does that include funds of your marked for the Civics field trip yes yes it does what's our deadline for what for getting tax credit checks in too so any tax credits that we received now can be used either in the previous calendar year or in the current calendar year we have up until tax day which is April 16th this year so any tax credits that have received for them those people who turn in those tax credits have the option of doing it for either year anything received after tax day will be for 2023 taxes what's the uh anticipated cost and completion data in the exterior painting and and weatherproofing free weatherproofing okay so let me since we do have a new board member let me kind of give them a high level overview of what's going on there is an organization within a stage called the school facilities board it is under the Office of Management now so it's got another weird name um what that organization does is they keep schools at minimum standards so whenever an AC unit goes down we can go through the sfb to have that replaced so it's not coming out of District funds what we're looking at right now is a weatherization project we have had the assessment done and I'm proud to report that we failed miserably so with that failure you know we have windows that are no longer keeping moisture and air outside and the air that's supposed to be inside inside we have doors that have failed um the block walls are are retaining moisture and not repelling so what we're doing the new building or the old building yeah especially whether you can see everything so right now we do have a quote that so by using the sfb it's a process it's not like if I wanted to go out right now get some quotes to have it painted we could have it painted within two months the sfb is a long and drawn out process we had to get an assessment done right now we are working with architects in the design phase because we do have doors that need to be replaced we have Windows that need to replace was um the paint will not be like a Dunn-Edwards paint that you could go to Home Depot or Lowe's and purchase it'll be an Alaska American Paint which will actually help repel water even more so so right now the folk that I have to do the elastomerative paint just the paint it's six hundred thousand dollars good three four whatever the 80 000.
of that so over five years it's appreciated uh you know his bylaws state that he has to have an appraisal within one year of selling the property being sold okay so that's that's the the reason for the new uh appraisal we wouldn't need it anyway so it was the other one five years old uh the other thing as part of the purchase he would credit us back any amounts that we paid in rent there as I shared with the board we're paying five thousand dollars for the two months that we were there so 2500 a month is what we're paying and grants over there right now so we're getting credit for that money also so the only question I have that purchase was part of another plan and idea so if the the idea is to buy that where is that coming from and how is that going to change our our balance and our where we're at by June I mean we're going to have to talk about that just because I'm not sure how the next phase of the plan is going to go if it happens soon or later and obviously if this is an opportunity we we want to take advantage of it but we also got to be aware financially where we're at yeah the money for this purchase at this point will come out of our fund balances and that uh that's where this purchase would be we do have an opportunity if down the road if you remember when I gave a presentation about purchasing this property as part of another plan that we had we would sell bonds for that now again we could take it out of fund balance the money is there for that uh and we could reimburse ourselves in the sale of bonds if we wanted to in the future so you could do that um it is going to take us the reason we're bringing this to the board right now is there there's a couple reasons why we're doing this what I went to a little bit and I know Dr Carol wants to talk about this is looking at the expansion of the ELC program in order to do that we're going to have to vacate here now there is an opportunity we have found to get grant money for the expansion uh there's called a pre uh a preschool Grant expansion grant that will allow you to do that and I know Dr Carroll share some information on that at least what the thoughts are on that of expanding that program but in order to expand that program we have to have more classrooms in order to have more classrooms we need to vacate out of there and that so I can't say that we'd be guaranteed to get the grant money but it would pay for I'm estimating that we're probably going to have to have insurance let's just say we're at fifty five thousand dollars a teacher uh plus some benefits such as 660 000 that's a hundred eighty thousand dollars um and then probably a TA or two that will pay for that the grant will pay for some supplies uh you know things like furniture and that um again we'd have that money in some discretionary funds that I could I could do that uh in vacating this building we would not have to put a lot of construction really none at all because into this building get them the additional classrooms because where Miss Chester's offices that's a classroom anyway where their main office is that's a classroom that's been converted as part of our construction plan our short-term facility plan we're planning on painting and putting in new car new flooring in there anyway that will all be done and that so there's really no additional cost at all they'll be able to pick up another classroom in some of our office area Mr gennados Gennaro's office that we had could become a classroom the actual or board rule that was here the conference could become a classroom too so there's enough areas to do that I think the only construction I would do over here is I've taught I thought about were my office is that butts up to the kitchen area maybe putting the doorway there so a nurse's office could go there with access to you know the next area have it sink and all of that you know that that really would be the only thing that's kind of putting the doorway so so that there would be medical minimal construction here over at the new building facility over at the bank you know we're in there now and it's comfortable right now I think in the future we would talk about maybe putting an addition on over there that will allow us to have a boardroom PD room like room 35 here right now we're utilizing for that but again if we put on addition over there in the future this becomes another classroom then and so um but that's something that in the future you know we can we can talk to the board about uh because I think our goal would be eventually to add a Kitty room boardroom there and then move out of here technology and registration over there and we would we would all fit over there so it would be truly be a central office over there and then ELC would occupy this entire building right the other area we have here is technology storage and we have downstairs at the bank building is two vaults that we can store things in so there's no need to add storage over there for that at all too is the grant a one-time thing or is it reoccurring uh have to find out details of that bill I'm not sure yet Gentile do you know if it's recurring um I think reoccurring it's a competitive yeah it's a competitive Grant so um I believe it's every five or six years we have to reapply but it goes in conjunction uh collaboration with our current preschool for all grants so you'll get a you get it for a period of time and then we have to read it yeah I guess the concern just want to make sure that if we're going to commit to that and we commit to the teachers and the Tas and everybody involved we just wanted a one-year deal and then can't afford we want to make sure that our if we look at a five-year or ten year financial plan where are we at so that we can maintain yeah and I and I agree with that bill that's something that we're looking at I I think uh you know the other thing is I think if we're going to do this we can just start it slowly you know and you know slowly build this as we go excuse me um so I think I think that's the other thing the other thing that happens with preschool is so we have a preschool for all Grant right now now that amount is only about 440 000 that's all we get from the state of the grant for that and then there's and then there's we have a small piece of idea yes twenty thousand it's thirty thousand forty forty so it's really I mean it's a lot of money what kind of budgets and all that so so what's happening with the state is they're postponing reapplying for the 400 and some thousand dollars they're gonna what they calls are going to open up an RFP in a couple more years so that we'll be able to apply for more money there on this expansion grant that if we get it it'll probably be for four or five years but that some of that money can maybe be transferred over into this new RFP Grant this new preschool program that we could get on looking at what you know Governor pritzker is talking about he's talking about if you read you know he's talking about providing preschool for all you know Pre-K I should say for everybody you know now I don't know what that means and that that's a huge ticket on the state but again he's looking at putting more financial resources into that in the future um you know that's his goal you know he's got a democratic glad Congress down there so you know uh you know so far even so good on a lot of the other school funding so again uh you know I think I think starting it slowly is the way to go yeah so is it too early to make that call without knowing that or if we move into the three classrooms I just want to make sure that we can financially sustain that right and still retain everybody that we have here right that's the key retaining all of our employees yeah I I I think we're at a we're at a crossroads right now because if we want to go down this road we've got to start applying for this expansion Grant because it's for next year and I forget when the deadline is when they do that I have a feeling this deadline is and I and I and I think it's important because I know we've talked about it I talked to Mr Brown about it that a lot of the kindergarten kindergarten teachers have have had concerns that kids come in and they're not prepared it's because let's if the number is 400 kindergarteners we only have 200 preschoolers if the idea is obviously to get every kid the opportunity to come through preschool so that when they go into the five elementaries they are prepared absolutely and I'm gonna chime in when doctor needs speak a little bit because this goes hand in hand with the DLC program it does and in some news that that I was able to obtain this hot off the press just a couple hours before this meeting but I would like to share some things yeah I was going to actually continue the discussion under old business but if we're here we can just finish it you know why we're on because it really it's these two things go hand in hand we can't do one without the other and originally again this was about expanding the ELC program um we and talking to my buildings this year we are seeing more and more of our our little ones they're five years old they can come into school and they are not ready post-pandemic children are different than they were pre-pandemic a lot of them families were not sending their children to school in daycare at two and three years old they were keeping them home so a lot of our kids did not have those opportunities to be in those settings and so we're seeing more and more of in all my buildings all my Elementary buildings a lot of little ones that need additional experiences and we do not have the programming for that so really offering a train I call it a transitional kindergarten program for your five-year-olds that were not ready that might give them that extra year would really help um in giving them more play opportunities a lot of our little ones you know they need to play they need to have um you know the kitchen setups they need to experience all those things those are all kind of preschool those are pre-school skills that need to learn the other piece that we're looking at and this was from our parents uh Miss Joseph did a survey probably pre uh covet as well to find out what the needs or the families are the people in our community as you know they are crying for full day preschool programs here now many of our we would not if we would started small and we started with two and just offer just like CSK first come first served we can act 60 slots per se and start small we could offer that full day program we would offer it to the most needy students so the ones that really need to be here longer but it also gives us an opportunity later on as we're looking to recruit and this comes in with our recruiting model is how are we going to recruit staff to want to come and work here if they could have their children here in a full day preschool program so there's a lot of benefits to moving in this direction you know as we look at the cost benefit analysis on this again starting the small seeing you you know seeing how that plays out but very possibly you know the vision would be to turn this building over to completely a daycare a daycare and preschool program for our families as well as our staff we are beginning to look at a program down in Naperville our consultant Gail Wallin has connected us with a consultant and uh Ms Perkins I would be going taking a road trip down there with Miss Chester to take a look at what those programs look like very successful programs down there and I had visited that before when I was in another District doing similar kinds of things and uh Ms Perkins if you want to add into anything else the that I've added here about really the benefits for staff and our families for going in this direction I think the only thing that I would add is rants um if we're able to offer um to get the grant it's all based on weighted criteria and everything that we're saying that we're going to offer uh giving this program to our students who are most at risk so this would be students who are at risk for academic failure we do a lot of screening um at ELC students who are speak a parents who speak a different language students with IEPs these would all be criteria that would push us towards the top of receiving these Grant funds and just like our preschool for all grant that is a competitive grant that we've received all of these years that we've been able to offer the program and so they look at what our population is and what what our community needs are and what our parents are telling us and they await all of those items to say your school your district is in need of these funds currently we serve about 200 students in different programs at ELC and so we would be able to support that more should we get the Grant and be able to expand the program with very minimal think of renovation here very much can you do you know how many kindergarteners we have total in the district yes I can give you account currently rain all kindergartens and just kindergartners in the district right now we're at 254.
this next slide uh represents our education fund cash flow and so I obviously this is all the actuals so Jeff just you are aware once a month we will go over cash flow uh and obviously starting in January we'll build out I'll build out a model and then that will kind of show how our cash will potentially float throughout the year and give us estimates as we build budgets and you know we anticipate things like raises and additional revenues and those types of things you can kind of see how the the cash Moves In and Out of the education fund what what are some of those expenses what are some of those revenue streams and so forth and I'm happy to answer any questions as you know we go throughout the year uh when we're looking at that because you can see different variations from time to time um just based off what we want anything that changes throughout the year or needs arise or or whatever and so I've laid out three years of cash flow so you can take a look at that a lot of this information is just more for your review so I'm not going to go over everything but there's three years laid out of cash flow going back to 2020.
thank you um so an afternoon preschool would be what time did you say it is yep so we would probably go about 12 30 to 3 or something about that so much it's about two half hour session yeah both these split sessions all the same kids so these are halftime programs these are two and a half hour programs this does not give us a pathway for a full day program um and it does seem as though there's some interest um in that and we very much are interested in exploring being able to do that that's part of our district Improvement plan is to be able to study and look at that closely that comes down to of course facilities members of teachers Etc because the ratios that are required preschool programs cannot have more than 15 students in them um so we couldn't take the morning and the afternoon program and make them all full day that would be too many students at one at one so we are looking at that um but it's a little bit more slow going yeah so when I'm talking about the projected name for Special Education that is addressing the needs for students with IEPs um but these are integrated preschool programs so we have a certain number of slots for students with and without IEPs and that's right and it's phenomenal both my children went through to Honda but it's a wonderful program I agree so financially if we were to hire another halftime preschool teacher at this point in time it would be an additional 18 000 through the end of the year in approximately we're just so happy and you have uh we can pull that from school choice or something at this point in time we have a little bit of savings in the budget and I think we could sell your work laughs okay how many students this is for growing yeah how many preschool students do you have now in bro so um Berlin has right now they have two programs both run in the morning there's a three-day program Monday Wednesday Friday and it's a two-day program that runs Tuesday Thursday um and they're both running at or near capacity and capacity is 15 students so one program may have 13 and the other one may have 14 but they're very near are they unique groups of children yes there's an old robot there's so in special education there's some overlapping because some students do need a five-day program um which so sometimes when looking at the data came down a little squarely because it's you know are you having the same student twice um but for the most part in general the rule is that they are two distinct groups so it might be 20 to 25 kids ish maybe 25 yeah yeah 25.6 yeah somewhere somewhere in that range yes yes and I will say that there actually it was new I've been involved with the preschool in this district for five six five six years or so yeah yeah um and I have to say that this was the first year that I actually saw um one or more families opt-in um to both the three and the two-day program to create a five-day program for themselves but those are more the exceptions that they are in the rule it's the trend to watch and I think it's part of what we want to be able to study is also looking at a full day program and a found Day program I think when we take a look at that are we talking about a full day program that runs three days a week where we're talking about a focus program that lives five days a week so many different configurations yeah and can you quantify the interest you've had or share about your afternoon programs I'm wondering what this person could do with their other 0.5 while there's just more inappropriate yeah so um so a couple of interesting points there so what we would be doing with that um extension of that staff member's day and we would be opening up an afternoon program that would run Monday Wednesday Friday afternoon and we will then be able to open those slots up we would be able to make the slots open available to students with special ed services and needs um and then we would be able to open up those slots to families that wanted to tuition their child into the program um and then that running three distinct preschool programs for a teacher requires a certain amount of preparation consultation Etc so they're Tuesday Thursdays would consist of some of their preparation time having a special education license you know if they needed to lend a hand in kindergarten for an hour or so we might have that flexibility as well just out of curiosity and I don't mean to drag this one out but um so the preschool programs are actually um parents um pay a tuition for the preschool programs and they are um right that are like about 1600 for the two-day program close to like 2 000 uh for the Year this is for the year yeah so I was like 150 and you pay on 10 monthly installments but but is there a Sunday question is the same deal regardless of which program yeah and then the important note that um that Nancy was reminded me of is that um the program for some special education students need the program in order to make progress and there is no tuition for those students so there's a lot of there are definitely a lot of layers yeah and if the chair would like would be happy to come back and talk and more detail about how preschool Works entirely I know there's an item on the district Improvement plan to kind of evaluate that that's probably a better time what I wonder about is where's the line between education and daycare and you know parent interest in having a place to put their children full-time five days a week right it doesn't necessarily mean it's the right educational choice for those children I don't know what it is you probably do yeah and the resources too because you know we have a certain amount of states in the building etc etc right and you see a complex topic yeah so the waitlist is interesting um and um we have had a wait list we bring a weightless fairly intensely I was looking at that date this afternoon I'm going to waitlisted 19 just a couple of years ago that lasted all the way to the end of the school year um but as of right now for this current school year there is no wait list um and based on the applications that are coming in for next year um I do not anticipate with us we will need to do a lottery for the applications to make sure we get people into the right person second choice a spot but not this I don't think it will result in one I was so nervous so yeah that was that was made last year's first year my neighbor didn't put it on she was number four and don't be dropped the program it's a great program if you have any questions it was awesome all right uh anything else there are any questions thank you right on time come on chair do you want do you want to sit up next to me so my name is lisaquera I am the um science Technology and Engineering Department chairs transportation is the math department chair at Toronto and I do have to relay apologies for Peter Doherty he cannot attend today um as he is not feeling well he is listening now so I told him he's very nervous um and um I am going to be the voice of kahanto this evening so I'm hoping um to do everyone Justice um for the reports um to make sure of my accuracy is here and I hope okay um so so everybody knows it um and so I'm gonna move around and I apologize for the viewers at home but um I don't um it doesn't work um so um so in introductions again um Lisa Clara um and so I'm here to present um all three um Ela math and um science MCAS uh results um for Toronto grades 6 through 12 and we'll break it down so we're going to be doing that first um and I um I'm wearing new glasses and so I actually have to step back okay I apologize you're fine you're fine um Okay so the good news is is that our students and staff should be congratulated for their achievement um at the 10th grade level and at really at all levels I'm considering um you know the challenges that we've faced over the past few years um this is snapshot of achievement for 10th grade math um for um 2022 at the top here and this is over time so you can see just briefly by the colors we're looking at blue and green um exceeding and meeting expectations for the school and the district um does far outweigh the average for the state and I just to remind everybody and this will move forward throughout the presentation um 2019 um was I had to ask the kids today I'm like what was happening so um 2019 was a normal year and 2020 um that is when covet hit and when all of the mcats were paused um 2021 was our hybrid year um 2022 was our um in this year and you can you can see we're really back um to essentially achievement levels that are equivalent to um pre-covet um what is changing I think we have to recognize as a district that what is changing is our school population um and um it is a wonderful um amazing opportunity to meet so many different students but we have to recognize we have a changing population we have a change in population we have increased number of Ells we have increased numbers of low socioeconomics students are increased in high needs students um it's it's just increasing um and um and those are challenges that we all need to face and um and we need to retool and we need to make sure that those students are being supported um in an understanding how to do that um the best way possible uh this is a scatter plot of achievement um for meeting or exceeding um um expectations and growth um the median or the average um student growth percentile for Tonto this is used to compare an individual District's growth and achievement with other districts so um you can see that um this is asked Mrs Hutto Green tejanto in this state um so we are above and beyond we are at um 71 for um the main student growth percentile and um 83 um meeting or exceeding expectations so we really this is a really uh very valuable uh um graphic for both um Ela and math because student growth can be calculated this is not something that happens um in science because is a snapshot of what happens oh yes yes [Music] so the chart is normalized around the state's performances is that correct it's moved around so specifically so the state is oh no no no that is not no one is not this this is actually scores average scores so so the average taken for the 302 districts that you know comprise um the Massachusetts state school system um this is this is where it lies it lands exactly on 55. it does what the 10th grade so it does slides and I apologize so this curriculum analysis is important as Educators for to look at um you know questions the test item analysis in comparison to um the state um and the state average and how test items were answered so um this line is how to Hanto um achieved in each of the test items in compared to the state and we are above all of um you know this the scores for the state um except for one item so that is incredibly important information for us because we then look at we take a deep dive into each item and we look at content or is it question type if that's really valuable and in this case it was question type um you know and so that's important because then we can help students um master that type of question grade 10 highlights to Hunter is ranked fourth in the state in that student growth percentile in mathematics on the 2022 exam 84 percent of the hunter students are exceeding or meeting expectations in mathematics so 65 out of the 78 students so that's really something um to be proud of our students um for that type of achievement and a presentation that Peter um restority um here for that presentation understanding the goal posts are changing um so it is harder to meet these standards um the state is you know changing the guidelines and change changing this scoring for these tests so this is eighth grade um again um we see that our school and District um is meeting and exceeding expectations at a higher rate than at the state level we see um you know this they're not the same it really is really about the same type of reflecting the same type of data um we're essentially back to um our pre-covered um achievement rates and this is a scatter plot for eighth grade um and you can see that this is no longer 50 50.
and the one more thing is if if it's a group of let's say it's a group of um people who don't like if they did it as a member of the school staff they could use the school's 501c3 status but if it was a group of people maybe parents who didn't weren't part of a non-profit they could find a non-profit to serve as their fiscal sponsor and if anyone that wants me to explain what that is I can or Betty Canton um schools that are applied or been received received anything so I'm wondering if there's just a not aware of it well last year there was an application that wasn't successful that related to putting up a mural at CIS but it was we didn't feel that it was specific enough we didn't know what the mural was going to it would like show or what the purpose we did it just felt like we needed more information and that's it's really important that people provide it you know like answer any particular any questions people might have thank you that's helpful to know yeah that's great Teresa thank you so much um Kiera is our communications director we'll talk about how we can maybe get this more circulated in the in the school community and I'm sure Donna has a couple ideas already on where we might knock on your door so and we do have um things you could put on social that we can send to you sure so would I find your contact with information on the Canton Board of Ed website like what the process is so you get so many applications in how do you decide who gets what's the process like okay what we're trying to do is we're trying to get a cross-section of the community um give money to the cross section so we want to try to get young people and old people and people in between we want to try to get something that relates to sports and the Arts and maybe Economic Development maybe Recreation maybe environment you know we try we want to try to cover as many facets of the community diversity and equity and inclusion you know great thank you thank you Teresa thanks for coming we we have your uh we also have your immediate release yeah I just sent that well that's great in case you need it some details in case I couldn't remember the exactly nice to see you there's the informational meeting except February 9th it's it's at the community center room C and we're going to have cake Gypsy cupcakes should have started with that honey Theresa thank you so much for being here you've always been so supportive of our school district even though your kids have grown up and are no longer in our district thank you for all that you do for camping oh it's greatly appreciated thank you I I'm still really care about the school district trying children benefited as to hundreds of other kids and definitely we want to keep supporting the schools any way cheaper than you can thank you thank you thank you and I said because ice cream place used to be they're gonna open up a coffee shop in cupcakes yes Republican form thank you very much so we are fortunate tonight to have our uh our head of School counseling and guidance uh David schwaggers here along with the Pitbull is to support her and uh if you want to come to the front we have your presentation and I think we can pull it off we just lost internet Viber and um able to am I able to uh are we able to continue yeah so twice a year uh we love having Mrs schwager come and talk to us about uh what the counseling department is working on here in Canton because she and Mike Fury and Jennifer theorados in the high school along with Amy brindle at the middle school and Lynn Kaufman at CIS are always working on initiatives that really support our students so it's great to have you here and we look forward to hearing about all that's happening in the counseling department thank you I have two hours right absolutely okay uh no I'm so glad um that there was a room on the agenda because I've not since really had a pandemic um as other priorities took to Prestons really I haven't had an opportunity to kind of catch up and talk with the board and you know a lot is um sort of staying the same and and and shifting and we've had to Pivot a lot and so I think timing is really great to give you some updates we can go ahead and move on to that first slide um and in talking with Mr Capo about you know what are areas of focus for us there we go um you know it's a it's a lot of bullets but what we realized was it might make sense to give a little bit of background about what School counseling is really about and for some of you this could be a little bit repetitive knowledge that you might already have um but some of you uh might not have this so it seemed worthwhile to talk a little bit about um our Back to Basics what are our Focus areas so we really are sort of First Responders in the building in times of need and in times of Crisis large and small that's a primary role that we play as school counselors um and we collaborate along with particularly at the high school of course that would be our school psychologist and social worker to serve student needs individual needs and to provide responsive services and that can be you know something like managing getting through a really difficult or traumatic time or it can be just a student that's having really really rough day so we collaborate together on that um where we sort of differ or vary in our responsibilities from the other people Personnel Services um Personnel like a school psychologist or a social worker is that school counselors serve all students in the district so that really is what we must do so we have caseloads that Encompass our entire School building and when a student's needs start to grow beyond our ability to meet all of the needs of everyone on the caseload is where we collaborate and ask for help and support and and team with our partners um and so we work under a set of Standards just like academic just like our curricular folks do um and you can see our basic responsibilities up there they're exactly what you would expect them to be they're things I've already mentioned but really we are that sort of view of the whole picture and the whole student um from an academic perspective a social perspective and eventually what's their personal plan their career and their college plan so what have we been doing so that's just a little glance at our fall curriculum so we'd like to jump into really our our outgoing and our incoming is sort of how I like to put it freshman transition is a focus for our curricular areas in the fall and we really want to jump right on in with um meetings with our students individually as well as in classroom settings to talk about what how's high school different from middle school how does it look different we try to embed rather than sort of teach social emotional learning we want it to be organic we want it to grow and be embedded in all of the curriculum that we do so there's always a component that has to do with particularly in ninth grade for example it's about self-awareness who am I that's what kids need to first start to understand who Am I who am I in relationship to others how do I understand others how do I work with others and all of these of course are parts of the vision of The Graduate we're also working heavily heavily with our seniors and as you'll know from your packet we'll talk a little bit more about what are going to be brought to um they have been up to so it's it's hot and heavy with college applications and it's support across the board um particularly for those students that might be feeling really uncertainly oftensive parents these are the students and parents we want to talk to the most um the students that are feeling uncertain in a small community that feels very focused in one area and we have our students who might feel like they're looking for a different pathway so we're very committed to making sure that we're having individual meetings with every single senior by about the second week of October um grade 11 we've sort of launched if you've seen the kinds of things that we've been doing we had two programs at Connecticut College and Career Pathways program um to start to sort of start to bring everybody to the Baseline of oh my gosh is that now and already did you kind of get past that anxiety I like to have a lot of questions about with students and parents um I like to talk about scaling on a scale of one to ten how anxious are you about what's to come regardless of whether that's about um you know being uncertain about your path having no idea being afraid about applying to competitive colleges and not getting in all of that kind of thing and I typically say to students you know a zero to three means you have to wake up and join the party and eight to ten is not where we want you to be in we want you to you might have to live in an eight to ten world of anxiety on occasion and we can help you cope with that but we really want you somewhere sort of in the middle because we can work and collaborate on all of these tests together um grade 10 we always worry about the sophomores in School counseling what about those 10th graders they're not finishing anything they're not starting anything they're not brand new what about them so we made a concerted effort beginning about two years ago to say we need to see every single one of these sophomores before semester-wise out as well to find out how it's really going and our individual meetings take a lot of time but they bear great fruit we really feel that connections that we make sitting with kids um and just saying how's it really going help us to identify um you know those students who might have a need so we started for example this year actually last year we embedded a new question in our freshman survey that all the students do and it really was drawn right from the school climate surveys do you feel connected to an adult in this building um how connected to you feel somewhat a little not at all and we're looking at that data right away as soon as we finish those and we're grabbing these kids and those become the students that we're going to see first to connect with so we become more and more data driven in the work that we do all the time um what else have we done we've had our tungsten's Northwestern application day we think I've talked about the other things um our seniors parent night and our college fair came back we were thrilled about that that's really not something that uh Canton works on a loan that's a collaboration among Hartford area schools the Consortium a lot of people work really really hard to organize and coordinate hundreds of colleges seeing high schools attending fairs over a crazy week-long period and it was gone for a couple of years and it was really exciting to have it back and to have it in our in our gym this fall so that was really awesome that's what we've really been up to we're going ahead here everyone so of course I wanted to give you a little bit of information about what we're seeing when we survey our students and talk to our students about their social and emotional health and this has been this is always an area of concern and it's certainly been underscored over the past couple of years um so I wanted to talk a little bit again about the surveys that we do so we do these periodically and these are strictly School counseling surveys for information that helps Drive our curriculum and our work and that we can respond to so some of the things that they sort of say perennially that you can see there is you know they really want help with anxiety that's drawn from our senior exit survey and it's we're always in a little bit of this push-pull and anybody who's sitting here there's a parent which is many of you if not all of you understand what it's like when your kids are growing up you know they need you they know they need you they don't want to admit you but they need you and so students will say to us we really need help with anxiety we really need help in this way but they can tend to be naturally resistant to asking foreign so what do we do we take that knowledge and we just keep trying to build more and more opportunities that are both educational they're informative they're Rapport building they are opportunities for connection that aim to make them feel more and more comfortable so when you look at the fine print that's down on the bottom so you might look at it and I even have to get a little bit closer to see it on on the screen here so something that we're really pretty excited about is I started implementing the survey here um when I joined the district almost seven years ago and it was something I just always done in previous schools and I was really surprised to find 24 only 24 of our students at that point felt comfortable talking with counselors we're pretty happy at a 53 and I gave you the context for it so that you would understand that 53 is pretty pretty good among kids who say I don't ever want to talk to them um and so that is always what we're always working on in any High School is how do we help students to feel as comfortable as possible discussing things with us sometimes it's family pressure too it's a sense that school isn't your place for school and not a place to discuss and so we do what we can to try to sort of work through that and help students to see and families to see that even if we're just talking about college or a future career path or academics what are the things that help your student to feel successful and how do we um how do we have our doors open wide enough for them to feel that they can walk through so really happy that we feel that we're making progress over time in that area I often hear Mr people talk about growth over time um same thing with academic issues well thankfully you know they're pretty comfortable coming to speak with us and and we provide a lot of support in that area so it's this identification and the use of the data that we keep trying to grow and respond to we're fortunate that we have terrific support as a counseling team I've had great support from Mr Case I've had great support from Mr de pippo and Dr Kidwell on the school level certainly for Mr Bishop um superintendent distribution assistant superintendent Mr Bishop who's building more and more Tech pieces that he's brought in because he understands that we need those systems and that technology that help drive us getting the information that we need and lay the foundation so that we can provide students what they need um so everything that we do is with an intention and there's been a lot of pimping in it we continue to Pivot and we continue to try to grow and to be responsive I'm gonna go ahead and jump ahead and definitely about five more minutes yep and we are on I think I'm saying the last one so typically I'm asked what do the seniors do um and there it is uh so here's what the teenagers do so what's been changing a little bit of a shift so everybody now realizes knows and understands that we've got three Community College and not only do we have free Community College in Connecticut and I don't think it's going away people often ask me that in fact our state is probably a little bit late to the party with that so I think it's here to stay and we have more and more students who are saying you know what it's hard to turn down free and I'm not sure exactly what I want to do so um our role is always to be looking out for the students best interests so we are finding that our workshops to help students apply and the applications are now free have become more and more successful the numbers are even higher we have about 79 I think um we're looking at for this coming class looking like they're looking at two or four-year College we've seen a little bit of shifting on small percentage points every High School seeing it everybody's feeling it I think if there's some lemonade to be made out of the lemons of the pandemic it's allowed a freedom I think among families to say um you know is this my pathway do I need to follow a certain pathway because that's what everybody else has always been doing and so therefore it's what's right for me um and I think that the pandemic era shook it up enough in a way that's helping students and families to maybe have a stronger consideration about things like academic fit Financial fit Readiness and those sorts of things so that students are more likely to stick and stay in a pathway because it's not about them going it's about persistence in the end right we want persistence so we want our students um we want them to exemplify the vision of The Graduate and then be able to feel that they're going to be strong and successful in the programs that they choose and so this is what they say about you know their choices where where they were what they were influenced by uh we tell parents all the time that they are still still the number one influencers of their students and just some trends that we're seeing are on the right side so lots and lots of students are interested in business courses that hear it often um so I noted that pre-health of course is always something students are interested in although they often shift from pre-med once they're in it um and they're certainly looking more and more for credit on the high school level in high schools everywhere in our state and there's more opportunity for that Statewide than there used to be um so that can lead us to my final slide which is really that things are changing in terms of what's available for students more than they ever have so we now have Connecticut now has Auto admission programs for students who have um an unweighted grade point average is determined by a state measure um they're automatically admitted to certain colleges and don't have to pay an application fee and don't have to do a lot of extra work to apply um the community college system is now under a single umbrella so our community colleges for example tungsten continues to build their manufacturing center which is uh was a little bit on hold but is now um growing the Northwestern Connecticut Community College for example has had some sort of Hallmark programs and things like um they've got a vet tech program they've had for a long time Middlesex also does different community colleges around the state have sort of specialty areas but what's now different is they're all part of the cscu which we think is an unfortunate name because it sounds too much like CCSU and the logos similar um so it's tripping and my tongue continues to trip over um but they're all under a single umbrella so now a student can be a Tunxis Community College Student but they can take that same English class that the other kid has to take at Middlesex online for example and just be concentrating on certain courses within the actual physical institution so there's a lot more flexibility the pathways are much cleaner straight on into UConn as well as any of the other State University Systems it's super super exciting they're working out glitches in the logistics of it but it is it's pretty thrilling really because I've seen our neighboring states have something like this um more fully fleshed out and operational for decades really in New York and for quite some time throughout New York State quite some time in Massachusetts so seeing this come to fruition in Connecticut is exciting it also creates more opportunities for potential future project collaboration credit collaboration in terms of what can happen on our high school level those are the kinds of things I get really excited about and talk to Mr Bishop about or Mr pimple about who know that I have 30 new ideas every day and we can't do them all but I am excited so lots and lots of exciting opportunities and I think we all collectively as a community and as Community Schools and the state need for our students to know and to see their wonderful opportunities for our kids to grow here in Connecticut to be employed here to stay here to live here and seeing more and more of those possibilities becoming real in terms of what's available for kids so we're excited about that and look forward to working on that excellent yeah so that's a lot of words in a short period of time and I'm happy to answer questions so you're busy we are busy what's your staff like what do you have for staff well they're awesome I mean what do you have so we have certain other counselor we have three counselors um so as director I carry a smaller caseload and then Mr fearing this is theodorado split the the remainder of the students among the two of them so in terms of as a School counseling team we carry the case loads of the 500-ish uh for Canton High School is it a good ratio I mean it works I would say that's a really great question and one I've been thinking about a lot lately it is it is but I think how we determine and Define ratio is going to start to shift it used to just be an easy what's your number now it's relative to what is the need of the number so you have to have Apples to Apples so in Houston Texas where we have case loads of 400 to 1 we could never imagine such a thing so here in Canton our caseloads sit right where they should theoretically compare to peer schools I think the challenge that we are facing is that in terms of that general population the needs and the need for more regular individual counseling is rising so the need of the population is rising so I'd like to open up the questions to the board but I want to ask Mr depipo if you wanted to make any comments or any highlight any points sure thank you for uh offering that to me I uh I don't know if that had enough to um I just um create a buzz around how rehearse happens and how reassurance that you know I'm thinking reflecting when she's going through everything she she brings forward the the ten years I've been here and the first three or four years we had none of these programs we had none of the parent opportunities that we had we had none of the communications that we have um none of the established protocols and process pieces she has a great team that has stuck and stayed with us for over five years and as a result they have a great Synergy amongst them um I can also say sort of as a parent of three students who've kind of gone through the the game of high school kind of getting demand here to know and compare a little bit to how prepared our students are into what they're exposed to and the opportunities that they have to you know connect independently or through programming what parents have to connect to through programming what information fiscally um you know process pieces or College and Career and readiness you know is outstanding so I just want to make sure you know that you heard that from from you know myself and then in addition I think um what that didn't talk about today because of the time is just how um influential she is in our in our bigger picture that is she has a a ton of resources in the state and and with other counselors she goes to Statewide meetings and has counseling groups and she brings tons of ideas and thoughts back um it pushes all of us to be thinking forward which we need to be doing in terms of curriculum options you know different types of coursework to to prepare as she's speaking to she makes um great connectivity between the policy that's been going on what we need to do as a high school so she's a great days are in that one so I just want there's so much to talk about today I'll give you the give you the Baseline because I think with the newer board it was good for you to know and understand some of the basic stuff that's happening today but I do feel like we as a community are very fortunate and I think our students are very fortunate because of the video I agree just listening to this is very exciting so open up the Boardman any questions then and I have a question and we I don't know if it's possible to find out what happens once they leave yeah it will it actually is Believe It or Not the technology exists so sort of that stat that follows them um there's a program I don't know if you have a program that talks about persistence I know there's a state report that that is available to the public um that you can click on and it tells us so their track students are being tracked by their I'm also I'm almost hesitant to say it out loud but no secret I think by their student their static number their ID number in terms of that number follows them into college and that persistence measure when I looked at the State website sometime this fall I feel like it's firstly it's not all the way up to date and the last one that I saw I think only goes through their first year persistence do they persist through one year so a lot of the information that I sometimes have is and it feels anecdotal in a in a community as small as Canton anecdotes can add up to a lot but the anecdotes are things like how many kids are asking us for transfer transcripts how many kids are calling us sometimes a little too many you know so I worry a little bit about how do we help students to make right choices out of the gate right choices that are right for them because none of us want to see our students in debt and and those kinds of things so um yeah you're right I did try to pack a lot into a short time but you know give a lot of credit to the counselors they're Innovative they're great I do like to think that we've created a Synergy um they we would not have a collaboration that we do with finance and economics um in which students actually have to do work for us for credit which we think is so cool because most of the stuff we just sort of have to bribe them to do well I'm not writing a letter of recommendation if you don't have your senior meeting oh okay um so my theory for example gets credit for that for having the idea to have that collaboration Mike and Jen just started a new group um just last week because they picked up on through the Freshman meetings that I was talking about um a trend toward particularly um young female students in in the Freshman Class who are highly driven and highly anxious about brains so they've just launched a lunch bunch and we're gonna see how that goes and it's based on the Yale Happiness Project so we're using some resources from that to sort of talk about you need to make it sort of a low-key you know let's watch this and learn a little and hey what do you think about this what do you think about that so he's just launched Mike and Jen just launched that a week ago so we're trying to be as responsive as we can but so much credit goes to having brain counselors to collapse with as well as a great social worker and school psychologist right in the whole state marriage and collaborate with too um so I really think it's just it's it's it is synergy it's it's when you've got lots of people with different ideas and different backgrounds who who love kids are passionate about what we do and want to work together um this generates the ideas please give your team and and your secretary out front I forgot her name and Demon and yeah our gratitude I know Ann did a lot for that college fair yeah she sure did she gets the credit so we have the board let them know that we're we're all very appreciative of what they do and it's very important absolutely absolutely I appreciate take the time this evening any other questions oh sure um thank you I uh you know how you mentioned like probably 2017 to 2020 like that that increased my things felt more comfortable like yeah two quick two or three quick questions you could be questions sure sure is fun I'll try sure and one was Luke the one that Lou always asks but what do you think has helped increase that comfortableness like what do you think you attribute that to me I think we just have gotten out there and when I came we had a freshman experiential set of lessons that happened once per year so we have a curriculum we have prescribed what we call Guaranteed experiences in sort of counseling lingo guaranteed experiences you must meet with your counselor you must um and so we We Make It Happen by prescribing the things right the things that we do and we hope that we as trained counselors we hope that we then bring to that inability to help kids build some rapport with us and then the second part was the anxiety we keep hearing that everywhere even for the younger students in the middle school now and we mentioned again the Freshman that agrees like Lou this is usually your question like what two or three things what like is there are there things that you know of or you've thought of maybe you've talked to the gym about but like I don't know that would help support you're yeah all of you like what are but really in theory helps the students like what are some things that at the high school level really would help them they don't have that yeah well you know that's hard because it to look for a tangible answer for you one thing I can say is that we have to normalize anxiety to a certain degree and we have to have a collective understanding um about the difference between our responsiveness our compassion and our training as Educators and counselors to help students to understand their individual strengths so when a student comes and is saying I'm really afraid you know an upperclassman I'm really afraid of public speaking and I'm not going to go to this class anymore and wants to go right to that I'm not going to go to class and I might not come to school and that's going to be a pattern it's about helping to understand where the anxiety is driven from what level the anxiety is to normalize that feeling unprepared and feeling nervous about public speaking is a completely um appropriate feeling and to build tools towards success so part of it I think a bigger chunk of it um that I think would be important if we had all of the time space and ability for example a space to have workshops you know for a quarter for each grade that would be sort of the dream scenario where once a week counseling is running a class so we don't have that kind of a structure available at this time um and then we're sort of hitting it all the time but a big piece of it is helping the kids to understand well what really is normal normal typical what's a typical experience and I think that's vitally important because when we over accommodate a student emotion that we can do is build a sense of cannot do instead of a sense of but you can and we're going to help you learn how so I don't know if that's answering you exactly or directly but I think a big piece of it is helping students collectively and the community to understand how we help kids because right now there is a lot of escalated everything can feel big and huge and so where's the balance between helping students to understand themselves and to honor and respect that that is the way they feel while also trying to help them learn and understand greater context around it and gain strengths indeed to collaborate with counselors from the other schools like I didn't know we all work in the schools work in isolation or do they all work together do you talk to the middle school counselors about the same yeah so you know I'd love for us to have kind of a more structured sort of time together I think that's a good that's great goal to get to but we do the short answer is yes we check in with each other we mostly check in mostly with Amy but I check in with Lynn on his dis level as well about Trends etc etc you know what's happening um we definitely directly have programs in place in which we collaborate with the outgoing and the incoming structured meetings with Personnel at the other schools as kids move up and through to discuss our students that have identified needs students that might sometimes the most important and fruitful meetings are students that don't have an identified need but the school counselor is going to sit with the counselor in confidence who's going to have the student on their caseload and say I want you to know about so and so here's something I just want to get to Cindy's question done yeah thanks um so I wanted to say thank you for all the you and the guidance Department to do for our kids I have a freshman and a junior at school yeah so I do appreciate that um my question is about the percentage for the outcome so after high school and I know that you talked about likes new programs and incentives and that sort of thing and how can you had enough time with these programs to see um an impact on those percentages for example the four-year college or the two-year College um to be honest I I would have thought that number would be higher right yeah so I'm not surprised by that so it's been the highest it's been is about 84 yeah that's the highest that is a year well for the for the four years yeah um and it did take a long it took a little bit of a dip we had more students take a gap year yeah particularly in the class of 20 and 2021 we also had students there was a group of students that we struggled to capture on our survey and we figured out a way to make sure that that wouldn't happen again who gave us sort of non-answers yeah and that had never happened before and we had to sort of chase them down and figure out what does what does this non answer mean without getting too technical into you know the inner gods of the survey um I would not be surprised to see the the directive for your number make a corresponding shift to the availability of free college for two years and and that would be expected um that it makes sense it sort of makes sense when families are staring down hard choices of you know I'm hearing a lot about eggs this week are we not hearing about eggs much less um you know 70 000 is no longer an unusual number for a private college yeah there's some that are over 80 now um and a vast a majority of those of for your privates are in the 60 in the range of the 60s but you know the program you know is college career Readiness you know college careers and the arc yeah 85 Navy and now it's closer to 80 but I think you know when we talk about that last fight there's a lot of the program itself that that actually talked about was bringing like we we have a automatic admissions day when it comes just comes to our school and sits with it which she's created like you know so we have 20 students before they walk out the door they've already have an application in when they use it might not have to be tomorrow but it's there and they have a planet I think what we've done is sort of foster Pathways for kids and families to think differently maybe than five years ago because of what is available to them and then there's a strong reality of the costs and things like that so I think there's a measurement that that doesn't necessarily look at say Canton schools and say oh what's going on with you know unless your mother in fact it's actually more about better education and better understanding and better thinking I think than a few years ago and I think that's where you see maybe lowering that number it makes more sense well yeah and I would say those kinds of programs are that kind of what I call a small dip that's too soon to call a trend I think we have to see what happens is the same thing that I'm seeing in our our neighboring districts right more Gap years more I don't know what I want to do more I can't pay for it and more I'm going to do two years well in the 20 20 school year like that doesn't surprise me yeah yeah and that shifted yeah and I I that that really sort of carried a bit because I think what we all see and feel collectively as a society is you know that there has been maybe maybe 20 20 periods feeling different but that sort of post-pandemic malaise if you will yeah regardless of what it is whether it's what whether or not you get your laundry done as often as you used to you know not to sort of put too broad a point on it but um you know I think we've all felt that the teachers and felt that kids have felt that families have felt it um and so life's just it's a bit hard and people are looking to get back to that sense of normalcy mental tell us a question sure you've got an order No Yeah by any means no this should be it but you know I think it's great and you know mentions 84 is our highest dollars so the colleges go but yeah I would think that the technical education would be higher because there's a lot of kids that now I mean the pressure to go to college yes is not as great as if you're gonna go I mean my God my son-in-law is an electrician yeah and I wish I was making him money he was making you know sorry um so what do we do about that reaching to the fire so I I love to hear you hear you ask the question so the hardest thing that that we're sort of against in helping our students to understand those possibilities is it cultural and societal Norm that's really big and really Beyond so when we have something occur like an admissions Scandal um a few years ago happening right before the pandemic that sort of says it all right um it's a societal Norm that there is one pathway and this is best and oh by the way if you're smart it's going to be this pathway when the numbers of those getting into Harbors this team on you know a pin compared to the applications so it's hard for families sometimes has been hard in districts like these to buy into the idea that there are other pathways um because of the focus on that they see in the media and in society but you must be able to see a child Yeah by 10th grade and say forgive the term but maybe you're not College material please put out for that but you are so great down in shop or you're down doing this and you know have you thought about this this and this right well we right and and we I I just would want to say that of course um we never want we want doors open for kids you want kids to succeed right and when you're a school counselor so everybody has their story in their in their professional career of The Stereotype when your school counselor can be my counselor told me 30 years ago that I was good for who's heard it right that I could never succeed in anything so we want our students doors to be open yeah and so it's a fine line and then that sort of gets to the kinds of programs that are not as big and Hefty in high schools everywhere anymore are those programs that validate those kinds of things why wouldn't you do a career day that if you have your college fair day why wouldn't you do a technical school in Fair day I would love to do it have you read my mind that's also on the list so it's it's time space and opportunity absolutely time space and opportunity well if we can help you with that if you need support we've talked about Dr tonight but uh yeah I'd love to see something like that because I want every child to feel like they succeed absolutely and I want them to have options and I want to thank you thank you for your time and it's very gracious thank you thank you um if you have any further questions on anything please feel free to reach out and thanks for your time thank you for your knowledge for being a leader in the state which is why we are a lighthouse District and you're like the Energizer Bunny always having us always having no no always having an Innovative idea so we appreciate you thank you for that Mr case I appreciate that thank you okay great great report Mr dipepo thank you thanks for coming here okay let's uh let's move along then um Amazing Story assistant superintendent Bishop you're wrong um thank you everyone uh it's great to be able to speak with you tonight I've got three buckets that I want to be able to speak to you uh on tonight uh Safety and Security uh teaching and learning and then um continuing our our Communications from Safety and Security uh I spoke with you prior to the break about the request for proposals coming out for our new camera systems we had two folks or two organizations come in to be able to do our walkthrough with us we're expecting that the actual proposals will come into us at the end of this month and we'll be doing uh a final review of that and then we'll be able to actualize that that element for us we're really excited about that um continuing in that direction uh with Safety and Security uh we met Sean Paul and I are a security director met with Kim uh Myers um she is the Regional School Safety coordinator uh who works with Western Connecticut State University University and as a part of our rest so what's happening right now which is really really neat is our state has started to realize that the safe School climate legislation that they have in place um it's not just about safety and it's not just about climate those two things have to be able to merge together and they have to be married together a bit um and so this woman is fantastic she she actually grew up going cheaper Sierra she grew up in Simsbury well steeped in school safety but also understanding um how to be able to work well with the individual School populations and provide opportunities for continued hardiness and support she was one of the first people who ranged out to us after the tragic passing of our students recently and she's been a wonderful thought partner with us some of the work that she's going to do with us moving forward is some Consulting around some of our safety practices and protocols um she's also going to come in and do and I shared this with the youth Service Bureau last night but she's going to come in and in our multi disciplinary teams where sometimes our our police will come and be able to work with us she's going to do some continued Burpa training with our with our folks that they everybody knows where we sit at the table and how we how we uh communicate with that so she's a fantastic resource to be able to work with um and um from another perspective with this a a piece that I think our community needs to know we did send out coven tests which we received from the state um we have received another uh bundle of them in August we sent those out prior to the break because we we had a number of them we wanted to make sure that they were operationalized that people had access to them um those come up for disposal by February 1st we're now out of those um out of those tests that the state has provided for us we're going to be communicating to our families just to remind them that although we don't have those to continue to provide right now they still have the opportunity to be able to reach out to the to the government to the federal government before tests that there are multiple free testing clinics that are still available throughout Connecticut and obviously through through their doctors or other things as well um but those are a couple things from Safety and Security any questions for me on that okay um from teaching and learning the camp Fair glad to be able to hear that that has been hit on several times here um the main thing that I want to be able to share with you is the continued Saga of the reading legislation um and I want to share some good news with you um as we continue to to refine our plan for uh a proposed waiver to the state to be able to review what we uh what we have internally in our program and what we have for data for it we reached out and had an outstanding conversation with Dr Melissa eke who is the the overseer of the uh The Literacy Center for the state so she has been a great thought partner over the past couple weeks working directly with us to be able to support our efforts with that we continue to work directly with our crack uh Regional uh service Collective and area districts uh with the meeting coming up this week and next week and another on the 26th as we would be able to refine our applications to the state for this tedious process but we feel like we're in a a much better situation I want to share a lot of gratitude to Kathy Watson and Chris Woods who have done a phenomenal job the the effort that we that you all have um committed to by being able to have two outstanding specialists at our Primary School have helped us to be in a really good situation better than a lot of districts to be able to to work through this um and then finally I appreciate the superintendent bringing up uh our meeting on February 1st and also just to be able to cast out the vision of the anxious child as we we hear again these are important things for us to be able to be aware of Justine Ginsburg will be working with us on March 8th to be able to have that presentation as well so February 1st and March February 1st for uh social media in the minds of our children and a very interesting study just coming out about uh social media over the past three years so that'll be an exciting one to be able to have a conversation for and then March 8th on for the NS China any questions for me you guys online okay thank you John thank you I'm really quick all right um first up is just an FYI that's during the finance committee Uh Kevin and I reviewed the proposed uh continuous Improvement plan yes I'm sorry oh my God it's not a call always look in the continuously include that's true absolutely the capital Improvement plan uh so uh that's something we'll be working on and we'll be uh uh you'll see it again um and uh we will be submitting that in February so um it's just a draft that you have in your packet so um we're working on it the other thing uh is that I also during the finance committee reviewed the financials that you have in front of you uh so you'll see um the demo along with several Financial reports uh the Food Service report is last in your packet which you haven't seen in a while um but um I'm not going to go into the detail of that that I did with the finance committee um and the reason being is first of all Donna did a great job updating the finance company but we're just halfway into our you know so we can't really get our arms around a lot of things and there's nothing to really get too overly concerned about and it's like we're not getting into too much detail with the board tonight right exactly it's you know and we did you'll see on there that one of the reasons that we're uh not uh too worried right now uh is that we also calculated our anticipated reimbursement from uh or uh correct from Capital Region education Council and our very conservative view of our reimbursement for excess costs so that's going to offset a lot of these costs that you're going to see negative on your variance report so the bottom line is is uh you know not not to worry [Music] uh I asked Scott and I said what's keeping you up at night and she said nothing right now so we're good [Music] the audit the audit was completed uh at the end of December uh and although I don't have the formal report uh there were no findings or uh anything anything outlined exactly that wrote that report will come to the board you all get a copy and we'll accept the report okay so that was that was good news of course it's only a couple months when we start the next daughter so any questions for Donna nope you're good just so when are we discussing these probably in the 24th the finance committee will take one more shake at it they're gonna they're gonna prioritize it they're going to come back to us there's some things that are going to probably filter out and then under 24th we'll take a look okay that's just to give you where we're starting if there's if there's something that's not on that list that's on your mind right please email dot that's for everybody it just has to be in excess of ten thousand dollars that that's going to get approached necessary but okay um and then just key takeaways thank you Donna for being brief tonight uh but just key takeaways um our special ed budget um shows that it's a deficit uh but as Donna mentioned we expect to get four hundred thousand dollars from the city of Hartford because we middle Hartford for the services for our students who are part of the choice program and also we're expecting at a 65 rate a conservative rate with 600 000.
by 2016 he was hired as the night custodian at Foothill Middle School and he transitioned to hot as head custodian last spring and has been with us since in a short period of time Patrick has made a very big impact all around the Hodge campus and all staff has noticed our school is one of the cleanest if not the cleanest School in our district thanks to the hard work of Patrick he takes time while completing his duties on a daily basis but not only does Patrick complete his duties as a sign he is an excellent Communicator collaborator and critical thinking well how do I know this you ask when Patrick notices an area on campus that needs extra attention he is quick to let me know about it but not only does he let me know about it he provides Solutions or we have a conversation that leads to a solution at the end of the day I know our campus is in good hands because of Patrick our teachers and staff have expressed much gratitude for the work Patrick does when something needs to be tended to during the day Patrick is right there when there is an accident in one of our Kinder classrooms we call Patrick if our friendly neighborhood coyote is on campus Patrick is your guy Patrick is always just a radio call away to keep our classrooms and school campus looking their very best Patrick it is for all of these reasons that we at Hodge have chosen you to be our classified employee of the year and on behalf of the Hodge community and myself I thank you for your dedication to our school congratulations thank you foreign Board of Education members cabinet and attendees I am Diana Rojas the proud principal of Charles H Lee Elementary School and I along with entirely staff parents and students are honored honored to recognize Mrs Dolores castrejon as our classified employee of the year people Mrs custom or Mrs C as we all dearly call her has served the children of Charles H Lee Elementary School for 26 years she's well respected and a beloved member of our school Community she has worked at Lee for so many years and her impact is so great that current parents that attended our school when they were in elementary school are grateful that she's still here to share the same love and care for the for their children as they receive when they were Lee Lions themselves dedication positive attitude patience and caring demeanor are her strongest strengths as well as an RSP instructional Aid and noon supervisor Mrs C has excellent rapport with students she has a very special nurturing and enduring way about her that shines through each and every time that a child walks onto our school campus Mrs C at the door of the cafeteria each morning to greet our students they can always expect to be received with a smile a hug or a positive word as they start the school day as an RSP instructional Aid Mrs C motivates students to do their best work by believing in them and reminding them that they are important and should be very proud of who they are besides all that time that Mrs kostbrachon dedicates to our school she also volunteers as a greeter at her church to welcome parishioners and in the past she has also taught Catechism classes for 10 years Mrs Dolores castrejon is most disturbing of this recognition her work ethic and dedications to our students and staff are truly remarkable we are so grateful to have her as an essential part of our lead team therefore it is our pleasure to recognize her as least classified employee of the year for 20 20 23.
[Music] the past couple years it's been Recruitment and Retention like sky is falling stuff um there is no bigger issue because nothing happens if we don't have folks and all of the other issues that we deal with get exacerbated by this issue so this is front and center and so I was really also blessed to have the opportunity to work with a functioning HR department which is very exciting um yeah sorry um it's all right they're not here and so uh doing that we were able to put together you know this this package that you're looking at and also I think we'll be working together for the rest of the year to try to do everything we can with no stone unturned to try to set us up you know having all the buildings function it's it's not a single step it's a process that goes on for months if not years and so uh when Jeff came on I mean we both saw where we were at and uh yeah I'm just super excited about everything that's happened since Jeff came on and uh that that's been super positive and I feel a lot better about moving into August 2023 then I did 12 months ago moving into August 2022 so and this is a huge part of it so if if you approve it I uh yeah right on thank you I'm glad to be here and represent uh classified school employees actually on a school bus driving kids to their destination I I wanted to comments so I've been in this role since 99 uh working with the district and I went through our scene literally dozens of HR directors here I want to commend you on the orderly systematic way that you're working at moving the roles and changing roles here and allowing us time to get to know each other and them to understand the work that we've been doing because when one would leave in the past that work would just disappear and we'd have to start over so thank you for that any questions um I I would second that I too so appreciate the work that you're all doing um I don't know if you know but we also assign uh board members to each respective Union and we would love to be involved attend your meetings however we can help to create that partnership and also continue things that have been in motion and been discussed but I also in observing other school districts I've heard that it's been helpful um for the board to sit in on those so when we do make decisions such as this that impact it we have that additional background information and just understand a little bit better um any other questions comments I would just like to Echo that and I think I got the tail end of it um but really want to thank you Dr McKenna for everything that you're doing you you all as well I think that partnership and collaboration like this um is definitely something that has been needed and I hope will continue thank you madam I agree I I think um I'll Echo something Dr Lydia said where if we had all the money in the world we would pass it over so I appreciate all the negotiations that this took I do want to address something uh Jason that you said um and I think it well it resonates with me I think we need to figure out a way to pay our teachers better um there was a another publication where Colorado's dead last and we have been for such a long time and I I don't anticipate that that's going to be addressed on the state level anytime soon I know they're trying but I haven't figured that out yet so if we can do anything to push that within our district I think that would be another um really great retention and recruitment Edition Madam president if I may say something and I feel bad and uh I'd be remiss if I didn't say this but Doug Moss our CFO should be up here as well he is a huge advocate most of the CFOs I work with I've always called CF knows because they're not always there Doug Moss is a Class Act and truly does everything that he can to support us and everything that we need to do to finance Kids First in with a limited budget so he's really been supportive in helping us with those tough decisions [Applause] another thing you're seeing it in the calendar in front of you the the Partnerships that have uh been forced over the last year or so results in ways of increasing recruitment and retention in a situation where we can't just throw money in it and um in that calendar I think is hopefully going to be one of those one of those ways and we're going to continue to again no stone unturned and look for ways of addressing this because there is no more daunting you know think business so it's a bit huge the partnership between all of us is the only way we're going to get this done I just wanted to say thank you to all of you um and Jason I'm sorry we haven't been able to meet but we have been meeting um just so you know and I know that um director Estrada will be joining us there so thank you and thank you Mr moss and um I just want to mention that he saw some also because he's a Raider fan right I won't get started with that because I already have two Raiders fans that I gotta deal with but yes thank you so so much and thank you for I really appreciate that you've taken the time to come and introduce yourself and and speak today because I think it just helps we we understand better and learn more every day thank you all right without any further discussion um may I have a motion I'll second thank you Ramona roll call please Mr almador aye Ms Estrada aye Ms Lovato aye Ms Zubia hi awesome I'm just going to say Madam president this is what happens when you hire the best and get out of the way yeah there you go mic drop not throwing things that brings us to our last uh item for business item for the evening um it is a resolution to commit to policy governance um there are many models a board can choose to govern a district and we've chosen to use John Carver's policy governance framework before this governance model the board operated in a traditional sense where we are involved in many day-to-day types of decisions we quickly realized that we the work we were doing as a board was not the most valuable work valuable work and it caused confusion within the district as to how decisions were made and what the right right direction was this governance model is very clear on what the board's Lane is and what the superintendent's lien is and there are policies around all of this specifically four parts to our governance framework which are highlighted in the resolution every year policies within this framework are monitored by the board monitoring includes hard data and parameters that are real and show progress towards our results to me the most important element of our governance framework is the ends or student results we have ends around student achievement this is where the board spends and should spend a majority of its time you'll see the board has attended many workshops many conferences many trainings where we go more in depth and truly understand what's best for kids and how to evaluate those things so we're holding our administrators accountable for what's most important and that is student achievement and preparing our students to be ready for a college and whatever path they choose Workforce whatever the beginning of this governance the beauty of this governing governance model is that Adams 14 School District board will be in line to its Community expectations the alignment between the ends policies that are in governance the goals that are addressed in the Strategic plan and the expectations of what the community all Define a single definition of what success is what the community expects what the board monitors and what the administrative Team Works on and the Strategic plan all have a line of sight of alignment the community linkage plan is the way we plan out how we are going to meet with community members it's important that we link with them and this is a more formalized process of being able to do so so we're not spending our time linking with staff and administration I'm bugging you guys all the time we have time to be able to spend doing what we should be doing which is talking with the community and advocating for our district we have a five-member board elected by this community who are responsible to the community we call Our Community the owners of the school district and it's essential that we are meeting the expectations of this community the community wants a school district that is high achieving and meets the needs of students and that is exactly what the board wants as well School Board governance can affect outcomes for our kids and by adopting this framework we know we are doing the best we can for our students Miss dubia would you please read the resolution thank you so resolution to commit to policy governance whereas the Adams County school district 14 Board of educations the board's job is to represent lead and serve the community and to govern the district by establishing expectations for student achievement results expectations for Quality operational performance and monitoring monitoring actual performance against those expectations and whereas the board wishes to focus on setting the vision and direction of the district providing strategic leadership more than management detail concentrating on the future of the district rather than the past or present and providing a clear distinction of board and superintendent roles and whereas the board believes that all voices should be heard especially the community whom it serves and represents and will honor this by hosting Community linkage sessions to gather information and understanding what the community's values are for the students and the district now therefore be it resolved Adams County school district 14 Board of Education commits to adopting the Carver model of policy governance as a framework to clarify their roles and responsibilities empowering and enabling them to govern well and building trusting and respectful relationships with the community it serves and and further therefore be it for the result the board will adopt the framework which includes policies addressing the broadest level of decision making and for distinctive categories one and the board's values goals and expectations about the intended effects to be produced the intended recipients of those effects and the intended work cost benefit or priority of the effects two governance process the board's protocols and procedures for how the board governs and monitors itself three board superintendent relationship the operational and contractual decisions the board delegates to the superintendent while monitoring for accountability of the superintendent for executive limitations constraints on the executive authority of the superintendent which establishes the prudence and ethical boundaries within which all operational and contractual decisions take place thank you so much um may I have a motion to adopt the resolution to commit to policy governance thank you um any discussion or comments before we take role so I do with us passing this tonight are we do we have our ends are we good with where we were at that is my question because we did already pass something like this to say we were going to move to this um so I just want to make sure that it's not the same thing that we're going to move this and we're going to have more discussions about it right and just sit on it or are we going to prove it and let them do what we've talked about I think the second the latter we we are approving this to officially make a step into this direction and I think it'll start in our next board meeting where we officially approve those ends and and start taking action um I think personally I would like to assure our community that we're going to be very transparent as we do this um and then also is timed well because we do need our goals and our strategic plan I believe it's about to be rolled out soon so I I'm I'm presumptuously saying at our February board meeting we're going to have many actions that officially adopt this I think we had also agreed that during this transitional period there would be more of that transparency on our agenda so that the community and everybody knows what um we are talking about when we're talking about um the the new way of governance that we're moving towards what that means so that transition period if you recall we had a conversation about transition period and to have a to have a full disclosure and transparency on our agenda of what that means on a monthly basis so no I agree I just want to make sure because we have already passed one of these saying we were going to commit to this so I just want to make sure if we're passing this one again that you know if we are talking about it because we have committed to going to government policies that's why we've been doing so much research on it and the planning in the Retreats so I just I don't have a problem with it I just want to make sure that if we're going to say it that we by February have those done so we can move forward because we've been sitting on it for almost a year um I agree I think what differentiates this resolution is we have identified the model that we're moving forward with and I think we as a board have committed to that transparency because at some point um I'm hoping in in February we make that hard stop because as we approve our executive limitations then at that point we need to be able to tell everyone the all of our existing policies now lie under the superintendent and her staff to put forth um so it's going to change a lot like everything from we approved an overnight trip for under consent that's no longer going to come to us it's going to be more of a communication from our superintendent so I I feel like this is a different resolution um okay yeah but I hear what you're saying we've been working on it for a year so if we're going to commit then let's go full yep yeah and I think the only thing I wanted to add was literally adding to what both of you have already said around um just the learning curve that this is going to take if you know it took a huge learning curve on us and I just hope that we do unintentional and transparent and great job of um doing the same for the community so that they understand that there are different types of governance models they know the differences like one of the ones that you just alluded to right all the nuances between the way that um discovered continues to government before and now what this gonna what this is going to look like and so um sorry I hope that we do a good job with that right and that's just so they understand the one that we're on now we have 462 things that we're supposed to monitor as a board I think it's 400 plus that we're supposed to monitor that should be sitting under the superintendent because we there's none of us on here that can name all 400 to you of what we're doing there's policies that are dated from like 1980.
uh yeah I I would I call yeah a lot of things people are saying with uh trying to connect the presentations more with actual items and I do think there's just yeah just a general frustration with some things that have gotten slowed down for various reasons either the legal department or some things in OSI that we didn't know exactly what was going on but just yet hopefully trying to you know as we are in this climate emergency to try to as best we can move some of these uh items forward and uh the other thing I I believe uh commissioner Smith uh touched on this as well but I I do also think um coordinating with other commissions particularly the Planning Commission um if that's going to be one of the Avenues that we're going to use to uh get some new regulations like the one we're talking about with uh potentially uh Banning natural gas I guess I don't fully follow how that flow happened it seemed like it was an idea that we had for a while and then somehow it got to planning and I Know It's Tricky with you know all these meetings that conflict I think planning tends to have on at the same time as us but that that um that Commission in general I think would be one to try to get a little bit better connection with foreign other thoughts from anyone else uh commissioner Harper thanks um yeah I I think I feel similarly as as well as some of the other Commissioners and just a thought um you know I'm trying I do I do very well when I can sort of see the Horizon ahead and some of the items that we we might be thinking about and working about and just thinking ahead to some of the um some of the topics for this next year I'm just wondering about what capacity we might have to to um identify the agendas sort of with a sort of further runway in advance you know at least either and sort of um uh even intensively um to be able to sort of Ally and and and assemble whether it's presentations or or even even coordination with other other commissions and things like that and so you know in a sense trying to trying to look ahead whether it's six months or otherwise just to get a sense of sort of What kinds of topics into the future will be will be tackling and how we might begin to sort of bring a bit greater Focus might be helpful to the work of this commission um as well and that you know then just just the last little Point too especially as we consider um the climate millage and sort of relative priorities of that um and and what kinds of topics we might have to might need to address associated with that as well in the future great they keep on coming anyone else yes council member Edina I have I have more of action sorry my camera I I updated zoom and this has been happening all day um so I uh I had a question more for the group I I've kind of heard from a couple of people about some frustration with with um bottlenecks potentially and legal and and I guess I was wondering if if there were some specific examples recently that I could point to um in large part because I I I know that this has been a frustration on a couple of the commissions I'm on that are particularly interested in working towards ordinance changes and and things like that and acknowledge that our legal staff is relatively limited um in in their staff resources as well and and that they follow direction from Council and so I know that when commissions are asking for their time often that does get put pushed back if council is directing them to do things instead and so as I think about kind of processes and how we can make sure that as a government and as a system we're functioning a little bit better Are there specific frustrations that have bottled up because or that have come up because it may be something that that actually isn't the fault of legal staff but rather simply the way we're structured currently so I I we don't have uh Vice chair calling Garcia who's been on the commission for a long time um but two that come to mind uh are the Ed charging resolution that I think went back and forth to Legal a couple of times at least that's the way I recall it being portrayed and certainly that's the case um with her uh the housing energy rating disclosure uh as mentioned there was um I mean I have a copy of what I would call an 80 to 90 finished res um ordinance that's two and a half years old and um here we are hearing in the latest update that OSI sent out that it's um still in legal or back in legal again um so those are two that come to mind um and I can give that some greater thought and give you some input um and maybe it's just a legal budget that legal has that where they can go outside to uh to to use resources I know that you need to cultivate who that resource is or what that resource is and what their competencies are and trust that that resource that that the relief valve so to speak um when when the professor internally is is uh is so high that you need to go outside and relieve it um but those are two that come to mind does anybody else um commissioner Macomber does anything you've been on the commission for a long time does um commissioner McCoy um anything else come to mind from your perspectives and and I will also acknowledge all you guys are thinking too that you know the way that this works even at the the council level too is everything that we would make if there's going to be an ordinance change if if something gets bounced around if we rework a draft it all has to go back through legal simply because I mean we are drafting laws and we want to make sure that nothing's in conflict with other ordinance or with state law or and so so it can be a tedious process um so I I know that that can that can be slow as well um but but this is helpful as I think you're kind of just system processes too thanks so I I encourage anyone that has thoughts on the matter to um email our true Council Liaisons um don't email the entire commission um but um please provide that input um commission or council member Briggs and then commissioner McKenna yeah and this is a reflection sort of similar to councilmember radina's um in terms of you know hearing number of Commissioners kind of talk about the frustration of what happens next with this I do think um it may be useful to um build into this process um around the table just um as we as we hear updates Maybe um thinking about why thinking about why there there is a hold up um councilmember radina referenced this a little bit earlier though too in terms of sometimes what we find is there are some conflicting priorities or we have to wrestle with those in some sort of way and so um certainly that's coming to a head right now not only in our community but all across the country and world I suspect um but you know we have to figure out as we I I suspect that um as strongly as all of us feel around um ban on on gas there's there's also the implication of one we needed we need to make sure that if we make that make those steps that we're doing um we're being doing our due diligence making sure that um that we are in good legal grounding legal you know legal ground but also um you know what are the implications if if the implication of that would be that there is is no building in Ann Arbor um of of significant um impact what what does that mean to our other goals on our housing work um what is the impact of sustainability on affordability um and I think that the more that we come back to this commission with those questions to wrestle through there's a lot of expertise you know more than probably any other commission that I'm on not only are there passionate people here there's really very knowledgeable and um people around this table and so I think you can bring additional um insight to those those issues that we're wrestling with so I'm not reflection on that commissioner McCann thanks I wanted to share um on top of those really wise comments about uh conflicting priorities that um you know issues of jurisdiction and preemption with state law come to mind I'm thinking specifically about natural gas ban in new construction um and thinking about the work that I've done with the city of Boston the state of Massachusetts um and I know that that was a major issue there and we haven't gotten into the details yet um with what's happening in Michigan but um you know I think a pattern of what we see with climate change policy is that you know often cities have been taking the lead and have um through the past five years plus I've been finding issues with where exactly that jurisdiction lies um and so that's that's kind of the large legal mess of figuring out climate action um and I think all of us know that from working in the space but I'm just kind of wanted to add that point last call for comments seeing No Hands raised um player other than yours if you can take yours down just so we know going forward is not a new comment um I'll let's go ahead and move on to the next uh point which is um a discussion on the millage and proposed spending in the millage and Joe if I may I'd like to hand it over to you first and then maybe have the council members comment and then open it up to further discussion yep I will share my screen here um and just run through a quick presentation overview uh for people who are familiar others who are not familiar um just going over quickly what already is in place um Joe by the way is this posted to legendstar yeah it should have been attached to the agenda okay because it's not uh oh it is okay it is yep underneath yep okay now I see it good thanks all right um so yeah like I said this will just be a quick run through of kind of what's already in there and where the process is at the moment and kind of the next steps um for those who've kind of been following along a lot of this is going to be pretty familiar just because a lot of it was prepared in preparation for people to understand what they were voting for um so we're sticking as close to a lot of that as we could just because again that's what people um voted on um you can also check out more information at any time at www.a2gov.org 2022 Community climate action millage um which has all the latest information uh when we have it um so on November 8th 2022 Ann Arbor rights voted in support of passing a one mil 20-year millage to fund local climate action as outlined in a 2-0 plan since millages are based on property values the amount generated from the millage will vary year to year but it's estimated that the millage will generate approximately 7 million a year in 2022 dollars for the 20-year life of the millage um like I said in advance of the public vote we put a bunch of materials together including a proposed budget which can be found on that 2022 Community climate action website um and you can see some some more details on the different types of Investments the city proposed making here's just a few of them um there's there's more in the entire document there um so as we go through I just want to kind of break out kind of what some of these things are and kind of share at a at a high level what what those terms mean and kind of where that that uh funding is going in the context of a 2-0 plan um some of these will be more you know more energy related others less so but just to give the full overview of where things are going um so to start with uh strategy one and v20 which is about powering our grid with 100 renewable energy uh so in the first two years of the millage so fiscal year 24 and 25.
um you should have received your National School Board Association registration and hotel confirmations um I did have a conversation with Sylvia about um things you may need a trip uh as for flights I'll be doing those in the next few days but what I was planning on was a group flight to have all of you hopefully on the same plane getting there sharing a van or a limo to get though so nobody gets lost um other than that I I will be contacting you probably about um maybe just birthday information if I can't find it I think Jose has that for me um I will be asking for a special board meeting hopefully Thursday to approve some student overnight travel for FFA something virtual at noon um I'll reach out to everybody tomorrow morning to try and get at least three board members as Quorum hopefully as as many as less than five minutes I will send you guys the actual travel request so you guys have that beforehand um that just came up about the presentation did you want to have a stream from The Retreat or just a a public hearing instrument from there oh no okay thank you other than that if you guys don't have anything else you guys are set for the Winter retreat nspa a special meeting to approve uh we'll start getting you stuff for nafis actually Mr Figueroa do we have one board member or two hey who wants to who wants to go to DC to talk to Congress people Mark March 31st is nsba of April March so that's already been board approved I would just if we could get two board members to sign on then we can have those registrations and hotel reservations and flights to work on um the updated video or the presentation on any idea and his ID card is going to be contacting you um so we can capture that part of your presentation so we will have a video to present everyone in and ensure that everyone's presentation includes all of the section that you wanted we will embed it and mount it on the video that we put it together so the other look at for Aggie Hearts uh in schedule sometime so we can record your section on this slide all we need is your voice and some sections so we can read the video that we will be presenting so the goal is to have a presentation and then have a forum after the video presentation also because I just had an email about the latest [Music] I don't know peace I have Miss stevens or nafis anyone else would wanna and it's closed I'm done okay [Music] [Laughter] okay all right I was just trying to keep you here longer insurance [Music] all those in favor of the motion one boy Stevens Sylvie Hendrix Elevate Grease 7 30 p.m we are returning thank you all so much
and that is just that's just the paint portion that does not include door Replacements and window replacements so what is going on right now is we have Architects that are putting together good packages to determine what all needs to be replaced and once that gets finalized and we send that out footbeds then we'll have lasers we'll have Millworks we'll have painters all put in bits where this ad and we'll submit those bids to the sfb and then we can start actually fixing those in all actuality I'm hoping May June time though for um just because it is such a long and drawn-out process for the for the Public's sake sfb the reason it's taking so long to draw an Astra funds out in our budget so our district it won't be paying for these uh improvements correct equal so that's why we're putting in the extra time I just have to say it's a shame that after spending 16 million bucks on this place yeah well so just to just to clarify I mean it's not just the paint if you walk over and look at the I'm trying to get my directions right to the northwest corner of the Middle School you'll see the cracking running all the way up the walls you know so now we have to have Engineers come in and check the stability of the building just because of the cracking in the stabilization even worse I didn't say it was going to be painless yo but you know the settling of the ground is the building tilting you know so there's a lot of things that are going into this some of our so I'm just going to kind of use a technical term some of our scuppers which is where the downspouts are from a roofs some of those pipes are clogged so over the Overflow direct drain so if you look at the fourth grade side of the building on the on the playground side you will see where the water runoff is just tore away all the paint That's underneath the Overflow so there's a lot more to it than just you know throwing some paint on a roller and slapping it up on the building agreed I just it's blatantly obvious that the paint was thin yeah see it out front there and two this is not our first review I mean we had a we had a library full of water because of simple engineering issues with water flowing downhill and we've talked until we've talked with the architect we've specifically walk into the library showed them where the water was coming in and they'll come up with a you're one of the Architects we talked to was bringing in a civil engineer to come in and look at our our land to see if it needs to be regraded so with their there's quite a few steps there you know like I said it's not as simple as slapping paint on the walls no I get it it's just frustration and spending a lot of money yeah and I'll leave it at that yeah that's obviously well that's why the sfb is here to help us fix it and it's not going to come out of our pocket that's coming out of the taxpayer deposit well it is coming over well the statement the state does fund the sfb to the tune of about 90 million dollar um there was a product there was talk of increasing that to about 200 just because there are so many schools that that need things anyway thanks for taking care of it and just for the record we Continental family did not know about this program until Greg came aboard because we would have had to probably do a bond or kind of nickel Diamond along the way um so thank you great thank you I don't think it's a stress to say that we wouldn't have six hundred thousand dollars to do this right to do it right right no yeah we're looking for a emotions to approve the district Financial help them to approve the district Financial reports okay any more discussion thank you this is Mr mcgibbon yes Mrs Allen yes yes and moving on to Ford and School events you see them all listed um something that is not on our list of events that has brought to our attention is on January 18th there will be a new board member orientation that's virtual and on January 25th there is a webinar on budget basics for board members so UMES will be getting all that information out to our board and then on January 27th it is on our list of events as the bolts training that myself Miss rostery Miss Allen and Mr bethis will be attending here in Tucson Dan if I could point out uh February 11th it actually starts at five o'clock is the Continental Foundation sweet Arc Gala it's a really it's actually a pretty cool event it's up at the Performing Arts Center the kids play music there's a live auction silent auction catered food cash bar um we get a really nice turnout um lots of teachers and stuff also online production and there's an online auction now and the cost is forty five dollars for two or another two weeks 45 a piece it's a good event okay with that um the PTC as well it is from PTC School white board members trainings okay they probably are but I don't know what day do you know if they're having the mother father the mother I know they want to do it on the website thank you good question so with that we have um usually we have a little discussion proof that if you just want to say hi see I pass um a wonderful your president is you know something of the board okay on this board Greg I mean this first meeting was a little bit longer than usual and that's why it has prepared to advise your parents Karen advisory parents can you please raise your hand so that our recovery board can see so these are the parents that meet with me to discuss ins and outs of school and what's happening um and they'll also be reviewing the climate surveys with us and we talk about the parent piece on what we can do to enhance the parent response and perspective and help as well so thank you for being here meeting was a little bit longer because I really wanted to do an overview and a mid-year check-in this is Amadeus and our board please yes the school a better place I would like to know thank Rich ulery for his service for the the two years he had spent on the board he provided a lot of knowledge and insight on some things that made had never happened so thank you Rich and welcome Ruth we're thrilled to death that you're here um so you know I think we're gonna really get some done and uh Mr Lathan congratulations again on your Ranger do you know where your heart is it's really us and with that I believe it is time for the pause to sign some paperwork thank you ladies just sign papers so I'll be waiting okay bye Angie thank you thank you everybody taking everybody out for breakfast is Drew taking everybody up for breakfast is it steak and eggs at the ranch steak and steak where do we uh where it says um foreign thank you again the feet are still warm there Escape isn't that the other red meat yeah they're unnecessary yes yes I'll get the tree out but you know the trio fajitas I'll go chicken chicken steak and shrimp I go no steak steak shrimp steak um [Music] how's it going yes
so we're almost serving we're but 80 percent roughly so if we're at 200 just a ballpark number you know a round number so 80 percent of the kids are going into kindergarten are coming through here but if we could move it into a full day program that would be even you know more advantageous well I am we have some gaps obviously and we can't expect to play catch-up with our kids in the sixth grade the seventh grade the eighth grade when they are a year and a half two years behind I think everyone know that prior to coming into the district and I think that I think this is the right thing to do to get more kids into our ELC program I think everybody knows that I think everybody is in agreement with that right and just how we do it and with the addition of possible building I don't know exactly where how that's going to fit in but something's going to happen take advantage of the opportunities with the grant money and how that's allocated to the program and you said you was looking at going to Naperville taking a road trip yes they have a very assistant superintendent yes they have a solid program okay and I think I mentioned a couple meetings ago the possibility of a partnership with Governor State that family educational program there so I don't know if you had a chance to look at that or whatever but I talked to the new director over there today and I'm telling you this person was so excited that she got a call from me for the opportunity to partnership with us like no tomorrow not only three-year-old and four-year-olds but prior to you know two-year-olds and one-year-old because I mentioned before that it's been documented that a child or anybody would learn more in the first five years of age the first five years than any other time in their life I believe that so if we're getting these kids that's behind coming in to our kindergarten and then trying to play catch-up and I got uh well that's a whole nother thing that's for next week from the conference I went to back in November from another superintendent from another District about learning so this young lady from Governor State was so excited for the opportunity she said bring the whole board over set up a meeting with me tomorrow she's ready to come here next week she's waiting for an email from me tonight to share to share what she has to offer to us and there may be some limitations there may be some barriers financially or what have you but again we need to look at opportunities too find a way to make this happen as opposed to finding reasons not to make it happen so with the board be interested in hearing from her the director either bring her here next week or I'll have you and our assistance we can certainly follow up with her can you do that I'll give you the information and you can bring it back to the board next week because I think there's a sense of urgency needed here if it's agreed upon with the board she was just I mean I was I was saying hallelujah for the last two hours just I you know what if she was a car salesman she sold me okay the the worst car money could buy but she had all the answers all the answers maybe I didn't have all the questions but she had to only answers just looking for a partnership we partnership with Kankakee for different things we partnership with Prairie State for different things we partnership with speed and all of that so if our needs or if the parents needs for getting our kids in the ELC program our net not met here somehow we can connect with the program at Governor State in some capacity yeah again there may be some limitations Transportation so on and so forth but let's see let's see where it goes she was excited and then certified teachers over there so I don't think there's going to be butting heads and conflicts and things of that nature I just think it lends itself and it behooves us to have those robust crucial conversations with the powers to be over there okay Mr Brianna I will add that I will I'm a predecessor uh director Chester had been working on that Governor State partnership because we have lots of Partnerships with Governor State and so I believe the young woman you're speaking with her predecessor Chester had set up a couple of uh things with um that program and part of this expansion Grant is a parent initiative right now our ELC program we take students as young as three years old but part of this expansion Grant I believe there's a parent initiative where we could hire staff that would be birth to three that would go to homes not here on site but we would partner and do home visits and work with those students and again screen them through our process so that when they reach age three we're able to fully support them that's you know that's where I want to go with this I mean it's early as possible again we're not in no babysitting you know we're not here to babysit but there's a big element of social economic issues you know it's you know being caused by parents who are not caused by the parents of what have you the end of the day a kid that's born in our district more likely is going to come through our district so the earlier we can get to them best we could the better and I think that is going to be one of the ways we can start monitoring once we get our hands on this you know we can start monitoring where these kids are with the achievement Gap again a quote from a young lady at the at the conference that I went to in November that most of us went to she said all of her students will be at grade level reading by the third grade all she said all of her eighth graders will pass algebra all that was a commitment that was a goal and that was in her strategies can we say that you don't have to answer that's a rhetorical question can we say that we proudly said it but can we bring that to fruition I just say it again this is something here I don't know if we ever Dove that far the ELC program is is great here is great that's why so many people want to get into it and we should not be able to shut anybody down and what we cannot bring in let's go out and reach out to the other powers to be as a partnership that's all sorry I was long-winded but no no as as my mother used to say it's not that I talk so much just that I have so much to say [Music] um no that was good information Mr Brown uh my question is it sounds like with the Grant and you can correct me if I'm wrong it's key to have some things in place so and know where you're going so that you can be in a better position to get the grant yes and you're saying purchasing a bank helps us move this along to get where we need to go for this correct okay yeah we can't apply for the grant if we don't have the space please say yes you so if we keep you central office in the building can you how so here's the question if it's due by the end of February even if we agree to this how does that timeline affect the grant how long does a grant take to get I believe that the you have to apply by the end of February that they will let us know probably I thought it was April I have to look it up in isby and I think they let us know in April if we have it for the next year then so am I assuming it's kind of like you have to submit a plan to them of what you have here so it's not that you actually have the space because you're not going to implement it immediately you're gonna have to implement it probably for next school year right you're gonna have to submit a plan to tell them what your next school year is going to be about yeah no the plan would be that's what I mean it's not going to be an immediate thing so regardless we have time to apply for the grants make the move do we need to do but again this is going to happen tomorrow it's going to be applied for the 23-24 school year yeah it's for the 23 24 place I mean again on the purchase of the property you know that whole process is going to take three or four months is it going to take that long well I think so you know lawyers are lawyers you know [Laughter] so my assumption is you're you're you're making a cash purchase be a cash purchase just like we did with Burger correct so with that being said that should not take that long I don't think a little detail like you know you know I want to talk to the president Bank you know if the board is okay with that I'm going to talk to him about including all the furniture There you know and I've got a couple other ideas that I may want to include trust in but so talk about that I guess that's what we need to make a decision we need more information because at first we were brought up to light that I think it was the value was at 680 now it's at 750.
so you can do there and then I also use a software program that helps me with my budgeting especially when it comes to current uh budget and expected or forecasted budget and so this just lays out some of those things that I look at but this lays it out for the entire year so I look at these things from month to month but this lays out the entire year so this shows you kind of what our examples of uh some of our Trends have been versus our actuals and so maybe compared to to what our we know of the budget that we built and set forth and what the actuals were for each of those months up through the entire year so that's a document you can take a look at um next page Mr Beiber uh this shows you again that flow of cash and how you can kind of see how it moves from the bar chart but that shows you where we started at the beginning of the year and where we ended at the end of the year uh at that 9.3 and then this shows you kind of a dashboard this dashboard represents revenues so it kind of lays out what uh our main Revenue sources were for the year in that one box and then you can see kind of how that matches uh with what happened last year versus the budget that we built out for anticipated in revenues for this year and you can kind of see that how that compares from local dollars State dollars federal dollars Etc um so that's a dashboard that I look at next page this lays out your revenues in comparisons from year to year where you can look at from month to date from year to year so you can compare you know Junes from 2020 and Junes from 2021 and Junes from 2022 and see how those all compare uh from each year it kind of shows uh from our budget for that year some of those favorable expenses things that maybe we didn't really anticipate getting some extra Revenue in but we did um so that type of stuff next document then represents the same thing dashboard for expenditures so you can see your top expenditures and again you can see what those are and how they compared from last year to this current year and then it gives you the same thing here uh from your expenditures and showing you know where we may have had some increases in expenditures and you can kind of see that there um when you're talking about your expenses primarily that's coming from your salaries and benefits where we increase you know salaries over the last year and so forth so you can see where that that shows up and then the last one just kind of gives you a detailed example or detailed explanation of where those some some of those variances are caused side you can look over that and read that on your own time but it'll kind of show you like it said there for expenditures for the current year period salaries increased 7.7 percent over the prior period year period so it shows that we had a pretty decent increase in salaries over the last last year for our staffing so um throw that out there for you guys to look at your own time and begin to answer any questions at another time this one lays out operations in the same way so this is the operational fund cash flow and that shows you those expenses and revenues over the past three years um and then again you can look at the performance and how those uh how that cash moved and so like for example if you go to the next slide you can see Jeff there's big dips in your operations fund okay and the reason for those dips is that the main Revenue source for our operation comes from our local tax revenue and so property taxes are collected and then distributed to entities uh in June and December and so you can see you know we're not getting much cash in from January to June but then there's a big increase there because we received our tax dollars and then it goes down again because there's no not much revenue coming in it during those time periods and then again at the end of the year in December Revenue interest okay so I don't need to go through those same thing Revenue dashboards and expenditure dashboards for the operation fund yeah last one here is transfers so again uh Mr Porter just so you understand that our operational fund like we mentioned comes strictly from our local tax revenues the revenues that we're receiving our operation fund do not cover all of our expenses in our operational fund so therefore the state allows school districts to transfer money from their education fund into their operation fund to cover those expenses and so by law you are not allowed to transfer more than 15 of your education fund Revenue into your operation fund account so I manage that and keep an eye on that from month to month to make sure that we aren't meeting that 15 so for this calendar year uh our total revenue that we transferred over an operation fund was 11.6 that equated to 2 million dollars of money that was transferred from education fund to operation fund to cover those expenses and needs that isn't completely covered by our tax revenues okay and so that shows you that example we transfer 11.6 percent but if you go to the next slide the next slide shows you if we want to cover all of the expenses that uh we needed to cover out of operations we would have had to cover we'd had to transfer 13.3 percent of that money out of the education fund to cover those expenses and part of that is from the 2019 change and how they did their fund balances and so basically there were funds that used to be in there was a general fund was another education fund that have been moved to the operation fund so that's why you got to transfer that and our operation fund is uh healthy so didn't feel a need to transfer the all of it more like you can transfer up to 15 but we want to make sure that we are still transferring enough so that we're not relying solely on our operations to cover those costs because we need other things to use that money for like building projects and some other type of stuff that stuff so the next page just kind of breaks it out all by account number um and then this last document shows how that compares to the previous year so last year we did 12 of transfers which equated to 1.9 million dollars this year we did two million dollars which actually lowered lowered that percentage you think it would increase it because we put more money into it but our revenues increased as well in our education fund so I think that is I guess my financial summary um like Kevin uh mentioned we are going to move our Board of Finance meeting to our next board meeting and I'll have a little bit more of a summary of uh this as in comparison to our upcoming 2023 budget a couple things I always look at Chris is how well you did on your projections and you've been real well in here like I said some of that's just kind of knowing how things move and flow uh throughout the year uh the financial software helps uh the forecasting is I think really important um to really being able to look out in the future so that we can make those assumptions to you know possible raises I mean expenditures that we know we're going to need to have in the future those type of things I think have really helped us uh with some of that and especially budgets for the current year so one of the other things I look at is the ending account balances growth did it grow as much as it did in the previous year that's very positive what I grew this last year in 2022.
um so it's 50 it's 53 .36. so um and I think it's really important we'll see this um in grade seven we'll see you know this is all the same Graphics of you all you will have access to this but you know looking at we're really want to you know look at you know how are we doing in comparison to the state so meeting and exceeding um we are above the state um and then partially meaning and not meeting that those that information gets more and more significant um and you're going to see those numbers increase as um you know we go to seventh grade and sixth grade because they're still doing math and I always find it amazing that people um are like what's happening and well they're young you know what I mean seriously and it's really impressive to watch the growth over time in all you know in math the growth of your time in science it's not calculated but grows over time if Ela and math is really awesome impossible and you'll see that um so we have oh so we have again we have 50 37 um and title is again above that state um achievement and student growth percentile um and we have sixth grade again you know you see that um you know it's it's the same but you can also see it it fluctuates with the state as well so um we are still um you know achieving above the average state level um that's what we like to see um but we know that you know sixth graders and seventh graders and eighth graders they're accumulating their knowledge they're accumulating their confidence which has a great deal to do with um you know achievement in math um grade six again we have um around 50 and 42 but again um mean student growth percentile as well as um percent meeting or exceeding you know um above state level um growth distribution this is a great um graphic um one that is not available um to me but you can see what we're looking at is um so you have all grades um the first line and then four through ten and what you're seeing is the darker greens are those um growth percentile growth in high and very high so those two darker colors you're seeing high and very high growth and you can see those bars um those bars increasing over time so by the time they get into um 10th grade you've seen tremendous growth and you are seeing progressively more greater growth and I think that's um that's what we're looking for it and this shows it um a great deal do you want have a great time right so this is great to oh this is the one we went over today so you can see like these are all like you know um all grades and then you can see from the lower grades up um you know growth and achievement are increased and that makes sense because students um gain Foundation they gain confidence and that is reflected in how they are able to manage um this type of test yes good question to that point are the expectations set in a way that take that into account now these are these are measurements against expectations whatever those are right so the expectations take into account that the students will show performing those foundations and what those that students are measured against so the state um I I'm I'm I honestly have never had that conversation with any representative I've had some um intense interactions with state representatives on this um and um Frank um and now I think to Ducks from me so um I don't know I don't know if they take that into account so for example I the person for um the Science Academy stage um representative who's a lovely person and very knowledgeable and all that um they said you know we are going to be you know moving towards a fully online and I I just fully online is just hard and ever it is really hard it's hard for everybody um and there are a few students who are really good at taking assessments digitally and she said and then who will do you take this into account and she's they're always on their phone and I'm like oh my gosh you've never been in a classroom for years they can be on the phone all day long they can do the tick tock and the Instagram and all of the things but you get them on a digital platform for Learning and then when yeah how do you do this how what does it do like how do you submit how like how do you Pro it's a completely different way of interacting with material yes and I wanted to add on Bob to your question so there are standards that they're expecting to me too many greater levels I think in the Middle School level one of the things we have teachers here who spoke to changing the pathway for mathematics so that they are kind of slowing down the process but going deeper in sixth and seventh grade foreign absolutely because they're also I think often times and you can correct me if I'm wrong I think oftentimes people forget that um brain development and you know cognitively you know you brains young brains are ready for certain things at certain times and you can expose them to algebra like you know and push it and push it and push it but until the brains are ready you're not going to absorb it they're not going to fully grasp it and be able to you know apply it in a meaningful way until their brains are ready and I think that gets lost in the translation and it makes me feel really sad for some kids because it it ends up being that some some students can can regurgitate that type of thing even when they don't fully reflect you know can reflect in a meaningful way but they can they can do the work um and it makes other students who who just they're developmentally not ready feel less than I think that's I think it's important for us to recognize that there's brain development that occurs and we have to be cognizant and appreciate that um to meet our learners students that were accepted and being pushed forward quicker those were the students they they would do well on the MCAS anyways but they were missing certain content because they were they had such a large gap by jumping from sixth grade to seventh grade algebra so when they went to taking a seventh grade MCAS they were actually more prepared to take as opposed to the seventh grade because of the standards that were covered on seventh grade tests I'm curious I mean the the type the little kids are the elementary kids typing essay that was mentioned you know you mentioned developmental stage like I feel like they're still mastering pencil and paper and then to then be judged on a fully digital thing like that's a whole other skill set I think that you're gonna find is kids move through now and yeah we're testing first graders online that I think really is still being reflected especially with Coca you know you get the kids you really have a little bath um but yeah I think you'll see that that distinction disappear over time oh yeah I was just gonna say that I could speak on the student perspective of you know learning difficulties during covet I think um I was taught that there's some psychology about where you study and how it affects your brain so students they were gone from here's a place where I know I'm going to have to put in the work and study to be back home in a room and they're like this is where I watch TV and relax and um there's a study that makes it very harder to focus when um they're having that distinction problem especially in you know adolescence yeah I just know that I've heard that it's higher and I wasn't going to be able to make it stage like if they're doing work in bed it's harder for them to be able to go to sleep for instance because they're breaking in uh the state which what is for what purpose so what is the math um Department doing so new curriculum is being piloted this year in grade six through eight um we believe this new curriculum is formatted to better meet the standards in these grades it is really important to understand that in every grade we are teaching standards that are put out by the state um we don't create um you know we get creative um but we are getting creative around what the guidances from the state the pathway for middle school has changed to align this address Francine was speaking about with the state Frameworks which allows our middle schools to schools do full expectations of the Middle School standards and be prepared for advanced mathematics in high school um as mcast the time draws near the teachers discuss the testing formats and provide reminders about test taking strategies to alleviate any fears or questions in regards to the exam the MCAS tests require an impressive amount of writing in all areas of the curriculum consequently the math department requires students to be able to answer open response questions in a correct format and that ends up being um you know reviewed in coursework the math department incorporates open response questions into their assessments so the students are prepared to answer open response questions with ease and the mathematics portion of the MCAS emphasizes problem solving very few items ask students to merely add or divide rather the students are given a situation and asked to solve it in order to prepare for this test daily math classes are asking students to work through many word problems does anybody have word problem anxiety I remember I did so much in the school like crazy um yeah um to applying problem-solving strategies homework assignments like these types problems as well as the typical calculation style homework students are given more access to online practice in Delta map I excel and Desmos so that students are familiar with online testing tools and that a point to this that funding for these is incredibly important these programs cost money they are essential they are adaptive to students learning and achievement level and we'll go over material and reinforce material where students need reinforcements and will move more quickly through material where students are excelling the math department analyzes the results of the MCAS as a team paying special attention to where they maybe there may be deficiencies we look at all questions that score um at or below state level and note where in the curriculum these topics are located to be sure that the material is being covered the math department provides MCAS practice to all students in the 10th grade before the exam and incorporates these questions into classroom assessments where appropriate and mcasm Remediation courses offered Every Spring to any student who wishes to attend the success of students who Faithfully show up to this class is substantial in the math department would like to continue in offering this course usually this course along with a biology um mcat's remediation um networks are both offered and have been offered through Grant monies Peter has has you know that was hoping that he that he goes to that this year did you hear that yeah so um after school that was after school so in so for math we take six weeks out from the exam and it's two two days after school um for six weeks so there's 12 sessions for biology it's been we take six weeks out from biology there's a one week overlap which usually is fine um and I have found great success with one after school program and then I do um one Google meet um usually from seven to eight pm in the evening that's been great and really allows for students to access your remediation when they're you know they've had trouble like um with travel and you know scheduling so um so now we'll discuss the science Technology and Engineering [Music] so this is um so this is um our eighth grade um science technology engineering mcask course so the top figure um is the um overall State average um assessment and achievement levels and um the bottom graphic is a Tonto and the um there's 72 um are actually um um 71 are either exceeding or meeting expectations um whereas there we have four the average for the state is 42 so um for the eighth grade MCAS are exceeding um with the average State um score is so there are 87 um oh yes in all these grades you know all these drugs thank you so harsh that's partially meaning like oh well it would be right here well no that's not true partially meeting is not not meaning not meeting is not meaning and partially meaning is that they're moving you know towards towards you know towards other expectations District set a standard where everybody can at least um so I would say yeah that um would be um in a perfect world yes um but um that isn't reality um so partially let's jump in for a second right yeah I know what you mean so let me click okay so it's not even an in a perfect world with all the children were perfect children right um what we struggle with you've heard me talk about it 90 major exceed by the end of third grade there are children for whom this test is you know there are children who might take the test because everybody has to take the test we know that they're not going to meet the standard because for a variety of reasons it's not fair it would be like especially I'm a lot on the track with you but I'm not going to be very bad I'm bad for him sorry it's not that for those children who don't need or exceed expectations are we doing our best for them what's their world I think last time Peter was here he was talking about the importance of students and you can look at those kids who don't need the standard but they're still growing at or above what we would expect in terms of like our scores in relationship to districts and White House you know our scores especially um at tejanto are really strong in comparison to schools like our school district and even in comparison to some schools from what people feel because they're bad or anything um I think there's probably not a teacher in the building just to think they could do better give it more time and more resources and you know opportunities because you're always trying to do that but the reality is I keep saying 90 is not really a very realistic Health we got to 75 80 and test like this in each subject in each grade we would be so comparing a lot of additions instead and apparent for a taxpayer component is compared to another District if that's mine but we still have a tour of the class at whatever level this year what are you gonna do with it well and that's and that's the challenge so you've got to quantify that sometimes it's hard to quantify these are available the 8th grade science numbers are really really good numbers you know this is an area where it's nothing more satisfied to what it's the challenge for our school district I love it don't I'm starting to step on your time I told him okay I got stuff to say smoke so I was like stay on first is to identify our areas of growth into articulate those effects we need to do we need to do that I'm an argument we need to do a better job at early University but I think that through the work of religion Elementary School teachers and the hard work that gets done here sort of much better place but you don't yeah improve the program and take better support for teachers in terms of professional okay we're not going to get our kids poor we want them to be you know Peter and I talked over the summer my goal is for everybody to be able to read the outermost house and it's a wonderful book about the cape and uh I think also if you look I mean if you add the exceeding and the meeting and that's 71 our meeting our exceeding well the other quarter is you know or three quarters are are doing that so and I also think that is important to recognize as um Peter had identified in the last presentation um the in in particularly um with science and you'll see in the next slide um they're changing the goal posts so students who were meeting expectations last year um maybe partially meeting this year because they've changed the delineation they can change they're like okay so instead of you know 230 um it's now going to be you know 235 or 200.
so um we do have eight additional outplace students since we developed the budget a year ago so that's important to know last January we had 22 students receiving their education outside of the district now we have 30. um there's a specific reason to read to those students some of them were new to the district this year and we realized boy we can't provide an adequate education for them and others we knew about in the spring but it just came to fruition now that they needed to be outplayed so you'll hear more about that if I could so I asked I asked the Supreme technique because you know I'm concerned about the correct how many uh there's only four of the 30.
thank you foreign um good evening Dr Beau Board of Education members cabinet and attendees my name is Jenny Lee director of early childhood education and it is my pleasure to represent the Long Fellow staff in recognizing and celebrating Miss latissa Lopez one of our exceptional preschool instructional aides she is our classified employee of the year also joining us in the celebration this evening is our partner Victor Aguilar as well as some members of our school Community Miss Lopez is a prime example of a committed work hard-working and go driven individual her Integrity professionalism and work ethics are evident in her action as well as her interactions with others she always has a positive attitude comes to work every morning with a great big smile she is willing to step up to assist in wherever the need may be and there is such a high need when you're working with the little ones those of you who work at Longfellow you know well her dedication to student is unparalleled she is kind compassionate and patient with children which has resulted in high level of Engagement with the students they enjoy being with her in the classroom and on the playground and due to her ability to connect with them and to care for them they adore her Ms Lopez has built an excellent report not only with the children but with parents and with staff it is apparent that Miss Lopez maintains main focus is in ensuring that all children have a safe and nurturing learning environment working with three and four-year-olds who often think they are invincible who are ahead time driven by fun and not always say fun rather than caution and reason requires individuals who are quick on their feet Ms Lopez is always watchful she takes initiative and she is super fast she has superpowers and those of us who work with her know and have seen it and so when it comes to ensuring student safety and we are directing them to their learning she's right there when she's not at work Miss Lopez is a wonderful mother to newborn Ezekiel um very like and she herself is a student her passion for working with children is evident as she is working to become a teacher herself congratulations Miss Lopez your commitment to Longfellow does not go unnoticed and is much appreciated and we know you make a difference by being the difference thank you good evening Dr Beau and Board of Education members cabinet and attendees I am Marcela fonsica the very proud principal of Magnolia Elementary School unfortunately our esteemed classified employee of the year Mrs Jennifer Risley could not join us tonight but I am happy to accept her certificate on her behalf and speak a few special words about our beloved Mrs Risley Mrs Risley has served as a bilingual instructional aide at Magnolia for many years she has a Generous Heart for our wild community and is a force of positivity in the classroom and on the playground her smile and laugh are contagious and they brighten even the rainiest of days we needed her today she brings such joy and creativity to the learning environment and everyone loves her last year she led travel club during lunch and each week she would read a different story from around the world engage children in conversation about text and share artifacts from her own travels to share with the students needless to say travel Club was a soaring success she even organized a bon voyage party at the end of the year to celebrate the students learning Mrs Risley is an amazing amazing educational support colleague and Wild Mustang we are grateful for her and her contributions to Magnolia's school please join me in applauding her as our valued classified employee of the year thank you good evening board president Dr Beau members of the Zeus interfa School Board of Education superintendent Ortega cabinet fellow distinguished award recipients and attendees present this evening my name is Adrian Acosta the proud principal of Murray Elementary School and it is my honor to present to you Miss Luz Flores as Murray's classified employee of the year there's a quote that reads the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra we're at Murray Elementary Luz Flores is our extra loose has been an integral part of the Murray family for the past two years serving as our lead food service worker she along with her team of four responsible for serving Second Chance breakfast and lunch to 463 students each and every day Ruth is a leader of Murray kitchen and clearly takes that moniker to Heart just to watch her in action one feels at ease she is exacting in her work while providing every one of our Mountaineers who enters a kitchen a fresh a fresh meal served with respect after first having greeted them all with a genuine smile and a gentle voice loose is definitely an important element of what makes Murray Elementary an attractive place for all of our Mountaineers her colleagues describe Loose as hard-working compassionate a heart for Murray students patience and optimistic she excels at her job by going above and beyond to help our students especially at the beginning of the school year as our Mountaineers struggle to learn the new PIN number Lewis is also able to provide our students with new experiences and brought in their Horizons by serving various unique fruits and vegetables during first recess three days a week provided by a grant Murray has received she is quick to recognize needs before they become issues and her strong organization skills keep things running fluidly and efficiently thank you Luz for your integrity and extraordinary passion for Murray students and staff we are honored to have you at Murray each and every day once again please join me in congratulating our Luz Flores Murray Elementary's classified employee of the year thank you foreign Board of Education members my name is Antonio Flores proud principal of Paramount Elementary and it is my honor to present Paramount Elementary's classified employee of the year Miss Amanda Chavez tonight Amanda is joined by her mom Michelle and hopefully at home her son her five-year-old son King and her grandparents are watching Amanda joined our team three years ago and from the get-go Amanda has constantly demonstrated her undeniable gift for supporting students she applied to Azusa unified with the intention of becoming a student support aide because as she shared with me and I quote students with special needs require nurturing and understanding and I feel I can make those connections to help them get to get to their goals well Amanda you're being honored tonight because you have the growth that the students that you have worked with within the last three years has been incredible and it is due to your hard work and your ability to quickly adapt to the differing demands and of the needs of your students but not only are you being honored for your hard work with your students but also because of your ability to collaborate with teachers and service providers you always carry yourself in a professional and respectful banner and you Foster collaborative discussions focused for the betterment of your students these aspects of your worth ethic create a huge advantage to anyone who has the privilege of working with you now recently Amanda shared another one of her talents and it's probably displayed on her poster with us and it is our ability to sing she's saying the national anthem at our Veterans Day assembly and she recently shared that she performed all over California and Hawaii so as you can see with all these outstanding skills and talents that Amanda has to offer is easy to see why our Paramount staff selected Amanda Chavez as Paramount Elementary's classified employee of the year good evening Dr Beau Board of Education members cabinet and attendees my name is Jennifer wiebe I am the proud principal of Powell School of the Arts it is my great honor tonight to introduce you to Jenny Espinosa Pal's classified employee of the year Jenny is the mother of two beautiful children Sophia a seven-year-old pal Panther right over here and Santi Santiago who is four she's joined here tonight by her darling energetic inquisitive dancing and singing daughter Sophia did you all hear that the Mega Millions lottery jackpot hit 1.1 billion I personally am not a gambler and I certainly don't chance it when I'm looking to hire someone to be on our pal team I knew when I hired Miss Espinoza as our bilingual instructional Aid four years ago that it was a sure bet in fact one of our teachers said the following Jenny is helpful hard-working diligent willing kind and has a sweet sense of humor that lightens the weight of our workload you are glad to see her walking into your room for her shift and you're sad when she leaves for her next assignment we won the lottery when it when Jenny came to work at Powell indeed we did Jenny was a partner to a teacher who taught a kindergarten first grade combo class the two of them had that class running like a smoothly oiled machine meeting the needs of all the students and inspiring growth and academic success she has worked with our newcomers helping them to feel safe and providing them with the skills they need to adapt to a new language and new culture Jenny expertly runs small groups in a variety of classrooms and every time I've observed her students are engaged learning and clearly feel cared for in her presence Jenny says that one of the things she loves about her job is learning something new each day about the children hearing about their experiences giving them positive input and being able to play a role in their learning so I'm sure you can see it's easy to understand why Mrs Espinosa is receiving this honor in fact she's so Stellar that she's been snatched up by Longfellow as a six-hour instructional Aid So Long Fellow I hope you know that you have now won the jackpot at pal we certainly know that we did thank you Jenny for your dedication and your commitment to our students and for being a part of our pal family please join me in honoring Jenny Espinosa Powell's classified employee of the year good evening I'm Dr Bowe Board of Education members cabinet members and attendees my name is oracio Trejo and I'm the proud principal of Valleydale it is valleydale's pleasure and honor to present our classified employee of the year Selena Lopez Selena has been with Valleydale for the past three years as a student support aide for one of our students in this role she is always aware of what student that student needs and how to fill that need without creating dependency additionally if she is available Selena checks on other students who may need a reteach builds their confidence or provides guidance when a student makes a wrong choice she is even willing to stay after hours to volunteer in the office or with fundraisers Selena genuinely cares for others and her students know it she knows every student by name even though she is only responsible for one she notices when students don't bring in homework or have supplies and she finds ways to help students feel seen and supported by her it is for this reason that I was approached by a group of students on the last day before winter break who argued in favor of keeping Selena in their class for the remainder of the school year instead of transitioning her into her new role as instructional aid for our little ones Selena you make a difference if there is ever a day when you feel less than 100 always remember that you have made a Priceless impact on our Vikings the world is a better place because of you so thank you from the bottom of our Viking hearts and congratulations good evening Dr Beau Board of Education members cabinet and attendees my name is Anthony Contreras and I am the principal of Center Middle School it brings me great pleasure to recognize tonight the amazing and wonderful Miss Yolanda alapisco Center Middle School's 2022-23 classified employee of the year although Ms alapisco could not be here this evening I want to share how much she means to Center Yolanda has worked in Azusa unified for 18 years she had positions at both Longfellow and Gladstone high before beginning her tenure as the school secretary at Center Middle School when the nominations came in it was no surprise that Yolanda's name was mentioned she has been a quiet and Stellar fixture in Center's office for 15 years the staff described her as professional quiet quick to complete all tasks always ready with an answer and dependable the front office is the Hub of the school and Ms alapisco is in the center of it all she approaches each task quietly and confidently she magically appears to make it all happen at Center and then quietly and quickly Fades to the background although Yolanda does not seek the Limelight please join me in congratulating Center Middle School's classified employee of the year Miss Yolanda alapisco good evening Dr Beau and Board of Education members I'm Miss Fury and I couldn't be prouder to be here with Miss Veronica Perez and her family as we celebrate Foothills classified of the year audience how are you feeling good right you know why Miss Perez in the house that is why and I'll tell you why she as our staff knows it's her presence our staff knows it those of you out there who have worked with her you know it and I guarantee third row right there that whole row her family they know it for sure that's right she is our health aide on campus but ugh she's so much more I like our comfort food you know she's she's our Chicken Soup for the Soul and you'll know this as you approach your office no matter what ailment or issue you have you know your day is going to get just a little bit better because you've come to her for help I've had the opportunity to be beside her in moments where I mean care was vital it was you got to take care of this now she's calm she's collected she's professional she's the woman you want for the job when students scrape their knees out there playing soccer hard fought one they come see Veronica because they need some some care when students are having a tough time with their ever-changing and growing Middle School bodies they see Veronica and then you know those moments when you just you can't pull it together emotionally you need comfort you need a soft voice medical wisdom or just love and support yeah it's Veronica you want telling you we're so fortunate to have her as part of our office staff she is the love the support 17 years of ausd service to us and for these reasons and so much more we thank you Miss Veronica Perez for being our comfort our care our dirt of warmth our path to Wellness and yeah our chickens so Soup for the Soul thank you so much foreign good evening Dr Beau Board of Education members cabinet and attendees I'm Yvette Walker the principal of Slauson Middle School I am proud this evening to present Miss Tiffany Sandoval as slawson's classified employee of the year Tiffany is joined this evening by her mother loose Sandoval and her boyfriend Cesar Gutierrez as well as a few of our Slauson staff Tiffany joined Azusa unified back in 2017 and during her six years at Slawson middle school she has worked above and beyond her duties as an instructional aide she has successfully worked with our 7th and 8th grade students in the classroom throughout the years she is supported with the administration of elpac student registration noon supervision during lunch time and last but not least she is currently subbing as our amazing health aide Tiffany is an intelligent and reflective person who is professional she is receptive to new ideas and techniques that has easily assisted her in taking on the role as our new health aide in the front office and executing the daily tasks that are needed when necessary Tiffany arrives early and stays well beyond her professional work day in order to accomplish a task to help students and meet with parents Tiffany is dedicated a dedicated individual and demonstrates an enthusiasm for working with teachers and students she strives to support classroom learning making it exciting and fun for all students while enhancing the lessons that the teachers have executed Tiffany takes pride in her work and is very organized in all that she does she demonstrates a genuine concern for students and goes to the extra step step to make valuable connections with our students at Slawson Tiffany's by bilingual skills have supported her in establishing a good rapport with our community our parents students and staff her communicative skills are invaluable Tiffany self-imposed standards of excellence have guided her through a successful career here in Azusa Unified School District and it is a true blessing to have Tiffany as part of the Slauson staff please join me in recognizing and congratulating Tiffany Sandoval as slawson's 2023 classified employee of the year foreign good evening Dr Beau Board of Education members cabinet and attendees my name is Gabriel Fernandez I'm the principal at Azusa High School it is our honor to introduce Naomi Diaz as the Azusa High School classified employee of the year she's here with her husband Javier and a couple of our peeps from Azusa let's go outside as a fan of depest mode we would like to give Naomi a chance to enjoy the silence away from her desk hopefully our words are not meaningless and not forgettable so that she feels appreciated on this special night as Azusa High School has begun the work of the merger many classified team members have taken on the task of okabeek new team members and new bosses and adjust into different ways of doing things Naomi has been a pivotal and a role this year as The Keeper of the keys and the strategist of the substitutes who starts the morning every morning with a new puzzle to ensure that Azusa is running smoothly she works diligently with the team of Gia and Joe in the main office to make sure everything is covered when the main office was being renovated this year every morning was a new challenge she did not flinch she did not hesitate to adjust and continue on with their Essentials and the main office she is committed to Excellence this is the policy of truth that we enjoy seeing every morning day in and day out Naomi patiently answers the phones and responds to all parent student requests we do not know where she gets the energy to keep up with the day sometimes but she does and she's still smiling and laughing at the end of the day to this we are eternally grateful we are moving in the right direction and the spirit on our team is strong thanks to Naomi and lastly it is her desire to keep learning and getting better as an employee that I've seen in Naomi over the last few months that I truly think is special she spends the time learning from job and she's constantly soaking in her wisdom when the learning spirit flourishes in the team at Azusa we know we're on the right path please join us in celebrating here our employee of the year for 22-23 Naomi Diaz forgot to change the font to 64.
so moving to this model will help us stay updated as well to things that need to be changed so the transparency and the staff will be the ones that deal with the change when it comes out from the from the state and they change so stuff that we may not know should be in there should be in there and it's up to the staff to do that not to us so that's why we're moving towards this model that's that's one of the transparents like you said to understand there's 460 plus things that we're supposed to monitor that probably we have missed just because there's so much all right any further discussion comments all right Ramona roll call please yeah who made the motion Madam president I believe it was Mrs Estrada and it was second by missoulia thank you thank you hi Miss Zubia hi thank you that passes unanimously and I look forward to implementing this model and um definitely be an intentional and transparent with the entire process new year new um I think it's very fitting um we didn't have it on the agenda but we did have a blessing and a ceremony with group old say it thank you um and I just think we we felt a reset with our board with our staff with our community and um it's we're starting off the new year with a good on the Good Foot uh next on the agenda is Board of Education new business request colleagues do we have any new business requests this evening um I would like to put forth one um I know we had talked about it in previous meetings um but I would like to take formal action um we had talked about um how we move Equity forward and having an equity Committee of some sort that constituted that is constituted of a students and teachers and staff um director Zubia I know you went through like two years of training with the diverse and learner-ready equity for teachers and students through the Gemini group it was funded through the Department of Education and the Colorado Education Association um so I would like to make a motion that we um contract with the Gemini group to um to move the the equity work forward I think now is a good time to do that um it's emotion so may I have a second second Ramona roll call please yes I um any other new business direct parameter go ahead do we work with them Sheila no I just um we met I met with some people um when we were at one of our conferences in Puerto Rico that I would like to just kind of reach out and get some more informations about stages of learning that we had talked to them and they had some really good ideas to help us I'd just like to see if it's something that would be beneficial for us if we can have someone reach out and kind of I'll give you I'll get the contacts for you guys but to reach out and kind of talk to them a little bit about seeing if they can help us or not kind of like we did with some of the other ones that we came from there they didn't get to attend that conference can you tell me what this is I'll brief you on it I have to I have a bunch of stuff at my house on it I just didn't bring it but I have been I wanted to make sure if we hadn't worked with them I wanted to see someone Reach Out them and I'll get them the contacts for that because it was a good they were I spent some time in one of their their programs and stuff and it's really good so I'd like to see if they can help us I think they're based out of California even shower video yes thank you so that's not really a motion but you're directing our staff to look into it okay I can do it yeah okay without any further business requests um next on the agenda is Board of Education committee reports um as part of the beginning of a new year and part of our move towards policy governance um we are going to start implementing uh committee reports um each board member sits on many different boards committees and so we are just going to start reporting out to the public the work that we're doing with those um first on the list is Adam's 14 Education Foundation um we have been meeting very regularly um one big thing is we are going to be entering um I'm sorry YES scholarship season um I I just want to commend uh the director Dale mingleton um he does outreach with all of our Scholars day in day out um he also um works with both high schools so that we can get information for scholarships coming up um we have our 14 or Fest plans and I'm not going to say the date because it's not on my mind right now but we will be promoting that we have um sponsorship opportunities available now we're accepting silent auction donations um and looking forward to a great uh event um which is our primary fundraising event for scholarships for Adam's 14 students on the list again for area boards um that's where all of the area boards meet quarterly so it includes Tri-County Health um the fire departments um U.S Wildlife Reserve we have not met I believe we have a meeting coming up next month so I'll have updates about that um next on the list is C4 Early Childhood Partnership of Adams County um director Molina is on that and director Estrada I don't know if you have an update for that work have they not met I don't yeah okay board director Molina my house okay thank you um classified School Employees Association um I have not had an opportunity to meet with them so I have no update um city council they've been very busy um I think one highlights uh Renee Millard Chacon was just appointed to city council last night for the ward 3 vacancy um and I yeah I'll have a better update but there's been so much I highly recommend you go to their um their agenda to catch up on that Commerce City Rotary Club director Zubia so the Rotary Club has been busy last month was our hearts and souls program so we received hundreds upon hundreds of uh names for families and children that needed shoes and socks for the holidays and so the Rotary Club does fundraising all year to be able to support this effort I think we may have spent over twenty thousand dollars in buying shoes and socks for kids in Adams 14 or in Commerce City that needed them I got to go shopping one day and spent all day with lots of these families and their kiddos and it's just it's amazing to see our kids and how wonderful they are even as much as they might be struggling or what have you we just have some excellent families and children in this community that I just wish more people would see that but uh yes a very busy month for for rotary one of these days I'm going to have to invite them to come and visit we actually had lunch with all of the Apparently Liaisons in December they invited us here and we got to meet with all of them and went over what our process is for referring these families but we had a very successful month of making sure that we met the needs of some of these families that were referred to us or most of the families that were referred to us so I'll have a better indication I was unable to attend last week so we meet every Wednesday and I was unable to attend last week so that I could get a better idea as to what the final number was as to how many kids we serve because some of our rotarians believe it or not are still out there trying to serve some of the families that were out of town and couldn't come by they're still calling and trying to make sure that they kid everybody so yeah it's it's been a wonderful experience working with our rotarians and they're very passionate people about helping our schools and our kiddos here in this the sacrifice that's wonderful thank you next on our committee list is the Commerce City urban renewal Authority I'm the representative for that during last my Knights meeting the Ura approved a resolution to enter into agreement with economic and planning systems they're going to complete a study for 72nd Light Rail and RTD Station that's an area of focus coming up during its December meetings the Ura approved an amendment to the Extended Stay contract that's the hotel that's being developed at the mile high Greyhound Park development they also approved an amendment to the intergovernmental loan agreement with the City of Commerce City for the mile high Greyhound Park which effectively reduced the interest rate from 4 to 0.5 percent waived the accrued interest to date and extended the repayment start date um they also or we also received a presentation on the sound Creek Landfill area which is now being referred to as the triangle Logistics Center Metro District um very quickly I would just like to thank our board and our staff for pushing to negotiate the terms of the Tiff agreements um because of our Collective voice the district will be in a much better position with regard to this agreement um and let's see next is DAC the district accountability committee um Miss Molina and director Amador do you have any so I went in December um Connie was purple but they um they were looking at they were doing their presentations um and kind of getting ready to present some information to us and then I sat through the uip with them which they presented some different thought process for our community to understand the difference from when we learned math to what they're teaching them now and kind of the process and heard some really good stories from some of the people in there so it was really fun to to talk to them and I know they're meeting tomorrow night too which I'll probably be there instead of at our other meeting so I can go and sit with Jack so thank you um Kids First Healthcare Miss Molina is not here so I'll let her give an update next time uh director armador do you have a update for legislative or cassby so in December heck has be we passed um they're going to look at other policies so we passed they're building a committee to go over all of their policies at casby dealing with um uh our data policies I guess that they have to look at and then they did pass some resolutions to um back a lot of legislative that's coming up uh for us and then we're also putting a community together for um kind of urban school districts as well as to have everyone as kind of a voice there to looking into um school districts that may not be as big as being able to attend casby virtually over the next couple years but as that is something they're looking into so they're putting something together so that you know they can try and get all I think it's 178 boards voice at the casby the [Music] school district 14 classroom Teachers Association do you have an update no because we didn't not meet in December um our there was a conflict with our schedules usually Jason and I have been meeting regularly but uh yeah there was a conflict and like I said we are going to start inviting director Estrada to join us as well so it's that combination of getting everybody scheduled together so totally understandable and and December was the month yeah there's a lot going on um together Colorado uh there's nothing for December um I'll have to reach out to them because I don't think they know I'm part of that so no one's reached out or tried to talk to me and I don't have anyone there really to to connect with to connect with so I've been trying and haven't had any construction that sounds good directors will be able to connect you awesome uh next on the agenda is a gender agenda it's 8.3 other communication from the Board of Education board colleagues are there any other items that you'd like to share this evening um so um once again I I know I sound like a broken record but um we're still doing covet vaccines um and flu shots because people seem to think cobit is gone and it's not um so every Sunday at the flea market you'll find me at C15 um and I'm really passionate about making sure that people know that it's available it's free and we want to make sure more people are getting their boosters so that's one and then the other one is um I am fully planning to have a youth Advisory board for Atlanta Community Development that's going to be starting and so if there are any youth or any parents that are interested in having their youth join between the ages of 12 and 18.
um we anticipate advancing this goal by providing direct incentives to Residents and businesses for making investments in renewable energy uh the incentives are being designed to stack with the inflation reduction act to help more households invest in Clean Energy Technologies such as solar and energy storage um the specific amount of rebates per you know per household per business is still being determined but the goal is to help more households and businesses be able to take advantage of renewable energy to help uh help us achieve our 100 carbon neutrality goal um funding will also go to conducting any necessary studies design work and construction of renewable energy installations at public sites and in public spaces including at the Ann Arbor Housing Commission sites which we have a goal of making Net Zero Energy operations resources will also be dedicated to advancing the sustainable energy utility if it is enabled if that is a not enabled by city council the funds at least for the first few years of the millage will be reallocated to either direct residential and Commercial incentives or to installing more Renewables at City facilities um and funding will be allocated to support renewable energy and storage installations at sites that are being turned into Community resilience hubs thereby ensuring these sites have power 24 7 and are able to continue providing their critical Community Services for strategy two of a20 uh this is supporting beneficial electrification so here the millage will support the installation of more public EV charging infrastructure transitioning the city's Fleet to all electric and educational programs about the public health safety and general benefits of electrification additionally in the first two years of the millage we anticipate providing direct incentives to Residents and businesses for making these beneficial electrocation Investments um as I stated on the previous slide these incentives will stack with the inflation reduction act so we can help more households invest in things like cold climate air source heat pumps electric cooktops and electric dryers among others again the specific amount of these rebates per you know per household is still being determined but the intent is to help more folk be able to take advantage of beneficial electrification than are currently able strategy three of a20 focuses on Energy Efficiency or energy waste reduction uh so here at the proposed millage budget will support incentives and rebates for Energy Efficiency initiatives in homes and businesses again similar to the first two categories these incentives and rebates will be aligned with the inflation reduction act to help residents and businesses further in their Energy Efficiency retrofits these programs will also include support for renters and landlords and a special low-income sustainability grant program that will help offset the cost of sustainability improvements from some of our most vulnerable residents once again the specifics here are currently being determined um funding will also be allocated to expand weatherization Services meaning that Ann Arbor residents eligible for weatherization support will get more funding to help their improvements go deeper uh there are also dollars allocated to expanding and growing our Aging in place efficiently program to help income qualified older adults age in a place of their choosing for longer we've also allocated funding to sustain a people-person focused energy concierge which as we talked about last session we're current we're piloting this spring and of course there's General um education dollars available to ensure that folk are aware of and able to engage in these newly created or enhanced programs through the millage strategy four of a20 focuses on uh reducing the miles of travel in our vehicles by 50 in the plan itself a lot of the actions focus on Transit which is not the purpose of the community climate action Village itself um instead the millage will the millage funding for the strategy will invest in expanding creating and sustaining the city's non-motorized Transportation networks through making investments in protected bike Lanes in support of city-wide bike infrastructure upgrading and increasing the number of crosswalks to ensure safe and viable Pathways for pedestrians installing street lights at all uncontrolled crosswalks to ensure they're properly lit and launching a bicycle discount program strategy five of a20 focuses on moving towards a more circular economy so in this area during the first few years the millage will support comprehensive compost and Recycling services throughout the city including for commercial and multi-family units which is something the city has wanted to do for a while but has lacked the sustained resources to implement funding will also be allocated to support construction Waste Recovery and diversion programs the enhancement of existing in the launch of new reuse programs and services and enhancement to refrigerant Recycling and replacement programs additionally funding will go towards enhancing knowledge and the use of sustainable food throughout the community including at City facilities and events the sixth strategy of a20 is resilience uh in this area the millage will support the creation of neighborhood resilience centers hubs ideally in every ward of the city millage resources will also support Neighborhood emergency preparedness activities including neighborhood asset mapping resource sharing and Community Building resources will also be allocated to build out a robust heat and flood monitoring system and to install and maintain green infrastructure such as trees and rain Gardens in underserved or vulnerable areas the final category of proposed uses is around capacity building so here we propose resources to support general public engagement and education administrative and ancillary costs to operate all the programs and services we talked about as well as some dollars for external Professional Service assistance this also includes matching funds for funding proposals such as the Americorps program or the U.S department of Energy's various proposals in terms of Next Step um this slide details just kind of how the city budgeting process works for those who are unfamiliar we're currently finalizing the details of our budget this month so that it can go to the city administrator towards the end of January during the months of February and March will be in discussions with City Council in April the final full City budget as determined by the city administrator is presented to city council and in May Council votes on the budget and then on July 1st 2023 the adopted budget begins so that was a lot of things really quick in a short period of time um so but just want to let you all know that and kind of set the context for uh more discussion here again you can always see more on our website www.a2gov.org 2022 Community climate action millage um look forward to now answering the questions that I can and taking all of your input and advice on how we can direct These funds to most deeply impact Ann Arbor and our carbon neutrality goals in the coming years thank you very much Joe uh before I open it up I'd like to uh give an opportunity to our two council members to add anything uh or comment on anything Joe presented um if you don't have anything then we'll just open it up for General discussion okay um other Commissioners thoughts on The Village on Village spending priorities advice to our council member Liaisons and to council Lord generally what are your thoughts commissioner Peck thank you I wonder if it would be good to just go through those at some point um and Joe could do it perhaps uh when others could chime in you know where do you need or help uh and if you don't need our help on them uh we could focus on other uh initiatives in other words uh one one way to look at it this is wonderful do we have the millage wonderful it's well thought out and planned and um all kudos to everybody who's involved but it's not enough to go carbon neutral by 2030.
and remember it's on an appraisal in an inflation time right so that's a concern for me is that you pay for that and then in three years what I just want to make sure that our value for what we're getting is sure because I know he says whether he works one way or another but the building's sitting we have to make it work for both parties not one I I agree with that 100 so I mean we could have our own appraisal done I would just Gary say did all board members get a chance to go over there's a nice building every board member got a chance to walk it down Dr Hall I don't think are you going tomorrow okay [Laughter] some of that due diligence if the board wishes I can go ahead and um get an appraisal on it and again we're not negotiating in public so we still get that we still get that that's correct so I guess the point is before you get an appraisal a sheet email just there is a conversation that needs to be had okay and and that and I think you stay where you're at right now but there's a conversation that can be had and I think it's going to be done the fact that it's not going to run through bonds and financing there's something to be said there and if we're going to expand that then the other thing I would like is a timeline uh and and a forecast of what our costs are going to be because if we're going to do something we need to make sure we can maintain it it's the same thing with the buildings right you said you set aside two million dollars for preventative maintenance I want to make sure that that is followed in in retrospect because the condition of the buildings is because we never followed that before sure so going forward we want to make sure that everything that we're investing in that we maintain it and that includes our employees so I want to make sure we don't expand and then say oh my goodness we don't have what we need to continue so what's the timeline for this because it sounds like you need to right purchased this bank so that you can start with the Grant and do we have a consensus from the board that we want him to get our own appraisal how long it depends how much it costs I mean I mean we're talking 670 to 7 was it 670 to 750 about 100 Grands the 8800 Grand over and it's 70 it's 70 000 is the difference and my point is it's worth a conversation you might not even have to get an appraisal so that that's all it is it's just a conversation but we definitely don't want to lose out on grant money but I think this is this is I believe and again don't let me speak for the entire board but I think this is high up on the chart as far as the ELC getting our kids and expanding this program and trying to make things happen and there's no reason why you can't move forward with writing the grant while we're making this decision yeah you're exactly right that's correct which keeps our timeline and the same thing you're you're submitting a plan and then and then if something for crazy reason falls through we revoke our well again I mean if they don't they don't say okay you've got the grant but we'll do it correct so I would say I know that I know that but it doesn't felt like this is so if you need consensus to move forward I I agree we continue to move forward with some of the information you provide us we can make a decision then sure that way so with conversation not necessarily an appraisal yeah so just go forward with some conversations and bring us back more information definitely I would change the phrasing a little bit as the district purchasing a bank sounds well it doesn't have any money but people don't know that perception is reality you know yeah the district just purchase a bank well that's right there you go what would you like us to bring back for next week's agenda to put on the agenda and answer okay here here's what a good answer they will have that discussion by next week okay I'm just trying to plan my agenda I think let me let me take some time and I think what we can do is come back that Community as a whole February I can have that discussion by then by that point it's Perkins and I could sit down we can talk about yes that gives you a month to figure out the conversation what our costs what our forecast is going to be and then we'll have a better information we'll get out right and then discuss the committee of the whole and then we can make our decision and then if if there are negotiation things you want to come say is there any specific you can do that closed session or excluding okay got it thank you all right I'm going back you said at least expire end of January you can extend it yeah not a problem we're covered okay oh yeah candy really wanted number two I think they're always ready number two uh discussion on a resolution providing for abatement of 2020 lovely adjustment if you remember we did this last there's adjustments that are made it's a new state law that came out beginning last year adjustments that are made to 11 we can recapture those funds if we wanted to uh last year that amount if you remember we have made it back 300 degrees I haven't gotten this year's figure yet um I think it's going to be about the same my recommendation would be to evade that and not ask for that money from the taxpayers [Music] well when one of the one of the problems it was not a qualm abating the money but it was a crime broadcasting publicizing right I think Bill brought it up that you know this is a good thing it is this is this is very unusual that we do this especially a financially challenged School District to do with your raise they have something no um uh yeah I think I think one of the things Mr Brown is that we need to do a better job of marketing marketing that and getting that out to the public show uh that'll follow me and I'll work on that with Dr Karen we'll get that out so we broadcast that out you know what's important this would be the second year so to to note that and the other thing is I'm I'm I would like to know how many other taxing bodies did that it would be very interesting so as much as we as much as we take we do take a lot of flack because we're at 66 67 percent of the tax bill but for the second in a row we'd be doing that that would be huge news to our to our communities well Monique is definitely doing something like this but it's for Moni yeah yeah Monie did it well they didn't well they didn't you have a data debate this right not this but they did a 50 property tax uh from their portion now could you tie into this it's not the same money but they did a different type they did the different right right and it was well publicized it was yes so or maybe we just need some simple talking points I know I had trouble explaining it so you know how like in politics you turn the station and you hear the same message from every different news program maybe we just need to be better at that I should do that yeah umala and I think I don't know if you have number four on yours they might be the same thing actually to be honest with the discuss your acceptance for for a total contract of 394 to Midway Contracting so one of the things if you recall one of the things we did over winter break was we abated the cafeteria areas in Balmoral and Crete so we could utilize those areas next summer to move furniture in so we're going to do the same thing over at Talala over uh spring break where we update their gymnasium so we can use that for storage there is a asbestos under the tile there so it's going to need to be done so maybe we can get it done Keith has already checked this out the contractor uh environmental Specialists and they said we could get it done that'll come before the board uh you know here which is uh on next week with this being it with abatement this was part of your presentation though this was one step of it leading into the summer because you're going to do more there but you're clearing areas in Christmas break and spring break to move furniture in to do the rest exactly right okay so Mr Brown I'll just share this real quick and then we'll have almost all of their flooring is asbestos fits the glue yeah that's yeah and so that's what's going to be going to be over the summer clean yeah the whole building this whole building is clean okay yeah and that's just a sign of the times back when they were built that's what they were using there's nothing and we're not doing anything as long as it's not Disturbed and we're not tearing up anything it's okay right now but we are addressing it which is important as the word is used non-fryable right okay okay okay thank you you're welcome do we have to applaud for Ken [Music] you're the money man all right we're going to move on to our personal and culture we have a special treat for you tonight um we wanted to highlight for the board what we have been working on with our recruiters the board has been generous in letting us really focus on listening to what our staff has been telling us they have been struggling with lots of open vacancies of unfilled positions as well as struggling with not enough guest teachers and you know the staff has shared with us that they they have been working past their their 10 days as far as doing internal subbing and it's becoming exhausting for them so we have been listening to that and have been working quite aggressively to um to understand the our our own data understand uh what we need to do to go out Market it and then really focusing on you know this recruitment piece so today we're going to have Miss Trish she's really responsible for the certified recruitment she's been doing a lot out in the fields at universities and making connections and then more recently we have Christina Griffin she's really been focusing on the non-certified so they work as a team and tonight they're going to share a little bit about what they have I've been working on so I'm going to turn it over to you ladies I like the clap before well first of all happy New Years it's great to be back um so we're excited to share with you the board and our school Community um what the recruiting department has been to since its Inception the presentation that you're about to hear um will help will give you information and we'll help alleviate some of the concerns that our teachers have about the guest teacher pool shortage and also this presentation will help inform the public of the recruiting efforts for certified staff non-certified staff and our guest teachers so we'll talk about Guest teachers our target audience on onboarding practices certified teaching alumni okay and we are creep money we are here to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright future Christina good evening we recently launched the campaign Be Our Guest in response to our teachers expressing their concern about the guest teacher shortage as well as the issue with internal subbing initially we were well first we were able to identify several support staff who are non-certified who qualify for internal subbing it was a total of 29 throughout the district in each of our buildings they're spread out throughout throughout our building so we were able to confirm the credentials and then provide a list that will be maintained by the person on the culture Department moving forward so that way they're not completely relying on our teachers um this was also an opportunity for us to support our teachers by increasing Our Guest teacher pool in October of 2022 we reported that there were a total of 54 active guest teachers who were um wishes listed not include the permanent guest teachers since then we've added a total of 23 guest teachers so we've increased our pool to a total of 77 and our goal is 100 by Joan that increase was of 42 percent since October um and again we've recruited 23 new guest teachers we're also actively still recruiting at this time um we've increased by doing so we've increased our daily fuel rate of from 60 to 65 percent to 85 to 93 percent in that sense that's the short amount of time it's just been since then of November December yep Okay so what are we doing and who are we targeting with our recruiting efforts we are targeting our our local communities we are targeting alumni we are targeting local universities we are targeting universities that are out of state we are leaving no stone unturned we are looking everywhere for teachers so we're willing I'm going everywhere and doing everything I possibly can and you'll hear a little more about that as we look for teachers to help us with our teacher shortage oh I'm sorry in addition to that with our advertisement if you look at what you have we've started working on a district brochure because when I go out it's helpful to have some information that's neat and packaged to give prospective employees right so the first one we worked on and this was myself in Cala Erickson our new marketing person um and so we we worked on the district brochure not only did we work on it before we had it published we talked to Dr Cara and we did a focus group with the students at the high school they gave us some feedback on some of the things they thought were helpful um and so we made those adjustments we took it back to Dr Cara and then we went to the printer and so this is the result of the high school I mean of the district brochure in addition to that out of the Press today we just received the brochure for the Middle School because obviously we're not just looking for one school we're looking for all schools the goal is to have a brochure for each school um by the end of this week I will be sending to the press the brochure for the high school and then we'll start with each Elementary School we'll just go alphabetically to get those done and brochures are really important so that the message is consistent about what our District offers okay this is a career page so we want to talk about our expedited um pipeline so recently there have been some changes to help this whole process go along and streamline the processes with background checks the automation of the entire employee packet um the employee packet process and being able to streamline the efforts with new employees getting I.T devices and access access we're also being very transparent about the hiring process we know in education globally there are a lot of second career Educators yeah a lot of people entering at the education field as a second career and so they're unfamiliar with how school districts work we hear this question a lot when we're onboarding after the interview what's next and so in school districts a standard is that you have the interview you're recommended for hiring because we are a uh we have a centralized hiring process everybody has to come through HR um once the job is is extended what's next so we have the final approval by HR the onboarding process involves the fingerprinting and background check several appointments but we've streamlined that process as well by just allowing access for our entire department and we're all able to fingerprint at this time um and then the next part is the board approval and a lot of our educators are just not familiar with a lot of our new hires are just not familiar with how long that takes so that timeline gives them some anxiety but this will allow for some really fair and that's just part of our website can you scroll down a little bit please we've moved from a landing page where you're only able to do you were only able to go in and say okay what position am I applying for to a to this website and so it's going to tell it's in progress It's not complete but we want them to know why our current team members work have chosen to work for Crete Moni we've highlighted some of our alumni we've highlighted some of our community members you see here we have uh Karina who is willing um to be the first person and she said I'm a true warrior she sleeps and breathes all things creep Monique she represents the community as an alumni as a parent as an employee and she says she's seen this District through several lenses and she know that this is where she belongs we know that belonging starts with connection and so this is part of that connection how do I become a guest teacher several things have changed over the years with how you can they become very creative with how we are able to get our guest teachers license in the state of Illinois and so this is letting them know how do I become a guest teacher where am I on the Spectrum so if you were to it's a link there if you were to click the link you're able to go in and see what is being saying now as of January 1st they're saying that if you have 90 credit hours complete in the Illinois approved State program you're able to become a guest teacher and so that's already increased our pool we've been able at five just since January 1st five new guest teachers and then it gives them the contact who do I call if I need assistance we're still building it out but this is just the start we wanted to share with you because we're really excited about for staff and we just wanted to highlight that currently for the 2020 to 23 school year we only have we have five certified open positions um they're currently being filled by guest teachers some of which are two of which are licensed teachers operating in a capacity of guest teachers we are anticipating um for where we're planning forecasting for our retirement pool as well we have a total of six leaving for 2020 to 23 school year so we're focusing our efforts on securing placement collaborating with our building administrators so that we can find out where they are if they're going to be reassignments to fill those positions if so what help what support can we provide to them um we have six we have 29 in the pipeline overall over the next four years for resignations we're forecasting based on the well actually we're looking back at data from the last five years we had to go back a little further we were thinking three years but five years would give us a really good idea um of our averages for resignation so that we can plan and fill our pool with talented um professionals who fit the warrior profile which we'll talk about that in just a second um for the reassignments we talked a little bit about that and then for the hard to feel Physicians we've identified those as your science your math bilingual education foreign language we know that the technical theater director has been posted for a while so we have a few leads on that we've been able to feel in just a short amount of time the Adena student position at the high school with an African-American who's going to be joining us he's currently in a very competitive program one of the top 10 in the program at for UIC he's going to be joining us in January so our team is our greatest asset we strive to build a strong smarter team by hiring people who fit our Warrior profile so what is our Warrior profile our Warrior profile will represent not only our existing staff we created a standard we worked uh we've had unofficial focus groups we've collected some information and insight uh from several of our district office uh staff as well as our team members outside of district office and what we identify as a warrior profile is five characteristics that each person who we have here now currently employed and those who we are looking to attract and retain of five character races include they need to like children this is education yeah you have to like children um it's not optional you need to be a professional and we found that that word is very subjective and so we took the liberty to actually uh identify what a professional is for Crete Moni which is holding yourself accountable for your thoughts your actions and your words it's being reliable is someone who demonstrates that they care about their job every aspect of their jobs we know that you won't love every aspect but you need to at least care about it because it is affecting our kids you need to be collaborative because just by Nature this is a very collaborative environment there's no way nowhere in Crete money that you can work along um you need to be empathetic and that's simply understanding another person's experience by imagining yourself in their shoes and then the last thing which is really really important that there to us is embracing diversity because we don't just have race as a diversity here we have people are coming from all different places and backgrounds and situations and so you need to be able to embrace diversity so that we can maintain a healthy culture here okay so a certified teacher recruiting what type of teacher is an onboarding designed to develop and how do we retain them so when I'm going out to these job fairs when I go to universities when I'm sending emails when I'm making phone calls when I'm returning returning phone calls this is what I'm thinking about right so onboarding is just not the process that starts once they're here once employees are here during orientation it starts with our website it starts with communication it's so those are the things that I think about so we have I'm in preparation through partnership so some of the things that I'm doing is establishing Partnerships with colleges and universities and or re-establishing those Partnerships that we've had in the past there's a chance to overcome the teacher's shortage so what's the solution to actively recruit and select teachers so what am I doing I'm going to recruiting events job fairs mock interviews I'm looking at student teachers and I'm looking at how to retain them so with recruiting events some of the things that I've done is that I went to Indiana Northwest University and they had an event I went to the event I had a good time I asked me to be a part of their book club right so do I mean it's okay yeah but what does that do that gives me an opportunity to opportunity to make connections so while it was there another event I went to at Indiana northwest University was because they received their Hispanic servicing institution designation which is a designation because of the amount of Hispanics that they service at that institution they are the second one in the state of Indiana with that well why would I go to that number one I was interested number two our focus is also to create and I'm sorry to recruit a diverse working population so it only made sense for me to go there so then after that what do I do I go to the federal um State Board of Education and look at this designation because I wanted to know how much money did they receive well they've received three million dollars in Grants to do what to help support students those students who could eventually become teachers who could eventually come here and then we'll talk about why Indiana is so important a little later so those are some of the things that I've done I go to job fairs I've been to job fairs and I will continue to go to job fairs no matter where they are if I'm invited I will go mock interviews some universities that I've reached out to um have shared with me that we're too far for student teachers to travel and so I've said I'll do anything that I can to support your education program let me know and so I've had Aurora University reach out to me and I spent the evening there assisting them in the education department doing mock interviews with students um yes I did pass out business cards and yes I did follow up with emails to them um and I also did the same thing with Northwestern University they reached out to me to help them do two sessions um in addition to that Northwestern also called me and asked me would I be a panelist on discussing the teacher shortage and doing the so I am I've actively out there cold calling and doing whatever needs to be done so that we'll have the best opportunities we have to service our students and then again part of that is the marketing I have to have something when I go out there so that's part of a presentation that's part of brochures Flyers all those different things mean something as far as marketing you have a Be Our Guest flyer you may have seen this on our social media Outlets or on your community posted as well um that's part of our efforts and we also had an um for one specifically for our retirees and for retired Educators we've been able to obtain or to secure um employment with six new retirees just over the last couple of months with those flyers so you'll be amazed by just the message when people know what you're looking for they're committed to helping you fill those gaps okay alumni I'm not this is a great one so we're building a powerful Alumni network and this was done through stages um with Dr Cara and um Carol Erickson who who's not um and so I'm stepping in to assist so stage one was the preparation building a strong Alumni network stage uh I'm sorry stage zero stage one was activation a campaign launch completing alumni profiles identify active alumni the campaign launch will start tomorrow that information will be going out there will be a survey that will go out to all alumni alumni out in the public and alumni that are working within the district asking them their thoughts and ideas in addition to that we will make active the new website and I'll get to that for you um stage three is the engagement so once we launched a campaign we'll have people sign on complete the alumni profiles we want to be able to identify active alumni right the only way we can do that is if you sign in and once you get to the website you will not be able to see anything until you sign in um stage three is resource and mobilization we want to be able to build professional groups and mobilize resources for our alumni which is going to be important right um and eventually when it we want to start looking at alumni giving programs because they want to give back and then to make sure that we're doing a good job with the website and with the program we want to be able to measure our engagement right so we should be able to look in you know the last 30 days the last six days UH 60 days the last six months how many people are active not just how many people but who are active and what are they active addictive in doing on the on them so that's important so why would people someone want to join this well for nostalgic reasons reasons you're a graduate you know you went here and so you're interested in giving back and contributing and perhaps mentoring all those things are important and we have a really large alumni population here whether you graduated which we've identified 50 team members who graduated from Korean and curly employed and then we haven't even launched a survey yet that's just Word of Mouth pay up I graduated from Crete but we also have individuals who attend decree and who know people who attend accrete so building that builds our community okay thank you and so the survey will go out tomorrow and for the first 100 people to sign up the district we're offering them a welcoming gift for all of our um alumni and Friends alumni let's go go up a little bit well down scroll to the top fourth please yeah scroll to the top for us all right so you see the little emblem up there isn't that cute you you have two people you have one with a grad with a graduate uh graduate cap on and then another person so this is our new alumni website creep money Warriors and this is for the alumni and friends look like you might have to change a mascot [Laughter] you're right um and so is you click on when you click them so once you sign up the site is active and that keeps people from just going on and looking at things without being a really a part of it you can join there's a directory we'll have news there we'll um Spotlight alumni so there'll be alumni stories there'll be events and opportunities for you to give back and with the upcoming 30th uh year anniversary um for the class of what is that 1993.
in the prior year or two so that's encouraging having said that though I want to reiterate that we need to be vigilant and then coming from the agriculture sector we know how fast things can get away from the person so thank you move on to HR report if you have that in front of you if I mispronounce names please correct I want to give a correctly resignation we have Jeremy Elsie Alex miracle um resigning Jeremy's paraprofessional and Alex's paraprofessional and bus driver under appointment Jeremy's going to be rehired as a fair professional only at Southwood High School not at Shark Creek we also have under the point of Patsy R wood bus driver in the South Nate filer seventh grade was basketball Kerry two paraprofessional at Shark Creek and then leave we have number 149 which begins in February through the end of this school year get anything on those tomorrow too the HR to move second all in favor partly not together superintendent's report or do you want me to yeah I don't know if you want to do it yeah okay all right well as we've done the last couple of two or three years um just a little review we don't always like to Look Backwards but there's a lot of positive that happened and so I like to just put things together what I do is um I look at our board minutes I look at some of the things that I um look at more minutes I look at the recognitions and just put something together and next year um I have talked with uh Laura Lange Bartles about doing something different maybe a video or something that might be a little more entertaining than me just talking about some of these and so we're thinking about how we're going to do this next year but it is neat to just to go through so in January uh of course one of the neat things that happened is that you guys were presented with a frame state championship medal in picture from the Northfield softball team that won the state championship also we had students at Southwest students had Allstate honors choir um basically the intercom system uh the granted Dr Kuhn wrote I was actually integrated into all the schools and that was 345 000 Grant so you know that's a big deal and so we'll continue continue on in February then and I apologize if I missed something but I did give this to a lot of different people to see if they want to add anything but we had a wrestler that went to the Northfield wrestler went to semi-state we were up on our ADM from spring or from Fall to Spring 74 students which was great we had students who were simply in color State finalists and also Mrs Moore Road Grants her grants actually totaled a little bit more than uh it's about 702 000 or so um and some of them are competitive some of them aren't necessarily but you have to write them in there's a you know it takes a lot to do that with all the other things that are going on so that was really um in March a lot of things uh bumped up there robotic teams participating in state finals we'll talk about that a little later too academic Direction recognition honors banquet that you guys attend uh Mr Drake um heads all that up also Southwood basketball team won their sectional and that was the third consecutive uh Indiana State House youth art month honorable mention um I think he said what am I going down to one of those I don't know which one it was but Indiana State Library letters about authors contest level three award the spring Banner winners lots of those at norfield Indiana high school wrestling coaches association Junior academic Allstate honorable mention also south of region five football junior class Allstate team FFA there's a lot of accomplishments going on there Norfolk senior trip Boston so the reason why that's a highlight because there for a while we didn't get to go to different trips but they went to Boston and of course thing that that we you approved was for Southwood Elementary sixth graders to be transferred then so Mr Stauffer never got to experience the sixth grader so um also then in April we had two schools that were recognizing family friendly schools um maybe three three all North schools were at that time yes has the quality three there's a couple of times that that happened Mrs Moore is in charge of the umbrella of all the the preschool and so there's a lot of work to be able to be level three and continue with that Indiana Landmark centered the student art competition Award winner that was great Vincennes University's writing contest so you can see a lot of the teachers a lot of things going on as far as what they're doing then this Southwood seniors went to Gatlinburg and then of course there were races that were given again 2223 classified admin raises um in May uh we had some you know two of our students and MSD took on the two winning places or the top two winning places the Walbridge County initiative within pitch con uh competition uh U.S news world report Southland again earned a high national ranking uh south of high school baseball across Indiana player of the week the TRC mentality awards at Scott athlete and distinguished award honor Awards Northfield and Shark Creek robotic teams went to Vex World robotics in Dallas Texas um the 1003 flexibility resolution approved for 22-23 calendar year that was a pretty big deal though as far as how we're doing things and be able to have more professional development uh maybe not more professional development but being able to uh just concentrate that on on those days that we have those hearings and resolutions for the referendum we're done during that time we had students go into the track regionals of both high schools we also had Southwood and the track and field academic All-State honorable mention there were four of the students or athletes south of track and field individual sectional Champions there were three of them and then there's a Southwood track and field girls the intersectional champion set a School record at Southport in June we start slowing down a little bit because we're not in school except for whites but graduations of the bridge we had a bridge graduation Northfield and Southwood summer school mines and action addition an additional support for students we went to the little girl parade it's always fun to go to parades um teacher of the year Elementary was Mary Donaldson this year secondary Shelley Faust and staff of the year then Amanda lions and then the referendum signatures delivered to the county clerk was kind of a big deal too then in July I went to the 4-H Fair again that's always fun uh public question approved by the County election board to go to the dlgf I have to say it misleading and then we'll go on to August 2022 we started school we had new administrators Casey star from course principal at Southwest Elementary Kerry Johnson assistant principal at Southwood High School and Chris Oswald as athletic director at Northfield high school and in September we were up actually 114.5 students on the ADM um all seventh grade students that's always a fun trip that they on the Wabash River Defenders well-based River Wild field trip uh e-learning resumes and we had Dr Adam Drummond that came to us um and we used yeah and then the Founders Day Parade we attended that the Royal en parade we had Norfolk girls uh played in the regional the ptq rating because of different schools allows funding for parents like on my way Pre-K and ccdf vouchers was also at level three again variance meeting and approval and then public meetings meetings meetings and events events events a lot of things going on in September October Max Preps athletes of the week nomination student and Allstate band choir welcome to my future event Northfield Advanced for girls at a regional Moorefield now has a girls wrestling team Southwood football share of the TRC Conference Championship a great game at the end to make that happen teach a contract 21-23 approved 1 million plus and raises over the two plus years of contract Southwood girls volleyball playing in semi-state Northfield boys and girls ran in Regional south of the boy random Regional and Southwood cross country academic All-Star honorable mention there's one student there November Winter Street Banner contest would be became failed referendum partners with four other neighboring School corporations who also made an attempt in Southwood All-State honor band and then finally December coach Schneider in the past five years a coach had a 45 and 12 record in the last 10 years he had a mark of 8730 another teacher Irina Mark seller recognized by Higher Learning commission to be able to teach dual credit and then of course we had Caitlin Rank and it's a new right this time Malachi eggs for the two different scholarships and those are big deals so and I know I probably didn't get everything and you don't want to hit everything necessarily but you want to hear those high level things that the students or staff are doing so it's just really great to see what happened and just a couple other things the financial help our health donations I know uh Mr Bowman you always talk about this but over the year it took all those donations and it was 470 760.10 so that's that's great those are donations for a lot of community people things like that um of course the education fund operations fund ready to date fund all healthy and then I I included one more time a one million dollar extra salaries over the two-year contract period for teachers and just a reminder of our purpose of a strategic plan to position MSD Evolution as a preeminent District of educational opportunity or programming so of course we have the four different uh priorities so Embassy provides a strong product determined by our surveys and the results our goal is to continue to strengthen msdwc Miss account a changing environment and sustain it for many years to come and so 2023 here we go we've already started opportunity we've been waiting for tonight yeah no it is great though just to go back and look at all the things that have happened and like I said we'll try to do something maybe a little more engaging more fun next year with a video or something like that it's good that it is good though to go back and review and look at all the different notes and different things that have happened and putting in a kind of calendar format so through so that well sitting here you realize how many people are involved in making that happen oh gosh it's not a good people in the district I'm proud we have four items for new business first one is a recommendation to approve the local income tax distribution resolution called any clarification yeah so this is we do this every year we do receive local income tax dollars from the county and so we just have to determine where those dollars go typically we put them back in any of those funds that generate any tax levies so we put those in our operations and education fund balance and we are an edge case of operation and get service funds and we just divide that based off of the uh percent distribution of our tax rate and how much of it is Operation fund and how much of that is that service so I just recommend that we continue that process and that's just the resolution that does that and there's a good resolution um I have them to your recommendation to distribute the 2023 transfers from the education fund to operations fund so we have to have board approval for any transfers that we made from education to operations fund we do monthly transfers and we've always set kind of a cap limit and so the recommendation is to transfer not more than 195 000 a month we probably won't be transferring that much but that gives us a little bit of cushion in case we would need to and that would go throughout the year if we ever needed to transfer more than 195 000 then I would have to come back to the board and ask for another resolution to increase that amount okay you have a motion don't move safe camera in favor say aye aye item three recommendation to prove resolution authorizing the treasure to pay claims so we have two board meetings a month but there are months that we don't always have a board meeting because of a cancellation or whatever reason but we still need to be able to pay our bills so that we don't have late payments or anything like that so this is just a resolution that would allow us to pay make those payments whereas you still would see those claims and approve those claims at the following board meeting all right folks item four would be recommendation to reappoint Jonathan Fisher to the Roman Library Board of Trustees for a term ending January 2027 five years for four years ago so all right you know I'm finished for business fortunately no board policies anything for the public anybody from The Lord of the United States everyone been a customer for the new board member to have a five-minute speech well that's where we're giving this test this is a quiz this is the test time stand for students in Jeff I'm glad to have you here if not we're adjourned yeah I did that on there too well
you know they're changing um what it means and depending on you know what things are released like I this is the first year for biology that they've released the new exam questions past two years I've been it's been shooting in the dark like I have had no idea what the questions are even when they release so I was understanding you know what standards that we might need support in they were doing the same thing now as they were researching the exam they weren't allowing us access to what types of questions the students weren't performing on I could we had no idea we had no idea what the questions were now we're back to being able to see what those questions are so going back to what John was saying with this 30 percent I'm sure you know exactly who those students are so you can Target them should we get some statistics you mentioned earlier why is this changing is because of our school population is changing ell low cell Studio economic another episode we talked a lot about last year higher higher needs populations do you have a breakdown of the percentages we can get that information I will invite you um you go on and this is thanks to um Sally um Dart um and you can look up anything about the district our population um you know the breakdown of Chinese um well I can get some of that but as it as it's changed over time um as our population has changed over time yeah I think everybody understands the population as it relates to these scores is it we don't right here or is it spread of holding places right we can we can absolutely I know I can't do it by different subgroups right we can um we can download yeah like we also need to think about how we're instructing our students to how we're going to present you to communicate this speaks to your budget the three-way plans the portrait of graduate looking at how we instruct are we instructing the way our students need made that instruction over where they need to be Shifting the way we're focusing project-based learning experiential learning they're going to these classrooms because you're doing a ton of that pregnancy they're thinking about real world problems so that's how they're engaging more I think in reading the standards so we have to look at that piece of it we need to be able to continuously offer PD opportunities and teachers Avail themselves of coursework who learn more about content pedagogy so that they can instruct better so it's afford more opportunities that goes out as a science department chair of the coach and the other department chairs go out coaches to the sobriety are different they belong to affiliations right they'll learn about how to improve teaching and learning I think and then also looking we're talking about with math for example what resources are we providing that we have resources that don't want to what we're teaching if they're scrambling to try to say you've got to get to the standard but the resource that we have you know we have to build more supplementary materials that takes time so that's why I think somebody mentioned before when we see one particular um so in for the eighth grade um there were 87 students in the district um identified for taking the exam so 14 12 students um exceeded 57 50 students meeting 26 23 students and two percent of students not meeting expectations um so this is we also try to identify who the students are that we're not meeting expectations and understand who those students are students who did not make take the MCAS but were supposed to are identified as not meeting I think that's important so if they just they missed if they were absent and they were on the roster and they missed it so it is a test that wasn't taken and there were a couple of them yeah there's no opportunity oh yeah oh absolutely they can retake it but for that test year it is slated as not unit so there's no makeup for like two two not later not for that it's it's projected in a different like this is for this particular test take it this time it's the spring of so I can download information about other testing here but this is for the spring results of but there are and it has negative three days right oh absolutely don't go they don't go into the same pot wow it depends if they were if they were if they could perhaps one day you can watch it in the window they can make it up but if it was something windows no it's a bigger window but it just it kind of depends on the surface it's just been trickier I have a message from Peter yeah um we can absolutely break down if students are not yet meeting standards and they are overwhelmingly our high need students and it is in those areas that we can propose to our resources he already has the data ready to go for email that's what I was going to say too like the budget is big ger cases right so for a taxpayers and it's all about the growth right right so um that's great so this is the last um slide for the eighth grade again the test line of analysis how we work with the data um looking at you know what was that question I mean our eyes are always drawn to what can we do better what was that question what was the content area um where is that lesson you know how is that lesson taught what type of question is it the questions are twofold there is a Content component and there is a science skill component so every question on the science MCAS has two parts to it um so you have seen this slide before this was one of um Peter Doherty's um the first live he showed um it is the talent of biology MCAS it was the first year the next gen um scoring was rolled out and so this graphic and this graphic represents the same test um old scoring um reflected um next gen scoring reflected and it clearly says different you know tells a different story looks different um I want to do this tool I don't want to be this school it is the same test same students um same wrong answers um but it is now how the state is presenting the data so this uh you know is new this is the first year for my students and again um I have to you know kind of reiterate that the um you know the you know this is new and I've been teaching blind for the past two years um with this so you know they um and they they rolled out this information slowly this year um this is a side by side comparison of the next gem so this is how the state um is doing and this is how tanto students did on the um it says grade 10 but it's any one who's enrolled in biology takes the um biology MCAS um if they've completed the full course and so we have um ninth and 10th graders and so um our district um 79 um and we have 81 80 these numbers are different it's very strange I can pull this information and get these reports very tidy um and then there are different slightly different numbers and I don't know why they're calculated um in a different way um but so we have 75 we had 75 students taking it 13 students exceeded expectations as per that data um so we have 62 47 students meeting um and then 17 partially meeting and three percent two students not meeting so 79 of our students succeeded or met expectations was 47 of the state exceed that exceeded or met expectations addressing so addressing the two students identified as not meeting expectations there's only one student who actually did not meet expectations um and um we know that the biology test is a language-based test there's a lot of vocabulary there's a lot of language and it is very difficult um for young students to navigate that and the other not meaning is a heartbreak for me because it was an incredibly successful story that is reflected it's not meaning and that was a very successful very beautifully put together portfolio assessment on that past which is really difficult it's very difficult to put together portfolio assessments and have that passed through the state it was but in our scoring it is identified as net meeting so that's a sad that's sad for me um so this is the this is the final report so this is if you break down um the information and download the report achievement analysis by year this is all of the same Edwin analytics this is the other so the report that is sent out in District comparison this is the data that's reflected 81 of the students and now I don't know where they get the 81 because the previous lives in 80 and 79 but this is the same D Edwin analytics and this is the information that is in the district comparison so it's 81 students are meeting or exceeding expectations as compared to 45 um as the state average um Tonto sde next steps so um we review the standards report item analysis report and released questions um we asked ourselves are there any areas that need to be strengthened in content or in skills we review data prior to each unit and identify activities that will promote greater understanding particularly in areas identified by the item analysis report identifying models that are used as illustrative examples for each unit this is really important students really need to be able to look at models and be able to use models and um apply their knowledge to the models and then apply apply those models to new situations which is a complicated series of um events for them to do and so we want to incorporate these in similar models I was in the Middle School classrooms um and they were doing just that we integrate new question Styles and previously read these exam questions this year um high school biology can do that we've been doing that at the middle school level um we're using diesel reports as guides for creating classroom experiences um there are links here to understand what those are but those are um you know prescribe best practices within the classroom um that have been identified as um you know um goals for what our classrooms should look like um we schedule eighth grade review sessions prior to the MCAS um where there's a you know um review sequences that happen in the classroom and then I address the high school review sessions the discrepancy yeah attention but discrepancy between one percent here and there is District versus school school are the students that are in front of us District are all students who are taking a guess whether if they're from our towns whether they're homeschooled they're outplaced those students are included in our district graphs on Jesse so if you choose school or you choose District when you create perhaps that's the difference of the one percent right because those students are included in our district numbers right um highlights for high school I'm constanto high school biology MCAT scores are 15th in the state for students meeting and exceeding expectations I think that's um a great statistic to use um we are in the top five percent among the um 302 school districts in the state um results by standard is again this helps us um provide some information and Analysis um in look Force so now any questions on science yeah okay um it's p now I'm sure P we'll we'll hear from Peter um to Hunter Regional um Ela results this is 678 and um 10.