make sure that we don't discard um again historical elements and really re enumerate that I am I've been carefully looking at the the maps but again there is also that concern of we don't have the I don't want to say that we don't have time to verify so I am looking for some way I'm kind of getting I'm not answering your question directly but I'm now pivoting to commissioner weish's comment that Mr deck's uh comments as well try to figure out a way is there a way that we can still recognize kind of the vision that was shown in those Maps I'm looking at it it is what we're talking about um safety porosity strengthening non-motorized Transit so is there a way that we can kind of preserve that while not again slowing down again procedurally because obviously that is important that this is straight up due by the state by February 1.
um and finally Lexia reading also using a site license um that's just over eleven thousand two hundred dollars and that's again we're going from Huckleberry and um Center School down to cles um so there is going to be a proposed savings to the technology budget of 46 666.
they may do so in the following manner upon your name being called please approach the podium and state your name and address for the record please speak clearly into the microphone so everyone can hear please Focus your comments on whether the closing of the school building will improve the education opportunities for students and remain respectful if you fail to abide by these guidelines your turn will be ended I'm going to do my best to read people's handwritings and to pronounce people's names correctly I apologize in advance if I'm unable to do something okay first up is Susan Phelan [Music] turn it away you know that was me I didn't know y'all um my name is Susan thielen and I live at 19939 Hunger I live on a farm north of Florence and have had the privilege of working in education for over 40 years during this time there have been lots of changes in the school environment and I would like to share some history with you Doris who has originally a part of USD 407 rest of school district after a choir that burned the High School Lincoln is for Clinton Township and the USD 320 a was done a K3 building and a 712 building we're located in Wilson a 4-6 building was located in Joanna when USD 328 built new buildings communities of Wilson endurance on K-12 building in a smart decision that felt that the K-12 building was the way today when Claflin approached USD 328 District many of us had our clouds but decided a larger visitor after working to bring flatlin in Community military with the plans of the school board to close the Wilson 7-12 building now I would like to address three issues concerning education of students ministers education is my passion safety and Logistics thinking outside of the box and vegetables this is a large district with several communities we live in the North West Point of USB 112 close to Wilson Lake my concern about lessons 7th through 12th grades do 7 through 12th grade school students took her grades you know students to classroom is that it just doesn't make sense most students can attend another facility that would be fewer miles and we have looked at the number of miles and the number of minutes that travel to various schools did you know you can look at it on your map so I did my grandchildren could go to Russell 18 miles in 19 minutes Sylvan Lucas 23 miles and 24 elsewhere 29 miles and 29 minutes Victoria 32 miles and 30 minutes okay and services Central Plains 33 miles and 39 minutes my grand granddaughter made a comment to Mr grandma that will be about and a way of saying every time we have five other schools that they had the kid attends and unless it's time characters safety of our students is initial I know the south at Central Plains is very qualified that is not an issue safety and time another concern our students are required to get themselves to the bus stop endurance or the school involvement will country students in Wilson endurance be picked up at their home as they are in the south I would like to ask the school board to think outside of the box in educating those advice the configuration community and the configuration committee looked at many different scenarios some of these included both schools thinking schedule so teachers could be shared putting four or five students on the road making wet teachers on the road makes way more sense than putting 80 students many school districts have gone to a four-day school meeting this appears to save 25 school districts some money technology allows education to be creative I taught during covet I never knew what technology it can offer us having looked into everything technology offers education before we disposable change is opportunity I hope that you're not missing and finally and most important our students we have these students on a parole of poster many of them have questions I hope each of you are making decisions based on facts yes but also what is the best before education of our students thank you I would ask the control school buildings our motto every student every chance every day [Applause] foreign [Applause] to give up their time have you signed up to speak okay what is your name the five-minute rule was put into place before the hearing everyone knew the rules we're going to stick to the five minutes and if you're going to donate your time to someone you're going to have to say that up front so is there anyone else who wants to donate their time your name ma'am anyone else attention okay yeah okay so I have Amy and Darcy yielding time if you're going to donate your time if you could please come up to the microphone and declare that for the record please foreign [Music] anybody that needs it foreign [Music] foreign Roberta Meyer I'm a private educated from I taught all my time with the voice Kansas um I just want to ask the Lord first of all do you remember the student memory to the board 4 11 22 22.
I don't I don't have an answer yet so I'm not I'm just I'm literally just speaking out loud at this point because this was given to us kind of at the 11th hour so no further comments and hopefully that answers your question so the moving together transition zero does reference the border to border both existing segments of the border to border and anticipated segments are identified as those are examples of Trail Bike networks as part of a larger framework of um local minor Major Street oriented bicycle networks all part of that is Kalin we talked about in all ages and abilities Network so but this in that Transportation plan it is border to border routed it is not specific as to this is how we are going to solve the problem so as Mr landfill was talking it is about that same level of identifying it as an import as a goal for the city not identifying the solution whether that's whether a solution was crafted some time ago in a previous document or not but rather talking about the overall Vision to achieve the connectivity frankly without the specific knowledge of what the right method is right now it's to me that part of the issue here is yeah the part of the issue is um kind of in a I guess an awareness and acknowledgment of of um of citizen-led work in the past and how that gets Incorporated and picked up into City plans um and that you know there probably are things about the whole plan that don't make as much sense now but there may be other parts of it that that do make sense and are kind of more you know um referred to just in the in the the overall goals but it does seem that it seems strange to me that that there's plans that nobody knows about currently on staff in terms of big efforts that were made in the past so [Music] um that that's like a larger kind of administrative issue in a way that it seems it seems like there should be some way to if people have spent a lot of time on these things and there are these pads underneath these Bridges you know that there's some way to be able to lift up the things that still make sense to be able to incorporate them into current plan thinking it seems like we're kind of getting it this at a time what makes it really difficult to be able to make any changes based on what we have in front of us and so I guess what I would say is it seems like based on what I'm hearing from Park staff that we're not really losing the spirit of what was being talked about and so that feels um that feels okay to me I I guess what doesn't feel is okay to me is how do we make sure that previous visions that still seem worth preserving and and have good ideas as part of them are are able to be able to find New Life in in continuing plans as they go so that's I guess what I would just say is I don't want to stop the train because it feels like the train really needs to leave the station if if this has to be approved on February 1st but um I guess I would ask about some sort of way to be able to make sure that we can honor good work that was done that we continue to want to be able to draw from for future planning too so that it just makes sure that we get those things Incorporated um into our current thinking and and future plans that would be Mr Leonard so this is a bit of a tangent but I think this conversation is very relevant to our upcoming upcoming comprehensive plan we have issued a request for a proposal for a new comprehensive plan a lot of work has been done in the past by citizens and volunteers and your predecessors and some of you and this conversation that we're talking about here I don't think Parks and Recreation is by any means trying to they they were aware of this plan that was included in the previous version of the prose document by no stretch of the imagination are we trying they trying to say that that wasn't a heroic effort I think that what they're trying to say is that for some very specific reasons they we're now recommending to you at this point not to include that document in this plan not because we don't agree with a lot of the vision side that were that came out of that but because that document includes some aspects it has some age to it that we didn't think it was still necessary to include that we are going to face this conversation in a lot of Realms as we look at updating the comprehensive plan and so it's not to it's not to say that all decisions are going to be the same and that we're going to apply the same filter but this is this is a challenge of planning and communities evolving we are planning on the backs of our predecessors that put hard work into things that the next conversation in our community might come to a very different conclusion or a different approach to the same problem and so I I guess I just you know I don't I don't hear Parks saying that they weren't aware of this that they don't respect that work we they have presented us a plan at this point that articulates the prioritization and the focus of that work without the same level of detail um and that is that is going to be a decision that we are going to be facing a wide range of issues once we're talking about the comprehensive plan that's really helpful context because yeah we're probably it's going to be hundreds of decisions probably with the comprehensive plan around things like that so any other comments on the pros plan commissioner Mills I I think just to put a finer point on that particularly sometimes our planning efforts are about very specific things and drawing the lines in a particular neighborhood and sometimes they are bigger picture I would say just like um staff and answering before noted that sometimes it's a physical plan and thinking about like what it the thing looks like and sometimes it's more what are the I use way better language than I'm going to use here but like kind of what are the overall needs what are the kind of goals of what our infrastructure is maybe that I mean it it may not necessarily be a physical map that were that is part of our plan and I think that I can absolutely see how this is going to come to be our current Tome of documents includes very deep Dives on specific areas that may were really important in thinking about a corridor but 15 years have passed we're not going to do that same deep dive and when there's there there will be conflict things have changed in that situation and I think that we need to be okay saying that served its purpose during the time we may need to move on to to what this is and I just want to commend the park staff here as we did the last time that you came before us for all of the engagement efforts that were put into this documenting kind of how you responded to comments the feedback that we gave you the last time that we saw you and the changes now that we see as a response I really appreciate the clarification and the getting to the bottom of the like 10 minute versus 20 minute neighborhood um walk so thank you for that um I just wanna I I think that different planning efforts are really going to focus on kind of a different granularity and you can I think we can't just keep on adding and adding and adding because then resolving the conflicts I think really becomes problematic and it doesn't necessarily move us forward so I'm I'm comfortable with where this is um and also hear feedback certainly um but I I I feel like where the where the document arrives right now kind of balances what makes sense within a Parks plan and to this point I actually pulled up the non we used to have a non-motorized transportation plan that we actually repealed when Vision zero plan came out because it's not that we don't care about non-motorize but we had a different approach now to the way that we're thinking of our transportation planning system and and so I just think I'm comfortable with kind of where we are commissionally uh yeah thank you uh and to build off of that and I think I've kind of gotten a better sense of specificity versus generalities right we've kind of captured the intent of really again connectivity porosity as well as systems connectivity reading your uh specific words uh Mr deck um I do feel really comfortable that 20 over 2300 individuals have given feedback the process by which this has been devised and revised looking at all these changes tracker does make me feel that a lot of the community has given input and you are right that we are going to have to work to resolve certain conflicts that exist between existing conditions updated conditions and what the visions of the past were so um the other thing that actually gives me a lot of relief is the fact that um thank you for double checking Vision zero creating consistencies within documents and references between is also very important that's going to be one of the core points of this master or this comprehensive plan so um I also feel comfortable in saying the general intent of this has been I think upheld as far as systems connectivity and that a reference to another planning document visit Vision zero and the B2B on a larger Regional uh basis to me again I feel comfortable with this and again I also commend the parks department here for getting the level of feedback and inclusivity and you know getting really addressing at the granular level of all of these different public comments so so thank you for synthesizing 2300 plus people's comments and really making the updates necessary so all right thank you commissioner Soviet um I I believe the intent is carried through with sort of the bullet points that the map um may be outdated in its specificity of implementation of intent and that uh the intent is still uh carry forward um just through different metrics um speaking of intent though I want to go to some of the changes that were made as of yesterday and maybe discuss a little bit of the intent of the language specifically around the on design usage and funding for the Library Lane lot and the removal of the paragraph on page 20 which seems to actually repeat in that same paragraph on page 52.
um and then after we take out that e-rate reimbursement it'll be a net of uh just under forty thousand dollars and that's baked into what you've submitted already so uh everything except for the removal of the fiberwan connectivity that is uh hot off to press new information after talking to the provider and handling uh the every all the rules we have to follow with e-rate um so that will be reflected uh after tonight um I'll formally give all that number to Ken and I'll have it for the next uh Finance subcommittee on Monday yep um finally although not um all uh budget related there there is an impact um just a quick update on our work with our technology strategic plan which is um kind of running out the same track as the district strategic plan um just as a reminder I could come up and kind of give it a couple updates about this um it was a cohort with districts in the state of Connecticut through the Future Ready schools organization it was about a six-month window um with 15 school districts participating including us here in Brookfield in which they provided some tools resources sample templates sample plans basically everything we needed to help ourselves develop our plan the technology committee worked together throughout the fall on a self-assessment to see where we are now that assessment is going to help us do our action planning which is going to start later this month our plan is to present the five-year strategic plan for technology to the board of ed in the spring which is actually alignment with the district strategic plan and the Strategic plan and the reason why I bring this up is hey I'd like to provide an update but also um that um a lot of what we do in the Strategic plan um the software resources the infrastructure everything that you saw earlier and everything that goes into the technology budget is going to be reflected into this technology strategic plan and this plan is going to help support all of those tools going forward and that's all I have for my presentation I'm happy to take any questions I do have a full detail of the technology workbook I'll share well I will put it up on the website um the full detail this is what I submit to Mr post um which I can just pull up really quick but you can see I wanted to be able to provide a full detail of all the numbers that we don't need to take a tour um all of the numbers that are included in this and I'm happy to we'll post this up and I'm happy to share this separately afterwards yeah that'd be great yep yeah can I ask that you send your presentation and this in the email to all of us absolutely that would be helpful thank you change the date on the front 23.
okay do you remember the student video whether or to the board chair that the able board meeting was that impressive or not that sure it was shared with me and I was so impressed nice job kids nice job Mrs Holland and there's been so many good teachers that are worried about their roles hopefully that video isn't the only positive thing that comes out of all this that video should be used as a marketing tool for this area I wanted to come to the school after viewing it and I did I came to the December board meeting but you should post that video you should sell your school your community and your future you have some amount to be proud of in the small communities it is so short-sighted to think that clothing would make you stronger unless you're afraid of closing yourself that won't last long collaboration between north and south is what you we all desire are you really capitalizing or working together or is it who's the Last Man Standing that's important in wrestling but I I challenge you to look up The Acacia classifications online we are the smallest tool 1A can you afford to be smaller but that doesn't mean I would sort my kids in school but we've had short kids I taught fourth grade for a while short kids and I say you are small and mighty I am talk is and they say well you can be large and in charge but respect other people's needs be polite I encourage the Clapping kids to collaborate online with Wilson students to create a More Beautiful video than what was presented last in April it can be done the technology is there if you want them to see succeed in line they will have to collaborate online and compromise all the time thank you for listening and I get to speak again too [Applause] anyways yeah okay Sarah you're next on the list and you've given your time is that correct okay oh Amy okay good evening my name is Sarah I seen second Road Wilson I spoke with the last board meeting and had many Financial questions very few of these items have been addressed even up till now the only response I received that was not a form letter was from one board member who indicated that no financial information could be put together and yet the stated reasons for the hearing tonight or financial condition of the district the district's need to reduce expenses and the districts need to gain efficiencies which can be gained by closing the building can someone please explain to me how we can claim financial reason without any financials being put together I reviewed a copy of what Mr Lowry presented tonight earlier today those members were not finalized until this morning interesting considering financial reasons have been claimed since April of last year when this all started I can understand the needs of living financial reasons that were recently at home what I cannot understand is why the only option we're looking into to fix these issues is closing Wilson High School these are district-wide problems what is the root of the problem when bushing was closed there were several scenarios on the table there was around six months of information gathering and there was even an unbiased outside party who looked over the financials and put together a presentation why is this being railroaded through are there other options and what are the cross savings there were 700 000 of estimated savings by closing Wilson High School and Mr lowers report however there's nothing mentioned about reduced revenues on the last payment documentation it shows a loss of one student from Wilson 7 through 12 next year to date Ellsworth high school has received out of District requests from 19 Wilson High School students for the Ellsworth independent reporter That's not including any that intend to attend Sylvan Road or other schools we can go back and forth about what we think will happen but I think we can all agree that there will be a lot of important just one student so what about decreased revenues how much students lost from the district withstand before they saved expenses are less than lost Revenue or even a break even the loss of jobs students Etc all for us to end up at the same place financially at the end of the day what about increased expense for transportation increasing need for teachers at Central Springs High School especially if you're using the methodology that you're only losing one Wilson High School student therefore we'll still have utility costs maintenance costs upkeep costs Etc Mr Lowry stated in a previous meeting that the savings would be used to increase teacher salaries so is it really savings or are we sacrificing jobs and careers for some teachers for the gain of others I re-ran some scenarios based on the updated Prosper people members the Mr Lowry distributed in the packet of information I have a copy of each of you today this video while I personally don't believe that closing a high school is our next step at either end of the district why would you not choose the option that gets our Prosper people below the state aid number in our buildings I acknowledge that there's some nuances to this for increases for expenses that are transferred here and there which you can see in the bottom right corner transporting Central Plains High School to Wilson bring the cost per fuel to 8 100 and 8 400 in each building there's no other scenario that does that it has each buildings along with the stated number like I said I acknowledge there's information that I don't have there but we should be looking at everything before looking at closing High School also recognize that from the first iteration of that document that was published earlier the federal lead amount of 2 328 was removed which was clearly addressed earlier wouldn't it be great if we could grow our cash balance rather than cleaning it by being under all of the state and federal aid numbers I know several Beyond this board have business businesses of your own ask yourself if these numbers were for your personal business would you be making the same decision this district is a business and needs to be run as such I highly doubt you'd be comfortable making any decisions with the current lack of information I sure would not offer my own business this is a longevity concern for the entire District as a whole does anyone want to be back sitting at this table in a year in two years five years it is your duty as a board member and a lucky reference over there to do all due diligence to make a long-term decision I truly believe that we can be better together but we need to investigate more than one option to save businesses I see the need to look at these things but more than one Avenue should be considered thank you for your time [Applause] thank you foreign [Applause] Collins and Amy you yielded your time okay Darcy mopat healed Michelle Brooks and I am stepping up here to speak um because I want to make a demonstration um to all of you to understand you guys are speaking about uh finances and I think we really need to look at this as well Public Service Financial talk I don't think I can top that but I do have a demonstration to show you something at one of the board meetings Mr Lowry said that closing the Wilson 7-12 building would save the district six hundred thousand dollars so that would last for maybe two years because I can guarantee you a minimum of 50 kids from the school will not go itself and um at twelve thousand dollars per head that's six hundred thousand dollars so in two years you'll be actually back to break even and not at anywhere so I would like all of the junior high and high school students in the cab to stand up please foreign [Applause] okay so this is roughly a number of people in our school my demonstration is going to be this if you plan to go to the central plains high school next year remain standing okay [Applause] you'll not get all of the students you think you're getting I'm sorry and this is not just a north south pink it's a logistical thing much of what Sarah spoke about with transportation and whatnot there are other options to save our district and if you do close this Attendance Center you are going to be signing the death warrant of this District because you will be losing all of those students and all of the ones coming up because they will not go south because it just is not legit logistically feasible for our families we need to find other options for this District find other ways of cutting Corners saving money why did we need to spend 40 000 on a chain link fence around the football field really wasn't necessary there is a lot of other expenses that could be approached and addressed that could be lessened other um I think Susan was the one that made the comment about sharing teachers and putting teachers on the road versus the students makes a lot of sense to me but I heard last spring many teachers from the Central Plain School refusing to come up to Wilson to teach again another cost savings would be the district's office we have a an office here in the Wilson School open we could easily admit that district office there but again our secretary refused to come up here and was going to quit in our uh superintendent would not give up her so um these are just some things and places where we can save money we're still spending what was it eight hundred thousand dollars on a building we don't even own anymore on leases does that make sense what can we do to save money we have to rent buildings to have practices for our sports teams on the south end but we have to pay the utilities on those buildings these are areas where we can try and come up with ways of saving money so anyways please just look at those numbers a little bit more of that I think there are other options than closing a building I would like to thank you all for your time Mr Lowry thank you for the numbers you put together I would really like to know where the expenses came from what made up those numbers that you put in here saying well this is case six expensive building cost 1 million 68 390 for the Wilson school what went into those numbers and I don't care what a cost per student is I want to know how much money we're bringing in and how much money we are spending what's the and if the bottom number is a positive number there's no reason to close the school that means that the expenses and problems are someone else than in this school building so I would really like to see those numbers if they could be presented to us all of them in detail and I would like to see those same numbers for this Outlets please thank you everyone have a lovely evening [Applause] hey I have it down that Corey yielded his time is that correct Kenny yielded is that correct throw away right now okay all right Troy wants to speak next to go for it thank you and thank you somewhat in generalities because I've been in the state legislature now for starting my sixth session uh this Monday this coming Monday and I've represented Central Plains over the entire 10 years that I've learned about spoken so far but with redistricting I acquired Ellsworth County into the 109th Kansas house district and so this is somewhat important to me because I spend a lot of time in the community of Wilson most recently I just helped secure a grant with the Department of Commerce for the chef opera house which was actually administered and announced earlier this month but the entire tenure that I have been in the legislature one thing has always been extremely important and that has been rural Economic Development and obviously I represent a very rural part of the state I have to combat some of the ideology with the legislators that are from Johnson County and consecutive County who don't understand the rural way of life and the rural way of life is basically based on the anchors that are in our communities and one of those angers is education when you take that anger away and it makes Economic Development extremely difficult and a small world community and I would speak from example I've watched two consolidations and closures one town actually lived in where they closed the school and right now there is hardly any Economic Development activity going on in that community they're trying to generate tourism but without that anchor there it makes it nearly impossible the other community I think it was kind of the mission by Leading the previous speaker that the anticipation was that the students would be attending the school district in which they were enveloping and they closed the school hoping that those students will go there but that wasn't the case they were actually in the middle between two communities and actually the majority of those students decided to go to another community and not the school district that actually closed to school now I understand your position my wife serves as a board member on USD 407.
and what I'm referring to is maybe the specific sentence of therefore the city of Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation and the parks advisory commission are not currently responsible for the maintenance planning and programming of the library lot space um and so I like to kind of like do a matching game and so when I see funding design and usage maintenance planning and programming I see center of the city as responsible for recommending design and the the parks department not responsible for planning so design and planning being the correlation usage and programming being the correlation and then maintenance and funding maybe being the correlation but there's no kind of correlation in terms of creation here so one I want to like see if there was actually intent to correlate those two things that what uh the center of the city is responsible to recommend um is trying to match in any way what the parks department is declaring not currently their responsibility it's kind of maybe I'll pause there for you guys to respond to that piece uh yeah I I can I can um I can I can do my best to respond um obviously this this piece of property following proposal a in 2018 created a unique situation in the the the for the parks department for the city in general um you know the the proposal a um had the support showed it as all public properties on that air on that block being identified as parks um since 2018 the parks department has taken its lead from city council an Administration on how that is handled city council created the center of the city task force following proposal a it was never the the center of the city and the library lot in the Library Lane were not given to the parks advisory commission to to to plan develop program um it was a task force was created in a from that task force a Commission for those properties was um was created which is the Council of the commons with the I with the with the direct initiative to provide recommendations to Council on that space um Liberty Plaza in the Kemp house have historically and are currently parked properties that have been managed maintained developed um improved funded program by Park staff um while Council that comes have that ability to make recommendations on that any recommendations from Council of the commons should come to pack for their approval recommendations or feedback um because of the the structure that is created for the library lot Lane and the Library Lane um that does not need to take place Parks pack has no responsibility and park staff have no responsibility over that property there the initial statements that were put forth um in the prose plan kind of made that statement because it is by Charter um the language is there the language was updated um but Parks currently is not does not have anything to do based on the administrative structure created by Council for the Library Lane the language that was adopted yesterday changed the original Pros plan from and and because the two paragraphs were exactly the same we're page 20 on page 52.
on the first slide yep the cover page of all that work oh you got that number you know what I'm I'm uh I'm pretty good at I'm proud of doing that like you know for the basically the month of January so I think I did that last year too thank you well let me open it up to any questions for uh for Eric very well laid out thank you Eric thank you one question I had was are the the smart boards that are going in from the high school down to the element to the Middle School are they the same technology that is being put into clas or are they different um they are they are now so starting this past year um we have had a very very good feedback um and very the probably the best luck with the smart brand model which is you know the name everybody knows um while we had great luck with a model called ViewSonic the teachers have really responded better to the smart brand um so that's the district's commitment going forward okay um so this past year it was smart everything going into Candlewood Lake School is smart and we'll be doing the same thing in this bid we go out to bid every summer for this we will be bidding for smart again um most importantly the teachers you know when the teachers respond to it better they use they use it more um and number two I think having that consistency across the district is incredibly important okay yeah thank you and the price on a lot of the costs on these uh has gotten much more competitive in more recent years so um where honestly smart used to be a pretty good amount well a pretty good chunk more expensive it's it's now gotten a lot more competitive so yeah any questions okay thank you Eric thank you thanks Eric now I know Bob um we had the special finance committee meeting yesterday so um I'm not sure if we want to ask Mr post to come up and talk about some savings you want to go there at least have a high level yeah we'll talk more depth about it next week um uh conversational piece comeback that we're bringing tonight right so we've uh as we discussed last at last night's meeting um Dr Burrell and I had a Zoom conference with the folks from Ed advance and the superintendents from several local districts to talk about special education transportation and with an advanced facilitating it we all sent them uh numbers of students and what schools they were going to and they did some work and figured out where they could combine multiple towns going to the same school so that we can split the costs and if the data proves out correct and everybody um decides to come together and do this this plan it could save us up to over two hundred thousand dollars from what we put into the proposed budget right now so we're we're excited about that Prospect we just have to continue to Circle back with the other superintendents to make sure everybody's on board with doing that the other thing we talked about that could be significant is uh diesel fuel and heating oil um I put in the initial budget the amount the prices that we locked in for this year and since that time the pricing has come down uh we got a price quote a couple of weeks ago which is stale right now so it would have to be refreshed uh but if if we were to get a price like that it would be about another 125 thousand dollars that we would be able to reduce the budget so we've been talking a lot with the town finance office and the for select women about when to to pull the trigger and lock in and I think we had a kind of a consensus last night that you know we want to do it together with with the town but we also want by the time the board votes to to adopt the budget we'd like to have some certainty surrounding the pricing of our fuel oils so we're going to Dr Brill and I will continue that conversation in our Monday meeting with the first select woman in town controller okay and obviously Eric has some additional savings coming to you too yeah I'll be I'll be as small yeah yes and then you also locked in gasoline for next year so that's another about thirteen thousand dollars that we'll be able to save right that's that's all I've identified so far any questions for Ken any questions okay thank you for the update Ken you're welcome we talked about these extensively at our finance committee meetings and keep asking them to find more um okay so that's it for your updates that's the updates uh to the board members are there any uh items that we need to ask Dr Burrell to bring us at our next meeting or in in light of these gener in general uh thanks because I think at the next meeting we're going to be spending time deliberating on what budget we're going to take forward right so I think the finance committee needs to bring in a recommendation um I probably can't will present it but the uh um and uh either we have to decide at the next meeting we're gonna have to have a special meeting right um later in the month right but we have to submit by the 31st of January correct um so we ought to prepare ourselves Embrace ourselves for our next meeting it's going to be a hard one because the rate of increase is high and John you're hearing from other districts they're also seeing the same thing because of all the inflationary they are um as we talked about before they present uh quite a bit later than us many in February but some this month um I know Monroe came in around the same number as us um and uh other superintendents I've talked to um offline they haven't presented yet are landing either at our number or just below or some are concerned that they might land above six percent um we're all facing the same drivers you know there's how you handle the phase in um coming off of our besser and those funds from two years ago and of course all the inflationary that's going up okay what's the process for just talking about you know sort of line item questions I know we've been submitting questions to that Google doc some have been answered like I just put questions in this morning so they haven't been answered yet so are we just waiting till the next yeah so well no so Ken is Ken is putting responses into the Google Doc as he's gotten to it what's the pile of questions he's continuing to accelerate but he's plowing through them as they get put in so uh we talked we review them but every at least the ones that at the very least the ones that the finance committee submits but will obviously you know follow up with yours and then um you know at the next meeting so obviously didn't make it in for this meeting but probably at the next meeting you know we can and once that document is complete and you know we're pretty much going to adopt a budget or very then we can share that document it'll be a publicly available document so everybody can see every question that was asked okay yeah yes I'm glad you brought that up Deb so the sooner people if they have their own individual questions not as part of the finance committee and want to get those questions into the doc or to you Rose I'm not sure how we decided I just gave everybody access yes okay um Ken and I initially look at those uh Joan plays a big role in those and then obviously we either have to get them to Anna or to the principals to ask the specific questions and people have their schedules and so it takes some time to get responses back and then put it in a coherent form um that is easily understandable and usually is in in Ken's voice as we get that together so it does take some time so if we're thinking about the 18th two weeks from now maybe by the end of this week if we can really get our questions that would be really helpful or at least through the weekend so then we have time to work on those I found for those of you who maybe didn't get through it yet or or put questions in I found it helpful to read the questions first because as I was going through the budget book a lot of the questions were answered were asked and answered already so and a lot of the answers are actually in the budget book as well so the binder is quite detailed well a lot um you know and sometimes it's just hard to find if you're not super familiar you know that's the same feedback I get from the board of Finance too they said they told me last year after they read through that document all their questions were answered right they didn't they didn't have any further questions and and that is a power right to the process of of how we work our way through these so this may be our fourth year uh third or fourth year third year I think yeah sure it's been fantastic for us it really has been helpful it is well it's fantastic for everyone in the town the budget review process so okay so that's it for the budget for tonight and thank you for your attention okay to put in questions I think the more questions we ask the easier it is for us to deal with the the budget stuff uh two weeks from tonight um so that's it on item D necklace next up is our update on Candlewood Lake I didn't think that visually it looked like a whole lot of progress although I know a lot has been done um so I was hoping um you guys have seen this picture because it was emailed after our last meeting but um I wanted the public to Tennessee the pictures of the smart boards or the they're really just the mounts going in right now we wouldn't put anything that valuable into that building site right now but um I thought it was nice to kind of show it and maybe do we have that video as well because it just looks like so much like a finished classroom when you see technology going in there uh yes so um something we're going to be doing differently with the elementary school just quickly um that um uh given the age range going to the school is um adjustable mounts um on the wall so the board's gonna go anywhere from 20 inches off the ground um all the way up to I think about 72 inches as standard so um depending on the the teacher can very easily grab the board they can write on it Mark on it tell a kid to come up grab the board with one hand pull it down and then the student will have it at their level um I'll share uh I'll share um that video in a second but um this is this is uh uh the 86 inch board that's going to be installed in every single classroom um and so uh is that kind of one what are you looking more for yeah video of him showing how it Glides yep that one will help to download this r b install is up uh celebrity now so I'm sure he loves that so um yeah you couldn't believe it oh celebrity yeah so uh you many of you probably have recently gone on a tour this board was really here just for uh myself the installers and uh Rob tenza to review and decide how we wanted it mounted um this board immediately came out because the classroom is not locked so that equipment their equipment is not there just the mounts to Rose's Point um but easy as simple as that one hand very cool that's how they're gonna look yep and those brackets to either side of that of it are for the black with the the white boards that are in the room or or pegboards they told us yeah um because that's not that's not related to that yeah it's a mix of whiteboard and Tack board yeah they're gonna they're gonna put those on and then put a molding over this metal that's going to be like a grayish um that's gonna a create the seam uh but not be so reflective too so that whole white wall behind it is also a whiteboard cool yeah so behind here because we did ask that girl if any questions on either side of these I'm not sure which one's which but each metal bar going up and over is a separation so it'll be like white it'll be like whiteboard behind this tack board tack board over there I'm not sure the exact layout but um they'll be able to do different things on each of those each material of board yep and then the only other update um I think Dr Brill you had a couple things to share the teachers were able to tour so yeah maybe share some of their reactions so I was I was going to leave that um great news um for for Dave to share a little bit so Dave you want to make your way up here I just wanted to share a little bit I think the board knows that um the the building Administration for um CLS and I um have a week standing Wednesday morning weekly meeting and we talk about the elements of the Candlewood Lake planning team agenda that we put together last spring um and you know gosh that that particular committee was 20 or 25 uh team members Pre-K to five and so some of the things we're really we're working on today and Dave and Danielle in June and uh and Robin and uh and just uh what's that yeah on Debbie of course um we're really talking through key things that we are tangible things that we need to get done that are also called You're Building because Anna really talked about culture building today Dave certainly is going to talk to that when we talk about the tour itself um from from which was part of the December 22nd PD um but simply putting up a beautiful large uh in the faculty room color floor plan it's already available electronically when you go to the website but having it up posted with the room numbers starting to talk about the process for room assignments and starting to really think about that what is the temporary parking lot going to look like we're ready for now we all know we're going in together uh September 5th right for Labor Day teachers would be in a week before what's moving packing really going to look like let's get a memo together let's get expectations let's start to lay that out so the work the teachers have been doing could accelerate and they could feel um more concrete frankly and more assured rather than something ambiguous that's out there um the other piece is um the project manager and uh working because um our Fuller our longtime CES custodian is part of the the planning team and really talking about what are some of the custodial moves that we need to make not the Staffing custodial moves but um we talked about a finance committee last night the cleaners and how's that all going to work in the new machines and and so there's a lot of things going on there that we're really excited about but uh I'll turn it over to Dave's talk about the tour and anything else you want to share today sure well just uh to reiterate what Dr Mann said we had uh the coaches facilitate groups and we were purposeful in grouping we had over 100 certified staff so four groups of about 26 equal representation as equal as we could you know we had I think there were 12 from whiskey here uh and then about 50 and 50 from the other buildings so we had uh each group consisted of what's near Center School Huckleberry staff so the coaches I thought hey what a great way for coaches to meet everybody that's going to be Kenwood lake so I kind of said Doctor man could they maybe facilitate some workshops when they did an awesome job as administrators we each joined a group uh so Heather Batchelor did this amazing Community circle with Rachel Cohen and uh I don't want to mess this up Julie Vaughn did gingerbread houses mine was horrific but again those are different houses we went into smaller groups and you had Center School whiskey near Huckleberry and just such a community build and then Jim Fitz ran uh gaming activities in the gym that were more Cooperative collaborative games and the Pinnacle of the day of course the tour and it was I mean I don't know Amy can't even look him in that giggle a little bit because she sees me on the tours and how excited I get with everything uh but what really made it powerful was we were Candlewood Lake Elementary touring the building we were at Candlewood Lake Elementary staff it wasn't hey huckleberry come and see this with all those mixtures in the groups and just even walking through the kindergarten classroom with the fifth grade teacher looking at the kindergarten teacher and saying oh my gosh look at this connecting room you have my students can come down and reach your students in these beautiful and these rooms are awesome uh so just that sense of power and and excitement enthusiasm and just collaboration already happening but really leaving that building leaving that tour like and I've been on four or five tours maybe maybe 12.
and there are many times when I had meetings in Topeka and I get reports and spreadsheets in regards to the papers notification when I'm texting her asking her exactly what is UST 407 doing because I'm not seeing any of their items listed on the particular spreadsheets with reports that I've been I'm being handed to but the other thing that I've also been talking to her about is being and looking towards the future each fourth-minded right now we have a lot of smaller communities who are looking at different Avenues and ways and Pathways of trying to maintain their schools I for example I could look at the northern part of Russell southern part of Osborne and also Lincoln counties all three counties are in my district but at some point they're going to have to look at some different idea or Paradigm of looking towards the future I know we get caught up in the moment of what's happening in the present and what the numbers are right now but you also need to look at the future and look forward I I totally agree with the previous speaking and I think it was evident by the presentation of the students that may not attend Central plans they called they won't which means after two years this school district is going to be losing more money I don't want to see this little close I don't want to see the high school closed in Wilson I would hope that you would look forward and not look at the moment but look towards the future now there has been the talk about finances and I will pull out one of the spreadsheets that was handed to me because I serve as the vice chair of the legislative budget community and this is the safe and secure schools granted for a fiscal year 2022 and 2023.
the being duplicate was not was not desired um which is why they're removed from about 20 and from page 20 and put into 52. um the the original language of the first paragraph did not completely um create did not use the exact language within from the charter although the language was summarizing the charter language regarding the establishment of the um spinner of the city it didn't have perpetuity but for the most part it was reworded in another way the second paragraph was originally Council of the commons is responsible for recommendations and funding of the Library Lane Lot the reason that that was included originally is that currently there there is a desire to have an RFP for the design of that Council of the commons has been charged with fundraising finding funding for that RFP before it moves forward with the support of city councils um money that they set aside for counsel of the comments has felt um and it has reiterated that they are not responsible for the funding of that space which speaks to the Oxford comma comment earlier however there is a desire to include the the language in the prose plan so that the Council of the commons can work with their funding groups to to find an additional grant funding um so how they how they work together um the pack did not identify the connection between the first pair part of the that's that paragraph and the second part of that paragraph um they focused on what the concern was raised Yesterday by individuals speaking about counsel to comments in regards to um the that one paragraph that put counsel of the commons responsible for um funding that was the the primary thing that was mentioned yesterday um this iteration seemed to speak about the three areas that needed to be done for um Council of the comments to move forward Senator the city of that Library Lane Lot the creation is is that follows the RFP process which is on hold until until money is raised um and so I know that that's a long-winded answer that probably did not answer it but I have been struggling to figure out how to to convey this in a good way yesterday and today um because it is a unique situation it is unlike any of the 160 plus parks that we have in our system um where we have a space that is identified as a park in the charter that the park advisory commission does not have responsibility of so just to kind of the intent of including this is to provide Clarity around exactly that uniqueness yeah at this moment in time this is a document that is as of January 4th 2023 is is the reality that we live in yep and so yeah that's I just want to kind of like everything else that we're talking about here we're talking about ways that the uh that pack and the planning department can work towards improvements in projects and there's kind of language specifically in here to recognize the uniqueness and uh clarify it in a transparent way that this is a thing but this is actually not a Parks thing this is my understanding then it is it is the way that it is it is the way that the structure is today Parks is working with Council of the commons to help as they they look at how to activate Park staff um Hillary and Adam will be will be supporting with the RFP process because you know our job as Parks staff is to ensure that the spaces that could utilized by our residents are a follow-up process and a procedure um that is consistent because it when it is if it does move forward with an RFP we want to be a part of it because we want to support that because we want to provide recreational opportunities for people in those spaces so it is included in the pros plan because of what it may be in the future in the way that it is written in the charter as a part but it is identified uniquely that way because it is a unique situation at this moment so would it actually be appropriate uh where it currently says that the parks advisory commission and the Parks and Recreation Department are not currently responsible for maintenance planning and programming to also include that they're not responsible for funding um yes I mean Parks has not provided any funding to the library Lane lot um in any direct form when asked and when when things are brought forward there's occasionally staff time associated with it but there's no direct funding at this moment set aside for the Library Lane lot from Parks okay um I guess in terms of you know what's been surveyed uh the understanding that this isn't part of Park's like I I'm just gonna say maybe an offer up for a discussion before I put a proposal but that uh that their funding is added to this list of things that the that pack is not responsible for relative to center of the city to make it very clear if the intent of including this in the pros plan is for clarification to the community about what it is and what it isn't it would be really helpful in terms of planning and prioritization of projects and funding and effort to really articulate that so as I read it and as I understand the intent behind it I would want to make it really clear that there's no responsibility for funding from the pack as well doesn't matter those are thanks for all the kind of clarification on that um you know this is just one that's been put to us in a very unique way um and where the language was uh leading uh in the proposition in terms of assumptions and the voter understanding of the intent behind it I want to make language here very clear relative to our city hall and exactly what we do and do not intend to do relative to this project um I'm pausing just for a second as I think on this and so um if anyone else would like to speak I can kind of come back with a thought on that oh Josh if I could ask a good question on that yeah is there what I'm I'm thinking that if it were very explicit in that regard would that foreclose any funding stream possibilities I you know I think what you're talking about is sort of the responsibility to identify and seek I don't know if there was something in this plan that said the city shall not shall not participate in finance financial support of it because every day is currently not responsible for maintenance plan planning programming and then adding and funding so the language is still currently not responsible for but really clearly articulates that as part of the list of non-responsibilities at this time and I guess the question Josh is there any reason in which the city would participate in funding at well following the work of others on the other aspects I mean I yes I mean I mean again and I think I clearly what I tried to convey what we try to convey is that that this is at this moment um on Monday council could make a choice and explain um could could make a a statement that changes some of this and the city and not Parks the city has provided funding for Library Lane RFP there's been money set aside for them at different points for that so to to say the city um is not there I I am more comfortable and I and I I know that this is a fine line and I understand I appreciate the question very much so um and I and I understand that the the dichotomy of the groups that are there um I I think that that including funding at that point because the reality is that one of the biggest things that this document does is it provides our staff with the language to move forward with mdnr grants um and and so any if there is not a connection to this unique one um the um I think that potentially in the five years by by by including funding into this statement that parks and that may change in the five years and I think that including it today um Hood impact our our ability to secure funds as the city parks in the future so I came in and Hillary and Adam I'm asking I'm looking at you to to kind of I mean I know that's the bigger question about the process but in regards to the grant funding with the mdnr that language May preclude us if things changed in our community yeah that may think about myself I agree Josh I think that if we included language that we weren't responsible funding in the future four years down the road if something changes that that could hurt us without it Amendment to the prose plan itself um it seems like it could be something to come back in the future but I guess that's what I want to be really clear about like why it's in here and what it's saying because it doesn't say in in perpetuity it's not going to support these things it's saying at this current moment these are the things it's not responsible for um to kind of put a Line in the Sand of like where this thing stands right now um and who's responsible and should be working on this and who shouldn't so we can prioritize the other projects um that we spent a lot of the other time discussing this evening in terms of bikes and connectivity and transportation and things like that so I mean I'll take I'll take your recommendations you know if you don't want to include it but um I just I I see a lot of Muddy Waters around this project and I want to make it very very clear exactly the intent and all the kind of avenues of this language I I do appreciate that and I I sorry I'm I'm rereading it and pausing um I mean I I I will say at the moment um I think for the uncertainty of what the future may bring with with this space because of the uniqueness of it because of of the language of the charter I think to to to include funding when that was not was not part of the conversation with the parks advisory commission I would struggle to include it at this point um you know I I I if this commission is encouraging of that I think that I think that it would be a conversation that I would have to um to follow up with um I think at this point I I struggled to include it because I think that um that Line in the Sand is there um and I am not sure what the city's goals will be for it um and I think that there's an opportunity that while it is today um it is a focus of it right now um the maintenance of planning and the programming are key components that I think speak to it um and because there has been funding by the city um I think that including funding while it's not cars is is something that could be looked at differently so um I I would probably lean towards I mean I appreciate your statement um but I would lean towards not including it at this point of that if that's acceptable by this Commission appreciate that thank you I'll leave it anybody else yeah commissioner Lee uh we're having discussion at this point so unless one of the Commissioners wants to sure um well actually I wanted to switch gears because I know we've focused predominantly on these two the the only question I actually had um and I'll make this pretty brief I've been looking at the planning process for the prose plan I'm specifically looking at page 99 um and it has to do with the respondents demographic as far as rent or own and I'm contrasting that with our Census Data of a total number of housing units 53 000 owner occupies 22 and renters 26 000.
uh that was my favorite because that was really this is this is the staff and just that excitement and just that energy uh was amazing and it really the cafeteria with the bricks right and we have classrooms that are just about completely done we giggled because some of the teachers are a little short and they say well how the heck are we going to get all the way up there to get this well figure that out we have step schools or step ladders you call me I'll get them for you uh but just overall it was a powerful awesome day of Candlewood Lake Elementary staff it wasn't three staffs it was one staff and it was really awesome it was great yeah it was great thank you David and you know Dave I know Bob was on a a group with Nate we took a tour and um when I was able to share and although it's been talked about before until you're there and it starts to really become concrete like it's really becoming now for our staff is talking to the kindergarten Pre-K teachers um with all the other grade level teachers in the in the group and sharing that the floors in that area of the building are actually heated for the students the envy that came from yeah I'm still here so yeah yeah the difference I'm getting a lot so it's yeah it's uh it's pretty exciting so yeah anything else Dave no I'm good it was a great day thank you thank you that's all I had that was great okay any questions for uh Rosa or Dr bro all right um we're back to public comment um and this is uh in this section it's the same basic rules as before uh three minutes maximum and uh this can deal with any topic within within the purview of our board we have one person signed up Mr Korea and you can come up and I know it's a repeat but name and address when you start so um 45 West whiskey Avenue um so I sent this information to the board but there's people that watch um and I just want to make sure although I wrote in they at least get some of this information for themselves I think it's important um and this is what just a way of background of employees in the district there's a small handful that have their own contracts and they're very specific to their position and a couple of those contracts have a provision where they're not allowed to essentially work outside their current responsibilities with a small exception and it's mostly around participating sort of in a professional environment and this is true of a lot of organizations particularly where there's an executive in the company and it's mostly about the duty of loyalty and to ensure that you're putting all your efforts into your primary job as well as if there's not a conflict of interest and I bring it up because after the meeting on the December 14th a lot of parents watched um and then got in touch with other some of the parents that spoke and one of the things that came to me was um I got a a text of a email or a web link to a bio on a company called Zeal education group be careful yeah you know the rules yeah I know the rules yeah and so I looked through and it was a um it was the bio of an administrator here in District and I was quite surprised that person actually has you know a limitation in their contract and the contract is limited to includes consultancy um it limits it to five days work and the Board of Education needs to be informed and approve so for the Board of Education to approve they have to have a vote and votes cannot be an executive session they all have to be public they all have to be in minutes um and this company was was founded in April of 2022 um and so you can go back and you can look and there's no public record of the Board of Education approving this relationship um or any work there's a public reference um of a work activity in August right and the contract was was signed within those two periods so it was a very recent in terms of knowing you shouldn't do this it wasn't an oversight the other concern is is the startup company and I happen to know I have a lot of experience as startup companies and a lot of uh founding members of startup companies they work a lot before they actually can bill out to a customer right it's a lot of work especially in Consulting coming up with methodologies templates there's a lot of QA with Consulting quality assurance with Consulting to making sure you come across the same way right so it's unlikely that an early stage employee of a startup company would have only worked for an hour right there's at least the work of of figuring out hey can I join your company and all this other stuff so so my concerns are really the of these this conflict of interest because this firm also engages in in special education audits they do they do um Consulting around board governance in the in the description of the board governance includes really how to essentially manipulate your board so I bring this up because I brought it to the board and it's as soon as I brought it to the board's attention immediately this came down right and the board had responded that they would take it seriously and to me taking it seriously means you know not informing the employee figuring out what happens first because there's been a lot of cover-ups with by the board of education so um I implore the board to look into this seriously because you will be watched how you handle it thank you um okay so that's it for this evening's agenda three main points what do you think Deb um I think definitely we should provide um some information about the updates that Dr Mann and Eric and Ken gave us about the budget comebacks and also an update on cles um like you're like no I'm sorry sorry um Mike Mike Mike uh so aside from that I'm I I was gonna think I was thinking maybe the whiskaneer wall update and the nice slideshow that Mr Renda showed us even though it didn't have music yeah um or I did think it was important to let everybody know that Dr Burrell gave us an update about the special education program review and the fact that he has um some meetings coming up regarding that so bcbas yeah I think pcbs I can do that so bcba's the budget update items and uh and clas okay all right cool all right all right upcoming events okay it's pretty quiet all schools are closed in observance of Martin Luther King Day on January 16th and just whiskaneer has a few things coming up they have a motivational speaker Jeff feely an event with him for families on January 9th from 6 to 7 PM they have their band concert here at the high school on January 10th and the chorus concert also here at the high school on January 17th that's it okay thank you all right that's it for our agenda tonight thank you all we went on for two and a quarter hours tonight it's a long meeting I know people have had a long day so without objection we are adjourned
these are upgrades that begun to the school to provide security and safety for the students nowhere on this report is USD 112. so when you talk about the finances but this is five million dollars that has been allocated by the Kansas State Legislature for the last five years over the last fiscal year there are not USD 112 is not showing up on the support of even applying for a grant for the Station security schools Act this is basically free money I just wish that when you look at the possibility of not closing the high school because in a few years if you close the high school you'll be looking at the grace movements thank you as I mentioned before I have been a huge advocate for Rural Economic Development you take that anchor out of a community and the community is going to suffer thank you [Applause] [Music] foreign Michael I had you down next did you yield your time is that correct okay Josh good evening my name is Josh and I am an attorney from Topeka Kansas 900 South Kansas Avenue Topeka and I represent several people that you've already heard from tonight and that you will maybe hear from uh throughout the night in the challenge of this proposed board action to close the Wilson School Attendance Center I appreciate the information that was provided by this last week pursuant to our open records act request by it's not important Clerk and School staff have provided much of the information that we had requested obviously because we know some of that we're still looking for and we think is material to a consideration not only of this board but the public we've heard a lot of things tonight as far as the defense uh the public policy considerations that have been part of this process so far we've heard terms like railroaded rushed through we've heard about the financials provided tonight not only being finalized for the first time today after months and months of having the ability to make this case to the public we're finally getting some of the information in summary form now we've heard that the financials are being used as a pretense but there are actually different ways to look at the the financials that would make more sense to send students to Wilson we've heard about selling your school marketing your school versus selling out your community you've heard about a lack of due diligence and now just now we've heard about a conscience failure to apply for free state money that could be used to buttress the bottom line and so is the question tonight in that regard a question of facility operation or is it question of management effective management all of these things will be considered at the public uh at this public hearing I'm at further board meetings but it's my purpose here tonight not to make that case to you because ultimately my job is to make the case to the courts and to um the people and Advising my clients and the citizens of this school district to explore their legal options should you choose to rush this through and close the school building despite the lack of due diligence so I wanted to outline those for you tonight rushing this through instead of looking at management instead of looking at ways of um of a cutting that doesn't require the destruction of the Mainstay in this community public school system um is the is the first step and I would argue that there's no reason to rush this through if you look at the numbers provided tonight on the third page since the Indian cash balance has been relatively stable sure it goes down 100 degrees back up 146 down 157 down 177 but in actuality the average of those years is around 1 million two hundred and seventy one thousand so really the difference in 2022 uh from that is only 104 000 we've seen much bigger uh jumps down and frankly in 2020 we saw it jump up 146.
so you got kind of a roughly split and so I just wanted to kind of mention hey it does look like obviously renters are a little more transient but that in the next iteration cycle of Outreach I would love to see a little more even if it's transient we do want to get the opinions of folks that may be renting as well as kind of looking at the I don't have an exact household income breakdown but just trying to make sure that and recognize that the there may be biases as to the representation of people that we get kind of looking through this but again it's not to say that we've obviously gone through you guys have gone through rigorous things but as I look at these kind of results relative to kind of the Census Data just want to make sure that we have as Equitable of a representation of you know folks voices in this plan and just just again there's nothing that I'm saying who just wanted to switch gears and just kind of point that out as I think if we have a roughly 60 40 ish split between renters and homes then the respondents being 86 to four you know 13 to me was like interesting I mean it makes sense because again owners have a little more kind of like vested interest in the per you know based on their permanence but um to make kind of a conscientious effort to say hey could we have a representative sample that is more proportional to what we see kind of in the census just again kind of uh you know I know we've spent a lot of time on these other two items but just wanted to switch gears make that kind of comment not to say that the the results or outcomes of this is by no means I mean we've gone through procedural outcomes it's more of a comment on the systemic biases that may inherently exist in kind of the Dynamics of you know public reporting and as well as public kind of like engagement with these processes and an intentional effort to try and bring the voices of the not necessarily herb so just quick comment on that demographic thank you anybody else are we ready for both then I think at this point that that ship has sailed so alrighty all right so uh this is approval of the the Motions as presented to adopt this as a component of the city's comprehensive plan as amended by the parks advisory commission and has summarized um this would also repeal the previous version of the document sure Mills yes sure I give Randall yeah yeah commissioner sovay yes yes sure Lee Yes commissioner Clark yes commissioner white yes motion carries okay we are on to item number nine which is another opportunity for public comment um persons who speak up to three minutes about any issue um that is on the agenda we'll first call an individuals present to address the commission and then remote participants to speak during this public hearing remotely press star nine of listing by phone we used to raise the hand feature of viewing through the web link for phone access call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting ID 977-6634-1226 to unmute press star six City staff will select callers that have raised their hand using the last three digits of your phone number or by name if available for those accessing through the web link you'll hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television sounds or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly for either method please state your name and address at the beginning of their comments is there anyone present that would like to speak at this time foreign just wanted to ask a question I thought that Mr White had a good question that I didn't understand the answer if the plan has apparently has been approved in its current form is it possible to amend it say within the next two months I think that was a good question to ask and I didn't understand the answer did anybody have the answer to that I think at this point where we were not in discussion mode anymore but my understanding is that it's due on February 1st so I think that's we we have approved it as as um as uh as proposed so you're saying it cannot be amended is that what you're saying my we have we have approved it as proposed and it moves on to other people from us so the next steps for the plan will be it can be either approved or rejected by the city council right if uh it is rejected the city council can forward it back to the Planning Commission for how they'd like to see it modified and the Planning Commission can then consider that make considerate modifications and then re-forward it or the city council can adopt it after the city council adopts it the full um process would undertake again which is um multiple months for a plan Amendment it would not be able to be done in two months uh it has to be noticed gone through public comment and then repeat the process with public hearings so um so in short the next steps for this is It's either adopted in its current form as as approved this evening or it's referred back to the Planning Commission for for modifications okay thank you hello my name is John Wagner um I'm an architect uh recently arrived to Ann Arbor address 111 North Ashley Street I wanted to make a comment based on the exchange uh and I want to preface that actually with uh the enormous uh advantage that I am finding that Ann Arbor has such a qualified uh Council of planners on the commission but also um really echoing the compliments he had made to the parks department and press of the with the extent of that presentation and documentation um now uh with regards to this to this gentleman's concern about the alignment for the rail path I think there's actually a really important observation to be made here that uh refers back to something that councilor survey had said earlier in this about different sources of funding through millage and the kind of disjointed nature in which funding is being categorically applied to specific scope in the city but not thought of as comprehensive now speaking anecdotally as somebody who just arrived to Ann Arbor it was extremely jarring to take the B2B Trail to discover it sort of kind of ends at the hospital and I was like thinking okay this is a huge missed opportunity because it's clearly seeing that that trail as a recreational asset to the community of Ann Arbor and and more broadly to the community of uh of um of Ypsilanti but not understood as a Mobility and so Consular wish your conversation about bike paths and integration of if we're going to tear up the streets and we want to coordinate the bike path and the funding to me it seems like such an important realization that thinking atomizing these different topics is is a very um inadequate approach to these comprehensive issues of mobility and open a public space but also how does how do citizens navigate throughout the city and not to think of parks as open space solely but also as Mobility infrastructure and you know I think that there's a lot of incredible uh capability on the from the conversation that I've heard and especially within your staff which is really incredible for a city of Ann Arbor size to have such qualified staff I wonder how councilor Leonard in your comment that there would be a comprehensive plan upcoming how could that vision of of the interconnectedness of these assets whether it's Liberty Park Plaza or whether it's the uh the B2B Trail how can the vision think more holistically about uh about all of these really great ideas that I'm hearing in this conversation but it seems like they're completely atomized and how they're being implemented on a policy and on funding scale so that is my only comment it's not really exactly a question but uh really great to be here tonight and learn so much about Ann Arbor in a very few short hours it's been really incredible thank you thank you any remote participants we do Adam Goodman you have three minutes to address the Planning Commission hi there uh Adam Goodman 400 Virginia Avenue um I just kind of wanted to add a bit to uh Larry Ducks comments at the beginning of the meeting and kind of explain to you you know why this is you know while you're hearing about this why this is why this is an issue that that you know that kind of is seen as a problem by by some in the community and that is simply that you know I and I understand these the the sort of Huron River Greenway diagrams are pretty comprehensive and covered a large area but speaking about specifically these you know underpasses around Maiden Lane and Fuller um these these have a habit of disappearing from City plans and so you know I don't know I what you know the explanation from staff may be you know totally on point and maybe that you know this is not the right place to include you know diagrams like that and if If This Were A one-off this is if this is it then you know I think you know lots of the folks in the community would say all right fine and move on but the problem is that that we we sort of find ourselves with a little bit of a lack of trust here because you know Larry mentioned that in 2015 the goal to build these passes reaffirmed by a city council resolution well as I recall the reason that that resolution happened is that the city had had basically just proposed to to drop these projects entirely off of the CIP HEPA have them just disappeared right and and so like it what you need to understand is that it feels like this is happening again um maybe that's not true but it feels like that okay and it feels like the city has this sort of you know shiny object syndrome you know we spent all this time and money building a whole you know like on the scale of 100 million dollar plan for a whole other Trail when we haven't gotten around to finishing the one that you know we have we already have most of but you know there's a couple there's a couple places where it's really not what it should be and this intersection is one of them it's it's it's really dangerous it's the place in Ann Arbor I have most often almost been hit by cars while riding my bike 30 more seconds and it there's there's emergency around this right now because there's this proposal to widen the East Medical Center Bridge she'll actually make this intersection even less safe than it was before so you know I just wanted to add that context for you so that you understand why people are are looking asking at this particular change in the plan uh thank you thank you [Music] any other colors we do call her with the phone number ending with three four five press star six and address the Planning Commission kind again um I wasn't going to speak again but I have to correct something that was said by one of the other public commenters who called in Dan Adams he persists in spreading this falsehood that money has not been raised for the center of the city this is not true he is spreading this falsehood all over social media as our other people who want center of the city to fail money has indeed been raised by the library green Conservancy the last I heard it was more than seventy thousand dollars with more money committed I was really hoping someone from Council of the commons would call in to correct that falsehood but nobody did so I felt I had to do that facts do matter money has been raised money is continuing to be raised the center of the city can succeed it would really help if that land on the library lot was rezoned public land because then we could get grant money from outside sources the city would not have to give that money there are other grants available but they cannot be applied for unless the area is zoned public land or Parkland so I once again encourage you to do whatever you can to rezone the library lot so that would help with fundraising and it would be so great if the mayor and the DDA would support this effort as other cities with thriving public squares have done we need to ask ourselves why doesn't our mayor and our DDA do that okay thank you thank you call her with the phone number ending with 644 press star 6 to unmute your phone and address the Planning Commission my name is Alton I'm tired of the wealthy getting special treatment so I have two requests regarding the Airport runway extension contained in the Capital Improvements plan that was approved by the Planning Commission earlier tonight my first request please Missy Stoltz explain how the Airport runway extension will help Ann Arbor meet its 820 sustainability goals there is a climate emergency it was 60 degrees today emergency all hands on deck including the wealthy my second request I wonder whether commissioner weish who often raises issues of equity during CPC meetings has any thoughts about how this Airport runway extension which would benefit only those who own private jets will affect Ann Arbor's Equity goals does it send the wrong message I think maybe it does so in summary please miss Stoltz and please commissioner weish consider commenting public publicly on the Airport runway extension that benefits only those who travel by by private jet thanks so much thank you any other colors yes call her with a phone number ending with four six four hi um can you hear me this is Linda barauer again am I Audible you are okay thanks I wasn't going to call in again but what what one previous speaker said during the CIP public hearing about the airport and then what I just heard now from the previous speaker just made me feel like I have to call in that is so true and I don't know if you can before you adjourn if you can go back and we visit your vote on the CIP and recommend that they just take away that funding for extending the airport it is just completely in contravention to all what we taught is our values in terms of you know dealing with the climate crisis it makes no sense and what the previous speaker said is exactly right it's catering to the wealthy it's the wealthy who are coming in going to come in on private jets for the games we want to profit from that we we prefer corporate profits you know when it's a chance when it's a choice between climate change and profits we choose prophets if it's so if it's a choice between equity and profits we choose profits it's a choice between you know pollution and toxics and profits we choose profits I am tired of the hypocrisy and I know that you guys care about climate and Equity you talk about it all the time please please think about this seriously and considering going going back on your vote and and just recommending to council hey here is a chance to live up to our values there has been much data I've looked into it that Airport runway does not for safety reasons does not need to be extended that's an excuse that's an excuse to make money off of more corporate clients and the Jet setting people they can take commercial Jets to the Detroit airport it's half an hour away I used to fly for my job twice a week it's half an hour away we don't need it please do the right thing this time and I'm sorry for getting emotional but um I'm just tired of this hypocrisy and you've got a chance to to stick by your values and I'm begging you to do it thank you any other colors nope okay we are on commission proposed business item number 10 any commissioner Lee I'll make this really brief I talked about this at Transportation Commission as well but it's about accessibility as an evaluative criteria I think we were talking about Mobility as anomalized Transit being considered Mobility I really like the fact that the Strategic value scorecard that they added includes user experience equity and access and Mobility so this concept of creating some level of a metric or it's the Jonathan Levine and Joe Greene talked about this a lot at the planning school but really looking at accessibility in the evaluation of how many people can actually get to where they're trying to get to by non-morise transit and using that kind of as a metric and or a what would you call it like an index of an Essence um to really say how how are we doing so from a policy evaluation standpoint just wanted to say hey um from the Transportation Commission side it is something that we're looking at and we're trying to figure out how do we develop something and it's good to see that at least the CIP and the Strategic value score card is actually already considering it so just want to bring it to your attention that that's been something that we're discussing over there thanks thanks anybody else all right we are on to adjournment motion to adjourn commissioner sovay second and by commissioner Lee all those in favor say aye aye we are adjourned
so there is no sense of urgency yes there's a recommendation when it comes to the Kansas Association of school boards at the State Board and providing a recommendation and ending balance but you've been operating below that for for at least six years and so as you explore ways of finding a manageable and a sustainable cash balance cutting off your nose to spite your face really will and ended not just the destruction of the Wilson communities but also the entire District yeah that's not just in in the form of prophecy that's also in the form of uh the mechanisms that the citizens have to force other legal results other than the school building closure so my clients are prepared to circulate a petition um availing themselves in the process in KSA 72 the 634 that would disorganize this school would require 20 of the of the vote of last general election for school district and that would force the issue to the voters of USD 112.
so instead of that nuclear option of forcing this to the State Board where this entire District would be looking for homes somewhere else we encourage you and we demand that you you slow down you look at the public policy and have the public policy debate it should have started months ago it's being had tonight and engage in the black red numbers with the public be transparent don't require the nuclear option to the extent that that's required after a school board or School building closure a court in determining what assets and what ending balances goes with various parts of the territories of this District to new districts we're taking to the fact that it was mismanagement to close a school only to have it reopen when it's transferred to another District so my clients plan on bringing legal remedies there is a way to prevent that prevent the bone on bone nature of litigation there's a way to prevent the nuclear actions by actually coming to the table and I've submit that as the ending cash balance has been over the past five years stable work on those numbers work there with the public to save not only a school but a community there's a mechanism obviously for transferring territory out of the school district that can be explored there's obviously belt tightening but can I add to just a close I'd like to add one more phrase to the list of phrases I started with railroaded rushing through selling out your community diligence and that phrase is arbitrary and capricious that's what a judge is going to be looking we have to go to court office arbitrary capricious so the record needs to be filled with not only the public comment tonight with your due diligence that should start tonight and we would respectfully but um strenuously ask you to table any vote on this and tell the the either the financials can be explored with the public policy considerations tonight that cannot be recently or until the results if the board is set on on closing a the school at some point in the future until the results of an election that would disorganize this school district and over for another school that may be able to manage school buildings better could keep Wilson school building thank you [Applause] foreign [Music] each other bring it closer okay all right hello I'm your opponent and I am in our media technology broadcasting unit our teacher tell us that we should be unbiased in our report prior to the April 2022 school board meeting two students in our reporting sent out a survey to the current series to see how many people and how many students want to go to City points at that time pretty soon said that they would attend the Schoolcraft we know that that time in 10 months since students and their parents have had many discussions about Wilson School closure and the best place to attend school if Wilson were to close it is sad that these discussions have had to happen but families and what is important for the school it is important for the school choice to match what families and students need thank you today let me check the numbers again we just we did this show the students cannot be identified 10 or in private space when given their agents we give students support choices the First Choice decision made second choice decision-making decision not made may be decorated a fourth choice this is not made but not going to several points we put in the control factors like we learned in science students were in private when choosing there was there were assured that any answer was correct an adult took of the picture and did not allow did not allow any interference each student was explained that what each choice was also it was assured that each student had in fact had a discussion with their parents we kept the score as they went it's okay oops foreign there are currently 67 students in grade 6 through 11.
six percent or four students have noted they will vote for Central claims and 94 or 63 students noted that they will not be going to Temple Run we do know that these are still reported Finance we had no idea okay next is Michelle a brokish I'm a celebration from Wilson don't have a lot um new to emphasize what has been said that here um I guess something that I'd like to to put forth though and when I address you all in the November meeting the way I started it was there's no secret that there's there's not a lot of love lost between the North and South and that's gone for years and years and years okay that's not okay that's not what these decisions are about and and so I want to reiterate that when students stand up and then they sit down and say I'm not going to Central Plains guys we're not saying that a lot of animosity we're not saying that out of hate I hope it goes back to what Susan said goes that's what somebody said there's a simple logistical reality in this District this District came together years and years ago if I'm not mistaken it started with Wilson and Hollywood and it's it's just grown from there at that time Wilson Hollywood could help each other but it made sense to have separate schools it didn't make sense for them to be together as the districts had spanned out it still makes sense for there to be two schools okay when I go down um when I go to clock when I drive to Hutch whatever and I say it every time and my husband Paul gets tired of me anytime we're driving down that laptop I said see look at the elevators this makes sense Lots on Hollow rig Bush and Lorraine makes sense and that's great I'm glad you guys are together Wilson doesn't fit in that simply based on Logistics not in day-to-day every day travel that road with kids it just doesn't fit okay so again this isn't anything this isn't an animosity thing this is a simple logistics thing where I am coming from so with that I looked at Mr Lowry's numbers today um now I would have to change my numbers based on what the kids just showed because they showed I believe four kids that said yes we would go to um Central Plains So based on the numbers that Mr Lowry sent out he showed it 21-22 FTE at Wilson of 138.5 foreign unaudited enrollment shows 160.
okay that's an increase at 21.5 students now I know you qualified that but there's some um some monies for pre-k free that kind of thing but still that's an increase of 21.5 students that's a 15 increase okay so when we look at those numbers that's a huge increase is that a trend is that misrepresented numbers who knows but that's 15 increase from last year to this year okay then I looked at the estimated savings and again the very I know they're rough I know they're rough but the numbers say a 700 000 cost savings as Sarah said this does not account for lost Revenue now I took those 72 FTE that's that's on these sheets I took the nine valve or 9 692 uh base day plus waitings and if none of the kids went that's not accounting for the four but if none went that's a 697 824 dollar lost Revenue that means we're saving 2176 dollars by doing this like everyone else I would encourage you please look at other avenues because the kid's not coming isn't because everybody's hating on each other the kid's not coming it's because it doesn't make sense because there are better avenues for our kids should this go forward and like others have said if this was forward and our kids leave that is a net loss for everybody one that I don't think could be come back from thank you hey guys I rejected the enrollments for 23.4 nothing changes nothing's changed so those numbers I was in 2021 and 21 22 to 20 23.4 production for next year those projected on this if nothing changes that's what we think would be in the buildings okay okay next we have serenity hello can everyone hear me okay okay my name is Serenity sanity and I'm a proud Wilson High School student I realized that my point that I'm bringing up tonight has been brought to your attention several times and now you will hear it again from a sophomore at Wilson High School you talk about saving money by closing down to Wilson's high school and yet you'd lose so much more by all the kids leaving the district our community has addressed all the problems and concerns and yet you give us zero answers my advice to you is that if you're going to do something that's going to change our lives have an actual reason besides we're saving money I will not be attending Central Plains next year it just goes through along with many of my peers and it's not because we're sour towards sentient planes it's because of the roads we would have to take every day and the distance short but thank you [Applause] Leland Francis as you know said they closed down the Torrance grade school of the Wilson school to move to this school this is actually two schools if you if you look at the comments area the high school side doesn't have any windows in the careers and it's a solid wall up there because it's a firewall it was a money-saving technique to avoid building I happen to build the overhead sprinklers so that's why there's two schools I was the last principal at the warrants in the last principal at Wilson Elementary that the information [Music] that we were building the school in the wrong place so building it here it should have been built for the old race with this well that grade school was open folks Wilson city was full of vehicles twice a day we suffered a great economy lost here we really do now I look at it and I I see you guys I'm not going to get the Applause well received the building must close this school I would suggestions especially Lakeside Learning Center and allow our kids to attend Lakeside Learning Center here at the school you can have this cost savings they'll probably take two teachers and a handful of days parents you could form your own home School Association have your own sports do everything you want to do they would probably work out well I know Weston I know Heartland Christian School I know a few other schools have joined the Kansas Association of approved schools they have their own state tournaments so it Sports is your issue there it is we can do it but I I really would like to see you Recon reconsider the idea of public school first of all you say you're going to save money I would like to know yeah we're actually saving money or not I I don't see any way that my tax payment is going to go down so to speak to a happier so I don't think we're really saving me money so and that's basically what it is I thank you for your time [Applause] okay uh Mike natashek sorry you can call me Lori cop if that would make you feel better give me just a second hey I'm Mike special um so I could talk I could talk about economic impact opposing the school will have but I think you're all aware of that but I will say that two things one is Wilson's in the community so I sincerely believe that even if the decision worked closed 7212 we're going to survive and we're going to growth uh also if you look at the 2012 census uh and compared to 2010 there's one community in Elton County including the county the group there's one community and that's the city of Wilson we are growing community we will continue to vote that's sincerely believe that so real quickly because I don't know how much time I have here real quickly having been in a situation a similar to one you all find yourselves in I understand what you're doing I'm not sure that some of you understand the impact or decision they have on students teachers patrons and communities I believe this has been demonstrated by the very limited open public discussions before votes were conducted where they're considered when considering combining extracurricular activities transferring students and ultimately eligible 7 through 12 years I recently spoke with Miss goat about tonight's meeting and she said that tonight was not about closing seven twelve school for about practice well that may be true a reminder that on March 21st 2022 Miss Dodie boo Mr Ward seconded that following unsuccessful transfer Wilson Junior Senior High School will be closed but the conclusion of 123 2023.
that that vote failed for four however three board members voted in favor of closing without any apparent due diligence or fact financing following that meeting I talked to Ms scope and at least one other take your talk to Mr Rogers and we were both told that we were not at the point of closing will succeed however on April 11 2022 leave miss those improved departments consolidate all USB 712 students from the Central Plains Junior Senior High School classroom Mr worst again second of the motion the motion carried 5-2 do those that voted in favor of emotion I would like to know the facts what facts you base your decision on and to Ms coat and Mr Rogers specifically what additional information was discovered that resulted and changed your vote for only a couple weeks with the demonstrated track record I really have to question whether this hearing really is about fact-finding and conducting proper due diligence or just an exercise to try and appease those in attendance it'll make yourselves feel better about your previous decisions after all we only hear because it was discovered that the board and administration failed to follow a proper process for closing School if I was currently sitting on the board here are some things I would need to know or consider before making a decision as important as this the one current affordable all of these items will require detailed due diligence not just a quick review priorities it has been said many times by many people that the most important thing is what is best for the students at USD 112.
it's closing an Attendance Center and busting kids 47 miles one way several several times a day the best thing for our students this is the same where the Muslim kids are going to clap them a platform kids are being blessed to Wilson after all this is supposed to be about what's best for the kids one of the options to brushing the kids here's what I would love to know the most obvious is simply maintaining two Junior Senior High Schools well that's easy to say I fully understand it's going to make it much harder to implement and after the proper due Villages leave it this may not be mild but at this point I don't believe anyone on this board knows for sure other districts have implemented such things as sharing teachers having teachers travel between attendance centers block scheduling and even four-day School weeks it is my understanding that some of these options have been brought up but have been met with resistance by some teachers and administrators and I would attend the board meetings with that third I fully admit that I know very little about such things but the fact that they are being utilized by other schools and other districts means that they can't work with all due respect the USD to 112 teachers and administrators reality is that they work for the district not the other way around after all this is supposed to be about what a specialty is always should the decision be made to ultimately close an Attendance Center here's what I would want to know which building provides the best learning environment which building was the oldest building in the district which usually equates to higher maintenance costs especially when the difference is about 30 years which building meets APA requirements which billing presents asbestos in lead hazards for kids and staff which building has two gymnasiums on site to better serve the student athletes and to reduce costs for the visitor in the district office be housed in the Attendance Center to reduce costs I know this is looked at but I always believed there were options that were ignored he's been stated by the administrator the room would be an issue if a plaque clinic for Wilson students were transferred there I don't know if this is true but do any of you know for sure if the answer is not known then it needs to each time the same may be an issue for Wilson if the Clapping student for Buster Wilson I do know that the Wilson school was built for a much larger enrollment in the Paranormal even if there's room today in either school what is the plan should the student population increase if they're going through it after all this is supposed to be about what's best for the kids financing and you know it's been explained a lot better than I can do it by numerous other people but it's been stated many times why at least the majority of the board that finances the driving force behind the decision to close Muslim the resolution to Coast Wilson States three reasons all Financial if you're voting or have voting to close Wilson for any other reason then you're voting is working missing piece behind this locality is the numbers of support and again as noted by numerous people some numbers came out from Mr Lauer today but they've been getting asked for for weeks and months so obviously some of you this is a minor thing since they were not needed to influence your vote proposal uh Richard the rest of us is not a minor item and as a board member I would not even enter in discussions to close a building without solid or detailed financial information to support such an effort Financial numbers as I mentioned Financial Financial numbers were sent out today I did not have time to digest them one thing appears to be visited is the compartment members for the district by closing Clapton and transferring students to Wilson it also as noted future projections among Mr Larry may have just explained this that 70 students will be transferring platform that's not factual which school is the most likely to have the higher highest feature costs to maintain and to make changes inspired between Ada retirements which school has the lowest utility costs what's the financial impact to the overall District following the closure of Wilson Junior Senior High School there will obviously be a reduction in overall School population surveys have indicated the majority of students will not attend class in school one of the estimated short-term and long-term impacts I'm sure reduction in student population would occurred if clapping students were transferred to Wilson I don't know what those numbers might be but I would guess that none of you do even a group of very dedicated and passionate patrons of the district led by Dr Brian Jordan spent months developing a configuration study that provided guidelines and proposals for moving usd-112 forward into the future it appears that this study has been largely ignored at least five of you have apparently decided that you know much better works best for the students of the district in this much larger group of concerned passionate and knowledgeable patients if that is not the case then please provide the basis we'll basically ignoring the configuration study and it was told to me today that the configuration there used to be on the website but it's no longer even on the website so I will ask what happened to it why isn't it on the website after all this increase both after that all this is supposed to be about what's best for the kids clothing I finally I apologize if I personally offended any board member staff member it was not my fan however you need to understand the frustration felt by so many other people here tonight and many others that were unable to attend and it's my understanding by winning the papers on the south end of the district watching votes cast and decisions made without providing any supporting information or even a comment prior to voting a certain way really brings in the question of motives behind such actions this is very emotional issue and anytime discussions include closing Independence Center whether it be Wilson or clapman it will be hard for people to accept it but a supporting information is presented to support those type of decisions is at least demonstrates the board that the form of proper due diligence are you sure all options have been explored and you can you clearly identify why none of those options are pleased me Wilson board members work hard to try to find a new home for the Wilson students board Administration from the district collectively assisting that effort I would suggest that you can accurately and sincerely answer the questions I've closed for you that you've done a proper due diligence the Kings after all it's supposed to be about what's best for kids this includes not only the Wilson students but those who wished it up thank you [Applause] don't like those things Kathy Smith did you yield yeah she did okay Mike just my name is Mike Jess when I live in Wilson Kansas and I don't have a dog in this bike I have no children I've had many in the past I'm here tonight because I have a feeling of Injustice and it's just a feeling I had thought several days ago about speaking tonight and decided against it my wife said you really don't need to do that I have a stack of folders about this tall from years past I have expenses of new school salaries put together by teachers information that leads to Wilson having been in the black and most likely still is I had people come to me I'm not a socialite I don't get out I hear things third hand but I heard that Wilson had grown I don't know that game and I had done the research with the U.S Census Bureau before and didn't yield much but four days ago and you can do this for yourself I punched up in Google population Wilson Kansas 2019.
and it was 723. so I did the same thing population lost in Kansas 2021. and to my surprise it comes up 836. validated by the United States census group that's 113 people for two years and I thought where are they well I do know it's really important with that again farm houses we could eventually people in New Hampshire so I thought well let's look at that further so I put in population Kansas 2019. and it came up 600. population Clapton Kansas and it came up in 553 what those numbers represent and again you can convince yourself was that Wilson Kansas had a 16 increase of two years that really sounds unbelievable what is there in black and white take a look Clapton had an eight percent decline so I contemplated whether it's people and I could just not fathom how you shut down a stool that's in the black but the population that's increasing it makes absolutely no sense how could that be it's always population increases well let me back there as population decreases it becomes our turn so it's a consolidate I suggest it's not our turn I'm here tonight to help keep this District together not territory Wilson Kansas offers a cash cow for his district worse than Kansas is the only community of the district growing it is through growth that we pull out of this not to tearing down somebody else just to hop off the kids we don't need that we need your help I urge you to consider the world as the option and take a look at these populations and then the question comes well why isn't the aroma well I know uh four children that were going to come to Wilson and decided parents did not to because of the fear of clothing the fear started in the newspaper article in 2018.