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Kinsky the superintendent and our board member so let me introduce you our president ceiling increase Gonzalez my vice president Yolanda Pena let's see then clerk is Jerry Bibles Vogel and two new members this year the joined us Gabriela Ariana's and Adrienne career and also sitting down there close to you miss hotel room kyoki's assistance of Human Resources he's one that hires your teachers and over here we have our third Ortega who is the assistant superintendent for education services they're the ones that buy all the textbooks for you guys and mark my marito who is the assistant superintendent of turns which means he pays all the bills so we're glad to have you here and we look forward to your input you'll get a chance to vote on different items they'll do what's called the student preferential vote or you get to tell us your preference and so welcome enjoy it okay moving on we have item six items from the floor public comment on agenda or non-agenda items let me read this this is this is an opportunity for the public to address the agenda to address the board on agenda or non agenda items no action can be taken on non-agenda items individual speakers may be allowed up to three minutes to address the board and then the timer's up above on any agenda or non agenda item prior to addressing the board please fill out one of the requests to speak public comment blue cards and submit it to the board secretary and I just want to explain how this works many of you this may be your first board meeting so this is this opportunity for anybody who wishes to address the board on any item including the item that will top you talking about a little later on school closure so this is the time for anybody in the public who wants to say something to the board would be able to do that right now we have three cards so I'm going to call through these but if anybody else wishes to speak I encourage you to fill out a blue card and and then turn it in and so we'll start with the first person and that is Joanie don't man excuse my pronunciation Demonte is that correct good evening I am Joanie de Monte from Mountain View Elementary I know that closing schools at this point is already inevitable something that is already on the table whether we like it or not all we are all we are asking is for the board and the district to be transparent and give us the direct answers if you decide to close the schools then close the schools period stop dragging this issue and give us the time frame and though and make the decisions already so that's the parents teachers and staff can move forward and plan their actions and if you decide to vote yes the closing of schools we want to suggest the following first create a transition team that is composed of administrators teachers classified and parents so that the input of of people will be taken into considerations any concerns regarding the transition will be taking care of this committee for example if any school refused to accept a student coming from the three schools that has been closed should be dealt with second school buses should be provided for all the students we have a lot of students that walk to the going to school especially it's raining there should be a designated place where parents can drop off their children to be pretend to be picked up by the school bus third Dual Immersion program should be uprooted as a whole program at transition in a school that can accommodate its needs like the Spanish estimate air accelerated reading with Spanish book Spanish book test and a mini library that is full of Spanish books which our school Mountainview provide for a Dual Immersion program last one signed the district release for parents who would prefer to transfer in the nearby cities without giving them a hard time thank [Music] [Applause] thank you next we have Alan Soriano good evening I'm just a parent of one of two children that go to Mountain View Elementary School I just thought I'd tell you guys why I like out Mountain View Elementary and why I don't think it should close my my oldest child she came in in kindergarten and she was rather awkward because she was an advanced learner the teachers of Mount View Elementary School recognized this and they were able to provide a solid educational plan for her and that I see mrs.
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manzanares right there she was one of the ladies who actually took care of my daughter very well and as students I don't know if miss Wiley is here but she has taught both of our children in kindergarten and our children absolutely loves miss Wiley my daughter my eldest Brielle is currently in miss ramirez's class and getting a great education but it's also about the community that this school has provided once a month or once every couple of months they provide these events and we see so many different people that we would have not seen before they bring a community together and I don't know who's responsible for that whether it's Miss Lee or who it is but it's a really good thing for our kids to to just have this kind of family structure over there and I've had nothing but great experiences with Mountain View Elementary and its teachers its staff and I just have nothing not a bad thing to say about them but another reason is is that I live on Holi Vale right there and I just saw I'd have to drive to take my child to school which I'm not going to complain people drive their kids to school it's fine but you know it's it's gonna cause a problem especially since my daughter who's in kindergarten entered the Spanish immersion program which means I'm going to have to drop off my one daughter at at Paramount and my other daughter at Valley Dale which could cause some serious problems just in my personal situation it would mean taking my a kindergartner out of Dual Immersion and taking away a tool that is going to be needed in the next in the upcoming years for kids to be bilingual Gringo's are gonna have to learn to speak Spanish and that's that's that's long the short of it so with my last 15 seconds if the decisions made the decisions made but Mountain View has been nothing but great for my kids and I hope you keep that in mind thank you finally we have sue Clark announcing TFA Community it is it is a joy and a delight to be at this movie I greet all of you members of the Board of Education this is impressive what this community continues to do together my husband Rick and I have been residents of Azusa in Glendora since 1990 working as pastor and educator from the elementary level through University level and in we found a faith-based organization in 2008 - especially engage in preventing intervention restoration and prosecution of those who are exploiters in 2017 we formed traffic-free Azusa we are residents deeply involved in this community that exist to make a city safe nurturing environment for all of our children families and individuals in this community focusing on addressing exploitation of the vulnerable including human trafficking gang violence prostitution drug abuse pornography child abuse illicit massage parlors and any other harmful issue in our city as a result of our interaction with the the community and especially stakeholders including those especially including those in our Board of Education we with the mayor and with Azusa cares we have decided to form the traffic free Azusa community task force to synergize maximize communication of our efforts in all of our departments and organizations operations we invite you board those of you who have time and interest to synergize our efforts to create a strategic plan focused on educating protecting and ensuring the well-being of all of our community this will be an ongoing task force that meets monthly to collaborate and create a citywide model strategy that can be shared with other cities this is there are several cities across the United States that have no counties but there is no city that has ever done this Azusa would be the first so I welcome your response to the invitation thank you so thank you mrs.
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Park now before I move on we have two more two more calm public comment but before I do that I thank you for reminding me mr. Soriano that we are a by Louisville community and so tenemos @vc la traducción CR ER necesita adi for most animals a Senora Camacho Baraka so if anybody needs translation we and we have it in the back and it's for Spanish translation um so with that we'll run to the next person will public comment and that is Daisy Rodriguez good evening my name is Daisy Rodriguez I am a proud sophomore student at Gladstone High School I am here on behalf of the students at Gladstone High School enrolled in Spanish courses of misrata I am currently in MS Motta's AP Spanish language and culture class she has been given she has been a phenomenal instructure however she had to leave because of personal reasons maternity leave miss Martha took the necessary steps to ensure her students would be well taken care of while she was on maternity leave she planned and requested a stable substitute teacher to follow her lesson Spence in October of 2018 when she had when her leave was not scheduled until February 3rd it is now March 5th 2019 so far we have had five unstable substitute teachers the Sousa Unified School District has felt the students from Spanish two three and eight piece Spanish language classes they have felt to complete compiled with their mission statement in which they stay and assist to ensure each student attend obtains or exceeds academic proficiency graduates from Azusa Unified School District and is college and career ready but how do they expect to how do they expect to compel with their promise if they have felt to provide their students what they qualified substitute instruction we are being cheated from the earning the CEO by literacy on our diploma which will later give us an advantage in the workforce also if we have to retake this course to make for the teaching we have lost which is a four month to be exact it is taking up a class where instead we can be taking AP physics AP calculus or ap biology which will affect our GPA and college acceptance and placement hopefully there is something the district can work out to supply us with a qualified temporary substitute teacher in order to fulfill our academic and career goals for the remaining of the academics clear Azusa Unified School District has failed us by not fulfilling their core promises which they have claimed on their district web page since you hold yourself accountable for making decisions which are in our best interest then why then where is our qualified instructor which you have had five months to find when you express the high expectations you have had for each student and adult how do you expect us to achieve that how do you expect us to achieve your set expectations if you fail to supply us with the basic temporary materials how can you assert yours how can you assert your schools and students have received the resources and support they need to ensure this academic success and NICs excellence when you cannot provide us with the necessary instructure how do you declare these characteristics of openness honesty and respective respectability and transparent communication when no one from the administration or district personnel has communicated with us students directly under three minutes are oh thank you thank you next we have Ashley Gamma denna also speaking to the APA and AP Spanish language class good evening my name is Ashley kamidana I'm a junior at Gladstone High School and I'm here to let you know that I'm very concerned about the AP Spanish link class I want to tell you how much I care about my school works and grades this is my junior year and soon I will be applying to college I don't want to be feeling this class and let it affect my grades or GPA I don't want this to affect me from getting or applying into my dream College which is Cal State Long Beach just imagine all the hard work that I've been putting in at school and my work at school just not me but also the other students too and not being able to get in to our dream school just because we failed AP Spanish link the seniors at our school have don't have another opportunity next year to take this class and also if they don't pass this class this year they will not get the seal of biliteracy just because we don't have a permanent teacher we've had over five different substitutes and seeing that we haven't learned any material related to our AP test and it's just meaningless time let me tell you that one of our one of the requirements for the Spanish scholarship and also the Spanish Court is that we must have passed the AP line class with the score of three or higher and seeing that this scholarship that can help us for money for college and not being able to apply for it just because we didn't have a permanent teacher to teach us and prepare us for the test we're losing this opportunity to apply it if we keep on having us up for this and waiting and waiting for a teacher to come and teach us it will be too late for us if we take this test we will make we will take it in May and we don't have that much time left and we still have to be units left to learn we will be late to take this exam the passing rate for the AP and nine class is 100 has been like that and we put in so much work to pass this and if we passed the exam we would get college credits and not have to pay for those courses and seeing that we won't be able to get that opportunity for the test is devastating I'm looking forward for you to take in consideration what I'm saying and how much we care about this class and how much we really need a teacher me and my classmates would be happy and appreciated if you would get us a permanent teacher that would teach us the materials that we need to learn and pass the AP exam thank you next we have Juan Luis Reyes good nice you think is Spanish si okay you want somebody can we have somebody come translate into English please - no cheese at all good evening everyone so you represent and alla Scuola para otros estados cool and here they represent the as you said old school so luego ser una pregunta por que quien será una escuela I'm here to ask a few questions why do you want to close our school open under no skeeters boy and where will you be moving us to but Emil escuela es algo muy importante school is very important for me porque IE aprendido and pull with the m pocket angle in the short time I've been there I've learned a lot a brandy domu chillin with my estas amana you Chi see I've learned a lot from my teachers and they've helped me a lot yo muchísimo mmm ooh stereo continuum mis estudios I've learned a lot and I would like to continue my studies Italian represent a novice compañeros ketamine so una familia para P I'm also representing my colleagues who are a family for me and the last speaker we have is misty Cameron good evening my name is misty Cameron I work at Mountain View I've been there going on 11 years now I was a student there my kids go there half of my family's gone there it's an excellent school it's evolved so much since I was there a lot of the students around there walk themselves and their younger siblings to school because the parents work if you try to transfer them somewhere else how are they gonna walk there how are they gonna get to school you guys say you guys are not gonna provide busing for these kids and it's not fair this school has come so far with the Dual Immersion the PTO all the different things that they do there is just become so much for these kids these kids love it they do cheerleading our life skills class some of those girls have joined the cheerleading teams the track team there's just so much that our school does for these kids the kids love the teachers I'm a new supervisor like we know all their names they know all our names they come up to us they give us gifts they there's just so much we have so many janitors that come to our school and just tell us I can't believe what you new supervisors do no other school does that you guys do here you guys have your sister your system was awesome it works the kids appreciate it you the teachers appreciate it your janitor appreciates it he's so lucky he's I wish we could get other schools to noon sir provides us to do as much as you guys do you know and we do it because we love the kids we love our school we love our principal our teachers there they work with us when it comes to discipline with the kids we just were like a family and you guys are gonna tear us apart and it's not fair there's other schools that could be merged like the high schools anything why a school that's been there for so many years I'm 42 I went to school there decades ago you know and it's just gonna be sad to see all these kids that walk past my house every day hey miss misty hey miss misty you know I do a haunted house for free the kids come to my haunted house what I'm not gonna have that interaction with them anymore and they're not gonna have that to know where I'm coming from when can they come just things like that you know it's it's heart-wrenching this schools been there for years and just to do that just to tear down to build a skyrise of Hartman's or for the industries to take over I don't want that in my city I want a school to bring the education to these students that need to learn because school is the most important tool in Mergent is most important most important to these kids if it's not there what are they gonna have they're not gonna have nothing you're gonna crush their dreams crush their memories for what it's not fair I want to thank each and one that every one of you for coming to speak to us so the way it works as a board we don't respond to comments as they give them to us so will will have an opportunity as a board to discuss the issues that were raised during our pub our board comments and or during the agenda items so you'll see that discussion as this meeting progresses so with that we'll move on to the next section in that section nine report action of closed session matters and we'll be taking action on three items number 9.1 we're taking action on the non re-election and released from temporary four from temporary certificated employees resolution 1819 116 make a motion to approve 9.1 did I skip why don't you skip the board um comment oh I skipped all of our comments I'm sorry I'm like so I'm at the backtrack well i skipped item all the comments that i just referred to so i we have item seven point one we have comments a request by the board so we will start with um cavity a lot a honest hello I just wanted to go ahead and let you guys know that I have been at different schools Lea had a meeting with this was a police department and the district and we had parents there to discuss the the different issues and matters that happen going on it was a really successful meeting there's another thing that APU Community Counseling Center they were there hosting four workshops three of them have already taken place this Thursday is the last one at Memorial Park at five o'clock these are free usually you have to pay for them but APU got a grant to be able to give to our community everyone's welcomed you guys can come it is for anxiety and mindfulness and it will be again presented by APU Community Counseling Center Jerry I'd like to welcome everybody thank you for coming and being so passionate with you know how you feel but we are definitely listening to you I would like to check on the AP Spanish sub please look into that because that's super important and basically I look forward to saying more later once we have our presentation but thank you all and believe me we are listening to you so thank you Adrian you know first first of all just want to thank everybody for coming out thank everybody for coming out and expressing your thoughts especially to the to the young people who are here and expressing your thoughts I mean advocating for yourselves I know I'm proud of you know that we're proud of you for that so when I thank you yeah we are gonna have some conversation a little bit later to directly respond to things that have come up but again grateful for for community sharing and giving input because we are representatives of you the representatives of the community and so thank you for providing us with insight I do want to say over here Noel I'm known you since you were gay hi and it's just an honor to see you here I'm very proud of you so thanks for being here and one other thing I want to touch on I was able to go over here and stop in at the the student gallery I'm hearing Gladstone high school I don't know if everyone else was able to but just blown away by some of the incredible talent that we have here in our community there were there were some drawings that were that were put together by a middle school student and if you don't have if you didn't have an opportunity to see some of that I mean I'm just absolutely blown away I spoke to these dukes of high school art teacher and one of the things that he said was this is the kind of raw talent that me as an instructor I wouldn't even know what to say to a student like this when they're coming in with this kind of ability and so I'm just blown away by just the incredible young people that we have here here in our community Thank You Yolanda yes I want to thank you all for being here today to voice your concerns regarding the school closures and also the young students regarding the AP Spanish so I just wanted to report I went to Azusa high school they had a full house there for the uncoming sixth graders going to the middle school all the principal's went and spoke about highlighting their schools and what programs they have at their school sites regarding sports academics the after-school programs so the parents can decide you know what middle school fits their child or what program they want to be and they're able to go to any middle school of their choice I went to Mountain View and I went to the annual jump jump heart jump for heart with the with the jump ropes and the hula hoops which I didn't do very well in the hula hoops if you saw the video thank you on halika I could I don't have that sway anymore but it's a lot of fun I really missed it we used to play tetherball and and basketball and they didn't have that this year due to the rain but it was a lot of fun and yes I do love mountain view I go there as much as I can when they have programs when they're you know I like to participate in their arteries and yesterday is a great school I went to the University if he you to the Student Service Learning luncheon luncheon we're working together with community members elected officials APU the Unified School District and I want to thank Michelle Laporte for her her worth are totally right just like today you know we all can learn from each other and this is why I like this young lady that came and spoke about their AP Spanish I mean honestly Demming versus and what remember not even knowing about that I wish they would have came sooner but you know we're gonna work on that and uh appreciate them their input I went to the State of the City dr.
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Kaminsky did a great job you know talking about our schools and what programs who have at each school but also especially the students since loss in middle school they're still 26 did a fantastic job when they made their video highlighting the great things that are going on it is does Unified School District and I want to thank the principal the teacher Kimball Coburn and your students I went to Read Across America I want you several schools and I read my favorite book is green eggs and ham because my kids you know how to make green eggs and ham they were younger so I tell the kid I tried it I also want to announce we have new five new members and this is the leaders to learning educational foundation we have Mickey carpenter she's a director of Azusa Parks and Recreation we have Sean Milner she's a former member of the COC committee which is a school one citizens Oversight Committee we have Melissa Romanov she's a clerk at sauce in middle school we have my Rodney Co she's the parent of the year it was a high school and we have Diane Vieira she's an employee from APU so we're looking forward to working with them because I think we're gonna have a great team thank you thank you I'm and for myself yes I would please give follow up with what's happening with the Spanish classes not only eight people at the other classes and then can we get a report back on Friday about what's happening with that please and thank you and then again thank you very much for all of you coming out tonight I know you guys all you have very busy schedules but I think it's a testament to to your belief and your and your strength and and the value that that you bring to the schools that you part that you are part of and your students are part of and they're your families are part of our community so I want to say I really appreciate that so we'll move on next to the next item and that's comments reports by the student board member cabinet and superintendent so we'll start with a student board member Jacqueline at Gladstone High School on March 5th the hit program field trip will be at Northrop Gruman from 7:45 a.m.
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to 1:30 p.m. on March 5th the district band festival will be as is a high school from 8:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on March 5th the girls got game conference will be at University of Laverne from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on March 6 the JROTC junior achievement will be at Ellington on March 6th the spring report card 9 will be in the GHS gym from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on March 8 we will have our is Sadie's dance on the outer quad from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. on March 9th the dance team will have their competition at Glendale High School from 6:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. on March 9 the choir carwash will be at the GHS circle drive from a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on March 9th the band Jazz Festival will be at Esperanza high school from 11:45 a.m. to 7:45 p.m. on March 12 to march 14th is the avid college visits on March 13th is a JROTC junior achievements at Ellington on March 13th the ASB Leadership Conference and on March 14th the ASVAB testing will be in the cafeteria from 8 a.m.
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to 12 p.m. on March 15 the French wedding will be in the center quad and library on March 15 the choir competition will be at Los Alamitos High School from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m. on March 16th the band competition will be a Newbury Park High School on March 16th the JROTC will be at orienting competition at Deb's Park from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and from March 17th to march 14th the WASC accreditation visit and then at Azusa High School from March 4th to March 7th will be the cheer tryouts they will begin at 3:30 p.m. on March 5th the hill field trip will be at Northrop Gruman from a a.m. to 2 p.m. on March 5th the district band festival will be from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. on March 5th the girls got game will be at University of Laverne from 9 a.m.
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to 1 p.m. on March 6 the SAT school day will begin at 8 a.m. on March 6 the senior panoramic 2019 and car pictures will be at 2 p.m. on March 6 the ACS a aureate Orion contest will be in Pasadena at 6 p.m. on March 7th the elac meeting will be in room 1 parent center from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. on March 8th the best buddy spread of the word will be on the stage from 12 10:00 p.m. to 12:40 p.m. on March 9th the colorguard tournament will paramount high school from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on March 9th the ashtec Saturday Academy will be from 8 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. on March 11 to March 13th we will have the cheer tryouts at 3:30 p.m. on March 12 the CTE job shadowing will be from 7:45 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. on March 14th the life skill field trip will be a citrus crossing at 10:00 a.m.
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to 1:00 p.m. on March 15th the spring rally will be in the gym from 11:35 a.m. to 1227 p.m. on March 16th to 17th the best buddies a waste and carwash will be from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on March 18th there will be a lockdown drill at 1:50 p.m. and on March 19th the school site Council will begin at 3:00 p.m.
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and can I answer of course so this year our leadership class partnered with chick-fil-a and basically chick-fil-a has a Leadership Academy and every month they come and they teach us new leadership skills and they also bring us lunch which is cool and they also help us plan these two big events so in December we did a ducat December project which is where we made blankets and then we gave them to the homeless people and then we also went to a Senior Center and we got to hang out with them and then for our end-of-the-year project we're doing a talent show for our school and it's on May 3rd and it's open to the whole community so if anyone wants to sign up our class will be sending out fliers to all the different schools and it's open from like so all you just like little kids all the way up to adults and we're having chick-fil-a there thank you and then Jacqueline this is your last meeting with us so what are your future plans I plan to go to college so far I've gotten into cal poly Laverne and I'm waiting on two more I'm next we move on to the Cabinet reports so we'll start with Court hey don't feel I'm gonna pass thank you we have our third Ortega no comment mark Bomarito thank you our superintendent Linda Kaminski good evening I just like to first of all share with everybody else the thanks for the community showing up tonight to talk to us and and share their thoughts and concerns and we will try to to listen carefully and to meet your concerns and if this moves forward to work as as carefully with you as possible so that it's a smooth transition I'd also like to thank the AP Spanish students for coming I'm very proud of you that you're in your class and I'm glad that you informally about the situation so that we can start looking into it for you thank you very much thank you okay moving on we have item now we have item 9.1 not in reelection and released from temporary certificated employees resolution 1819 116 make a motion to approve 9.1 is your mic on second okay there's a motion by Yolanda Rodriguez Pena second by a drink we hear any discussion I do have a question so I'm Jorge could you just explain what we're doing here yes of course this item is a standard procedure that occurs at this point in the year these are teachers who were truly valued who signed temporary contracts when they were hired and as part of the routine action we notified would release at the end of this school year okay thank you any other questions no all right please place your votes motion passes five-0 moving on we have item 9.2 release reassignment of Administrator number 18 19 3 4 - resolution 18 19 1 1 8 is there a motion is there a second second motion by Jerry Bibles Vogel second by gov the other Ariana's any discussion seeing none please place your vote motion passes 5 0 moving out and on to item 9.3 we have a proof settlement kate settlement of three cases we have azusa case number 0 2 0 3 0 9 case number 0 2 0 1 46 and case number 0 1 9 0 8 0 their motion motion second motion by a drinker ear second by Yolanda Rodriguez Pena any discussion please place your votes motion passes 5-0 okay moving on we're moving on to item 10.1 consideration of school closures and relocation as it shows here on the agenda this is actually an information item so this will just be a presentation and discussion and no actually will be taken on this item tonight so we'll start with a presentation by our chief business officer mark Bommarito good evening I'm tonight I'm gonna be talking a little bit about the school closure process and what that looks like what our current plan is and some of the implications some of the thinking we've done so far a little bit of the history so this started with the recommendation from the PAC plus the PAC plus is our parent group that comes together with our union partners and they were tasked with laying out seven over seven million dollars worth of cuts and through that process they came up with a list of recommendations so mark mark what is PAC stand for sure it is our Parent Advisory Committee and the plus stands for plus our labor partners which is CSEA AEA and our administrators that were part of the group and they recommended this list of reductions the number one item on there is our school closures with two sites to be closed with an estimated savings of $1,000,000 so five hundred thousand dollars apiece we went through a process of having each member of the group vote separately and the highest number of votes which was 25 was selected for that school closure piece moving forward that that recommendation was taken to the board the board considered it and they took action to create a 7/11 committee and this 7/11 committee or surplus property committee met for several sessions considered many different options looked at a lot of data put together by the district and was requested by the committee and their final recommendation was to close the following site Sierra Mountain View and Magnolia and that was their their final recommendation and part of it what in the language laid out that the Sierra and Magnolia was a consideration for where Aaron would end up so it was really it said three but when you read the language it was really important to how did we get to this point and we have several factors that are affecting the need to reduce our sites namely number one is the reduction in students in our sites so we had in 2000 we had over 15,000 kids in two years were projecting to have just over 7,000 kids so less than 50% in our schools right now we have eight thousand and ten kids and so that means our classrooms and our spaces are not being used fully why are we losing so many kids it's a very simple equation which is our the number of folks that are having children they live in the city boundaries or in the school district boundaries or not or not having as many babies so if you look at this chart it shows you that in 1999 there was one thousand almost 1200 kids that were born and you look at what was well what happened in 2015 and that number dropped to 852 so the this extreme decline in the number of births is the reason why we have less kids in our schools the number of kids that is captured from from the birth so the number of kids that actually enroll into kindergarten is actually increased over time so we've been doing a better job of getting more of those kids to enroll in our school so we were up to right now about 83% last year we were at 89% so many of those kids are in our schools back in 1999 we were only at 77% of those kids landing in our schools on the fiscal side the state has been shorting all school districts not just to Zuza for for adequate funding and for Azusa that means that were for the first time going to have less dollars coming from a DA than we've had I'm sorry average daily attendance so average daily attendance is how we earn most of our dollars were for our schools so for the first time which will be in 2021 will have less dollars than we did in the prior year and at the same time costs are going up we have our pension costs that are skyrocketing our cost of employment for our personnel is increasing naturally and the cost of electricity supplies everything is continuing to rise and we're gonna have to do that with less dollars and so the district has for a couple of years now been preparing for this downturn in funding due to declining enrollment and lack of funding coming from the state and so this report here shows the end so the money that we have set aside for declining enrollment if the economy was to collapse any of those items it shows the amount of money we have set aside for that and so you can see that we do have a decent reserve right now we have an estimated thirteen point eight million dollars of reserves and you can see that green line would be the trend line dropping down to three million dollars if we continue to operate within our plan if we fail to make cuts in the following three years that's the yellow line so those cuts would be next year cutting two point eight million dollars in 2021 that would be 2.2 million dollars and then just over a half million more in 2021 so you just clarify so when you say next year you mean we're gonna we adopt those cuts when correct so in the budget that we prepared at the end of this year which would be the budget for 1920 we have to include 2.8 million dollars worth of cuts thank you so as we started one of the recommendations from pack bus to reduce our budget was a million dollars of estimated savings from closing a school all right mark can you can you communicate going back to this other other chart we see the green line in the yellow line yes can you describe the impact of that or the impact of us falling below a particular reserve Thresher so the state requires us to have a minimum three percent reserve in three years that is the lowest that we can go before bad things happen to a school district which would be like a state takeover like Englewood Unified Oakland Unified so that that's what happens when you go below that three percent reserve and we couldn't get to negative 10% we wouldn't be here anymore you know that's when we were beyond zero so what have you take it or if they do what happens so what what happens is the board is relieved of their authority and so you you would hand that authority over to a state administrator that's a that's run through the county and the county would put us on a corrective action plan to get our spending within within alignment and then we would be under that leadership for for quite some time like all the districts that I mentioned so it's definitely something that we want to avoid in the district and the board has been doing a great job and addressing cuts we've made significant cuts in the past and we've reduced staffing we've aligned as best we can but there's still more that needs to be done next year and in the following years so can you help us understand last year we had the same discussion and why it was changed what one so I wouldn't say it was changed so we we talked about a bunch of reductions with the board we talked about timelines and we we pause the decision so that way we can really explore all the options so what you're saying is that if we do not do these cuts that the state will take over what I'm saying is that we have to make next year 2.8 million dollars worth of cuts those cuts we have we have different ways that we can get that if we close to schools as recommended that's only a million dollars we still have you know the other 1.8 to do so we're gonna have a myriad of things that we're going to have to add to that list that we consider and yes if we don't make any cuts in two years unless additional funds or to the district which obviously there's calls for the governor to change his funding model if those things don't happen one way or the other from ice making cuts or the governor giving us more money then yes the state will take us over and so if the state takes us over that means that we lose our local control of our schools the state will make decisions instead of people like us who actually belong to the community correct correct I just want to clarify though migrate so we're being responsible right we understand how much we have to cut right and so and they're never they're never good choices right in terms of what we have to cut because it's it affects people it affects individuals that are focused on employment so so but right now we have a plan right that we have to make these cuts and we're planning on making these cuts over the next couple years correct and we have the making cuts and you and we had and the county has actually commended the board for making those hard choices our labor partners are have been right there with us in conversation to figure out how to do this it it's been a collaborative effort and only been complimented on how well the board has done and in rolling those out well I would say it's a community I mean I think ultimately we have to make decisions but really I think there's a lot of input with the committees that we have in other people so obviously this would be worst case scenario I don't envision us getting there we will do what we need to do to stay solvent and in basically since we've gone through all these different steps and we've cut where we could cut the fat we're at the point where this is the best-case scenario of what we can do this is my recommendation for you tonight so the the first option or the first item that we're gonna look at is closing the Ciara Adult School campus and I want to be very clear about this the recommendation is to really to Gladstone Street that is not to in the adult school program the Adult School is doing amazing things we're hoping for expansion of the Adult School and so in no way are we recommending that we're ending Adult School Education it is if mr.
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Juan Luis Rey is still here so we can hear that what's another you're here you're here key so yes so we were not recommended to in the dual school program in hundred percent clear one of the reasons for moving that program is the Sierra a dual school campus has not been marked modernized the classrooms have not been upgraded like many of our other sites there's not a cafeteria or a kitchen at that location so our Sierra kids don't have that option for them the multi-purpose room does not hold all of the students so it's it's a little too small to fit everyone and the site does not fall with any of the future plans for modernization through our measure K dollars so that that is why we're looking to move that site so Gladstone Street is one of our largest acreage in the district besides the high schools so it's it's suitable to move another high school on to that campus like this year it also has many classrooms so it's one of our it's one of the sites that has been the largest number of actual classrooms the classroom are within range of restrooms and access to a play area if they wanted to have like a football program or something like that there's a multi-purpose room that's very large we've had many meetings in there there's room for to add a parking area on the backside for the adult campus it's it also is kind of separate from a bedroom community or apartment community where you would have a traffic impact it's on a major thoroughfare so there's access from transportation from our public agencies and it's a modernized site so that way when those schools move in or if they were to move in ciarán adult school would have a new campus that they would be moving into so if we're moving adult school and Ciara to Gladstone Street the students at Gladstone Street would need to be moved to neighboring schools and so the closest schools are Magnolia Murray and many of those kids actually live closer to Marie or Magnolia than they did than they currently live to Gladstone Street and so some of them would actually have or many of them would actually have a shorter commute to go to those schools but in my shower I wants to give almost 9:00 to Murray and I want to go to Matt know Nia what is the process of that what so can they do that we're planning to have an early open enrollment process so that way they can transfer over to to Magnolia that was there or vice versa and how about if they decide not to go to those schools that they want to go to a different school within our school boundaries then what the same rule would apply we would have open enrollment they could transfer to any of our sites we're hoping to advertise our Dual Immersion programs our visual performing arts programs our program at Dalton for stem so all of our programs advertised for the for these folks that way if they are interested or any of the kids are interested we can have them attend those sites so I know that the Mountain View parents are concerned about the Dual Immersion will they have to immersion still they we will still have the Dual Immersion program and I'll cover that when we get to that okay that one but you we'll cover it so one of the benefits of moving the Gladstone's teachers over to Murray and to Magnolia would be a reduction in the number of combo classes and so having more teachers per grade level allows us to have fewer classes where we're not having so many no one twos where we have mixed students in multiple grades so my question now is um class size so are we looking at increasing class size are we look what does that look like yes so we would be looking to increase class size up to the district cap so right now our cap is 26 for quick tk2 and then for everything above is up to 36 allow me to clarify please so for early TK 2 3 the class size is 26 maximum - to answer your question we're bound by those contractual rules so we won't be exceeding that for any one class for grades 4 through 6 the class size max is 35 and for middle school and high school the class size max is 36 thank you and so when we have only a teacher or a teacher and a half per grade level it makes it where a lot of our class sizes are very small and so we might have classes of 14 or 15 and that becomes very inefficient and it makes it challenging when you only have 5 kids in first grade and 10 kids in second grade for our teachers to leave those those classes so if you look at this map we have three colors represented over laid on a city block which shows all of the schools that are kind of in the Gladstone Street area so we have Magnolia at the very top and those students that attend that school are indicated with a red dot and so that's actually where those kids live and then we have the blue dots those guys go to the in the lower right hand corner right here that's Gladstone Street and then we have the yellow dots which go right here to Murray and so all these guys are going to Murray and as you can see we have many students that are kind of going across boundaries especially up here in the middle we have a mix of kids that are Murray Glasgow Street and Magnolia kids and if you look at distance a lot of these guys are actually closer to Murray and they would have a shorter commute and a lot of these guys up here are actually closer to Magnolia and we have few kids that are kind of below glass downstream these are the current attendance boundaries and so you can see that this area right here where we had a lot of that mixed attendance it actually belongs to Gladstone Street but they're already choosing to go to Magnolia or tomorrow tomorrow if we were to redraw the boundaries my recommendation would be to have the kids of the left of a classroom Street attend Magnolia and the kids below Gladstone Street attend Murray and the kids in this bottom corner would would also go to Magnolia if you want to go back home or so you can see the change so again this this area here is converting to Magnolia and that area below is gonna go tumor this map here shows the zoning of Gladstone Street and Magnolia so you can see that Magnolia here is surrounded by homes and down at the bottom Gladstone Street is is a major street and there is only business or the wash behind it and of course the district office on the side so it would be a good location for a high school program which instead of in a community that's gonna require a lot of parking so now you under your your question about mountain view maybe we can start off with that or you won't be dead oh you're after lunch go through your list go on your order okay so if we were to close mountain view the impact would be on the program that Dual Immersion program that's there and on the regular program so the recommendation would be for us to move the English program to Paramount and move the Dual Immersion Spanish program to Valley Dale so we would we would split the two programs and we would allow the mountain view of elementary students priority placement in other schools during the early open enrollment period so look we're gonna thank you thank you um so we're gonna as the board's gonna get to a lot of these questions so um Mountain View has a lot of potential for alternate use that we can explore there's there's it has a good entrance it's right next to the freeway for for some alternate use and there's benefits again just like Glasgow Street to increasing enrollment so it'll strengthen the English program at paramount because we'll have more teachers and we'll have the ability to do more PLC work across grade levels we'll be able to have less combos classes at paramount and a valley down there's been a call for dual immersion and the valley Dale parents are very open to having a dual immersion program on their campus the the valley Dale paramount mountain view map you can see right here all these red dots represent Mountain View students and the Mountain View students are very well spread out and part of that is because of the Dual Immersion program which is a choice that folks have and so many of these kids actually do live closer to Paramount and some of them actually live close to Valley Dale but they're they're really spread out we have ones that live next to Murray we have ones that live next to lis and so we'll give an option for those parents if they want to go to one of those other schools during their early open enrollment will we will do everything we can to make weeks for them at those sites I think so I would like everyone to please respect the process so the the VNA of the meeting was the opportunity for the public to give comment where this is not we're not voting tonight so this is going to come back to the board again and you'll have opportunity between now and whenever that meeting is if we move forward to be able to express those concerns but for now I know it could be difficult but we just please ask you to respect the fact that that um this isn't a meeting in progress thank you and and that's why that's why we're not making decisions tonight this is where this is our chance to we want to put all this information on public be transparent before we make any decisions moving forward so that's we're doing that but I don't want to start engaging in a dialogue we'll have time for that that's why that's why there's no action tonight this is just about getting information out so please we're going to continue with this and we'll you'll have opportunities in the future to have these conversations at your school sites and at board meetings thank you looking at the Mountain View attendance area which is the light blue color to the left that's the current area and the new area would be essentially change into paramount with with the big change of the Dual Immersion program shifting to Valle del and and of course we would make that option if folks wanted to go to Lee or they wanted to go to Murray through the early open enrollment period they could switch over alright so this is now the time for the board to ask any questions as far as what was brought up was siblings in the same school bilingual so if you have a child that's indeed Dual Immersion and your actual area is Valley Dale and you want you know to go to the other school and both of your children go there having been a parent to five kids I understand having to draw in North Dakota or drivin it's a pain so so both both kids in that case could go to Valley dinner yes but it would be the parents choice yeah other questions other other questions so so like I said I know I know it can be very difficult especially when you're in the audience and you want to ask a lot of questions and but um in order to maintain decorum we have to ask people to please not not interject comments so any any other questions from the board yes I I have a handful of questions if if we were to move forward with with this plan win would the consolidation take effect so we're looking to also can you can you describe for us which which schools in the district are currently impacted or at capacity we don't have any schools that are at capacity and we we have many schools that are far under capacity we do have in the middle of the year teachers classes that become full or grade levels that become full as students add late into the semester so we might already be at the cap that we discussed earlier and if an extra kid comes then then that school at that grade level it would find an alternate school for that kid but we have no kid I'm sorry no schools that are anywhere close to capacity so does that mean if we're looking at paramount and to receive you know a contingent from from Mountain if we're looking at Magnolia how confident are you in in space to be able to receive those those students and teachers very confident that we have room and Paramount's using just over half of their classrooms so they I also have another question about think together so I know that there are things together programs on the different campuses and so if I'm a parent and I have my child in think together at one school and I'm wanting to take them to another school how does that work am I am I on the waiting list am i able to get right into think together what how would that work out can I have something together is at every elementary site and then together we'll run by proportion so as as we find out who's enrolling where those programs will increase at the receiving at the receiving site to accommodate for the growth at that particular site so it's not like I'm just making this up and it's not like there's six thing together classrooms and Magnolia and that's it there's only six and so ever is coming right there's and there's not gonna be space so depending on on the growth of Magnolia those six will proportionately grow to be able to absorb the the new that's doing the woman at that site as far as looking at employment and the impact of employment this is so first question I have is have the union's been consulted and weighed in on this planet yes it's my understanding that going back to the 7/11 committee from last year the and the pack plus as Mark shirt and his presentation unions were actively participating and the conversation with them has been going I'm going with regards to possibility of a consolidation or closure can you speak to the potential according to the plan loss of certificated positions class classified positions and administrators yes I could take that question right now we don't anticipate a loss in permanent permanent teachers are classified again at this point we do believe that any loss rather with the consolidation will be able to absorb any of these positions through natural attrition retirement resignations so what you're saying with that is that we are not going to go ahead and lay off teachers we're looking at and trying to make sure that we could we don't employees won't be impacted by this this classifying exactly I mean what about administrators yes similarly I mean over time I mean we will be looking at how we could there will be a reduction in administrative position but that is a long-term deal I mean we're looking at our current employees right now and how we could adjust them within the organization again accounting for natural attrition and resignations Ken can you describe first mark what what current plans are in motion for the for the there would potentially be two vacant sites so what plans are currently in motion for what to do with those those sites so but the two sites that would be vacant which would be the Sierra adult campus and for Mountain View were going to be working with a consultant that looks at surplus property and evaluating the use and potential least value or sale value for the board so that way we can advise the board the best next step we also have to look at potential use by other public agencies like the county or the city and that may want to use those pieces of property so that's something that would that would come to the board and up to this point I mean there has been absolutely no we haven't moved on looking at that as we're so considering whether this is moving forward and then we can we definitely have more time to consider those alternate uses than we do or moving the current staff over to other sites okay and then kind of a two-part last last two-part question can you you showed on their ad a the average daily attendance to be around $11,000 per per student can you describe how that $11,000 per student is used throughout the district sure and just about 80% of it is used on there we go 80% of it is used on staffing and that's our certificated staff our classified staff our benefits for those staff and their their pension contributions the other 20% is broken up between our materials and supplies our books and then our electricity bill for example or water we love gas bill so that's all in that small 20% that's left is just the things that our teachers use in everyday our books are copy machines and items like that so most of the money is on staffing ok and so where can if a community member wants to get this information on where these monies are spent in the district where can they find this so we provide the board with updates at least once a month on what we're doing the items that are in consideration for increasing or decreasing funders and then every year you know even in good times we have the reporting that's required by the state which is our first interim report our second interim report are an hour which would be the the next report that we're doing today which would be our second interim and then we'll do our unaudited actuals and then finally at the end of the year we'll be doing our budget for the next year and so all those have details as to how we're spending every single dollar it's all a public document required by the state of course it's audited by an outside auditing firm to make sure that everything is being done appropriately any other so ok so um as you're presenting this to us I I don't I don't see a timeline will the parents and the communicate a timeline definitely will we will have a timeline we put out what that timeline has been in the past today in everyone's hands so we can put that up on the screen Kathy if you would like and that timeline lays out kind of a general overview of what we're looking at as far as what has happened in the past and some of the big items in the future did you want to interrupt well I just wanted to address just to make sure that we we you know that were able to it was a Joni from from Mountain View just the three concerns or the four concern she had one of them was being that the transition and stuff is we could you know a good timeline if we could go ahead and have that too and just taking in consideration her points yeah we were we're going to put together an individual timeline for each of the sites because there's gonna be small nuanced differences and changes and dates with communication visits from from cabinets though we can support our staff and our parents and our students in the in what that looks like at their site and we'll have details for each site separately and then of course it all depends on whether this is happening whether this gets approved and and as we explore the campuses making sure that there's no unforeseen items that may be a roadblock mr Barber II don't have we looked into transportation because I know we haven't discussed anything about transportation that I notice here in this packet we looked into distance that would be traveled from site to site we haven't looked at that yes and and there are folks that will have an increased distance to travel so that has been explored yes what I was talking about like busing service I mean is it feasible you know to do that for the further like long commute I don't think that's something behind to do school we can definitely put together some data to look at the cost implications of providing a new route and we're switching up some of our routing okay and I also have a concern regarding the special ed so are there class size gonna remain the same or they're you know because it's you know so concerning yes especially class sizes will not change it will be the same the programs will really move as one solid unit from site to site and as you guys know many of the kids don't necessarily live right next to that site right now they're being transported from around the district to get to you know Matt well yeah they are but history yeah alright so I have a couple questions as well um so in terms of the timeframe so Linda I know I I know Mark said it's it would be specific for each site but in just interim general terms right if we decide to move forward with this what what does that look like thank you if the board decides to before with this assuming let's say it's sitting there perhaps the next meeting in March then immediately after that we'll start going up some notifications to schools to staff up to families about the process of what it means one of the things that they'll get information about would be roads the sign school what are the procedures for open enrollment if people want to go through that process there will be meetings held at the school sites which of the I referenced in terms of these of parents and staff to the answer questions about the process to staff to make sure that we're doing as much as we can to support them in in the move and facilitating that move that would that would basically look at happening and the initial context the Spring Break parents will have for open enrollment principally half through able to make those applications at least a little of April and then in May we would be really pointing back to parents in terms of which schools if they had applied to go to different school would school they would be assigned to in terms of based on the space at those schools and then one of the other things that the once those have been talking about is how do you how to help them comfortable with a new school and so reaching out and having inviting people to their open cell open houses or events that they could have at their school from parents for staff for students to have a chance to get to know each other feel comfortable do some of the work that has to happen say between PTO s and P TAS get to know each other the leadership and the groups getting together to know each other and figure out how they want to work together in the coming year same thing for the staff having a chance to visit didn't get to know each other answer questions that might come up that would continue through me and think what was that by the end of May people saw relief they know where they're going they would have gone through the different processes that either certificate or classmates that have for placement and would be inside you know where they'll be and I've had a chance to visit and talk with folks and get to feel comfortable and people are already talking back to at the beginning of the school year what else can we do for outreach so that when students come at the beginning the school they feel part of the school and they feel that they belong there and hopefully see some familiar faces there some they'll see their playmates you'll see some teachers they'll see their other staff the members of the video and our parents all so that they see each other and the teachers so they're looking at many many different wouldn't have many different opportunities for people to get to know each other to work out the logistics of it and and then course in is a whole interval during summer time is when the move actually happens and that's our maintenance department civil States that so you're saying I mean if we move forward and vote at the next March meeting which is March 20th then you would move forward with engaging that the communities to figure out how to make a smooth transition okay so I what the thing that I'm concerned about is in terms of how do we engage the community I mean I can see that people have a lot of questions and I know it could be really frustrating to sit out there and not be able to ask the questions right now so how can we what can we do to make sure that people get the information that the school sites have time to have those questions and make sure somebody from the district office is there to hear then be able to that so that we can hear what all the concerns are are the issues s'okay what can we do to make sure that happens before my art we actually vote on this if we actually I've already spoke with all the principals and invited them to set up a time for us to to meet with parents to meet with staff and so they're in the process of scheduling those meetings right now so you're saying now what happened between now and the next board meeting it would not between now and the expert and these are for after if the board votes to move forward then it would start immediately after that September but I do think there's a lot of questions out there you just want to make sure that we're providing a space for people to have answers to their questions or to be heard that's certainly a good idea we can do that it's not about all right so were you going to work with the principles to figure let's maybe that okay I also want to make a quest a comment and question I think this idea of a transition team and making sure that it's inclusive and not just about staff deciding what's going to happen and make sure that we're inclusive of our parents in our community about how we transition as a very is a very good idea interaction is we agree the district has already been talking about it I think so what I would like is so if we move forward and this comes to the next board meeting what I would like is for you is for you to be able to develop what we envision that looking like so that when we if we move Footwear and when we actually voter net we know what that means and we all understand that so that we we're all comfortable with that and I think that maybe that can be part of the conversation with the school sites before that mean that data about how that is that going to work together okay my next question is in terms of the Dual Immersion program and this is a question very close to my heart because my son is in the preschool over at Longfellow right now the DOE immersion program so I did hear mention two very specific programs and pieces that are helping the program like like a are accelerated reader and some other pieces so sorry Thoreau what's well if we move the program from Mountain View to Valle del what would that entail and what would happen with the program so so the first thing is when when we move the program we're talking about not just students we're talking about the entire program the support that comes with the program and everything that envelopes and surrounds the program to make it successful some of the things that we are also talking about is the future and so by moving the program to Valle del we are we are talking about next school year at Valley Dale in addition to the Dual Immersion program that exists that month with you right now expanding it by adding a preschool bill immersion and adding a etk to immersion as well so those are conversations that we are having currently as we think about the future of the expansion of the program at Valley do correct yes it's not just the the the kids will be nowhere but the whole entire program and its entirety and all supports that go with it okay and then the last thing that I just wanted to point out I think I think this I just want to points out as a board member I mean I think when you look at what happens with Gladstone and I think in terms of where you see people are living I mean it's never great to have to go farther to a new school right but I'm but I that feels like a very compact space when we look at Mountain View and where those students are living right many of them are living above the freeway right many of them are living even across a couple major streets and so I think it's really important for us to think about I know you have proposed boundaries here for the school site I think I think it's really important and normally when you change school boundaries there's a community processing there's an engagement process to make sure that community feels like this reflects what they want so I really think it's important for us to that need to be part of the conversation at the school say especially if we are intending to approve the new school boundaries at the next board meeting right I think I think that easy part of the conversation because I see some of these kids are closer to other schools but but you know I don't know what the parents there what they what they're feeling in terms of where they want to put their kids um the third the third piece the last piece that I'll say is I want to make sure that we're very clear when it comes to the open enrollment piece so like these students are going to get first priority when you do open enrollment so they could they could attend obviously this their local school or one of the dinner bicycles but they would have a chance to go to any school in our district if they wanted right all right all right and so how are we gonna inform make sure that they're aware of the different programs I know you just briefly mentioned Powell School of Arts the stem programs are how are we gonna make sure that these parents know what's out there so they can make a choice an informed choice so if this is approved then we would communicate out to all the parents that are affected at these sites with the form and the application so if they can fill it out and request one of the alternate sites if they did not want to go to their new home school and it would include information to help them make that selection to see if they were interested in any of the programs schools that have some documents that you just mentioned okay okay so those are all my comments does anybody else have any more comments yeah I just like to give a general comment that I really appreciate everybody who has come here and all of your input and we're going through this as openly transparently as possible I mean I I was good to all of the 7/11 committee meetings so I saw a whole lot of you there and it it's a lot of school districts have done the same thing already we're kind of at the back of the pack and fiscally for us for our school district we want to be able to put as much money towards our students and their support as possible and if we're sitting there and have a half empty school here and a half empty school there basically we're wasting your money so for us to do the right thing please feel free to ask questions and reach out but this is something that I feel financially or fiscally responsible I feel that if we don't do something we will be irresponsible and that won't be good for anybody so I'm just kind of letting you know and feel free to reach out to me my email is on the website so that's pretty much it okay so since we've finished having a discussion about this item we really do need to give the staff direction about where to go so I just need each of each of us to chime in to say but we're feeling what we're thinking and so we can figure out what we're going to be doing or are we gonna what we're going to be doing so I can go in a row or anybody I'm just jump in so I'm so I wanted to add that you know I totally understand all the concerns of the parents and the staff of the schools but I want to thank you all for coming out and supporting your schools and voicing your opinions and it's not about caring about your school or not liking your school or not liking your kids you know we all have great schools in our district or a USD you know your children will have the same programs hopefully the same teachers they will just mean a different location we want to be transparent as possible we want to also be able to answer any questions you know my my numbers on the website or my email or I I do go to several schools and you're welcome to come up and speak to me I'll be happy to answer any questions that you know what would what I can't answer to you at the time you know we we we have not had any fair load days which other schools have had for our employees our surrounding schools such as Duarte Covina Valley Glendora unified they have market schools and we have held out for a very long time besides our declining enrollment 86% of our budget goes to staff salaries insurance CalPERS which is retirement and stirs and also we have to base it on the funding that is given to us by the governor we we have four hundred and fifty two certificated employees which our teachers will have six hundred and thirty-five classified which are secretaries custodians instructional aides and office staff that's right there already totals 1087 employees that does not even include our administration's which I'm talking about is the principal's in the director's in our district so insurance CalSTRS CalPERS have also gone up so we have to put up more money like mr.
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burritos mentioned about the line the gas the you know materials so if we just think about eighty-six percent of our funding you know what do we have left fifteen percent you know we need to cut 5.6 million within three years and I know this is not a really easy decision for me as a board member here this is a very hard job for me but again my job is also to keep this district fiscally solvent we do not want to be taken over by the state and we they want us to balance our budget so we do need to give a projection of three years so they also hold us accountable we're not just making a decision here as board you know we also have a boss on top of the boss on top of the boss just like everyone else does so you know III will take your be sure that how do I say I want to be sure that I am listening to the parents here and I do know their concerns I read am on Facebook I've heard of them I spoken to people and we will be sure to talk to the administration you know hopefully I know everyone talking to be happy I get it but I will try my best to be sure that you know the kids are gonna have a good school have the programs and parents also thank you yeah so when I look at this I I feel like there's a there's a three-step process and as I'm well there there are many hundreds thousands of steps but but I see three major steps along the way and when I hear and listen to different people within the community see some of the different comments that are going around I think some of it gets jumped around so let me the way that I see the three steps are one should we or should we not consolidate schools and that's that's that's separate from which schools do we would we consolidate or not it's it's just a matter of should we or should we not consolidate schools and when we look at some of just some of the data I I don't see how we don't we're talking about trends so I graduated from here from Gladstone High School and in mark when you shared you thought you said in the year 2000 there was 15,000 students that's the year that I came to Gladstone High School was in the was in the year 2000 so when I came to Gladstone High School there were 15,000 students and now we're at 8,000 on projection to be at 7 7,000 that's that's half that's that's that's less than half and yet that this the same number of facilities are open as we're open back then so I just looking at it from a perspective of responsibility I understand this again I came to this school of mountain view I went to Mountain View myself I went to Mountain View Elementary School my sister went there my younger brother went there my mom worked there for 10 years I mean it's it's I'm a wildcat and that and that's and it's it's close to home to to me as well and so that's where I say kind of separate the first step though is should we or should we not and again I don't I don't see how we don't if I was somebody who had a four bedroom home and if I was an empty nester and I had not as many kids running around as I did before it's something I might need to consider it's not a matter of even if I could afford to keep to keep it open should i and what does that look like because to turn on the air-conditioner in the house at all it cools down on all four of those rooms whether we're in there or not so there's just a matter of responsibility that I think we need to look at and so the next step then is is which which schools and so you're presenting this has been a long process over the course of the past couple years which schools and and there's been discussion and when I'm seeing this information I mean there are there are some compelling there's some compelling information here I think that there still are some things that are that are missing that I'd like to to get some info on so what you know what is a transition look like I'd like to to know what you know what what supports can be put in place whether we're looking at doing immersion and making sure that all of all of our everything is taken care of there with things to get there there are still some things I want to I want to get some information on there's some holes but but there is compelling data that like I think let's make sure that as bunnies you can think of tonight that you put it on the table so people could so that you can have that information before you have to make a decision okay so so one yes I would I want to make sure for one that before you vote on this that there is an opportunity to hear from with for dialogue for dialogue from from the parents and the families that are directly affected the school sites so if this is something that we're and I'm actually going to recommend that we do if this is something that we're bring to the next school school board meeting then I think that we have a lot of work to do in the interim because I want to make sure that people have an opportunity to dialogue I understand here at the school board meeting there's there's the decorum and there's there's the rules of operation but we need some fluid conversation and so I'm one I want that's that's a that's a must-have in my perspective that that we were able to hear from the community and then also yeah with that what is a transition team look like for the school sites and also a more a more specific timeline I'm going to make sure that there's a timeline so we can we can eliminate uncertainty I would say those those are probably the main the main things that I want to make sure are included in the process and then last a couple things so one then the next one is what do we do with the properties we're not eating so I you know I can rely on line different people that say different things I've had conversations with people who are you know how how dare you do this but the properties are that with the properties we haven't there's not even been a decision made and we're wanting to take it one one step at a at a time and so that that will be for that's that's a future conversation so one should we or should be not then which goals because and then if that's decided upon what we do with the sites that's it that's that's for a future conversation and again it's something that we need community input honest as well we want to hear you know what are what are some of the thoughts that are out there as well to speak to again especially some of some of the folks at Mountain View who again I've been able to go out and be at the site and see you guys one thing I want you to know is in order to move forward with this process we're banking on you and we're we're banking on on our other community when you talk about the incredible parents and the incredible programs and incredible teachers and the incredible students where we're banking on that and so as we zoom out I hear I understand from a first-time perspective how tender this is but but but again we're it's because of when I when i zoom out and see the beauty of my community and making this is a tough call a tough decision that's needing to be made but we're assessing what's in the best interest of the entire tire community and so I just want I just want to say that we're banking on you to be you know part of part of why Azusa school district remains beautiful because of what you currently kind of oversee in our part of at the school sites that sure that you're at so yeah I mean lastly I guess I want to make sure yeah that ensure that we're continuing to be transparent Linda I wanna I do want to thank you for you know over the course of the weekend even last week making sure that there was information that went out to clearly communicate that this meeting was happening and even stuff that goes out on social media to communicate that it's happening even though it sparks dialogue and people are talking about it and it's not always fun stuff but I'm grateful that everybody is here and I'm grateful that we're a part of the process because this this is something that would impact the community at large so my recommendation is yes that I and I would hope that this is something that we can bring to the next board meeting because like I'm hearing you know some of our neighbors here talk about this is something that has been dragged on so if this is something that we are going to do then I'm hoping that we can make a decision on it one way or another as soon as possible Thank You Adrian thank you guys I also want to thank all of you guys for being here and expressing your concern this is definitely not an easy topic not in a not an easy discussion as well on both sides there's a elephant in the room and we definitely need to talk about it we definitely discuss it and more trans more like more than anything we need to be transparent and I think it you know that's that's the main key being able to to be accountable to be to our parents and you know if this doesn't move forward in at the transition it's a scary thing being at a school where it's gonna be closed down it's a scary thing you know I went to Gladstone Street school I am an eagle eye when I can you know when I came from Mexico you're gonna study another English yeah you sign up at an English so you know it's so it's hard on both sides but the one thing that I can't tell you is that I know that I don't want the state to come in with the scissors for you but how can we move this forward how can we count on your support that we're gonna make the right decision how can in our household if you have to cut your budget and you have to cut things what do you start cutting first it's a hard decision you know putting all the emotional feelings aside because this is emotional I I get it let's start thinking responsibly and working collaboratively on how we can move this district forward we can't stay behind we have to bring our district to be comparable to our other just to the other districts around us how can we move forward and that's my question how cooing the board is you know one of the things I guess my biggest concern are the parents the staff at these schools you know Linda um one of the things that uh was brought up today was the busing some of these kids walk to school what is that gonna look like that's um that's conversation we need to have the committee you know prior to to the meeting for an it was in two weeks some some you know what does that look like can we hear parents out so again all I can say is that it's a very tough decision and and I I'm asking pear that are here if you took the time to come and express your concern just being here just by showing up that means you care we want to hear you out but also too we need your support how can we count on you thank you so I want to thank all of you on this board for really your thoughtful comments about what about moving forward and so I think what I mean what I'm hearing as president is that we have consensus to move forward right at the next board meeting but I did hear some clearly some some pieces that that have been requested in terms of how do we engage the the community beforehand a clear transition committee sub process in terms of the supports how are we going to merge cultures at the school and really honor what exists at the current at the schools right now that we're considering closing so I want to make sure that that we offer like those questions are answered before we vote into it's because it's two weeks it's a very tight timeline so I know that Linda you took notes on all the things that have been requested or commented on and so we will be moving forward because yes go ahead and and also some more clarity on the timeline yes yes you have it right there at the end the school boundaries I mean I was just I wasn't blaming them all I would just name me some of them um yeah so I think um did you want to say anything else Linda or no okay so we are going to be moving forward and giving you direction to start the process with the recommendation that you've given us today searing the scene that I seen that there's consensus on the board to do this so and again thank you all of you for coming out today I know this is not happy news it's not something that any of us want ever hear and I appreciate your time commitment to come out here and to listen to this and I really encourage you and I look forward to hearing what you have to say it at the meetings that we have at your school sides so that we can better understand I'm not only the impact but but I think put your good thinking to use about how best we can do this and meet your needs I'm sorry so I will in this item with that and we will move on to the next item because we do have a quite a long agenda and we have this we actually have today is the day that we have to approve our what's our called our second interim financial report where we give an update to the county that we are fiscally solvent and will and will be making the cuts that we say we're making all right so we'll move on now to item 10 point to approve notice of completion for golden Phoenix electric for completion of underground utility replacement at Dalton elementary school is there a motion make a motion to approve 10.2 I'll second there's a motion by Yolanda Rodriguez pena seconded by Jerry Bibles logo any discussion student preferential vote yes all right please place your votes motion passes five-0 moving on we have number item ten point three consider approval of California's School Board Association agreement for governance consulting services resolution 1819 120 their motion I'll make a motion motion by Jerry Bibles Vogel second by Adrian career any discussion student preferential vote yes please place your votes motion passes five-0 moving on we have the consent calendar all matters listed into the consent calendar are considered by the board to be routine and will be enacted by the board in one motion in the format following the last consent calendar agenda item there will be no discussion of these items prior to the time the board staff or public requests specific items to be discussed if discussion is requested by a board member that item will be removed from the consent calendar and will be considered separately the superintendent staff recommend approval of all consent consent calendar agenda items is there a motion motion is there a second second there's a motion by Adrienne Greer and second by Yolanda or Diaz Pina to approve the consent calendar what is a student preferential vote yes all right please place your votes if this is the 11.1 the consent calendar motion passes five-0 moving on we have item 13.1 approval of the comprehensive school safety plans make a motion to approve 13.1 there's a motion in a second any discussion I just had a question regarding that big binder that I noticed that each school site has like their own planning and why are they not all a consistent thank you that's a very good question and I'm Gary krill is gonna it turns out for you thank you we are working to get consistency as we're going on that some of the schools had developed those plans previously and they're all going to be looking like the ones that have the second section so we'll have uniformity across the district thank you so what's the timeline on that the timeline is we're constantly doing it's updated and as they're doing like owls and other trainings but we'll have the more uniform plans for you by the fall by the fall but we'll they'll come to us for approval and around the same time next year is that your intention my intention is to have it to you by October oh so we would approve it or not there correct okay okay great thank you okay I have a question and are these plans are they shared with all of the staff at each site each site yes they are that that's part of their plans at this the sites are developed by the principal schools I counsel staff members etc etc but all of the staff members would have those plants access to those plans any other questions all right seeing none please place your votes student referential mode excuse me yes please place your votes motion passes five-0 moving on we have item 14.1 second interim financial report and you should have received the report in your packet good evening once again so this report as I discussed earlier is a report that is required by the state that we do twice a year to update the board on our spending and on our revenue and so I'll be showing you that impact of that on this irin on the following years and review some of the items that we've just that we've discussed in the past as far as the so this is the timeline that I mentioned earlier which is annually we have a first interim report which we did in December and we're doing the second interim report today which is due by March 15 and then by June 30th we need to have our estimated actuals and our budget for the following school year this is the same chart as we had in our previous presentation showing that we have declined in enrollment and that decline is projected to continue until we're just over 7,000 students and as I mentioned earlier we have our kindergarten enrollment versus birth rate so in 1999 we had almost 1200 kids and in 2015 we had 852 kids born and that is proportionate to the number of kids that is enrolling in our kindergarten classes and we've actually done a better job over time of capturing those kids we dropped to less than 70% of those kids captured back in 2010 11 and now were in the in the mid 80s so you can see the increase in and that's due to programs that we put together like our etk our preschool program the amazing things that are happening at our schools but ultimately that means that we're losing kids across the district and just because of the declining birthrate if you look here we lost 458 kids last year and this year we've lost 276 additional kids and we're projecting for that to be the number for the next three years 301 316 and about 207 in 21 22 and as I mentioned earlier those students equal a DA and a DA is how we get revenue into the district and we are receiving just over 11 thousand 108 dollars in a DA for our kids this year and that's based on actually the 88 for the prior year so there's a hold harmless clause that means that we get the ad a from last year for this year and obviously next year will be based off of this year as long as we continue to decline and what that means is we can use that ad a number multiply it times how much we get per kid and that's how much money we get per year in for our budget and so the kind of big scary difference here is that we're getting less money year over year for the first time since the last recession which was quite some time ago and so that's why we're having the discussion about how do we address that decline in in overall revenue when costs are continuing to skyrocket on this I'm going to explain what those increased costs are kind of big item by big item one of the largest is our pinching costs and as I discussed earlier the state has put more responsibility on to districts or employers to cover the cost of the state teachers retirement plans and this the state purse plans and as that cost is moved over on to districts or on to agencies that means the less overall dollars can be used for other things so you can see at the bottom kind of a summary in increases so we're increasing in 21 22 an additional six million four hundred thousand dollars from what we were paying in 1617 and that's you know no additional dollars is going to increase like a extra pension or anything for the employees there extra money that's going into the employees pockets it's just simply shifting the cost from the state into agencies like districts and and that's to lower the cost at the state level so that's one of the big reasons why districts even though we're getting more money year over year more of its going out in cost one of the other large factors is the increased costs to run our special education program and this is not unique to Azusa this is a statewide program and actually our program is under what the average is across the state but even with that you can see that the amount of money that we spend is this brown line and you can see it growing exponentially year over year and the amount of money that we get as far as a revenue from the states and mostly from the feds is very flat if anything has declined so we're getting less dollars and what with much higher increases year over year so I want ask a question about this right so we're in declining enrollment student population in terms of our special ed population like the number of students in special ed has that number declined as well over these years what's happening with that so the overall number of kids in special ed has declined very small but the overall percentage is actually there so our percentage right now is increasing what percentage are we at right now Erin you know mccann just if you don't have it all Fanny we can get it later okay and I mean I want to make sure that every student who has who has special who has needs gets met right but when I see this increase and knowing what happens is happening with our budget and that the number of our students are shrinking this this is a little alarming for me and much of the cost is due to kids that maybe not are not even attending our school site so there's a lot of cost associated with kids that are attending alternate locations or the self uh provider program and legal cost associated so I have a question about that um so I mean looking at this as a unified so we're low so that means we don't have she said 12% was it okay can we get afraid of report on that just just till we could see the data okay thank you so are you Erin you're saying that we're not higher than the the average I thought we were a little higher than another additional costs will be the increase in minimum wage that's taking place as we work our way to $15 an hour and so we do have a few employees that will be affected by this increase and and obviously this would be factored into the negotiations with our CSD a bargaining unit and you know consider for some of the unrepresented employees that would have that increased wage and of course the implications for our for our budget this chart here I don't know why it didn't roll out slowly but in comparison to the increased cost looking at per student okay so we're taking one student and in 1718 we're getting two hundred and seventy nine additional dollars for that student over the prior year and that's broken into two pieces the base funding which is for our basic needs and our supplemental concentration dollars which is our ell cap dollars and so in combined that's two hundred and seventy nine dollars on the other side we have our increased cost and that's broken into the stepping column which is our teachers and classifieds as they move up in salary which is part of a salary table that they're on its they're the pervs increase which is the pension for a classified our stirs increase which is the pensions for our teachers and the cost of special education and so those four components are only on this chart it does not include things like the increase in electricity cause the increase in books the materials and supplies that's not even being considered in this chart so if we look at 1718 you can see that we had a slightly higher level of increase in funding than we did in expenditures if you look at 1819 you can see that this year is a great year we have a hundred percent lcff we had a pretend Cola or education that was much higher than everyone else got we definitely have increased funding this year but for 1920 you can see that's why we're having the conversations about closing schools and cutting budgets and you can see that we're getting four hundred and twenty dollars worth of increases but the cost of pensions and special education and just the cost of stuff and comm is gonna increase to five hundred and forty dollars per kid and so we will we will have a greater increase in cost than will we receive in increases in revenue and that continues for the next couple of years again in 2021 and that that gap even gets larger so we're already fully funded there'll be no more increases or I'll cap dollars or supplemental concentration will just be Cola so that'll be small increases but the cost of our pensions step and column especially if just continued to grow and then in 21 22 it's a very small Cola and so you see that again it it it actually grows a slightly less than the year prior and the only reason why that lines a little bit shorter is that is where the governor's budget allocates additional dollars to go into stirs and so you see that brown area is smaller because that's because the governor is allocating more money to go to storage meantime I'm so this is kind of a good snapshot we're dollars are going and the dollars that we're getting and kind of marrying the the difference between the two so mark I just want to thank you because I well I appreciate the school services generic slide I think this is more meaningful because we can see actually the actual impact on our district next is the same chart that we had in the previous presentation showing what we would have to do as far as cuts in order not to drop below our 3% and so again we'll have to make 2.8 million dollars worth of cuts in 1920 2.2 in 2021 and an additional just over a half million in 21 22 and if we do that that keeps us to three percent reserve that's not really where we want to be but that that's kind of worried it gets us if we do all those cuts we would have to do additional cuts if we wanted to have the same healthy level of reserves that we have currently or of course um you know the governor gives us more money than that change is the plan and then so this so if we close to schools that's 2.8 goes under 1.8 million and remind me do we have identified vote I mean identified cuts for that are you getting to that later on no so we have not identified additional cuts beyond that the district is looking at some options and to explore with the board and then does this does this include any anticipated salary increases or this is just our current budget right now this is our current budget right now for our teachers which our largest expenditure there's is settled for 1819 but it does not anticipate any salary increase or have a set-aside you know a little bank account set aside for increases in the following years this is every dollar in every part of our reserve in it's not a part of our reserve it is our fund 17 our ending fund balance all wrapped up together in one set of numbers I wanted to add one more word of caution on this slide which is in the governor's budget in January which is what these figures are based off of today they had some increases in cola and those are calculated in here school services and a few other agencies have put out a warning the elio which is the Legislative Analyst's Office commented on the on the governor's budget stating that with the shortfall and tax revenues that came in in January and February I'm sorry December in January that we may see a reduction in cola or reduction in cola may be necessary and the may revise and so if that was to happen and of course we would have to go back and add additional cuts to this so I'm anticipating or I'm hoping that those tax receipts that fell short get corrected for February and for March but it is kind of a word of caution that the Elio and school services has put out as we're looking for planning for the following school year again some of the recommendations that we are considering are listed from our pack class group and that pack class recommended but two schools that we discussed earlier and then of course we're considering many of these other items and hope to have kind of a recommendation for the board at a future meeting and the rest is kind of a just a description of funds all right are there any questions no okay say no questions this was an information item we'll move on to the next item and that is the approve of positive certification of the district financial condition as their emotion and make a motion to prove 14.2 any discussion all right seeing now what is the student preferential vote yes please place your votes okay we'll just take a voice vote Adrienne yes Yolanda yes I vote yes Gerry yes go do that all right great my motion passes 5-0 did I ask for your vote already Jen all right thank you all right moving on we have two first readings for board policies item 15.1 are there any questions on any of these first readings no no hey what about 15.2 first reading on those No okay seeing with that we've completed our agenda and we will adjourn at 9:18 thank you very much
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all right councilmember alley you're on Molly yeah Alison buck Deb Mexica here Connie Brown here copy Coleen Rowley here David II saw your John Qatar ski they're very faithful here David's in yeah you have a quorum to approve the agenda Thank You Jonah and seconded any discussion of the agenda I'm sure I would like an addition on the agenda under new business I'd like to add addition of a work group to determine developer input all right anything else all right if that change is Amina ball all in favor great I think that what she just she took it as an assent rather than as a motion and so at that moment before and we can go back on the vote but before she moved on you could have spoken up in had you wanted to okay all right now is the time for public comment I'm Ian I'm here for a class of mind but I am really interested in the arts so of course I chose to come to the Art Commission one but yeah welcome yes annual here near the end of our meeting we have several working groups one of which is looking to involve youth with our Commission so that might be of interest to you on particular okay now we have to move for approval of the minutes I have some questions on a couple so maybe we'd be better off to take them individually or move to memory okay sunny one second on the November 18th minutes thank you all right any discussion I'm sorry November 18th are 17,000 1800 minor grammatical changes which I've made a note of to send Trina and then there was a couple I think discrepancies in Mary and Jonah's BIOS you're not the director of neutral zone and then Jonah what would you say your your turn working in it's at real estate and property robbery management management I knew there was a word missing there okay but contextually it all looked pretty good to me was there any way I'll take those changes in half and you to crack them and put them in the record anyone see any other concerns with that one I'll move the minutes as amended great thank you all in favor I'll pose for any of us all right those are approved well now we got to do the December 11th does anyone moved to approve okay um discussion I have one correction madam chair on page two under potential tasks it indicates the second bullet point provide advice assistance with recommendations for placements of art donated to city that cannot be placed on city property enhance project that is Allison and my workgroup actually as I understood it it wasn't that artwork that cannot be placed but rather just donated to the city period strike the work that that cannot be placed on city property or enhance project strike all of those I think that would be more accurate from what I understood so those two placing a be donated artwork anywhere great if that changes amenable to everyone we can i'll move the minutes as amended stepping out of bounds here but it does say with the roll call wish um no our minutes are you on ones from Oh November seventh nevermind okay alrighty now we are looking at or we have a motion to look at the minutes for January so thank you alright discussion on these ones madam chair yes I have a question yes on page two there's under the first paragraph there's an asterisk that says add Coleen Crowley to section 1 what is that I think she is part of working group and she wasn't listed in that working group on our report what are those numbers [Music] so in our report each of our working groups are put together because of something in the ordinance and those numbers relate to where they are in the ordinance so there was probably just how many uh no that didn't go back and make the same I don't know clarify that yeah maybe instead of saying numbers in the room I had a question about it said public comment and I says approved as presented one more comment and maybe I'm missing it but for the section where it's one in the back or for architectural enhancement page labeled page 2 of our plan I thought we were going to list the group that was working on the CIP was the CIP group supposed to be listed as one of these pieces are not I'm looking at the the annual plan on the back of it on four I thought we were talking about putting the CIP group as part of back to the question John Ray's colleagues probably the section one should be - could we just put in the name yeah doesn't sound section number but the donations go all right any other minutes I move the minutes as corrected thank you John hi hi any opposed great we've got approve minutes three meeting okay so we've added to our agenda report from share I may have something every meeting I may not this meeting um Romilly I will be talking about our two CIP projects that went to recently and I'm happy to report we're approved if you haven't gone in a moment to check out the link and watch it I highly recommend doing so it's very insightful to see what everyone's commentary is on the topic and see how it was received at the meeting it was a close vote six to five so that's something to note as well in response to the meeting I did send out emails to everyone on City Council thanking those who approve and those who opposed I welcomed their input wanting to understand their point of view a little bit more I did get a couple of responses if you're interested in seeing those I'm happy to share them one from each side so one was very nice and one was not so favorable but I was glad to get responses nonetheless and I really thank City Council for the lively debate they had and the positive outcome that we have in it I also wanted to thank Ally for speaking on our behalf at that meeting as well as Craig for being there and I know Veneto was there supporting us in spirit based on some conversations I've had afterwards she's very supportive supportive of us and what we're doing so yeah it was if I can speak I'm not sure Thank You chair it was a debate that went on for about 15 minutes and some people said well we're getting away from what's on the agenda here because it went to a broader discussion of public arts and state of affairs and it was a close vote six to five so you know I do suggest people go back and watch that part of the council meeting and you know see where where the you know issues are and you know I just you know it was fun to be able to come to the defense and be on the winning side and keep keep a pulse keep it going so come and ask me questions if people have questions in particular I don't want to take too much time tonight as to where counsel stands but I think there's just a lot of misunderstanding lack communication and so hopefully we can over time clear clear the air on that and go forward I think some of the current the concerns that were raised are things that were actually working on there was a lot of suggestion for finding for art coming from other places and we have a working group working on that so I while it was a little bit frustrating I do think it was encouraging that you know given what we're doing and with a full breadth of information I think there would have been less opposition so and one thing that on the agenda that was the preventive preventive fencing the parking garages and I think $10,000 request some council members asked you know why we haven't asked the DDA and perhaps this body has asked the DDA it is there you know property hey they build a manager Mike Cejka so that was a question that was brought up by council members so when it comes to working on you know those assets that belong to the DDA perhaps to asking them for the financial assistance yeah there are DDA projects on the full CIP that and the council approves the full CIP and so it's all just part of the way the city works on projects david has been working with the DDA and had conversations with them about the projects so I think and at this point when we have our list we have now identified all the ones that our DDA project so it is listed in there that we are aware that it's a DDA projects that's where that funding criticism yeah so and then you know of course you're working on the donation aspects and the gifting and you know that was a part of the debate that was again one of the thing that is just they're not up to speed yet and and and so once once the information gets to to the right people see that new work that's coming out of this commission and you know I think that's that'll be good obviously do you have any suggestions on how to get people up to speed so at least the debate is about the right things you know the mayor and once every couple months once a month you know something that some sort of communication allow them to know because otherwise I don't know if they're they're directly gonna get it another way I mean unless they're looking for it I mean it's available obviously I mean unfortunately put it on their desk a little bit more you know as they say you know put it on on their desk and you know you know some of the new stuff that's happening some of the some of the new stuff that you're doing you know so they're not you know reading yesterday's newspaper well on our full report that talks about all of our working groups and all the great work that we're doing was part of that meeting packet understanding that that packet that they get is huge so when I did email them all to thank them I it out that that's in there if they're looking for more information and want to better understand all the work we're doing you know Deb and I have talked a little bit about going to some city council meetings where appropriate and presenting about what we're doing we definitely don't want to ruffle feathers when it's not necessary but we do want them to know what we're doing in a positive way and also you know with Ollie being present and also at those meetings when it's appropriate to talk about what we're doing he'll be sharing what we're doing yeah please you know you know prod me poke me say you know we need you to kind of light on this its upcoming meeting you know and and you know like we've said a lot of the opposition wasn't necessarily about what we're doing it's about just public art funding in general so it was a larger debate that had nothing to do with what was currently being approved or not approved and more about how they felt about public funding for art so I don't know that we can do a lot about those personal ideas and opinions but I think we can continue to do what our ordinance has asked us to do and we're doing some good work and continue to hopefully share the work that we're doing with them and maybe they'll get excited about what we're doing so you know it was a positive vote we did it up six five but I just wanted you guys to be aware of it and that we should be you know cognizant of it moving forward I was just gonna point out I appreciate that you sent the link with the time to so we didn't have to watch the whole council meeting to this yeah there's lots of public commentary beforehand it doesn't necessarily apply to I have a question for Olli particularly and it's not clear to me I'd say the DDA projects appear in the CIP but it's not clear whether Council's approval of those projects for enhancement has any effect on the DDA whether they actually take instruction from City Council or if they're completely self you know it's just a stockist of money you know we are told I think you know I'm not sure I've never sat down to count them but over 50 buckets so where is this you know so so a lot of that quick you know reaction will be - well it's a DDA property you know what's what's their contribution to it all so make it you know some and again I have much to get back to you on about how it can be more helpful for this commission to to extrapolate you know how to identify and apply you know just just throwing that out there now that you know and I'll get back to you later on how we can better do that but they are gonna you know say I would focus more on you know or make a make a note that it is a DDA project and hopefully there is gonna be funding from the DDM because that's what city the City Council will be looking for is they deviate it we revived this like that yeah yeah funding for it yeah and if the DD if the Council's approval has no authority over the DDA then we should just not even include those in our recommendations or at least break them out separately and I would have to give back it'd be good to find out more about how that works the projects the DDA is building city assets the city owns those parking structures the DDA manages him on behalf of the city the city had let me back up and say the DDA does consider the art recommendations and they do participate I think that one is far enough out that they were they weren't thinking of that fencing as something to do artistically however I can speak that I recently talked to staff at the DDA about their planned expansion of the in Ashley parking structure and they're they're actively contemplating putting art in that expansion so it's our addition is not something they're opposed to get it's just about which projects aren't they're willing to put it into so the answer is it's a recommendation and the DDA considers it yeah okay are they forced to act on it no and in fact any of the recommendations you make whether yes he's gonna be appropriate it won't happen so it's a recommendation it's not a mandate yeah so and that's what we brought up at Council I mean there's a lot of things that have been identified on the CIP for targeted projects and you know we're gonna have to you know obviously there's a lot of debate there was debate going on as there is now and you know but I think you know shouldn't stop this commissioner from doing the work that it's it's got to do right now you know it's just you know I try to hopefully it's not demoralizing I feel like the Commission was was you know under under under attack or something and I let counsel know that hey they just came back with what we asked them for so we can't you know you know be you know accusing them of anything if there's any failure it's on councils are we're not making it clearer so there were several council members who talked very warmly about what we're doing and public art in general too so it wasn't all negative I know there's some long faces right now but you know what was gonna debate you know yeah if you haven't watched it go damn damn chair I was excited frankly and I applaud I did watch it III applaud Alison for showing up I think that's important and it was a very effective advocate frankly I wasn't expecting it to pass so to me it was a win and even more so even those that did not vote for these recommendations each and every one of them said they appreciate what this commission is doing and they support what the Commission is doing and I've talked with most of them and everyone supports public art so I think that we're making headway I think I consider this a success and it's do I think to the leadership of Olli on that on that council and I think that there were some opposition to it that sounded to me like just missed information they just didn't quite understand it so the more we educate but kudos to Alison Alison and Ali I think they did a great job it matters no one looks at the score it's a wins a win all right so now we can move on to new business we have a new meeting that we're gonna add to the calendar in August we talked about this previously there's an annual report that it's due to City Council and in order for us to include as much information as possible and get it approved by us before it goes to City Council on its due date we need to meet in August to approve it so there are four different dates here should we just take HD startled is there a handy one I'm sorry madam chair yes maybe if we could identify and there any date here that one it conflicts on your schedule with anyone scheduled believe this 7th does for me okay let's just cut the seventh out and the 20th does for me cut that out seventh and the fifteenth twenty at 120 I'm sorry so madam chair I think the 15th doesn't work for me does the sixth work for everybody the 76 works all right looks great all right now we are on to old business No oh sorry yes John all right yes I've asked this to be put on the agenda it grew out of an incident that happened last night I attended a meeting of the downtown Citizens Advisory Council and Brad Moore was there he's the architect for the development of six sixteen Washington which is the large high-rise behind the Michigan theatre and he as I'm learning that developers come into town and and they put together a proposal and they take it to the Zoning Board and the Design Review Board and and they take it to various places around town the DD a Citizens Advisory Council and to seek input that a member of there were several members of that council that were at the reception and much to my delight and surprise someone brought up the fact that the front facade didn't seem to be rather played and was called a cheese grater and couldn't Brad consider public art and he said of course and then they just pointed to me and I said that we would be happy to do whatever we could do not knowing what we could do so we exchanged email in addition that last year Ron Mucha who's the vice president of Morningside that are developing the huge thing in Lower Town Maiden Lane approached me and another meeting and said I was told to to see you by some council members about public art in this project again I said we'd be happy to do whatever we could and he said fine let's exchange emails and I will get in touch with you when the project gets more along well that project has broken drum and it'll probably at some point they have designated an area for public art that together sort of caused me to think what exactly is that the art commission could advise developers coming into town the good news is that we are getting folks that are actually recommending to developers to consider public art so I put together an email and sent it to several folks that I invited to be on this working group to one to consider what the Art Commission might be able to offer to developers so when they come calling what is it that we can do I would recommend that we don't get into selecting art but we might be able to help shape them we possibly could start an artist registry we could do I don't know what we could do but that's why I've asked this working group to get together and to meet help shape the discussion and bring it back to the Commission for further discussion that I've asked David Issa and Mary fievel's and and Jonah coffee to be on that they have all agreed that Allison has suggested maybe we could discuss it here I'm open either way it just seems better my if the four of us meet kind of refine the options and try to present something to the greater board but discussing how the art commission relates to private development on private land or developers who are doing City related projects solely developers that come into town with a proposal and someone is going to say what do you think about putting some public art and why don't you talk to our public art Commission so it's really only pub in the sense and it's visible from the streets but it's not it's not any way related to a city official yeah there's no there's nothing official that we are the natural reference point for anything public are so that a developer's you know I mean the downtown Advisory Commission thought you know what do you got that stupid light going around you know like well what about the color of the bridge they they really give these suggestions and advice the good news is is our community leaders are recommending the developers also consider public art and that they come to us asking for advice well what kind of advice can we give them and how can we give it and that's what I'm asking this to set up a working group to discuss what what could the Art Commission do when developers are referred to us and you know we could promote local artists we could promote you know Ann Arbor's culture so there are a number of things that we could do but I think if it's thought through so when they do come because I know to probably will just just to check it off I don't know but we might be able to be effective in bending their project a little bit towards public art so I would recommend if if this goes forward that you guys look at the public art proposal that's already on our website which is where people considering public art projects to submit their projects to us it says we can provide visibility and feedback for proposals submitted and if I municipal space it is part of your project if if municipal space is part of your project city ordinance requires you to seek a recommendation first but I think that this form may or may not you guys can do debate this in your working group serve the purpose for larger projects and not just municipal projects as well so there might already be a template that would be worth looking at and considering so I guess at this point we have a motion to add a working group you're moving to I'll make the motion discussion so I think that this sounds like a really good idea in that having a set of sort of talking points about how one might approach the city how we might be able to offer context perhaps in what other pieces might be nearby or experiences is certain kind of media I think there are things that we could offer as sort of advisory experts or if not experts at least advisory so I think that this is a really good idea and will probably not just be informed by the forum that you that we already have in place but might also go the other way to allow us to sort of shape the forms language as well at moving forward that if whatever we might be able to offer a developer in terms of context culture working with the city other contacts those kinds of things that we all can share so that whoever gets approached will be able to point them at something or have something but it also seems like it could be fought what we already have so I'm I'm in favor of this proposal to move forward with a group to its one of these options any other discussion do we need the appointment of those John and Mary will this go beyond new development or just development that's being proposed to me and what about existing my path at the moment just new development these two projects and let's try to find something that we can sustain and and be have a benefit to developers but that could be the model going for redevelopment for a whole host of things to engage the private business owners property owners but that'll be something we can talk about the group David I can't think of anything that we would recommend that wouldn't also be applicable to an existing business owners that want a dad public I mean that's kind of what I'm hinting towards is it's having something that perhaps I mean started off as this but because that's where I think our success is gonna lie is gonna be in the private sphere public money is it's not even sometimes worth trying to get unfortunately because of of things you know fix the potholes argument every time you ask for a dollar so but the private sphere I think has got lots of money and would be willing to break off a little something okay so I think we're at a point now we can move all in favor of adding this working group oh yeah okay all in favor of the working group any opposed great to a point David Issa Joan and copy and Mary thief olds they're probably employers myself second all in favor all right all right you guys are in another working all right now we're on to old business in an old business what is attached here agenda is what was submitted to City Council I don't think it takes any discussion you've already discussed it earlier in the meeting yeah yep that were sent in the February meeting and you discuss it if I may go into reports from staff the general office clerk position aka this summer students who worked on the art inventory the position has been posted the there have been first screenings of the candidates so they're now being scheduled in for interviews for the possession so we're moving forward with it the only change from the note it is once telephone screening has been completed it is complete so now they're bringing in candidates um yes yes I don't know if madam chairman whether you want to discuss this as much as me this is the flags on Main Street approached a group wanting to in the approach DDA about on Main Street between Liberty and I believe William putting up flags between light poles it would be parallel to the street and the various students in the school system would be decorating the flags the best way to describe it is akin to prayer flags that you might see in there are flags etc and it would be a temporary display so be aware it's it's in your packet the information on it and it is being pursued I don't we're not necessarily looking I don't support emotional support with me welcome well I have a I have a question about this so you know we do have a youth working group that has been thinking about doing some additional programming around youth art month um so I think that there might be some natural fits here for that in terms of perhaps coordination or working with the groups that are here the other part is that in thinking about this you're talking about this being a sort of a set of flags that run parallel do we do anything the city like they do on the University of Michigan campus which is the banners off the light poles those are all controlled through the DDA so those are all DDA but and okay and not us do we have access to those I you do through the DDA the the banners are not insignificant and cost oh I know yeah you've probably purchased we have it yes I have actually so you would if you have a desire the group has a desire to put up either either there's the little banner arms on the poles or the full cross street banners those are all controlled through the various merchants association the Main Street Association the State Street Association under the guise of the DDA so would these four would this project then be entirely so under their purview are the light poles ours that they would be hanging from the light poles are ours but they would say I thought but they would be permitted through the DDA alright thank you when would they be going up Craig proposed yeah I want to say March whatever the markets this month isn't it yeah they approached us late in the late in their game I again that would be under the permit of DDA for the poles no no and the I'm trying to remember the group they're working with has already modified their certificate of insurance to have this display covered it's not in there I'll get it sent out I'll get it I mean I don't know like it's pretty cold out right now understand they're doing these banners in inside they're making on the sidelines just erecting them there's not a big deal if you want to support it support children's art banners all right tell us about our city art gallery it has the original contract has run out on the mayor's art gallery and mayor's office is working to renew the contract and we still have art so just a quick question it's my understand is this that gallery space that we're talking about yes so just for the people who are perhaps watching at home there is a large area in the back of chambers where and yeah excellent yeah you can see it up there where we have a great exhibit right now you know what is there showing it we should probably do this at every meeting is make sure that it gets shown a couple times thank you cameraman madam chair Craig is there going to be an evaluation of what went right over the previous contracts and what could be improved I would if you have suggestions for that I would have you refer to the mayor's office they're the ones whose kind of to do one I think you should evaluate it I mean just give them good feedback to I think what was what was just mentioned that you know we could be promoting this at each and every one of our meetings that during the year last year when I was chair I invited a representative the art commission to come to each and every one of our meeting and they always had a conflict with her schedule if there's anyone that really needs to understand what's going on in here it should be us and we would welcome someone coming here and explaining what is this collection about why and to promote it and I think that a simple you know email that we shouldn't be the less educated about this particular thing so that would be one recommendation I would suggest going forward so noted I do believe a link to the Ann Arbor Art Center's website which talks about each of these exhibitions and has information about them is on our website so if folks want to find out more about this exhibit you can go there and also common person this room is open to the public and there's a display over here that talks about what's going on here I'm in the back of the room which obviously you can't see from the camera and I'd very much like to ask perhaps even one of the audience members since we are stuck back here - perhaps retrieve the name of the artist so that we might mention that this evening that would be great thanks I think it's all so if you could just wire back there audience member if you could jot down the names of the artists that would be fantastic because I think that that kind of a mention yeah is what will also bring more people to sort of see some of the public art that we have in our buildings thank you and I might add Allie if you might pause during your council meetings to reflect on maybe one particular person what's going on so no I was looking tonight in fact ik because you know you can really really so Thank You Allison Franco and Jenelle Smith you should come to more of our meetings actually the whole Jewett memorial chair and placard the Fifth Avenue project ran into a labor dispute issue as many of our municipal construction projects did this pass late summer and fall additionally there was a material project material problem on the 5th Avenue project so they were not able to complete the work the comment is the chair is being moved over to 5th as part of that project and the placards as described in our notes will be placed next spring this coming spring this coming spring can't tell you exactly yet because there is no schedule until after the frost laws are off so that construction can start Craig could you explain what did why is there a second placards going for names for donors names and that has been an issue as to size and location yet or unresolved okay any other any questions on these things for correct do you want to introduce the connect fan oh wait we can take team on it if you want to start included email to you with this agenda there was a link to the canoe fan art which we don't have a visual to share I am just describing where it is so canoe fan is a sculpture near gallop or at Gallup made of canoes looks like a fan hence the name canoe van by Victoria fuller it was part of the canoe imagined art project which was a city parks project in partnership with the Arts Alliance several years ago they selected I think it's four different artists four or five I want to say five different artists to install works as part of that project they were temporary installations that used all the projects except for this one used recycled canoes from if I could correct you there are permanent installations they as part of the heart call they were to be turned over to the city as part of the project this particular artist either did not understand it or chose not to follow that and was wanting the city to purchase yeah well previously too and we have declined because that wasn't the original call for art was not to purchase them they were paying honorariums to the artists each of the artists received a $5,000 or their work and in turn all contracts with artists in the city you basically give up the rights of your work at that time this particular artist did not want to do so but we still wanted to include her work with a project and so she was given a special leasing arrangement the lease is up essentially and she I said well I'll leave it here if you guys want to buy it for $45,000 yes and and also understand if we're to buy it when we buy a piece of art we buy all the artists rights with it in that is a been a bone of contention with this artist so yeah she would have to be amenable to the general with the city type of purchase so I'm this is going to go to City Council we we will inform City Council of the status of that piece of art whether you folks wanna weigh in as to whether we want to you folks want to try to raise funds to purchase it the city should try to raise funds to purchase it or we let the lease end and if she comes and gets it she comes and gets it so we have an opportunity at this point to make a recommendation that would go forward to the City Council with the information that the artist wants to purchase it the lease ends and I don't remember it's midsummer I can get you the exact date but the ones so we have no reason they have an expectation of having after that she's seeking other buyers for it has the artwork been appraised at forty plus is that how we're arriving at the number she's that's a number that she's putting on us okay a little background I was on the task force I was chair of the art commission at that time and the recipient copied on a number of very strong emails that was sent to Craig hooping the fact as I recall Victoria filled up her answering machine one one weekend demanding a number of things so Victoria is not is is a an accepted regional artist from Chicago she has pieces all over the country she she misread this competition and what she was thinking was that she had a piece already designed that she was advertising for $85,000 and and on her website she would enter it in this competition and for the five thousand dollars she read the temporary to me that it was only to be temporarily there and she could retrieve it she didn't read below no the city was only committing to showing it temporarily because we did not know what we were going to get for five thousand dollars much to everyone's surprise we got wonderful art for five thousand dollars each far more than what what we could Commission so the city made permanent stands and we now have a collection if I think five Canoe type of artwork this is the only one that is problematic so when she was the top vote getter everyone loved her piece she had a great reputation it was listed on the website for 85,000 she was going to give it to the city for five so we asked Deb Pollock through the art Alliance to double check that this was the case and when she did that Victoria said oh I did not know that so the question becomes then we had picked a sixth one in case Victoria wanted to pull out she said how about I do this I come and I install it and for the five thousand dollars and I will let you have it for two years I think it's been a period of two or three years and we've renewed it once and you've renewed it once the idea was all along that this was going to give her exposure to be able to sell it she approached me specifically if I would sort of lead the charge and help find someone to buy it and I said we really don't have the time or the interest to do that she said she has a number of her collectors around I said you should do that then so we're at this particular point then each time it comes up the question is what's going to happen to this artwork well originally it was as I said valued at $85,000 it is a very nice piece of art people like the art that I'm not so sure that it is worth the forty five thousand dollars however Victoria my understanding through numerous emails that she was going to find someone locally to lead the charge apparently she has not done that that I said at the time that we would be willing to accept the donation from her and we would show it in this collection that we have she then tried to find a person to buy it and donate it to the city and then there was some discussion of how big the plaque if she found a corporate buyer so it all got mixed into this I think the city did what they agreed to do that Victoria misunder in the competition we had the benefit of this for four years but I really don't think it's something that we want to ask the city to lay out money for when the understanding from the very beginning was that she would find she would sell it and then and the buyer would pick it up or she would find a buyer and the seller would donate it that's the back story and that's kind of my take on it great well I really appreciate that that history of the piece it certainly does place the context so my question is you know as the public art Commission what is our recommendation moving forward it does seem as though we should have or take some position and that position could be we would like the city to purchase this we would like to have the opportunity potentially to have her or us attempt to find a donor a buyer or that we are very pleased with having had it for the last four years and are so happy that it's going to be taken into someone else's collection and that as long as we have it that will be great so but it does seem to me that we probably should at least start to this conversation about what kind of a recommendation we would make moving forward I agree and I would I'm sorry well I make a motion that we advise the city to let the rental contract run its course and thank Victoria for allowing us to to exhibit it for four years and it's regrettable that she was unable to find a purchaser for it as was our understanding and that it will be sorely missed that would be my recommendation I move that yes is there a second all right it's discussion to refine it - and to refine yes John thank you I think based on Deb's kind of three option rule and we have an opportunity to weigh in we'll start with those three perhaps I do think and even kind of in the context of the discussion that was held at City Council the a yes we should weigh in and give a recommendation and also my opinion would be to reflect kind of the current climate I'm saying it's time to maybe have a more fiscally conservative approach towards public art in this particular decision-making process so to say yes thank you very much for having the piece on display and we'll offer it back to you and your opportunity to do with it what you will share with somebody else perhaps yes I think I'd even add though that even if we were in a fiscally sound period maybe the artist did totally misconstrue the rules but the other artists didn't so that's kind of confusing I think it would set a bad precedent for us to allow ourselves to let the artists change the rules and then sort of push us up against the wall and force our hand to make it purchase so even if we had the funds and we were flush that I'd feel a little uncomfortable about that I second that yeah I would agree with Colleen that we've appreciated it it's been great let the contract go how it has and thank her and return it if I can weigh in we don't return it it's I'm sure it'll fit up that's for her to retrieve she can retrieve it and you know what if the foundation it's on may present an opportunity for another piece to be installed there there's also there's are already a foundation poured there you know I'm not an engineer so I don't can't say for sure but it might be a great place burn used to be installed in the future each of those foundations were unique to the piece being displayed it doesn't mean another piece can't be there it just means that if we were to choose a piece we'd have to be aware of the foundation that's in place yep in one of my many conversations with Victoria she said that it would cost her ten thousand dollars to come and disassemble it and take it back I do not think she is going to be in a hurry to come and get that I would I would advise the city not to force her to pick it up not to threaten her but just to let her know that that this is renewing or something and I suspect that she might not come and and get it for several years but I see a look on dad's face well I would I mean we welcome it as long as it's here but there's a contract and if the contract comes up it could be renewed but contracts are contracts so I just wanted to make a couple of comments certainly one is that you know if the artist does choose to you know pick up the the piece as was stipulated you know we will certainly do everything in our power to facilitate that and if there is a delay in picking it up we certainly will appreciate having the artwork for a little longer one thing I wanted to respond to was something that Jonah said about and also that's idea of you know we don't want to be backed into something even if we have the money but maybe we should be more fiscally you know conservative right now considering perhaps the political climate and and I certainly think that that is something that we as representatives of the community need to take into account but I do also want to speak just a moment to the the real charge that we have around bringing to our community that aspirational uplifting and beautifying public art that we all have been committed to and we'll be committed to in the future so for me I I will support the motion in this particular case but I think that each of us if we really thought that keeping this piece was worth the the conversation with Council I know that each of us would actually take that position and it's just in this case we have benefited it's been a great piece to have and we do wish the artist well as we move into this next phase with this piece so thank you any other discussion around this particular I don't think we amended really what John says so with our discussion any second okay all in favor any opposed great okay reports from workgroups so there are summaries of everyone's work groups within your packet this is an opportunity for people in groups you know you can verbally summarize them a few bit length or just assume people rent out I'm sure I'll start okay and I for those of our viewers at home an awful lot of what is online so people could go online and get copies of them as well for those at home that the promotion and public art workgroup which is Allisyn myself and Colleen and we met at cafe verde Colleen had a work conflict that we had discussion and I also work with the historic Street exhibit program and I'm familiar with Don Hammond and Don is a graphic designer that has a unique practice he belongs to the Society of the antal graphic designers these are the designers that do graphic designs for theme parks for malls for national parks in in large areas to try and and in fact it's now being folded into place making wayfinding these kinds of things and I I asked Don if he would be open to discussing it with me I discussed it with Allison and and I had an extended discussion with Don and asked for his his input it was eye-opening to me and I've detailed as best I can in this report basically he's suggesting that we first of all should identify our art and we understand that if for no other reason than to brand it as a cultural asset and he's saying once we do that we might want to think about combining it with other cultural assets what makes up the culture of Ann Arbor and these are sustainable projects and and he imagines the kind of explanation that would go into a name tag actually just being a portal to an online description that could be as broad and expansive as we would want it to be it would also satisfy a DA of requirements it could be a QR code sticker so that the tag itself would be rather small maybe 2 inch by 4 inch just the name of the piece the date and the title and then a place for a sticker and whether if the the website sends more information about this particular piece and we could put the QR sticker on so to do that he encourages us to expand the notion of public art to include public art and design and to think about it as cultural assets when we do that we bring in a lot of other stakeholders that might have an interest in promoting cultural assets that they have a vested interest in so I like his idea and that I he said that he's going to be discussing this with some colleagues of his and to find find out if whether there's any interest in this this isn't going to be kind of a freebie kind of thing and it's not going to be something that's going to be done overnight but it's going to be done well and it's going to be done professionally and it will give us the kind of thing that I think we're hoping for that to be able to present to both residents and visitors the cultural assets that we have here in town and some kind of description about them so I was very encouraged by this he did email me saying that he has spoken with some folks he has a colleague that is very excited about this and he would like to meet with me and discuss actually some recommendations of how to move this forward to get from an idea into actual an action point and that may inform our recommendation so I will do that I'll meet with our working group and we'll report out at the next at the next meeting recommendation to you guys and getting your input at that point before there's any plaques or anything going up obviously we have to do the inventory before we have an idea of where everything is and we can identify it but this is sort of just while we're in the kind of waiting period for that we're figuring out what makes sense for that those placards and things getting advice on that process any questions for the working group no but I'm in strong support of that John and I think connecting with tourism and connecting people with the assets of our public art is paramount and I would see that as a very should be a very strong focus of ours in this coming 2019-20 yeah one of the things that we talked about in that working group was the option to have media training for all of us and see if that was something people were interested in pursuing or if we should look into that a little bit further media training would just you know give us some talking points as we talk about public art general public art funding and talking about our collection so I guess just a show of hands if people would be interested in that type of input what does that mean Media training like if you were talking to the public or media like media PR and talking points like what to talk about the public is that what you're talking about okay gotcha how do address questions well one of the things that was in this report that John just said for word was discussion about the value of asking a public relations representative to address the Art Commission to suggest ways commissioners might engage published criticism or to speak in other ways either to the public or to the media especially as we roll this out so I think that this idea of having some additional media and you know talking points training for the Commission it's another way that we can prep that's been recommended here but that I know that Allison thinks that we might be able to get through the city as well hmm as just a show of hands if you'd be interested in getting some and you know Bonita and Craig can help us navigate who within the city would be the best person to talk to us about that [Music] media everyone thinks of social media and so will there be ways to open up channels for social media and for this commission to have an outlet for social media that's incorrect one can only hope mm-hmm the communications unit within the city closely holds the city brand social media I mean I know I am a council official but he's just you know North Korea you know you know what do we yeah keeping from the people like maybe through this John those cars might open up doors through that conversation I think I wouldn't be mine - how am i bringing it up you know I think - the reservations or what are the restrictions I think that there are there have been concerns you know as a volunteer commission that we definitely would want to be on the same page with city but I think that you can do that we can figure out ways to do that and still be able to communicate well with the public around our mission and the pieces and collection that we have and I think that that's been a tension in the past but one that I think that we're all interested in addressing I'm in order to be able to get better communication out because you know truth be told every two months we're right here on TV live and so being all on the same page is what we all want to do and having ways that we could actually work with social media or the website or any newsletter is something that I think we're all looking to explore and we would really appreciate your help could that be a part of what group well we certainly have the media I think that's like if it's in communications pretty long isn't it yeah I mean and perhaps it's worth revisiting right now you know I think that's a blank function Holly we have I have a Facebook page called Ann Arbor public art it doesn't say anti-republican Art Commission and I Allison and and David and David's in you all they all have access to it and post regularly particular thing we you know we have followers on that particular phase we were told by the attorney's office it cannot be the official City Facebook page for the public art Commission so we just took commission off of it and said this is not official and we continue to do exactly what we were doing before we had Commission and we said it was official so in effect we are spreading the word in social media it's not as focused it may not be as organized that I myself am able to do it sometimes more than others I would like it to be embraced and and produced by the city and not rely on volunteer so that's one key issue we started this meeting tonight on misinformation miscommunication you know and find out what is really possible things have changed a lot I mean I'll meet with him tomorrow in fact and if I have time and bring up the conversation but he knows it's an evolving world and I just don't see how this this Commission expected to do its job with that part without the latitude for that just I don't know what we're protecting well one of the things that's come up in several different working groups is the people want to have an ease newsletter or have a way of communicating and so Vanita just shared with Deb and I Robert Kelly's contact information and so we're gonna meet with him to talk about newsletters see where there's an opportunity for us to share information so we're starting to get those conversations rolling again good appreciate your support helping that I want to it reiterate that we appreciate your support in helping that and so you know whatever you can do to have those conversations as well with others would be great I also wanted to say that you know in other contexts that I've worked in where there have been you know large public organizations even just something as simple as having only a couple of people or a single person if we can work at that spokesperson through those channels so that you create that connection but you also know that you're not having to distribute the message over and over across a large board but through a spokesperson such as the chair who can actually communicate on behalf of the public Commission in a way that that the city can feel good about and be proud great I think we can move on to another working group the next one on the list is the CIP group sure David I saw a report for Connie and Colleen thank you for your input as we talked about earlier in the meeting the main thing was that our new recommendations went to City Council and were approved there's also in your packet a new kind of summary document some of the council we had only submitted the new items because the other ones were approved so they seemed like old news but some of the council wanted to see a summary document so they need to put that together and I added some notes about some you know how some of those had evolved in the CIP over time it looks like craigger Vanita has made one edit to that at least that I noticed which is item number seven the an arbor station construction I would swear Deb Gosselin's told me that all the train stations dropped out of the CIP but I guess this one just got moved to a different number in a totally different section and pushed way off to the end of the CIP term so it's a long ways off yeah but it is still officially a project it would be interesting to see I mean it's the same it's not the same number but whether the council's previous approval under the old number would still apply to the new number in the new location but I don't know about that we can maybe we want to try to remember to throw that in for yeah I would I mean I would suggest it's far enough off that there's no urgency yet there's no urgency or you know I don't know if you want to expend political capital on could be pushed off again next year it's it's it's it's short supply for this commission so yeah it's spending that political capital train station is what train station I think we should take yeah exactly there you go that's that's that's the better question um so those of you looking at the it's if you look at it on your computer or if you print in color the notes are in red so it's really obvious where there's updates to different items thank you for doing that to add to this Vinita has made us a spreadsheet an Excel spreadsheet that has it's starting to track these projects so we know when they become a project and when there's a manager assigned to it and stuff so there's more back and forth between the Commission which will be presented to the Commission so we have a better idea of where things are or her project drops off the list for some reason great yeah exciting we're honing that thank you guys fundraising group who wants to speak on our behalf I'm not the chair of any working group our fundraising group met and we we discussed just briefly what we are wanted to focus on we're looking into methods or the process of accepting donations there isn't currently one at the city so that we talked about different grant opportunities and exploring those we talked briefly about the Victoria piece as an opportunity there's a walkway near the river that's an opportunity that that project I think was identified within the CIP before we had our system in place so it was not identified for enhancement and likely if we move forward it would be a piece of art that would be added after the project but so that's one the ones were exploring potentially trying to get either a grant or grant with matching funds private donations something like that so lots of fun stuff we're talking about in that group anything else you guys think it's important for the group to know at this point Commission there's a lot of work that goes into that but I think it would be helpful for us there's a lot of money within the state of Michigan the National Endowment for the Arts Michigan Council for arts and cultural affairs and it would be silly for us not to attempt at some of these projects and just you know doing one or two things really well and starting to explore the ability to have private donations partnering with different entities outside of government Mary do you think there's opportunity to partner with someone who's maybe got that grant writing in their portfolio another arts group that would be with the city to do something like that to get grant money that's possible and if you've ever if you're setting the time like you'd mentioned with the ad and the is a tricky one I know to solve once you once you flesh out who we are what we're doing the motives behind the possible project I mean really you've got that information down and it can be kind of cut and pasted into a number of different opportunities which kind of led us to start backing up a little bit and think about a strategic plan for the Art Commission and think about a three-year five-year kind of possible outcome of what we are looking at and heading into especially with a lot of the new ideas on the table as a new commissioner there's a lot of information to kind of unpack from previous years and I think if we are going to move forward I think it's important that we have a clear vision and fundraising is definitely something that is attainable and viable and we're and we're looking at the Michigan Council for arts and cultural affairs as a potential place to apply because cities can apply for grants there and several of us have experience writing grants so we thought we'd get that experience share it at this point because we are part of the and we think that sharing that experience with city staff could potentially invigorate them for doing so in the future I don't think we're suggesting that this commission would always have that since we do right now that you could initiate something that would exactly make it a little more robust sounds grand and I'm like Mary said a lot of the pieces that go into grant writing our pieces that can be used again and again in different proposals and so making those foundational documents will be really important moving forward for the potential to there's a lot of there's a lot of new exciting things that we're talking about I mean we're talking about a possible app or wayfinding around you know how to how to find what assets we have that already exists we're talking about engaging young people and their ideas you know there's ways that we could kind of fold these ideas together and write a grant that stimulates that idea you know and and then brings that to the table I well I emailed Craig I mean I think that's a different one that I emailed you about those are very different I mean they're very similar as far as their pathways that go underneath the railroad was it the tunnel yeah there's two tunnels one is slated to go into construction this year I think I emailed you about recently is the one one further out well that's more nor bandanaira yeah that one's further out right they're not funding so is that one in the CIP well no they're both in a bullion well the one happening this year would not because it's expected to be completed before the CIP kicks in in July the banding but one should but we discussed I discussed it with their Goslin in a year or two ago yeah and it was it's something that's desperately crying out for art this is basically a concrete tunnel under the railroad tracks to reduce the floodplain and allow pedestrian access but it was entirely federal funding as I recall so it's not legally not allowed to fund public art it's so there's no potential funding yeah no it is you're correct it is either state or federal funding through yeah so it's something that would really need a donation the main fire is for two and art to it because we don't have any other mechanisms if I may suggest the river site of that tunnel would be out letting on the DTE project mm-hmm and that might be a developer donation Upjohn's yeah we have discussion that we just had if there's several different developers that are that you had mentioned that are not only stakeholders within that project but have also already had some financial implications with that project so it would be potential avenues for matching funds the space is really tight on the city side of the tunnel any space would be on the river side we don't put our didn't we'll just get really appreciate you bringing up the idea of DTE potentially being a donor for something like that it was just kind of a segue into what I was gonna ask is that we as a group did brainstorm about potential donors and grants they came up in our discussion and I would just ask the other members of this commission if you or anybody out that you know has an idea for somebody who might be a good donor please share that and hopefully we can come up with some good ideas together so and I use DTE in the very broad sense because I I don't know which unit arm corporate reincarnation that DT is doing this as already youth outreach and interaction group okay our group meant a number of times over the last couple of months and I'm gonna key in first here on a word that Mary said and that was strategic so we've done a lot of planning we're putting a lot of things together as a commission we've got our working groups and we've been looking at a variety of ways to achieve what the goals are for this working group and I'm just gonna read them to you briefly so everybody remembers creating mutual learning experience and a point of view Understanding between youth and general citizens three citizen used to Arts in the public arena and so our goal was to involve youth in the Commission by participating by helping work on projects and things that are going on and also to showcase what the youth are doing to and help them discover what's around an arbor so we've discussed a number of ideas that might invigorate and invite youth into we started with the questionnaire that Mary took to the neutral zone teens and talked to them about it and I think Joan might have gone another time and discussed stuff too so again it's trying to pull youth into it early to find out what kinds of things they're interested in and what having a voice in art means to them so we don't have any project recommendation ship because we wanted to go back to what is the strategy really where do we want this to end up and where do we want things to go as you know there's a youth art month going on right now and it would be great for the art condition if this is something that happens on a yearly basis to help flesh that out and be a part of it that there's a greater participation between things that are already going on in the community that we can attach to and they can attach to us to make it a more robust program so that's where we are donation and art placement yes that's Alison and myself that I want to be clear this is about donating artwork so it grew out of a friend of mine Jim Palace was moving from Michigan to Portland and he's a major Michigan artist he had three pieces that he didn't want to move so he said could you help me you know I'd love to have him in Ann Arbor so I I helped him find locations they were free that the organization's gave him a $500 honorarium but pretty much the artwork was you know well over $20,000 and and so it it made me think that there are other artists he was older than me probably in his mid to late 70s and he did not want to burden his kids with having to dispose of all this work and pay taxes on it because then would go on market value but he could donate them and get it in a collection and for artists they love to have they do at a certain point you want your work in a collection you know I mean the Museum of Modern Art in New York have a long list of people that just would donate freely so we have a particular demographic in a location that I think is attractive to artists if we can find the right location and find the particular artists we might be able to get some good works of art major works of our donated for nothing so that's what this working group was going to explore my first step was to talk with Mary Ann wilkinson she's a friend and she was the curator of Contemporary Art at the DIA for about 20 years and she moved here to Ann Arbor and was the curator of Contemporary Art contemporary art our living artists so these are the artists she knows who are who's making our right now in Michigan probably better than anyone else she she's now the executive director the Scarab Club which is in Detroit I have missed connecting with her she was out sick and then she was on vacation but I still expect to make a contact with her to explore whether this concept actually could work and how to start it she would know the artists that might be opened to some kind of a donation this we already have forms on the website and Allyson alluded to them that came about as a result of this giraffe donation that we wanted to be able to present it in a way that first of all wasn't just one person's taste that it actually was adding to a collection so the website tried to tease out who's the artist are they important and where do you want this artwork to happen do you have any stakeholders that's what that forum is it's it's mislabeled actually and on the report you can see from the website says get involved support local art projects with a donation I read that to mean cash donation but that's not what the forum is about the forum is about a piece of artwork that you as an artist or you that own the artwork want to donate it like like Victoria's fan to the city so Allison and I are going to continue to meet I still haven't connected with Marianne and I'm going to expand it to maybe talk to the director of the museum local museum to see whether this concept that we have can we actually attract some artists to be able to donate their artwork is is worth pursuing but we have a donation form if anybody wants to use it the other form that's on there is also sort of there it asks questions specifically to get to the point of the type of work that we would like to be donated John mentioned it asks are there stakeholders are there other people within the community who have support of this piece being in the communities collection and it also talks to the fact that if it is a sculpture and needs to have a foundation or there's installation fees that you know the donation would have to come with those costs already come up with them so a lot of those questions Oh kind of are educational in the process of donation and intentional in that way it says that you should think about maintenance and you have to have in your application you have to talk about maintenance and how much that would cost it doesn't specifically say you need to give us that money for ongoing maintenance but you do need to give a outline of what would be required in that plan and who pays for the maintenance I mean this is what is the maintenance and who are you imagining paying for it well once it becomes a part our collection then we would be taking on those responsibilities so that's something that we have to consider unless the donor puts in some money to pay for the maintenance I mean it's certainly possible that maintenance could be part of that donation donation but I think that's part of the reason that you approve or accept gifts into your collection is that you are taking on that maintenance whatever it might be and so I think that having you know I was just thinking about our agenda moving forward even having a place on the agenda where we would be looking to ask the city to accept such a donation in the future would also be something that would routinize and get people thinking about this donation process and again this proposal was specifically for one particular request that we are using it or could use it right now that Alice and I are exploring a a strategy to do this and how would we move into that strategy while we're talking about the forms there is one other form and it is called the public art proposal form and it is really kind of mislabeled and if you could pass that to Craig that's my take on what would really sort of it says to help organize neighborhood art projects volunteer to serve on an APEC subcommittee or offer suggestions for public art themes and locations that's not exactly what this was about this was about a fellow that wanted to paint a piece on a handrail for a bridge and so he came with the idea wouldn't it be neat and so we wanted some kind systematic way of processing these kinds of proposals for art that is to be situated on or in a public space so what this is that him pains honor I cause the public our proposals we had before us when we had money to spend this is okay this is basically saying what is your art project what do you want to do what's the budget who's going to pay for it all of these kinds of issues that would come about that it basically says that we're in the preamble the public art Commission is advisory body with a goal to improve yada yada yada we are not a source of funding any proposed projects should address the plan to fund it we can provide visibility yada yada along with this we have always liked the donation want to know do you have stakeholder interest and have you reached into the community is anyone other than you and your mother like this idea so we want to bring we want to get artists to think about that that if they do have a project or proposal or a donation we would like them to think about coming together and bringing partners and and stakeholders with it that's what this public art proposal was about it was to address one idea that came about it could be used for the projection of the lasers on the building it would be the same kind of thing if we have somebody that wants to do something in the city create work install work and they have a great idea we end up getting that idea and so this proposal this blank form was a way of collecting that information so we can review it and and and touch on things that are makes sense so I've I haven't reviewed this with Allison so maybe I should but suggested different wordings of the website donation of artwork if you are an artist or owned a work of art that you would like to donate to the city of Ann Arbor for inclusion in our public art collection please complete this online form and a story proposal for art if you would like to create an art project that uses city of Ann Arbor property you will need to submit this online form your project will be reviewed by staff submitted to the art of public art Commission for feedback and you will be notified of a request for changes and/or approval and so that's that identifies what those forms are change forms whatever but I just wanted to mention that are you suggesting then that you guys are gonna rework the forms to be more accurate I think we like the forms we just do not like the description on the website so I do think that the to clear differences in the forms are important but I actually when you had spoken about how you know artists will need to think about stakeholders or need to think about some of the issues in this installation and of course somebody who's donating may have other things that they want to think about there are two things that strike me there is a third group that we could probably engage that is you and your mother who have identified a place that they think public art would be good or the kind of public art that might be interesting to them they went to another city they saw a piece and they were interested if we could have something like that this is the kind of access point where you place a very low bar on somebody's suggestion but if that bar were such that it would trigger a conversation with someone on the Commission or start a list that we could also then say we've heard that people are interested in this area is this are there more people that might be interested in this kind of piece so I think that there's an even more accessible public forum that could be in places we won't get a ton of suggestions here but having something where the public can just have an interest in that wall or this artist or that area the other thing is is that a lot of times when I have an application like this I also always offer the option of a pre-application conversation with a commissioner and where you can say prior to submitting it because what do you mean by some of these things or gosh do I really have to think of every bit of installation because that's not what I do and so being able to connect them to resources or to other things to think about or to even get us thinking about it on our end I think would be a good thing as well so if we could offer some kind of pre application or preformed conversation I think that would also be helpful framing it as a way of you know if you want to have a pre that's a little more dynamic you know and it sort of rolled on well and you get more information because they may not know the questions to ask - so if you can help talk them through what's involved I think they have a different understanding a better understanding right so I may have that rephrased as well on the form email you that information yes that's all I have Oh madam chair I think that's the last thing on our agenda right we have a presentation meeting Oh Jonah I was constrained yeah there's usually an anything else you want to talk about regarding the youth arts be it youth outreach and interaction several people did mention the youth art month youth art month which is March and just even for the benefit of a young man in our public audience today some of the some of the workshops that are going on at the Ann Arbor Library caught my attention there's button making improv music tools workshop letterpress all kinds of stuff and I'm gonna try to make an effort to attend at least some of those to either engage with the folks that are facilitating those workshops or potentially some of the young people that are participating in them as well to kind of get some input from them so was it David Ian sorry you know if you know if you have input for example on ways that you think young people should be more able to get involved in public art or things like that there's actually a visual arts collective that meets on Wednesday next week at the neutral zone and so that was where we kind of started the conversation about some of these other potential either events or programming that would be able to highlight youth arts voices as well so there were some smaller projects that you know kind of fell through but some bigger ones on the horizon I think for the future as well so just want to let people know about those and hopefully get excited about them cool thanks anyone else have things they want to share well we have our listening ears and the public No all right well now I will say meeting adjourned you
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[Music] we have for board members seated here at the moment Jen will be here in a few minutes he was under the weather and Bob and his wife Jen is actually welcome to grandson yesterday so congratulations to the Belden family and they welcomed little Troy so first up we have the student spotlight for Brookfield High School and Mr bland is on his way to the podium and I promise to not be here long because what we're highlighting tonight is our friends at Rachel Club which is formed recently after our greatest challenge assembly back on September 11th we have I have one of their advisors here this is Laurie Moses two of our students who have stepped up as leaders in this group cake Apicella and anthony o'hara and they're going to talk to you a little bit about the Friends of Rachel Club what they're doing and really how this is entirely run by the kids certainly Laurie's here to support them but the importance of this club is that the kids are on you and they have their ideas and Laurie certainly there to support them solid reduce go three of them so come on [Music] good morning dr.
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Breeland members of the board we're here to talk about the Friends of Rachel Club as mr. melinda introduced and what we've been doing this year in order to form a positive impact in our profile high school community at the start of the year the assembly that was given to us about Rachel Scott a victim in the Columbine shooting moved me and Kate internally to really try and turn this club into something big in the high school something that like people wouldn't look at and just like second-guess it or be like oh they're not really doing anything we really wanted to make a positive impact and the first thing that we did to do that was high-five Friday and we had students on Friday morning as the buses came in and as students were being dropped off at the two front entrances we had students stand at the front and give each other high-fives and you know something small but like it was good to see people have smiles on their face as other students greeted them in the morning and then the second thing we did was a compliment box in the cafeteria and that was a huge success we got around whoa a lot of students participated writing compliments to teachers fellow students custodians anybody in the school and we distributed during flex pay and after the Flex happened we saw all the students in the school walking out the little paper smiling at what their friends had to say about them so that was also really good for us to see one of the other things we did was a incentive base like kindness challenge where we hung up four posters in the main hallway in front of the main office and we had students who gain stickers by doing like kind activities are showing integrity and respect to other people they had them hang it up on the posters and whoever had the most stickers on their posters whichever grade nine through twelve would gain snacks performing contacts that it was by the great kindness challenge was a national campaign Jakarta not for a week snow day kinda mess up during that week so we expended overall the juniors ended up winning they had over 150 stars anyway my hunger game Athena I wanted to really like get the chain reaction as Rachel like challenged in her essay before she died she challenged the reader of three separate times to create a chain reaction of kindness and so we heard about a tragedy involving a suicide DHS so the members of Rachel's challenge came together like pre last minute and created positive posters to hang up in most of the classrooms at DHS and we got over a hundred of them done in just less than like in 45 minutes to an hour so our next big activity is happening on March 20th so we really want to do something for national happiness day so every grade 9 through 12 is getting like a color poster board and during lunch later they can come up and cut a piece of paper and write something down it makes them happy and she ever and then connect it to a link so look whatever it is a longest link is gonna get like a surprise at the end so one thing that was Moses and I had to kind of yours to a very big trial and error was these Bobcat passes that we have for you guys we're really jumping out last season a challenge to experiment in here nice moving we came together one day friends Rachel to treat background sorry our kindness not goals but also the so um miss Moses like presented to teachers at our school today actually and so these were replaced in packet form in our teachers mailboxes so when they see one of the students or a student acting in like with one of these they can check off the box right the student's name and then write like what the student did on the back and it's placed into a box so at the end of the month it's kind of like a student month program because Anthea had both attended with Samir and the really car like remember like everyone's really excited to see you as a student month Matt and we feel like a lot of kids the high school would be more willing to do something if there was kind of like a little incentive and it's like we do like the pledge every morning mr.
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Glennon and like one of our peers like does the pledge should we thought that like at the end of the month there would be like a little bit of like a prize for like acting with integrity or being a bobcat and to create the chain reaction so the first box that we had on the pass is being responsible which is pretty big for kids in high school because high school is a place for them to learn responsibility and then another the next one for Oh is all for a helping hand which is something that you like to see you of kids who see each other everyday for a night one see here and then it's built a supportive community which is just as important as the other two because who wants to come to a school every day for hours and to be supported by their peers um so challenge yourself we thought was like not necessarily like a kindness effort but more like teachers are can see you when kids are going out of their way to really try and class which is just like building a supportive community and like also in addition to like mission statement that we have at BHS actually with integrity and treating others with compassion and showing respect all kind of go hand in hand because like that is what builds a supportive community and when people come to swim feel supported then we are creating like a happy environment to be around and then the last thing that miss Moses Anthony and I are all kind of working on right now is we realize that a lot of people that at the beginning of the year decided to be part of the club weren't really participating outside of the club hours so we realized that there was a reason to that and we feel that kindness can sometimes be uncomfortable for people to accomplish so I'm in order to kind of get over this we decided that we're going to try to have an assembly where seniors and sophomores are put into random groups and have to do like activities together as long as well as juniors and freshmen so both underclassmen are causing they're kind of mixing and like becoming friends or at least people that they can like look to in the halls that up to or like whatever goes wrong you want to talk bad they can tease me first about it's great thank you thank you so much you know as a principal to see a couple students you know that it was a very moving day I think for everyone there that first day of Rachel's challenging back on September 11th and to see the number of kids that wanted to see their sign up they already signed up initially to do with Friends of Rachel Club training in the afternoon after the morning session so many kids came up said I didn't sign up can I come and show up in that I forget how many kids we had it was you know overeat because that came for that first day training and you know while those numbers have certainly latent and we've gone down these two students you know certainly stepped up Kate and Anthony have really stepped up you know Anthony even came back for the nighttime presentation I'll embarrass them a little bit when his mother came up to me and yeah I know he's blushing right now she said I don't know what what you showed him today but he came home and could not stop talking about it and to see it continue now months later that he's still involved Kate as well and then of course you know miss Moses has just been there supporting every idea I think the best part of this whole thing is we know if we're gonna create a positive school climate in a building it could be something that I think of it could be some of the teachers think of but unless the kids buy into it nothing will change and the fact this is being run by our students is just it's the most rewarding thing to see and you know their work they're gonna work together to make this exchange happen and this is overall by the way if rate nights gonna be high school night you're gonna hear from a lot of high school people today this is making my dad quite often awesome so that's all I'm saying Oh Thank You Maya - were in middle school what 10 11 years ago when Rachel's challenge was brought to middle school and I was thrilled when I heard that it was the high school version of it was coming and even more thrilled to see everyone embraces so much so it's very very proud and excited that it's therapy this any of the questions [Music] okay I am going to make a motion at this time that we take new business agenda items a and B and move them next on the agenda and so we can get all the high schoolers out and back home on a school night [Music] any discussion all in favor aye okay so then that brings us to the robotics Oh mr.
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blender oh I apologize I'm sorry recommend a motion that the board approve the following trips for the robotics team as requested by robotics advisor jason's asaji oh and BHS principal mark Belinda [Music] okay sorry I had me to push Robert's Rules on you hi Anne nice to see you I'm here mr.
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Nastasia adores him he's the assistant robotics advisor for the robotics team and he's gonna share a little bit about the challenges this year as well as the ultimate trucks they're looking to go on to compete okay so this year's challenge is called a deep space and so every year the game is that you form an alliance with three other schools you play an asset that's about three minutes and then get about 20 minutes to your next match so it's the same format and aspect but what they have to do the tests they have to accomplish they're different so they share the themes deep space it's kind of like you're traveling we're stuck on Mars we can't boat me out here so we have to send the robot a few tasks and we're gonna move on to the next place so we've got to get our ship loaded our carb loaded everything ready to go we have three minutes to do that as a team and then before that I've seen some problems they have to get the robot has to dive to safety essentially though what it comes down to is you got the kids are driving but then after the match they that's the key part we bring over a lot back in there's definitely some damage after the 30 minutes of working it and you don't get hit by other teams whatever may occur if something breaks motor doesn't work so we have that 20 minutes to really work on the robot in this where I think the magic happens for the students that are involved because we have a pit crew and after speed with the drive team what are you guys experiencing after you know soft properties fix it very much this holds on for the entire weekend play anywhere from you know seven to fifteen matches so and we're we have super competitions we go depending on how well we perform there we could qualify for districts and those are the times that I have a customer first one is this Friday and water any other questions for success okay all in favor aye great have a great time next we have the deca ICBC true recommend motion of the board approve a trip to deca to attend the international career development conference in Orlando Florida from Friday April 26 to the 19 to Wednesday May 1st 2019 as request by B just business teacher and deca advisor you know Derek Jeter Daugherty and EHS principal mark Belinda second hi again again we're here to you know are well the successful Decker program just came back off the state's yesterday absolutely so should you know they'll talk a bit about military progress is looking request but I introduced apne and Brian blown wit as well all right all right thank you good evening everyone how are you and I'm so happy to be here again and it just makes me so proud every single time that I come to stand in front of you with my students because I am so imagined by these young adults that we have here yesterday was our competition where there was over seven hundred forty nine contestants in actively today I had seven confirmed people that are students going to be able to attend with me down to Florida in Orlando it is a great conference there's about 19,000 students from all over the world I'm talking as far as India China South America Canada and of course all the states in the US and they strive her professionalism and this year's campaign is ready for it and I'm gonna tell you something these kids are ready for it the work that they did and we did have a group of students that actually won third place and it's Brian's younger brother so he is a great role model for his brother and his freshmen they want in a written project which was a twenty page written project that they have to present as freshman phenomenal you know and I look at the the upperclassmen that are really showing how great this program is so thank you again we're gonna be going on the 27th probably come back on me first we estimated it to be about nine hundred fifty five dollars unfortunately convention areas of Florida are very expensive but you know we are looking at other ways to fundraise we do have our everything at easy business of course you know the Salesforce with me all the time she'll make my little plug so excuse me everybody but I must do these things to support our business and I want to have actually my students speak to you about what this means to them and why it's so important and why we just love to have this program run as well as it does so I introduce you to my president of Daka Brian Fallon whele all right so as Miss Audrey said yesterday thousands of thousands of X students competed at the aperture pin in pencil and in eight of them at Hertz were her co-worker Canadian deaf members through a three months of three months of operation they were able to craft a a written product I was able to that was able to that was able to evoke and come in as a judge that they were heard any one of the best and their business models we followed these students for Christopher construe I believe a drew over here and William Fox all freshman and I'm so proud to have as part of our club Latos here April 8th at our students will be traveling with us to Orlando to participate and leave for conference as I said three of those members have won that arm on the competition but also three them were able to receive variety response which are tariff on all hated to divert traffic say community service projects since our entire topic believe that the bees are trying to Europe to a allocate three spots to our most dedicated members in addition to that we also had to stay out soon if that ran for offices here their names were five ways our who is the who is a maternity member on the on the State Board and a junior this is Mount Airy she will be returning people become invested a state worship percent s on the on the doctor State Board of Education members some as you all probably have heard of our everything at GGC business as you see our native place right here some some everything that's easy that's been revealed a good experience for me for Brian Ms for Liam as well because some is taught us a lot of the fundamentals of business at a very core level such as different processes such as accounting marketing and finance because in today's world businesses continue to develop and evolve and at times you can see my things are so complex that they're really hard to understand but what everything SEC did for us was the providing almost from like the first Florida a way of understanding how even complex businesses in today's world work and what they consider like to do every and on top of business skills that is also Ty's communication as well as organizational skills because we need to communicate with different teams whether it's the sales team or the production team as well as how to organize our events so that each team member knows what they have to contribute in order for us to generate a positive business here and thank you thank you here that they you it's just another part of work it's just another part of our program that we run through Decca answer Future Business Leaders of America through our business department that really is providing these great skills for our young students and we want to thank you and thank you again for your time thank you I have a question about the business do you have a website or a way that people can find out about we're working on that yes we did what you would call a soft opening because we wanted to make sure that we had all the skills in place and here's our other we are just jam-packed here in business and this is our finance young man and he has also been doing a lot of her invoicing and our web design and all of our different Orion we're creating catalogs so well did we did have the pleasure of addressing the board back in April in fact about everything I should easy which is the business run jointly between FPA and deca specifically our Fon and I lead the FBLA at Murphy high school and Bryan is the president of deca for the business recently we have been working on our website which we are interested in publicizing eventually but do some of the constraints that we have as a business related to production we wouldn't be able to bring it to a larger market market outside of Brookfield but we hope to someday we only have two hedging machines downstairs and we have a small production team but we're working on that and also next Tuesday in fact at the FBLA State confidence we'll be presenting our business as a part of a workshop thank you so much thank you great thank you thank you thank you very much yeah reach out there any other questions all right good luck you all thank you okay we have board recognition expert dr. broom I see that you have the youth commission on your superintendents update yes and I think I might make a motion if we just move that as a separate item and have them present now so they're not waiting as well or sure there's a hole okay so move that the board receive a presentation from the Youth Commission okay all in favor hi okay it's gentlemen from the Youth Commission please come on up welcome back to the podium lamp turning into mr.
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Bolander they're coming well thank you again members to the board my name is Liam Ania my name is Michael Bates and where are the youth members of the newly reformed or peeled youth commissioner I want to start tonight by reading to you our mission statement for the public and for the board to hear the Brookfield Youth Commission provides an advocacy and information platform for youth representatives to get more engaged in town issues now we find in our we found in our about four month existence what we've actually helped raise more of these concerns to students and it's trying to facilitate a conversation in the student community about the about the issues that would face them specifically from the point of governance our adult members are mr. Robin Montgomery our chairman Marty Guin McNiff who is our Vice Chairman Gillian Vostro who is our secretary Aurora Mary Kelly and Sarah Devine so far we've actually ran a survey of the student population of Brookfield which I believe is included in the agenda packet tonight which actually has addressed some of the internet connectivity concerns that students have found in the infrastructural conditions of the school and the Frank existent existence of vaping within the school which has been a big problem and we're trying to work out a way that we can help raise awareness not only to the school which fortunately were able to do tonight but also potentially in administering sucks blocks presentations to students in accordance with the health with the it helps permit at the school and with mr.
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Belinda who has been a fantastic supporter of ours and we're very glad to be doing things with you found us specifically we haven't met with our concerns about that and we've met with him on a few occasions of fact and because we've formed ourselves as a board we've been be able to create a dialogue in the town so we can work on these specific issues as they present themselves there are time as student members of the perk of youth commission we find ourselves in a unique position to bring a student's perspective to many situations around the town particularly in the schools with BIGBANG the situation with bathrooms and Internet connectivity we hope to encourage more student involvement in the school and to encourage more students to really want to take part in the community and other activities as well right and specifically pertain to our municipal government we also we spoke with Eve Sturdivant who I see as I was able to attend tonight and we actually hope to bring a member of the Board of Education to serve as a liaison on the borough field Youth Commission and that's something I believe would be up to the deliberations of the Board of Education but we would like to propose that as option so we'd have that direct association with between the board and the Youth Commission and for all of us where some of the student leaders in our school we lead different clubs specifically Michael is a senior class president this year and we really do want to help bring these issues to the attention of our town leaders who are absolutely excellent and even able to hear us on these issues and and I think we'll be able to have a you know a prosperous future as a town with more youth leaders working in conjunction with our accounts so thank you so much for your time and we'd love to answer any questions oh yes yes but there's also her Fon and I established a business club at whisky near Middle School which is aimed at helping students understand the basics of economics and we just held our second meeting this last Tuesday which is going very well and we do hope because as of now we're all high school members of the Commission and as per the Charter it actually does permit for students from the ages of 12 and up it says serve on the Commission so when our Terms do expire we would like to bring members up from the middle school from the middle school onto the Commission and those entering the high school which will be in a year and a half so we do look forward to that and we like to facilitate as many connections as we can with the other students and keep you know spreading these ideas and making sure that everyone has kind of a platform that they can speak from as well and see if we can help bring them off I'll get them involved in community thanks so much when do you meet we meet on the first Friday of every month yes second I'm sorry are there any other question here what time at five o'clock at Town Hall blame did you share for us the last time the Youth Commission was active I know it's been quite a while approximate how many years because you guys just got this started this over I'm proud of you for your engagement of this well thank you I believe it's been about a decade now since it was last in exist a long time all right I look who's looking through the news times archives to see if anything was on and I saw the most recent one was from about 2005 when they were nominating candidates for it from the political parties in our town and that's what I believe is in last night was in the same area I think that's very important in you know you folks taking the initiative to get the Commission going again I'm very proud of you guys great job thank you and I am in support of a Board of Ed Lisa yeah I love the opportunity to work with you guys this is wonderful thank you joy [Music] thank you very much thanks so much everybody for presenting tonight and for all the high-school students great job we're very proud of you and thanks to mrs.
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Stern you're getting out early so no excuses on the homework being due tomorrow so one of the things is everybody's getting up if you could just just listen for just one second on your way out if you haven't partaken already we have cake to celebrate and recognize the Board of Education for all their volunteer hard work year round I think it's the hardest board to serve on in any community is the Board of Education and marches Board of Education Appreciation Month so we want to make sure we're appreciating our board and recognizing them with a little bit of cake so police are taking some cake and also as a congratulations to the board for the passing of the referendum for the new school building [Music] like that and just to myself I just wanted to send my own appreciation it has been a privilege sitting at the stable working alongside each and every member the board event so thank you for everything you do [Music] okay next we have public comment we have just one person signed up Robin logo Murray I was that with that Youth Commission you through your parents so is there anyone else here that would like to speak for public comments okay they'll be a student representative report hi everyone it's been a while since I last met and there's been a lot happening in both Delhi most reasonably yes Jamie at our second National Honor Society blood drive or we had 33 donors who are both teachers and students who are 17 or older this is a great turnout and NHS is very thankful for all of those who have donated tomorrow at 6 p.m.
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