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e e e come and will be via telephone only to speak a public comment call 888 78899 and our meeting ID 954 3473 965 this information is available on the published agenda in the Public Notices section of the city's website and broadcast of this meeting on CTN Channel 19 AT&T channel 99 and online at a2gov.org watch CN uh Aon will you read the land Heritage statement yes I acknowledge that the land the city of Anor occupies as the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including the Odawa oju and bwami and wand peoples I further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the United States on lands obtained generally and uncons ways from indigenous peoples The Taking of this land was formalized by the Treaty of Detroit in 1807 knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding the ongoing consequences of this past can Empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals thanks Saron would you mind doing the roll call yes uh Vice chair Brown absent for now um council member Cornell here w v an arbor chairperson Curtis here an arbor commissioner Dale she let me know she would not be here this evening uh commissioner Graham here council member Malik here calling from Ann Arbor's second ward commissioner Marson here in an I'm here in an arbor commissioner mki here at my home in an arbor in War I commissioner Mitchell here and an arper looks like commissioner NRI is coming in uh commissioner peterswood let me know You' not be here this evening commissioner Smith here aror and commissioner wng absent and hello commissioner NRI hi apologies for my lateness no problem and here comes Vice chair Brown okay that is a Corum thank you so does anybody want to make changes to the agenda is there a motion to approve the agenda so seconded by okay Rita good um is there all in favor of the approval of the agenda raise your hand say I I unanimous um okay does anybody want to make changes to the minutes from last month's meeting is there a motion to approve last month's meeting minutes and seconded by Steve will be second um all in favor of the approval the minutes raise your hand or say I I I approval it's approved uh next item of business is public comment this is an opportunity for people to speak for up to three minutes please call raise your hand press nine to unmute press star six City staff will select callers who have raised their hand one by one using last three digits of your phone number when speaking please move to a quiet area state your name and address at the beginning of your comments there may be a delay up to 30 seconds before a connection is established eron you mentioned we had one caller uh yes caller uh 464 hello can you hear me yes we can oh good thanks um yeah my name is Linda barer 4213 Street um I was very happy to see the draft resolution supporting inclusion of natural features protection protections into the city's new comprehensive plan the comprehensive plan which as you know is in process of development now and likely to be finalized towards the end of this year will embody land use principles and guide land use decisions for years to come in Ann Arbor I consider it essential at the comprehensive plan include robust protections for natural features protection of natural features has been an Anarbor Community value for as long as I've been here going on 40 years the last and most recent comprehensive plan formerly known as the master plan contains sections speaking eloquently about the importance of preserving green open space Forest remnants Heritage trees and our tree cany in general and maintaining the Integrity of our wetlands and the many Creeks that feed into the hiron river I have not seen is yet much emphasis on natural features Protections in the current discussions and planning surrounded the currently being revised comprehensive Plan and there's no better body than you guys the environmental commission to bring this to the attention of the planners and Commissioners and others who are developing the comprehensive plan so I urge you to recommend such protections to the Planning Commission and Council and planning staff in the strongest possible terms you guys have the credibility to make that recommendation because of your expertise in environmental issues so I encourage you to use your leverage and then I have one specific request for inclusion in your recommendations the draft resolution mentions protection of wetlands water courses but there is no mention specifically of flood planes and with the increased infield development and effort to increase density Citywide protecting the open flood planes that remain under the ownership should be of the highest priority this was the recommendation of our longtime and recently retired highly credentialed flood plane manager Jerry Hancock as you know the city is purchasing vacant Lots in the flood plane to prevent others from you know buying them in building so that they can stay open and they're even buying some Lots in the flood plane with modest homes and demolishing the homes in order to exp expand the areas of UN obstructed flood plane I can't remember which Creek sheds that kind those kind of purchases were happening in but I do know that the city owns significant acreage in many flood planes notably in the Allen Creek flood plane and I en urge the environmental commission to urge the city to adopt the policy of no further construction of any type on the remaining city-owned Parcels located in the flood plane these should remain open Green Space planted with Native species to serve as green infrastr infrastructure flood ples serve a natural purpose which is even more important in our era of increased prec precipitation brought on by rapid climate change reducing the potential impact of floods is a matter of public health and safety as well as environmental responsibility thank you thank you thank you um color 411 uh commissioner Curtis uh members of the commission can you hear me yes yes great thank you um my name is James deore and I am a a longtime resident of the city as well I work with a previous speaker uh Linda bar and uh um working on the S Creek uh uh task force and I concur with opinion regarding uh um uh parcel development along the oun creek uh Greenway um but the main reason why I called you I speak to you as a a former member of both the Parks Commission and as a city planning commissioner and I have what I have to say about this issue is I think this ordinance before you uh change that uh you're working on is long long overdue um i s surprised when a uh previous iteration was delayed in the first place at the request of the sustainability office and the Planning Commission um we really need this element in our uh development of a comprehensive uh uh plan I note that commissioner that that uh uh city council member dish a couple nights ago um mentioned a certain parcel with a large number of trees is saying this the parcel wanted to be developed did anyone ask the trees that are there um we still have a number of steep slopes and natural each areas that need greater protection as Miss MC Brower had noted also the flood plane issue I note that my time planning Parcels are developed without consideration to Greater natural systems around them they're analyzed in isolation by planning department and commission sometimes as I said not taking the greater issue I have to say let's bring natural features protection hand inand with sustainability initiatives we cannot solve the CRI climate crisis while protecting natural systems I'm sorry if I'm a little I'm reading my chicken scratching as I carved it this the last minute but I know that each of you are are well qualified and you have great interest in coming forth a good plan and I look forward to what you produce and I support your efforts thank you for what you do and good evening thank you that is all the raised hands for now okay thank you um so let's move on we don't have any old business so let's move to a new business which is the resolution that was just being talked about Rita do you want to walk us through it and Aon will you share it on the screen yes I'll give a short introduction um the goal of this resolution that's being offered by the biodiversity work group of the environmental commission is to acknowledge biodiversity as essential for the future health of the an arbor Community we know that we're affected by the climate crisis we know that in addition to climate change land use planning will change our immediate surroundings we've pulled together some ideas in this resolution from local planning efforts as well as International thoughts about including biodiversity in urban settings and that seems to be the direction that we're going more urbanization um benefits to humans are inter intertwined with ecological health health we are part of our system um as an arbor changes we strongly believe I think I'm speaking correctly for the biodiversity work group we strongly believe that we must work to implement actions that integrate natural systems that will result in measurable gains in biodiversity that will ultimately be more efficient and effectively effective to address our overall Community Health and Welfare as we're were part of this system so we're proposing support for ongoing processes to be included with City Planning efforts for the comprehensive plan and the a20 plan as well as existing um protections that are involved in the um historic districts in the city so that's my intro and um I guess it would it would help me to know um if the Commissioners have had a chance to review the document and to understand how closely we need to follow it and and track as we discussed tonight is there uh could we have like a show of hands if you at least had a chance to read it one two three okay four okay looks like we might need a little bit of review um so I'll just I'll kind of skim um first we call out the responsibility of the environmental commission itself as a body um so that because we are responsible to advise Council on ways to protect and enhance our air water land and public health um and we want to help set those goals for the city um we know that the natural features plan that exists now um has definitions and we want to retain those for our reference and use as we go forward how we do that in the comprehensive plan is something that we want to make sure that is worked out um and so what we want to acknowledge is that the planning for the comprehensive plan and down to the one that has multiple bullet points Associated um has already acknowledged some aspects of green infrastructure Environmental Protection promoting balance between natural and human systems which I think is really important um and in that um the balance again is reflected not only in the natural features protection but also in reducing carbon emissions they're intertwined so carbon emission reduction is not just about burning fewer fossil fuels but it's also retaining natural features that help us to store carbon excess carbon that's being emitted um and to give us oxygen um we had a um public feedback let me see it yeah just in the review for the comprehensive plan there was an indication again of the need for balance between natural features and biodiversity uh and the develop system uh and calling out preserving natural features and again uh once more in looking at public support for natural features there's a we feel that this is essential so we have quite a lot of sort of our Preamble uh the whereas is that that introduce the features that we feel are really important about um how we live in our ecosystem it's a natural system that can help us it's there to serve purposes so a couple of our callers indicated that for example the flood planes serve a purpose and can help us to to avoid what could be excess flooding in the future if we keep intact ecosystems um we need those ecosystems or life just vanishes essentially and we'll work even harder we'll be impoverished I would say um from a a natural perspective maybe even from a food system perspective um so we're looking again for how we acknowledge and support what natural systems do um they support diversity of species and we want to avoid that decline um I'm just going to go through these multiple whereases there are quite a few um and we'll probably ultimately and we welcome your input today and of um in the next month um for how to um reduce the um how to consolidate these make them more efficient as statements but we want to make a strong statement and the point is that we know that we have some risks um in our climate and we know that we should be able to do better and we're lucky that we have some processes going forward that are looking at the future we just think that we we can do them better when we incorporate the natural systems that we have um so I'm going to buzz through these we want to acknowledge all those natural features down to the last one including the natural Forest fragments landmark in Heritage trees wetlands and water courses and flood planes um we want to now I'd like to move in uh actually I guess I should ask before moving forward um are there any questions comments or suggestions of about the the Preamble what I call the preamble to our actual resolutions where we want to go with dealing with natural features I'd like to hear a few comments from our group uh Steve hi hi everybody I had um a few thoughts about this um I'm we calling the city's proposal for what they call a tree line you know and that you have phase one um which goes between I believe Washington Street and the river and that will and that's which is the most um last I looked it seemed to be the most natural features friendly um of the um of the three legs that were proposed for the tree line and the thing is that um that would provide there's a lot of building going on downtown and so you know 15 minutes in nature can lower your blood pressure and other things so hopefully and I've been thinking about the part um the open space issues as well you know near downtown and West Park seems to be ideally situated for that so um I was wondering if you if the natural features group has thought about having a a corridor like a non-vehicular corridor short Corridor between the tree line and downtown and um West Park um I can say that we haven't talked about that specifically Steve but we have talked about natural features as being integrated with the entire city you know so we have residential areas we have streetscapes we have parks and um we know that the UN as part of our system as well so we're kind of thinking of it as an overall ecosystem as opposed to identified as one discret area um so yes to what you say but I would I would say I'd like it to be even more you know that considerations of biodiversity get included with developments as they move forward so that we have as residents visitors um exposure to Nature wherever we walk not that it has to be all greens space necessarily but um there is uh a benefit to having um components of nature that function near us that we can see and touch and so I wouldn't want to have Parks be exclusive as the features of natural systems that's my op Rita can I add a comment on that please do so maybe just building off of what Steve and you are saying we could look at a a nature Corridor in different ways you know that's a blend of public and private spaces because some private residential yards would count as part of a nature Corridor depending on the trees and the plants they have and that could be something of beneficial from a biodiversity standpoint absolutely that is a really good way to describe it and thanks ah Sarah Gita thank you for this resolution um this is It's just beautifully written and I you know the way that you spoke about this was so eloquent so thank you um I was really interested in the part you talked about metrics to measure biodiversity and that is such a big issue um I was actually just at a conference last year at the end of the year that there was a whole session on U measuring biodiversity and what types of metrics to use and it is it's it's really um there's a lot of policy debate about that right now even on a global scale um so you know I think that that is you know a really important step um if we are going to be able to track the impact of different actions the city's taken um we need to establish good metrics um so I like that you have that in there um I was wondering generally um do you know the timeline for the comprehensive plan like have we seen a draft and do we know um like is is this resolution um adverse to what's in that plan or is this just to kind of throw it out there so the make sure that it's in the plan both um yeah I would say thanks Chris I would agree that it is sort of both we want to make sure that natural features are mentioned and so I we called out points where it has been addressed in at least discussions of the comprehensive plan but we haven't seen a draft yet um and that is anticipated to come in the next couple of months I believe and I saw a calendar of the process recently and this proposal um our our recommendations should be possible to include in it and so we will we are intending to work toward that goal and um your comment on metrics yes and um I can't say that I am a an expert in those kinds of metrics it's clearly something that's quite Broad and we'd have to determine what are the right things and ideally from my perspective this would be something that would incorporate input from multiple departments in the city so that we'd have because I know we have expertise and so we should use what we have and in a way that can be measured right here it's very controversial so some people think you should look at overall like ecosystem Services provided and not worry so much about individual species and some people think you really need to have like look at diversity um and that that's the metric so it's just like this really hot debate um you know it's fun but yeah if you have recommendations please pass them along I can I'll ask I'll ask the experts and let you know where they're leaning great yeah thanks yeah um John mki thank you uh full transparency here I a member of the biodiversity group so I had a hand in uh the drafting of this resolution I just like to make a few comments um I'll speak for myself but I think many on uh the working group uh feel the same way uh to state the obvious I think um we all know but maybe not everybody in the community knows that we not only have a climate crisis we do have a biodiversity CL crisis I mean there's lots and lots of studies more and more all the time coming out showing dramatic in uh declines in um the number of insects uh the the you know the biomass of mammals I mean you can just go on and on down the list there was just recently a study published in nature within the last 10 days or so indicating that butterfly populations have decreased dramatically just in the last 20 years not over the last you know 100 years or something like that so we we have two two crises that we have to to take into consideration um re in that re recognizing both of those um I think most if not all of us also recognize that the city needs more housing and it needs more affordable housing and it needs that housing to be sustainable housing and um as outlined in the a20 plan we also recognize that vehicle miles traveled have to be reduced and uh that the only way Transportation emissions are onethird plus of total emissions and they're the one segment of emissions that are growing so we're we're we we recognize um the context in which we're operating in um if you look at the resolution um it's not prescriptive it's not saying yet you have to measure this or you have to do that um it's not saying we have to do this or that with a tree line Trail or anything else but we're saying that natural features and its ecosystem Services really needs to be considered as a part of the comprehensive plan and our view is up until now there has not been enough recognition of that um in the public comment as well as in comments from um Planning Commission and The Advisory Group that's working on this Etc so what we're trying to do is get this as a part of the discussion and this to be recognized in the comprehensive plan and then uh after that we can become a little bit more defined and prescriptive um lastly I'd like to say um we really uh well two more things we're not trying to prevent development we're trying to steer development to the areas that are going to have the lowest impact we're try want to steer it to vacant parking lot Lots we want to steer it to strip mall areas and things like that and that we're not also saying you can't develop in areas where they're natural features at least this is you know we're not saying this directly in here but I think this is our intent we're not saying to anyone you can't develop in an area where there are natural features or where some may be negatively impacted but what we'd like to see is that those be mitigated and as I said in that pushes people to doing development where it really makes sense and frankly where it's going to be have the highest Transit impact where is you're going to have uh Transit oriented development as opposed to putting it in residential areas so we we're we want everyone to realize what our motives are here um we're not nimes um we're really trying to do the right thing and um let's see I wanted to say one more thing I had some notes here um yeah oh just one other thing um and R it touched on this very briefly but I want to mention that we were some of this discussion was inspired by the fact that we um recognize that the UK has has passed legislation requiring that um larger scale development all larger scale development within the UK has to actually increase biodiversity so we we haven't dug into real detail on this and it's obviously there's metrics involved and things like that but the spirit of that law is that again development is desired and needed change is a good thing um if it's done in the right way and the right way is you do it in such a way that you preserve natural features you you enhance biodiversity and that is what is really behind the thinking and the purpose of elevating this for discussion in this whole dis this whole uh effort to update our comprehensive plan thanks for the opportunity to share those comments thank you John thanks John that was great um and I agree with what you said but I'd like to add something and that is that it's not just VMT miles traveled but also reduction of carbon emissions related to the buildings themselves which currently um a lot of them use fossil fuels and if we can reduce the fossil fuel use in buildings we may even reduce it emissions greater than the um transportation miles um whatever the right way is to say that um any other comments right now so we did the te up okay um and absolutely John you right on I was just going to say that we were not attempting to be prescriptive we want to set this as a framework so that we have a way to look at what we're doing in the future um and that sees our natural world as an ally that we need to work with as kind of like um sorry to anthropomorphize that but anyway that's that's my point is work with nature um and so with that I would like to get into our results oops I see another hand Chris Graham I'll put my hand now until you're done Ma okay all right well okay um I just want to make sure that that we all know that what we're going to be talking about is some suggestions for the comprehensive plan to be developed um and to make sure that we start that as we move forward that what we're talking about is included in this very important a20 plant that that I think um would benefit from having the scope to include natural features um again to be developed um and to have us work together in those uh planning things so um I think I'll stop there just Chris if you want to make your comment because I was just going to go into the resolve steps um more than more like 30 years ago when I first started to work on natural features we didn't call them that then um I wondered what an aru was like before Europeans came here what in other words the question answering the question what is native Europeans came to an arbor in 1824 and prior to that um the exact location that was the original plat of Ann's Arbor a RB o urur was a Grove of very large bur Oaks widely spaced with a 300 species count Prairie growing underneath it it was a spectacular parklike setting but all Native the Indians Who had who Camp there off and on grew food there they did their families there um it was one of the many Indian camps across Southern Michigan they would migrate between them over the years they used fire to burn their prairie didn't hurt the trees but very much enriched the species count in the herbaceous Flora um some of the work we've been doing with nap is trying to restore some of those original ecosystem elements in any case it gives us a Bas map with which to say okay what did we have here what is our natural heritage and by definition those very healthy ecosystems that great stewardship that Indians passed on to us is a is an expression of the optimum cover for our land in an Harbor um we read every meeting in the city last phrase of which says um knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can Empower us we have this statement we don't do anything about doubt it I would submit to you that if we did a great job of including natural features in every step of development across our city parks and private lands and University they're very excited about this too we would be doing something important to recognize the Heritage that 10,000 years of Indian habitation here left us um I personally am very afraid of the current comprehensive plan I think it's undemocratically set up I think it should be set up and managed with the cooperation and full knowledge of each neighborhood I think it should have a very healthy dose of design management rather than doing away with the design review board I know it didn't have much effect because they never gave it any teeth we ought to really enhance it and really work to develop this city in a way that's poetic that's alive that's exciting that's very conservative about our old trees most of you don't know that our original natural features regulations amended parts of the code to try to protect Wetlands Woodlands Landmark trees blood Plaines waterways steep slopes it applies only to those um development projects in an arbor that require a site plan approval process which meant large Parcels of land back in the late 80s people were very upset because we had almost wall toall clear cutting of the large Parcels of land to develop housing mostly um Wetlands were filled all the trees were cut down all the soil was Disturbed the land was made flat and clear and most important in that whole process was the loss of trees so um we established these regulations with 100% support of the council back then 100% support of the Planning Commission and the process has worked extraordinarily well over the years to minimize the code actually said you'll present plans to this city that persuades them you are minimizing the damage to natural features on your property and if you want to take trees you want to take a piece of a wetland you need to mitigate via some sort of fee or replacement of the things you've taken the damage you've caused this has been very successful it ended years of terrible controversies about developments in the city but the key fact most people don't know it never applied to Res existing residential neighborhoods or any project in them anything that never required a site plan process through the Planning Commission and the planning department was not and is not regulated now we are talking about doing away with all of R1 and R2 housing in the city we are talking about allowing things like the George a big apartment building down on Packard to be built in an R1 neighborhood if someone can Assemble two or three lots together I and we're talking about cutting setback distances to about half what they are we're talking about these things happening by right no discussion if it fits the code we're talking about buildings as much as 48 ft tall in an R1 neighborhood um what the net result of that will be without the kind of planning process that really brings great Beauty to our city rather than building Galore is almost no trees left this will not be Tree City so this is what we're afraid of this is why we're doing this resolution here we've seen almost no sign that natural features matter in anymore in an arbor some of the neighborhoods are beginning to wake up they're beginning to talk about a tree ordinance we have one we just don't apply it where we need to right now given what's coming so I um we us should be a biophilic city Washington DC's one San Francisco's one uh Singapore is the world's most famous one they love to say we brought the jungle and its water into our city we didn't take the city and place it on the jungle and that place is really exciting if you like anything green last thing I'll say there was an astronaut yesterday or the day before fan of of those folks coming back from the space station he said the thing that's been most important to me over the last couple years other than getting back into shape which I guess takes a while I really love to sit out of my backyard and see green the plants the birds my Fountain my swimming pool this is the most important thing to me after being up there thank you thanks Chris okay so with that I want to move into um talking about the results um and we try to keep them simple so that we can move forward with the Planning Commission the planning department the other City staff groups that will help to move forward in the direction that we've discussed and that Chris gave a good summary about um so what we want to do is say that the comprehensive plan must incorporate measures to protect conserve restore enhance and manage natural features and recognize that the value of those features to our health as a whole all species um we want the existing natural features protections as they are stated in the current UDC uh to be a baseline um and not to disappear but to be available to be used as we move forward in the future um and we've got a really strong statement in our 1B about having higher mitigation requirements for taking of large old trees um freestanding or or otherwise in a in a native Forest fragment and to protect native soils from destruction compaction and extend natural features to all areas of the city so I acknowledge that there are some areas of controversy in in that particular um resolved qua um we want to have the living and Arbor a20 carbon neutrality plan prioritize natural features sustainability along with other strategies that are being used so that we can enhance that plan because I think that's an area where there is some opportunity for inclusion of natural features um so we want to work together collaboratively to develop some methods to assess and track gain or L of biodiversity so that we have a sense of where we are over time maybe we'll make a change that doesn't show um a direction of of um natural features that we'd like to see and we'd like to understand what could be changed um so there's that um we didn't call out specific City staff in the 2A section because we think that there will be different departments that may be involved um and we want to see more cross Department integration to support natural features um and number three um we know that the city currently has protection of natural features that are in in historic districts um those protections are related to features that were in place historically and at this point um it is required that um um permission be granted to remove say large old trees on a historic district property um we think that that information is not well known or understood across the city um and feel that it would be good to improve communication about that to both residents um maybe Realtors um and contractors so they know the requirements and and really the intent here is to show the value and the reason for um protecting those natural features some of those trees in historic districts may be among those that are remaining after our um European settlement of the area for example um and we the last is that we want to um work with the Department office of sustainability Innovation to develop some M natural features based complimentary actions to work on with that team on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and sustaining our local ecosystems um those could be are definitely too be determined and since we are not intending to be prescriptive we are looking for um input from professionals uh to help us with developing measurements and and um thoughts on how to do this efficiently and effectively in the future so that's my rough review of where we're going with the resolution um okay Brooks yes can we go back to paragraph 1B sure I'd like to suggest that will you reward that section to be more in line with what commissioner mki talked about the UK requirements of the spirit of the UK requirements of increasing biodiversity when we do development um we know that um when Brett Leonard came to the environmental commission last year he stated he thought that the current level of Environmental Protection natural features protection was appropriate for Ann Arbor and he was not going to support any additional requirements on res Residential Properties um we know that city council as a whole is very Pro development and this statement when we start talking about additional higher mitigation requirements can be considered not pro-development and so I think that would make it hard to get through um and I would hate to lose the benefits from the rest of the parts of this resolution because of that one paragraph and and I think we can if we focus on biodiversity I think we can get a lot of the benefits that we want um as commissioner mki said we we need as a city we need more development of housing we need higher density housing but higher density housing doesn't mean Paving an arbor that's not the intent uh development and biodiversity can and should be done together if we work at it together and be creative I think we can get both of them but I don't think 1B the way it's worded would allow that option so I think we need to do something different there thank you the rub comes um about trees Brooks and uh and it comes about trees in in not just R1 or R2 R1 A or B neighborhoods it comes even in R2 neighborhoods in Burns Park um where trees that are 60 70 80 90 years old disappear those lots in order to build at the density they've already upzoned is so significant that they completely clearcut these lots to build not just one duplex but two one behind the other so I we're going to have we need a process that allows us to have these discussions I don't know where they all come out on any given site but um it's not just about it's uh I've been saying for a number of years one of the biggest troubles on Residential Properties in the city without any regulation whatsoever it's the Lo unintended loss of old trees a lot of contractors most of them go on private Residential Properties to do projects they drive on the roots of the trees that the owner of the house expects will be saved they're dead three or four years later especially if they're old Oaks we need some some sort of regulation on Residential Properties and the bone the real bone on those apart from losing open space and Gardens will be the loss of old trees and I I agree with you this is difficult and maybe there's a way to word it better but I don't want us to back away from uh the argument we have to have thanks Chris John mki uh two two points my understanding this is a first reading and um that we will have an opportunity to take into account everybody's input here take it back into the working group and tweak this that's is that correct that's right okay good so um I think what we're hearing between uh Brooks's comments mine um Christopher's and others is that there's these are uh things that we need to work on in terms of Shades of Gray um and it's um something that I obviously I think we we can come to a consensus on certainly within the working group and hopefully within the commission um my second is a request and that is um I saw some I'll call it subtle um nodding and shaking of heads between our two council members and I'm hopeful that they might be willing to share their thoughts on the resolution um where we where they sense either personally or um judging this the overall um thinking of of council and the Planning Commission and those working on this what um they think might resonate and what they think um maybe needs to be reconsidered or re-evaluated so that's a request that I have no further comment thanks uh Steve yeah thanks John um I support your comment but also I want nobody picked up on this on my earlier comment it seemed but I want to emphasize that this is also a quality of life issue for the residents that are living in these highrises you know the ability to to re to to easily access natural areas without getting into their car and driving 10 miles or across town um would be an amenity that I think anybody like not even the astronauts would uh I mean certainly the astronauts returning would agree to but anybody who's lived in a high-rise apartment building like I have I would appreciate having um ready access by foot by walking or biking to a natural area so I think I I would suggest that you add a wees Clause that includes that as a value a proven value by the way um for the health and um for the health of residents living in these um more dense housings uh in denser housing you now um and that's not to detract anything from biodiversity but in support of it um that's all that's all I had to say thanks Steve um aarin I think we're talking in a way that doesn't require view of the resolution unless someone has a need for that could we just go to a the big screen screen of all of us thanks um other comments Sarah yeah I just had um like one random thought after this discussion of Residential Properties and big trees have we looked at like cost and Energy savings of having big trees in the summer since you're not going to be using your AC as much like could that be another argument or consideration I should say I know just throwing it out there I think yes because and and to me that would be a great area to have the office's sustainability assist with developing that kind of an assessment um and might biometric I don't know um but yeah I would think so yeah um Olivia hi thanks for this great discussion everyone I just want to play devil's advocate for a second and ask whether we think you know allowing more high density you know development in the city not that any stances are like anti-development but these higher density residential developments I think in a lot of cases allow people to more affordably move into areas that have greater access to Green Space um could you explain that a little bit more because we're talking about including so maybe I need to understand a little bit better yeah I I agree with the inclusion of it that was just kind of a devil's advocate question um just like more access to the green spaces in this the downtown you know City area the residential areas that you know already have a lot of parks and in Access let me see if I I'm understanding are you saying more green spaces in the downtown never mind it's no please don't back off um I think like the the higher density like in the I think this is one get like more walkable areas higher density residential developments in more like walkable and accessible areas like allows greater access to the green spaces already exist okay thank you um I see an marsan hi uh it has been a great discussion um certainly um I'm in support of um a resolution of this kind and I think uh just wanted to follow on on commissioner Smith's comment I think one of the things about an arbor is that for a city our size we actually have a substantial amount of Park land and um it I think it's it's one of the reasons not the only one certainly but one of the reasons why there's a lot of demand um to live within the city of an arbor is access to that kind of amenity and and therefore in order for an arbor to be affordable um sensor housing kind is is one way in order to achieve that so that more people have access to the great green spaces that we have and uh I certainly believe that we need to do what we can to protect those green spaces and make sure they're there for generations to come thank you thank you John rki I'm I'm hoping to engage a little bit with commissioner Smith to tease out what I think she's getting at um so my daughter and son-in-law live in Seattle and in Seattle you see along major Transit quarters a lot of faceless multistory um multifam development um it's loud it's noisy it's not a very pleasant place to live um and my senses is that um what we also want to provide is for people to have the opportunity to live in a residential neighborhood without um being able to afford rent that's $5,000 a month or a home that is um frankly a million dollars um you know if you're looking at an ior Hills then you're not going to find any place that's over or that's under a million dollars and so I I think that's and maybe commissioner Smith you can comment on that I think that's what you're getting at is we shouldn't be forcing everyone into faceless places that are in horrible neighborhoods yes they may be they may be walkable neighborhoods in many regards but they should also still be pleasant neighborhoods um and I I hope that we're not setting up that dichotomy and I think also what most a lot of developers may find is that frankly it's not particularly economical to go into an aror woods and buy three homes um that are a million dollars to put up a multistory multifam unit because there's a lot of other places in the city where that can be done where you don't have to buy properties and tear them down um so I don't know that these um doomsday scenarios are um really realistic um at the same time I don't think also that the kind of solutions that we're seeing in some some cities where really people are being pushed into areas that really aren't desirable um because they are loud and noisy and they don't have trees right outside their window that's we don't want that either so it's really difficult to thread that needle um I I see that council member Malik has raised his hand but maybe um uh commissioner Smith you can play catchball with me on on that idea and maybe elaborate more or tell me where I'm wrong and what else you were thinking if you may sure yeah I think you and also commissioner Marson kind of more eloquently put what I was trying to say um that you know there there's a very fine line you walk I think of some of the developments on like the city boundaries um my office is at the corner of map Miller and there's all these developments going up that are just like Barren land and you know very loud the highways right there so yeah I think there's a very fine balance to strike between like high density development within the city limits that have great access to all these parks and these green spaces um and you know biking trails and walking trails and you know lots of Nature and bird noises instead of car noises um but also preserving those spaces and not you know developing them away so yeah it's it's very tough balance to strike and I think this resolution is would will bring attention to preserving those spaces um and I think the way it's worded right now you know isn't is not anti-development and you know it still allows for those higher density developments thank you council member Malik hi thanks for the presentation Rita um I do want to underscore something you mentioned about the status of the comprehensive plan right now you are exactly right um it's still being drafted um there I think maybe like a year and a half into Gathering input on the plan but they're still be drafting it and they being the planning commission so the Planning Commission will work on drafting the plan it will still have to pass the Planning Commission after that and then there will still be a 90day public comment period on the plan before city council even considers it so I think the kind of Target is to get it to city council eventually sometime maybe like fall or early winter just for a a general timeline um and then on on the resolution itself my perspective on it broadly um I think the focus on biodiversity is great and worthwhile overall uh being newer to both city council as well as this commission I'm not entirely sure if or how the comprehensive plan kind of takes these aspects into account um it does sound like Mr Leonard from uh City staff planning staff has had a conversation with commission already on this I heard chair Curtis right um so I would I guess kind of defer to him broadly on it at the moment um and then just to kind of touch on the you know I guess kind of environment versus development kind of topic we've been discussing um I'm also on the Green Belt commission and of course everybody here kind of knows the purpose of the green belt to create kind of clean space and open space outside the city um the city has kind of long the city and the county and the whole region kind of has decided that that is a a good um a good thing to pursue for the city overall and the region so but of course one of the trade-offs of doing that means development is kind of confined to the city um and even if you know Ann Arbor didn't grow some things are out of our control such as the university admitting more students and bringing bring bringing new uh folks to the city so um development is needed in the city and I do think there's a a balance to be found in terms of allowing greater dens City within our city boundaries as well as protecting some of our green spaces so I think this is a really good discussion for the environmental commission overall but um I did have one question if anybody would know um do any other cities have kind of aspects like like we're discussing tonight in their plans or I guess maybe not in a comprehensive plan necessarily but um kind of like we're discussing like are any do any things like these already Exist Elsewhere um I know some somebody earlier was mentioning like San Francisco and stuff but um I was just curious if other cities have tried kind of exactly what we're discussing here tonight and if so what the results have been if anybody knows thanks I don't feel I can answer that last question but I do want to make a comment about the green belt and is that is that the um funding does include um funding for some purchase of green type properties within the city of an arbor it's a lesser amount than the whole um but that's something that perhaps could be um used as part of this biodiversity process as we go forward and again I don't have a specific prescription in mind but it's something to to keep in mind because um although we do have a generous amount of parks um if you count the number of parks there are areas of the city that are less well supported by Parkland and so it's worthwhile to think about that in terms of balancing where we go with this I think so onethird of the proceeds of the green belt is allocated for purchases of Parkland within the city that's right that's right and so I believe there's some funds that haven't been used yet um we really should think about that um because now there's no better time than now right um so going up in price in the future um so uh Brooks so just um to answer some of council member Mal questions the currently we have a separate natural features master plan that's sep a separate document than the comprehensive plan the new comprehensive plan is going to incorporate everything that's or incorporate natural features we don't know what's going to be in there we haven't seen anything back out um relative to natural features nor we any of the presentations we've seen coming from the steering committee show say anything about natural features and I think that's that's the uncertainty that's driving a lot of discussion Steve oh responding to uh council member Malik's comment um my information is old but um the City of Minneapolis resolved to um eliminate R1 Zing Citywide almost 10 years ago I don't know any more of the details but I do know that um elimination of R1 zoning they also said that you could not build more than two or three units on any property that had formerly been zoned R1 so there wasn't any allowance for combining lots and building highrises but um um they also impo they also encoded in their ordinances um you know Transportation oriented zoning there were toc's which the city recently did but I as I recall City staff actually proposed that modification to city codes back in 2008 but it took um a long time for U for the political will to develop for that rezoning so um I think it's a good thing to look through and see what other um es cities especially in the Upper Midwest have accomplished over the last 10 years in terms of resoning you know to increase density um because there are ways to balance some Community Values um better than I think what a lot of residents here think is coming thank you for your time thanks Steve I'm for balance um Chris Graham you call me Rita I did your hand up very good job so thank you Steve uh Boulder and Madison both had very different kinds of planning processes to to do this kind of up zoning they're very Democratic they're very open and transparent and they really were based on working with each neighborhood to decide how to design those neighborhoods to be really satisfying to everybody while there is more density I I I get it but I'm just really afraid we're uh dipping the real estate Kool-Aid te here in an Harbor and not doing a balanced set of zoning changes um if I understand I heard planning director say something last night we don't really want to have public hearings for anything that satisfies the code we don't want to even talk about it at the Planning Commission anymore we'll just approve it in my view that's not the way um unless there's a whole lot of homework done on the planning staff that's not the way that you get exciting poetic green um thriving neighborhoods it's a way you ruin them so um I'm afraid forgive me I'm expressing my fear I am not the only one I'm going to meetings where there are many other people bothered about the trend lines of this discussion thank you Steve thank we Mak my hand now thank you um all right I feel like we might be near the end I'd like to invite council member Corell if you would like to add anything since you're here and it's a good opportunity for us to include your thoughts yeah I I'm also uncomfortable with the 1B um I'd like that to be a top of conversation for the work group just to see how um we can acknowledge the fact that we do have a housing crisis and having people commute into the city because they can't afford to live here is an envir contributes to our environmental crisis these two things are are linked and so um I think when we talk about density we do need to find that balance we we do and I guess my other point is I I think council member Malik did a good job of describing the process but I don't want that there to be a public I want to publicly acknowledge that this process for the comprehensive plan has involved a lot of input sessions a lot of opportunities for the community to engage and so um I think City staff has done an excellent job with it and to sort of hear like maybe to hear it suggested that this process wasn't thoughtful wasn't included and wasn't Democratic is is just patently false and so those are two separate thoughts but um I I did want to acknowledge that City staff has really been very thoughtful about Community engagement and made available through various listening sessions um there was a huge session at the library this isn't a press this is not something that has been done in a dark room with no input so just just to make sure that that's clearly stated thank you thank you um John riski thanks I know I've spoken a lot but just one one other thing that I want people to also consider um this is building off the comment of council member Cornell um you know I think we all have heard that uh washingon county is the eth most economically segreg ated County in the country and there's one thing that's not taken into consider consideration in that you know we talk about affordable housing affordable housing is the cost of the housing your mortgage or your rent it's the utilities um it's also your housing is going to drive your transportation costs but the other thing that's never considered when we talk about this um in terms of what we're doing and what we're imposing out others the people the8 80,000 people plus that commute into anabor every day there's an opportunity cost a huge opportunity cost for time lost in transit and so when we force those people to live outside the city of ant Arbor and we don't give them an opportunity to live here we're imposing not only higher Transportation costs but we're imposing the opportunity costs of time lost and Transit and a lot of these people um are already on the edge um they probably have families many of them um they want to have time with their kids and when we put them in the car for 45 minutes or you know in each Direction you know it obviously ranges um there's I'm on the board of um two housing nonprofits and we had students interview um people that come to University of Michigan parking lots and get their hours ahead of time and there are and and we talk to them and there are people that come and try to get a parking place sleep in their car and then walk to work because um they um can't you know they I don't need to get into details I think you get the sense of what I'm saying is that by by not doing the kinds of things that I think need to be done in terms of Housing and providing housing and opportunities for these people um we're also imposing not only economic hardship we're imposing other kinds of hardships on those families and I just want to all of us to think about all that worldwide problem and cities worldwide problem very tough very tough not not in all cities and there are cities that that do this very very well they do a lot of things obviously to solve it but um look at Vienna and look at um affordable and public housing in Vienna and other cities in in Europe but yeah it is I mean every every Big City that's a desireable place to live is a problem because they're expensive yeah thanks John I feel like we've gotten a lot of really good feedback on this and I appreciate everyone's comments um members of the biodiversity group that are here thank you for uh contributing as to the what we've written so far and also to the discussion and um everyone else so um I feel like this might be a good time to transition to our next topic thank you all okay thanks Rita you did a great job um do just a clear question because maybe I should know this but do we need to have a vote as since it's a first reading does anybody know no no okay thank you um next topic is discuss discussion of combination of the environmental of the merger of the environmental and energy commission to create a sustainability commission and Aon I don't know if you have anything you want to start with that to talk about sure yeah um I think I'll let um council member Cornell can introduce the topic thank you Miss Donnelly um so this has been this should not come as a surprise to anyone that these discussion these discussions have been going on for some time about creating uh Joint Commission that could work and concert to with OSI um to advance our at20 goals and for us to be more effective in reaching those goals um I think council member my colleague council member Briggs did a really good job at energy commission um explaining it but the city has changed the city structure has changed um City staff has changed especially with OSI um you know being being um such an influential part of how the city conducts business um that none of that existed when these commissions were created and envisioned and their missions were set and so the idea is really to create um a sustainability commission that would be a merger of the two energy and environment and would um focus on a work plan that would come through OSI um kind of stating these are the four goals that we have where participation from a commission would be really really helpful in advancing and accelerating Network um and so versus kind of OSI doing its thing energy doing its thing environmental doing its thing bringing everybody together to work in concert because it just makes more sense right we're just going to be able to move a lot faster in my opinion um and being able to tap into the unique expertise within each group um and have that collaboration between the groups I think is is definitely great too so um where it stands right now is just kind of having these discussions and getting input on it um but that is the the core idea of it and sort of the impetus for it and council member Malik I don't know if you have anything to add but because you were I know you were part of that discussion from energy so if there's something I I watched most of that meeting to get the gist of it but if there's anything that I'm missing please let please fill in thanks yeah I think you uh hit the nail on the head uh the kind of main thrust behind this would be to kind of realign and refocus if you will and uh we had a really good discussion at energy commission a few weeks ago discussing this and council member Cornell is right you know this is kind of the discussion stage to see if this really does in fact make sense um I know commissioner mki you had some really good comments at energy Commission um in that discussion and um chair Curtis I know you probably have some things to say on it too so I'm happy to pitch it to whomever would like to chime in thanks and I can add a little more about the logistics um to um so I would also add it'll be um a combination of OSI and public services since there is so much overlap with environmental and energy issues in both of those departments and so uh the vision as it stands is um coming up with kind of a staff Le work plan that would focus on three or four high priority items that could come from OSI or from um Public Services um and then we would kind of continue with the current structure we have now where there are work groups that are you know the the technical work would happen in the work groups and then those groups the work groups would come back to thear group um for broader discussion um but the work groups would be the ones to really drill down into the to the issues um so we are uh staff and Council are are working on updating the bylaws um if if discussions go well um we will start updating the bylaws um and we would have kind of that ready uh around May um and then potentially take a break or you know that the the bylaws and the ordinance SL resolution would be ready by May for Council to discuss um and then June would probably be a a kind of recalibration month and then you know potentially the sustainability commission would kick off in July sort of timeline so yes we can open it up to questions and disc disc question thank you so I'll start for the um first meeting is it safe to assume we would know what those high priority topics would be at that point in time or when do you think we would know what those topics are going to be good question I think that would be the goal yes to have those prepared by then and would it makes sense for that first meeting since we're going to have a lot of people who don't know each other to have as an in-person working group meeting and then maybe have staff discuss those so we can figure out where people want to fit into those priority topics I think that could be considered for sure yeah person be good commissioner Marson thanks um I yeah I wanted to State my my support for this um the idea of aligning a sustainability commission that kind of works better with the current city structure City Administration um but I had a couple of recommendations as you're working on the V laws um and this these are based on my um experience with um Parks advisory commission uh where I'm currently the the chair um I think first of all I consider that the staff leaz on to a sustainability commission actually you know be the director of the office of sustainability so have Dr staltz be the primary Point person um my experience in pack that we we work directly with um uh the the the director of um our parks department and uh there are a lot of benefits to that in terms of um having a better sense of um what the needs are within the department um you know that's the person who's going to have the most holistic view of the department and so um they're able to really direct our work um and they're also able to get things done when we need things done so um they've got the connections with the city manager with legal and that sort of thing so with and the city council um and so I think that's that's one recommendation I would have and then the second one is um I think we should consider term limits for for Commissioners I I I know there's many on the uh environmental commission who've been here a long time and I really you guys are great I value the um insights that you have and your history with the city your passion for the environment um but that said I again this is based on my experience with Pac I think um when we have new faces uh new folks um regularly cycling on to the commission that it provides for dynamic um fresh approaches to issues um it encourages more collaboration I feel like between the Commissioners so that um valuable information isn't siloed um helps you know with the the handoff of information as people are rolling off um I think it allows us to share what we've learned from working on these commissions with other organizations that we go to when we're our term is over and frees up time and we go serve on boards at other places um with other nonprofits um or continue work on other commissions within within the city it allows us to kind of share that information um and then I think I think it encourages us to kind of if we've got projects that are important to the city and the sustainability commission you know the office of sustainability agrees with that kind of encourages us to to move those projects along and and tie them up wrap them up um as we're rolling off so yeah those would be my two main recommendations but thank you commissioner Graham yes and I've been here a while sometimes there's some value in deep deep history um one great idea it could be accomplished by combining commissions is that we could finally amend the a20 plan to include biodiversity plan it's the other half of the coin in my view about um climate mitigation um most of our resolution tonight was talking about the reasons for that um I I know we the environmental commission asked how we might amend the a20 plan to include this a couple years ago and we didn't get an answer maybe if we're all together we can get an answer and move on move ahead with it hand commissioner Mitchell thanks um I agree with what Christa said about that thought um and also I just want to ask um if the priorities under consideration will be shared with the two commissions so that we could actually have some input in um moving forward with particular priorities as opposed to just necessarily having them assigned or at least it just would be good to be involved in that discussion yeah I think there's a going to be a lot to work out there I think we're certainly open to feedback um I think we need to kind of land on um the amount of collaboration on the work plan um just to ensure alignment um but yes we are we're certainly open to suggestions um and we need to I guess it's still a question of how like the process of the work plan will work um but yes to be determined um yeah thank you for that feedback commissioner mki yes thank you I'd like to share some comments that I shared at the energy commission meeting and a few new ones um first of all um I'm absolutely positively in favor of a discussion of how we make the energy and environmental Commission s more efficient and more effective um my personal opinion is that they have not been recently so I'm all for that um second um my sense is this is a fate to comple um and I think actions speak louder than words um the energy commission should have 15 members we have not replaced a commissioner since 2023 in the summer um so that's one example of that um there's other examples um and I don't need to go into them but if it is a fate compley then we should figure out how we do make the commissions as efficient and effective as they possibly can be the statement that this is a realignment with City staff I I frankly take exception to that um OSI is responsible for basically climate and energy it's not responsible for solid waste it's not responsible for air quality it's not responsible for water quality it's not responsible for natural features um I I've been around for a while um I'm not like quite like Chris um but I happen to be uh have a role um in the office of the city administrator that's since been eliminated but I helped draft Missy's uh job description I was on the interview team um I was present when she was introduced to council and she was introduced um as with the title that she has but it also included and I can I looked it up earlier this week and I can share it with you she was to have include she had responsibility for solid waste so if we're going to be efficient and effective and if we're going to realign um the commission then let's realign it with with reality and not with statement saying well this is a realignment um so that it better fits with the city structure it doesn't better fit with the city structure certainly not as it is right now so if if if that makes it more efficient and effective then I'm I'm all for it um as far as how the commission would work my understanding is completely different than what has been explained here tonight my understanding is that city council sets policy those are that's given to City administrator and City staff and they execute on that policy they they are provided with the overall um objectives are they're provided with goals like a20 goals or affordable housing goals you can go on down the list and then it's U and and the way that city council is informed on on policy issues from from from the citizenry up from the residents up is that the councils are there to develop proposals and give input to City Council on what needs to be done so that there are the proper uh objectives set the proper metrics and targets that are set as well as how to best achieve those with with with policies and I what I heard earlier is that City staff and city council will get together and tell the commission the new commission these are the things that we think you need to work on I think that has to be a two-way street and if this restructuring is a one-way Street then I think you've really taken away a critical element of and a critical role of boards and commissions boards and commissions need to be the the route to provide input to to city council and I I'll give you a specific example that I was going to mention earlier but I think maybe it fits better here um when I think everybody is aware that um the city is looking at various utility options um this seu is obviously one of them that's now approved the other is this proposal that's been put forth by anabor for Public Power that there should be a municipal City utility that City should condemn dte's assets and buy them out um there was was a phase one study um that was authorized by the city that was brought to uh the energy commission it was debated over three meetings a resolution was passed and city council then uh uh passed a uh uh a budget amendment um to spend $700 for that phase one study um the way the last discussion went over a phase two study for $1.7 million probably the most important budget policy related activity that the the energy commission could have considered that went directly from City staff to city council it went to one meeting City staff didn't say oh this is something that maybe the energy commission should weigh in on and we should be getting public comment in an energy commission meetings that went then a second time to city council and city council voted on it so what what I see is a series of of actions that like I said speak louder than words words so what what I would like to see is if this is indeed as I believe it is a Fed comple then let's really talk about how we make the commissions more effective we take into consideration what Ann said about term limits we talk about the city structure we talk about how do we have effective working groups where people are really dedicated to spending time in working groups and actually have things develop there and then percolate up that has not worked on the energy commission we used to have working groups the working groups don't exist right now and that's partly probably a function of the fact that the number of Commissioners have been uh reduced and the fact that a number of the Commissioners frankly don't have the time to do anything more than come to to commission meetings these are the kinds of things that we really need to Grapple with and we need to be honest with each other about what what we want to accomplish um about this and let me just say one more thing I want all of you all of us to think about of all the city's major environmental and energy related goals what outcomes I'm not talking about actions I'm not talking about efforts I'm not talking about accomplishments I'm talking about outcomes what outcomes have we had that really align with our goals our diversion rate is is virtually the same I think in terms of clean clean water there there are some definitely some great outcomes p and and and a bunch of other things but even if you look at at greenhouse gas reductions we are reducing greenhouse gas reductions at a rate where we will reach net zero this is the average of net greenhouse gas reductions from 2015 to 2023 if you take that same rate by the way we have the rate going back to 2000 um and it's it's a little bit lower so we start are are starting to uh accelerate the activities but we will reach Net Zero in 2070 if we want to reach it in 2030 it needs to be 7.5 times faster if we want to reach it by 2040 it needs to be three times faster so there we have to do things certainly that are more efficient and more effective there's a lot of things going on but there's also a lot of headwinds in from Washington and I think we need to think of all of this in context and think of what are we going to do to really make the commissions more efficient and more effective and serve not just Council and staff but serve the residents of the city of an arbor better so that we achieve outcomes really outcomes for them that's what we're that's what we're here to do thank you so I've got a couple of comments um regarding term limits um since we have we will have working groups you don't have to be commissioner to be on a working group so that's a way for people if they term out if they still want to be involved they can stay in the working groups and still be effective there and then get back on the commission the next time there's an opening so there are opportunities there with term limits to work with working groups um the second is really a question if if assuming no one wants to drop off of either commission when we merge them it's going to be a relatively large number of people on the commission is there a concern about the size of the commission um I think at this point it will be a slightly larger commission um but as somebody was talking about the size of the energy commission is quite low um and I forget it last count what the if we the combined number of Commissioners and I know we have a couple people that will be terming out in the environmental commission um our two youth members um uh will not be returning so I think the total number is I want to say around 18 um so it's not crazy especially because we have the working group structure that can be like where the actual work is getting done in the smaller groups and the um the larger group when we all get together is just kind of a general discussion so I for me personally I'm not concerned with the size um and then at first and then it will kind of as people will kind of naturally drop and I I forget where we landed on the total number at this point um but it's it won't be a huge group to start just due to the kind of smaller size that we're both going into on both the environmental and energy side is the plan to still have the youth youth Commissioners going forward or are they going to be that is the plan yes all right Vice chair Brown yeah thanks um chair Curtis um so I'm just going to take a minute because I have some historical memory I've I've been with the commission I think as long as John msky has but not as long as Chris Graham but um I'm going to speak about solid waste because in 2016 I believe it was City staff um told I was just an audience member when this happened to the in front of the environmental commission but City St told the commission that there was that the solid waste fund which is financed by a special millage um that enjoyed generous support from the uh electorate here in an arbor um City staff was saying that the uh Solid Waste fund was going to go to zero within two or three years um under questioning you know under some questioning you know friendly questioning by the environmental Commissioners City staff was not able to adequately explain why why the solid waste fund was going to disappear now um the commission was a forum for the community um to investigate this matter and um in a way take it off council's table um to see how this to gather facts to gather um information to have a public discussion and try to see where it would come um ultimately after months of uh discussions it was clear that the U City staff could not actually explain why it was going to go to zero I think what was happening in the background is city the city staff decided they did not want to have a murf they did not want to manage a murf so the outcome was that um so the outcome that that principally happened through the commission is that um the city city council decided that okay we'll restart a murf so they set up rfps there were two U organizations that submitted proposals one was mtera a canadian-based company who proposed Trucking you know our our recyclables and uh to uh aerf that did not yet exist in Lansing in East Lansing and that uh it was unclear about what was going to happen with that um their bid was higher than the other bid which was submitted by recycl Arbor recycle an arbor put together a proposal that did not to restart the murf that did not involve any Capital expenditures by the city and now the solid waste fund has $24 million in it so um I I just want to throw this out as an example where the environmental commission performed an excellent Public Service um as it existed because it was able to take um to take the discussion out of city council the community had a chance to uh provide input um and uh the situation was resolved in a matter of sa satisfactory to City staff and to uh Council and to the electorate here in an Harbor so um I just hope that um whatever changes are envisioned that they do not really cut the legs out of this um of out of this um kind of public forum that exists to resolve issues such as this well that's all I I want to say on this topic Steve commissioner NRI hi I just wanted to very quickly express my support of combining um I have expressed that I wanted the environmental commission to focus more on a20 and so I feel like this is a good opportunity to kind of share and collaborate more and understand where the city's going with that um and I also have expressed that I wanted more input from City's staff on what we should be prioritizing and working on and it sounds like you guys heard us and you're going to be doing both of those so thank you my support so I just want to say that um I know John mury and I have had some conversations offline I do I do a lot of volunteering for a lot of different groups around an arbor and one of the things I always think about is is my time being used valuably am I making a difference and after you know almost three years on the environmental commission it was not ranking very high as far as that so I'm really looking forward to the emerged Commission of sustainability to and the new direction we're going with the the working groups the way they're being set up I think I think I'm hoping we have some opportunities to really make a positive change so that's where I stand on it anybody else so our next topic we're probably going to go a little bit over but Steve we want to talk about the discussion on Solid Waste education I don't know if we can make that a quick one and then move on or maybe do more next month what would you like to do yeah um yeah this came out of discussions in the uh circular economy working group so please um Olivia you know Aaron and um and John and Brooks um you know please um add to whatever I I'm just going to put out here and that is um two things first of all um we're we're in the middle or at the beginning it's hard to tell which of a process where Solid Waste Management is regionalizing you know to cap to better capture economies of scale that may exist now uh what that means is that first first of all uh um there was an or organization created called warma WR MMA um to which the city has subscribed um they are U uh this is this is a government institution which is designed to help facilitate regionalization um now the um the second thing is that uh is that of course anybody who's volunteered as I have um you know with um City staff um on booths where you're talking about recycling like what's recyclable and what isn't it's very confusing to people that show up at your booth because they don't they all live in different areas of the county and the rules are different you know and so um and so there's some sort of harmonization that should occur now um the way the business Works um I I was formerly on the board of directors of a recycling company in North Carolina so I have some I have some experience on the other end of that and um so um you know it's the MF it's whoever is managing um the recycling and the composting who really are best aware of what their end markets are what's the marketability of the uh diversion you know of the things we're diverting from the landfill what's the marketability of all the recyclables and the compost and so in a sense um they're the ones who really know best about um about what the rues should be because they're the ones that have to sell the product that they're processing so um so so there needs to be some sort of harmonization but it needs the murfs themselves the contractors who run the murfs have to be a central part of that because they're the intermediaries in in the whole value chain and and so um and so um and so that's highlighted the the need for more um you know more education more funding now I'll just say that um that within the recycling Community you know there's the Michigan recycling Coalition there's the there's various organizations Nationwide that I have participated with from time to time um including MRC and there's a general consensus that basically uh a bottom level of funding for education is basically $10 per household so if you count you know the the 2020 census um an arbor has 26,000 some 26,000 households but when you start adding um you know Apartments as individual households Condominiums it's more it's closer to 50,000 so what that means is that there should be um to really attain any kind of goals on waste reduction and diversion you should be spending about the city should be spending about $500,000 a year now the question is um the way the rfps have been um have been drafted it's not uh it's not clear um what the goals are first of all for the education what are the metrics we're going to use to tell whether an education campaign is successful or not so there need and and so my experience with various organizations reinforces what I'd heard as a young person that it really takes 3 to 5 years to evaluate the success of any plan especially something regarding around changing cultural habits you know uh we we don't want to wait seven generations for everything to get right um but three to five years is a reasonable uh goal to set for yourself and um and but we don't have a real stability s uh stable kind of fund like like the solid waste fund is so one of the things that I was um one of the ideas that several of us are putting are are have been discussing is just that maybe maybe um we should sequ maybe we should ear Mark uh maybe five uh who knows what the amount is but it's it's it's hopefully it could be up to 500,000 just to cover the city um and um maybe we could earmark some of the funds that are within the solid waste fund to provide an annual fund for Education that staff and Council can um Can evaluate um you know the success of various um strategies and um you know and issue rfps and all that but this would provide a stable funding source for education to accommodate you know the regionalization and all the confusion that's going to cause and also provide a stable source of funding for educating the residents of an arbor in U in compost and you know and uh improving the value of the compost and the recyclables so um did I uh miss anything or I don't think so uh so next are report outs from the the work groups um so biodiversity we had a meeting uh March 10th we discussed the merger of the commissions and we discussed the resolution and then Google cut us off after an hour so that was all we talked about um circular economy Steve I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to report on circular economy um let's see um um yeah um yes Sarah Mason was present you know she's um she's one of the staff people that's um that we're talking with um you know that's part of the circular economy group she was mentioning that City staff prefers reusable containers actually because of this confusion about um about whether a plastic container is recyclable or compostable because everybody you know um everybody knows everybody here probably knows that um back in the beginning of 2023 um there was a problem with our composting contractor you know we care Denali because uh these bla approved you know uh containers plastic cups that are made out of like poly you know polylactic acid and other um that are sourced from biological um chemicals um that they are not really compostable uh you know with the operation that they're using so you know there's um the fact is that I've saved him in my garage and I just take him to the university because the university uses a different contractor um that accepts um bla Plastics so you know it's a very complicated area but um Sarah did mention that because it's so complicated and it's probably not going to you know the market isn't going resolve clearly for a number of years than um than the city's actually City staff is currently thinking that um you know that um using that expanding the reusable program in some way may be the best it's beginning to look like that's the best option um and that was about it it's new yeah um have I missed anything Olivia okay uh water quality Sarah hi um yeah we had a water quality meeting on February 21st which I wasn't at the last meeting so I don't think you got an update on that um and then we also had a chloride chloride subgroup meeting on March 3D and we actually have our next water quality work group meeting tomorrow um so we've been busy um the flad subgroup has been very active um shout out to Kelly M from here on River Watershed Council she's been amazing getting us a bunch of data on forde um surface water quality um and we've kind of been able to through her her her data crunching um kind of come up with a a more prioritized plan of focusing on our um Creeks that are impaired for fluoride in the city so that's malitz Creek Swift Creek and Miller's Creek um so we're taking a more targeted view on those and looking um more at what we can do to specifically help those water uh those specific Creeks um I'm tentatively thinking of a field visit um to maybe tag team with hrwc as they go out um to see these Creeks um we've been looking at some technology like chloride strips to get more um uh detailed understandings of where the chloride is coming from um and then we're also looking into Minnesota has some really great um salt programs um called their smart salt program where they actually Ed have education for applicators um and the public um so we're going to look at that and see if it's feasible to implement a similar type of U program here um we're hoping to have a presentation on our work um available for this group group probably I would say in like May or June um so we might have a special presentation um to give you guys some more detailed update um and we're hoping to also meet with public works and talk about all the efforts they've done um to reduce salting um through their work um we're also still kind of working on the4 dioxine ms4 issue so we have a few feelers out on that um so we haven't dropped that yet but I think that's it Steve am I missing anything oh just one thing um and that was with the midon partners with the Heron River wat Council um Mid mid hereon Partners meeting that was held on February 27th um it was noted that scoring is the scoring for rain Gardens is a little whacko like you get a four point credit every or rain Garden no matter how the size gets a four point credit while the entire entire Mary Doyle Park Basin project only get seven points so there was a discussion about the fact that that needs to be Revisited and uh and and actually follow the metrics about storm water retention far better um than it currently is so we're going to discuss that in the in the water quality team okay Sarah was there anything on storm water also on that work group no so we're kind of on pause for that we're focusing right now on chlorides and then I think in the summer we're going to pick up on the storm water stuff so okay like juggling priorities right now sure uh energy commissioner mki yes uh we discussed two topics one of which was already mentioned we discussed the combination of the two commissions into a sustainability uh commission um I don't think you anything further needs to be said about that the other thing that we discuss uh is uh the idea of using zoning to uh Levy a carbon fee on new natural gas uh developments as well as the replacement of mad major uh Natural Gas Appliances in buildings over 20,000 square feet um that effectively was shot down because of legality concerns but I'd like to point out to our two council members that still leaves a major problem in that the a20 plan assumed that starting in 2022 all new buildings in an aror would be um all electric and we also have obviously problem with major uh buildings um in their systems large boiler systems and things like that um those are um in many cases in most cases still being replaced with natural gas and uh residential systems are going to be there for 15 to 20 years and Commercial systems in many cases when you're talking about the commercial boilers they're going to be still emitting um renous gases for up to 50 years so we need to do something and I know that in one case including recently there was at least as I understand it there was a 30% % height bonus that was given um and that that that's that's okay but when we're talking about um New Heights in the comprehensive Plan and there's push back against some of the higher Heights in residential um neighborhoods if it goes up to 48 ft and then you add a 30% bonus for uh all electric construction or maybe for um affordable housing then it's no longer 48 ft so we we have a problem that uh we need to solve and just so that people understand we have approved since the a20 plan was implemented um we've approved over 30 buildings that are natural gas connected I'm not just talking about um for a backup generator and um the emissions of those buildings is going to wipe out um essentially um about 2third of one full year of decarbonization activities for everything else that we're doing and that is that problem that we're going to uh continue to be confronted with particularly in my view in in in the sense that we have a trump Administration that's not going to be doing much um in this way to advance um all electric construction so we we have a dilemma that we somehow need um to figure out how we're going to address and that hopefully will be something that a new sustainability committee um can come up with so we we talked about this resolution it was shot down but basically the topic as an open topic for further considerations um although I don't know exactly what options we have um available to us so uh that's that's all from the energy commission uh Parks commissioner Marson hi thanks we've had two meetings actually since the last time the environmental commission met so um we had a nap a natural area preservation update on uh they they recently did a new strategic plan um mostly reaffirming the the goals that they've had all along um we had an update on the capital asset study that's being conducted um and suffice it to say that Parks has quite a large number of capital assets um most of them aging and uh quite pricey to uh repair and maintain um we uh uh voted to recommend that the that an arbor be designated a bird city of Michigan and then we uh had an update on West Park um and the planning that's going on with that and those are the highlights thanks uh do our council members have anything they want to add I can just say really quick um on the city council agenda on Monday so a few days ago uh we did approve what I believe is the last step to build a new fire station 4 which will be just simply replacing the old fire station 4 um this is at plat and here on parkway but of note for this group it it it will be Net Zero um and we believe this will be the first Net Zero fire station in the state so uh more to come on that as it's built and hopefully you know things like tours and stuff like that will be available once it's complete but that's all I have thanks okay um nothing else from chair uh report out from staff yeah I had an update about the next sustainability uh Forum series is next week at the library on circular economy so check that out uh from 6:00 to 7:30 pm um one other update from OSI in my notes are the Energy rebates available um so it's an expansion of the home energy rebate program um to hopefully make it easier for for residents to get um hooked up with that and then public I have the budget update under public services but it's clearly for the entire city but um so we are our budget process is underway for fiscal year 2627 um Council will have a work session I believe on Monday um and then in April um the city administrator will have his kind of recommended fisal year 2026 budget um and then in May um Council will uh then adopt um the budget on May 19th and that's all the updates for me thanks nice chair Brown you have a question oh yeah um I'm not sure if um I'm sorry Erin I dropped my attention but I I just wanted to mention that there's an a20 sustainability Forum as part of the U you know uh on March 27th at 6:00 p.m.

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Hey [Applause] [Music] everybody. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Hey, [Music] [Applause] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] N. Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do that. It's green light right there. It's on. I call to order the workshop for Bhead City School Board on Thursday, March 20th, 2025 at 5:30 p.m. Call to or roll call. Melinda present. Charlene Dia is here. Fred Rushton here. Barb Zarziki here. Judy Reid here. Well, we are all here. Um, item 1.3 site instructional improvement update. I got a feeling that's why everybody's here. So, good deduction. Just dive into this and see what we get. Okay. So, Madame President and board members, you you will have a presentation from uh the principles at each of our sites um kind of summarizing what they've been doing so far this year.

You can see that it's always incorporating all the literacy skills, reading, writing, listening, and speaking. And there's always a lot of text and a lot of evidence and elaboration, text in hand. There's a example of our students teaming using the summary thinking mat structure of thinking on the left and on the right the connecting new learning thinking. You'll see a lot of evidence of task sheets and tools and agree disagree cards and roll cards out there and just uh heavy on the text. Um so this is just another example of student teaming. I do not think our videos actually came out. So they didn't. But uh just between year 1 and year two, you can really hear a lot more back and forth between the conversations with the kids and a lot of, you know, show me, prove it. They're going back into the text.

Wildcats, it's March, which means March Madness. We got our own little version today. We go [Music] madness. We have our learning, living, leading, and likes. Had to think of a fourth L bracket. We got it down to the sweet 16 of some of the best things here at Weo. We're going to find out who reigns supreme. I have a special guest, a [Music] professor, Brian Turnbot, here in studio today to help analyze the brackets, be our co-host. Brian, what do you see here when you look at the learning bracket? What do you think the favorites are? We got the students as the number one seed. Any thoughts or analysis here? Well, I don't think you ever want to sleep on the cafeteria. I watch the students that are always lined up for those Frappuccinos, the Oreo ones in the morning. Pretty powerful stuff. You got to think they got to be an early favorite.

An inanimate object if you will, but you know, a historic place here in the building. So many memories. So memories being built, amazing performances by the drama program. And did you know back in the ' 50s that served as the gym floor? I did not know that. That's you learn something new every day here on Friday funday. So students against the auditorium, the one versus the four. I think as a member of the student body, I would be letting everyone else down, all 2,000 of us, if I didn't put the students ahead. All right, advance them. Advance them in the brackets here. We're going to move the students over. They're going to the lead eight, folks. No surprises there. We have a strong student body. They show up every day. Hey, they learned. They're the number one seed in that bracket for a reason. All right, Wildcats, who am I here with?

e e e o'clock we're go ahead and call the meeting to order Kim can we start for a roll call please noran Fred is absent tonight Adam hkin here Andrea Cory here Kelly Moyer is also absent tonight Greg Meyer here Lisa schacher here Tyson search here right if everybody stand with me and recite the Pledge of Allegiance please I pledge allegiance to the of the United States of America and to the Republic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all perfect thank you so much well welcome visitors I think this is a record crowd for us appreciate everybody taking the time to come out tonight and hope you found a parking place and I know a lot of you don't have chairs so apologize for the standing room only we didn't uh expect this many people so but welcome welcome I'll go right on to our first item which is public comments anybody have anything they would like to say this evening start hello okay if you would just tell us your name please hi everyone um my name is Betsy Mahoney and while I am not a resent Columbia I am a concerned neighboring librarian I am here to discuss the board's recent decision to remove the Ala Bill of Rights from your school media policy upholding the Ala Bill of Rights is one of the most important aspects of a well-written collection development policy there have been many misconceptions about the new Illinois act aimed at eliminating censorship the ACT reinforces professional responsibilities of Library workers to build collections suited to their students curriculums and recreational reading needs as stated in the Ala Bill of Rights Library material should never be removed based on partisan or doctrinal disapproval upholding the Ala Bill of Rights is not an admission of a controversial collection it is a commitment to a measured methodical evaluation of your libraries collection Librarians are constantly evaluating Library collections to make sure that it does reflect a school curriculum and meets the needs of the students a sound collection development policy will include the criteria needed to select items including accuracy interest positive reviews and to quote a sample policy from the ala's website the emotional development ability level and social emotional intellectual development of the students for whom the materials are selected this means that every Library collection is designed for the students taking into account the curriculum and the maturity level um all collection development policies also outline circumstances in which items may be removed from a collection if the item is out of scope with the criteria set forth It's removed with a process we call weeding this is that censorship but a critical part of librarianship and evaluating your collections um sorry um if a book is out of date written at too high or too low of a reading level or just no longer popular those are all reasons for it to be removed while there will always be and this again is not censorship well there will always be disagreements among parents about what is appropriate for their children that's a private family discussion um having a strong collection policy for the school media centers upholding ala Bill of Rights benefits everybody in the district trust your Librarians to create a library collection that speaks to every single student's needs in your District thank you so much for verying [Applause] you state your name for us please uh my name is Carrie Clayton and I am a parent of a fourth grader and a first grader here in the district recently while I was filling out the five essential survey I came across a question that asked do you feel like you have a voice in the planning and decision-making at the school and I struggled to answer because while I know I am respected at the schools that my children attend I do not feel that the school board Tru values parent input unless it comes from their friends or neighbors it seems that many decisions are based on conversations among like-minded individuals rather than through meaningful engagement with a broader Community for example when the topic of the Scholastic Book Fair arose why wasn't a survey sent out to parents when a committee was formed after the October 2024 meeting who was on that committee was it just board members and the assistant superintendent did did it include parents from diverse backgrounds did it represent families from all district buildings were there parents whose children may not fit the Colombia mold were teachers administrators Librarians or literacy professionals consulted did certified Librarians or Community Library represent Representatives weigh in has the district decided how they will help fund classroom books and update the libraries with more recent content no longer having rough L $113,000 raised from the in-person Book Fairs all of our students have a right to see themselves reflected in the books that they read I understand the importance of balancing age appropriate content but severing ties with the American Library Association and eliminating The in-person Book Fairs concerns me deeply I worry that this is the first step towards book bands and that a politically motivated agenda May soon dictate what is available to students particularly books that include diverse racial and lgbtq plus perspectives you may argue that you don't hear concerns from those who disagree with the changes the board has recently enacted but perhaps that's because those voices aren't in your immediate circles and when they do speak up they are dismissed as having a misunderstanding or overly emotional if a parent does not want their child to purchase a book from the fair or check out a specific book from the library they have that right to make that decision for their family they can review book options attend the fair with their child or have a conversation about why they find a certain book inappropriate but what they should not have the right to do is dictate what books are available to every child in this District I urge you to ensure that decisions about Book Fairs Library materials and classroom books are made with broad Community input and with the best interest of all students in mind not just those who happen to have the board and superintendent's ear thank [Applause] you hello hello my name is Alison wolf and I'm proud to be a parent of two children in this school district like other parents I enjoyed the board's warm welcome for my own Young author last month I come tonight disheartened with concerns regarding the recent change to board policy 6230 along with others present tonight I am requesting that you revisit and reinstate the former board policy regarding Library materials particularly the section noting alignment with the ala's Bill of Rights selections not being removed for doctrinal or partisan reasons the entire ala Bill of Rights is nothing but reasonable and I have have not yet heard any compelling justification for its removal from our policy however by defying the Law Public Act 10300 the school board willingly excludes Columbia School libraries from eligibility for State grant money all in the interest of being able to remove texts due to either origin background doctrinal or partisan reasons this law does not prohibit the act of challenging or complaining about a book if our board were to restore the Ala Bill of Rights within the policy and rejoin the ranks of the vast majority of local school districts reconsideration policies would still apply for valid reasons the only limit to selection being on a basis of partisan or doctrinal beliefs given that this is a public school district I struggle to see the logic of removing this section of the previous policy unless you wish to violate these widely accepted rights in order to impose your own beliefs I have heard the response that parents are misinformed the truth is there has been a lack of transparency regarding the composition and work of the committee formed in October to investigate the hypothetical issue of parent concern about book fair selection you have said that you are not interested in Banning books I ask then what would it mean for the board to prohibit a book's placement in the library based solely on the board's discretion why would this be necessary of course I agree that reading materials should be developmentally appropriate providing access to materials at students developmental level and removing books based on diversity or differing perspectives are entirely separate issues which should not be collapsed into the same argument it is concerning that we do not have a certified library or media specialist to conduct this work we all love our children and want similar things for them though it is clear we may choose different methods again this is a public school system in our free Society parents have the right to oversee what their children read but they are not entitled to limit what all other children read or learn thank [Applause] you hi good evening uh my name is Sarah Clark and I have two students here at Park View I was here at last month's meeting where you recognize the young authors winners thank you for doing so my kids were very excited to write their books they look forward to library day uh every week and to say they're pumped for the school book fair is an understatement moments like these Foster a love of reading creativity and learning but recent board decisions threaten to undermine that all children deserve to see themselves reflected in the books that they read by removing the district's adherence to the American Library Association or ala Bill of Rights you have erased the district's commitment to not exclude materials because of origin background partisan or doctrinal disapproval I've heard claims that this is a misunder understanding or that those concerned are misinformed that is not true I have read the board meeting minutes I have watched the YouTube recordings of the meetings I've read the board policy before and the board policy after I've exchanged emails with Dr Grody seeking more background and context and I've spoken with multiple certified local Librarians I've been told that this change was needed to ensure reasonable local decisions that is not true a district can comply with the Ala and still remove a book if it is too mature for a School's grade levels what the Ala does not allow is removing a book simply because it includes a character that may look different like an lgbtq or Muslim character that's the difference between a responsible collection policy and censorship the district needs a certified media Specialist or librarian involved to shape its collection development policy according to B uh board policy 63 230 sorry that doesn't seem to be happening now and it must be corrected I am here tonight to urge you to reverse your decision to remove the Ala Bill of Rights from Schoolboard policy I also urge you to bring back in-person Book Fairs which further Foster students love of reading these changes appear to to have been made based on the objections of a few individuals without considering the needs and rights of the larger School Community they have also resulted in Lost revenue from both state grants and book fair proceeds both of which fund new books for the schools finally I'm asking for transparency whose input did you seek what problem was this meant to solve and if you won't reverse your decision then we need clear communication regarding when and why books are removed from school libraries parents and taxpayers deserve to know whether these decisions align with the principles of education and intellectual Freedom or are just a response to ideological pressure our students deserve access to books that Inspire Challenge and reflect them thank [Applause] you my name is m scaran i have a second grader here at Parkview and then I have an upand cominging kindergartener here for this fall Emily scon um and I am actually reading a letter on behalf of a local District employee so um they worth uh dear members of the school board I am writing to share my thoughts and concerns on the district's recent DEC decision to eliminate Book Fairs in our schools I understand that every decision made has its reasons but I feel strongly that this one may have unintended negative consequences for our students in the community I would like to respectfully ask for you to reconsider Book Fairs are so much more than opport opportunities for students to buy books they are moments of excitement and Discovery for many students the book fair is one of the times they get to choose books that reflect who they are their interest and their experiences it's not just about picking up a new title it's about finding a story that connects with them whether it's through characters who look like them share their struggles or explore worlds they can relate to this representation matters more than we might realize as it helps students see feel seen valued and empowered while not every book and a book fair will fit for every student the variety available means there's something for everyone whether students are looking for stories about friendship Adventure culture or personal growth the books on display reflect the richness of their diverse lives these options are vital because they ensure every student can see themselves in the stories they read whether they're reading about someone from their Community someone with a similar background or just a character who reminds them of their own journey in addition I want to emphasize emphasize the decisions related to education should prioritize the best interests of the students without the flu influence of political ideologies schools should remain a place where students are encouraged to think critically explore new ideas and discover their own passions it's essential that political views do not influence decisions that impact their access to knowledge representation and diverse perspectives decisions that are made for the benefit of our children should be based on their educational growth and well-being not on external political pressures I urge you to reconsider the decision and I think about how Book Fairs help us invest in our children's Futures by supporting them we continue to cultivate a school environment where students can find joy in reading and where teachers and libraries have the resources they need to help students grow thank you for your time and consideration I hope we can keep the tradition of Book Fairs in our schools [Applause] anyone else good evening my name is Amanda Champion um I also have a first grader in the Columbia school districts um and I'm speaking on behalf of my household tonight so my husband wrote this letter up he says my name is Brandon Champion I apologize I could not be there in person due to work but thankfully my wife is kind enough to be my voice tonight I know there are others who wish to speak so I'll get right to the point you claim that removing inperson Scholastic Book Fair is for the children you claim that removing books that some adults don't like is for the children but I must ask how does losing funding and revenue help anyone teachers are notoriously underpaid schools and libraries are notoriously underfunded and you want to take away more let's be honest with each other this isn't to benefit the children this is because a handful of people that their attitudes towards a particular group Rob them of their Good Sense working in health care I have seen people at their best and at their worse I've also seen more than my fair share of the extreme things that young people will do to themselves when they don't feel heard when they don't feel represented and when they feel that just being themselves is wrong I like many if not all of the parents here want nothing more than the best for our kids to feel happy about themselves 100% of the time we want them to be kinder smarter and allaround amazing people before we send them into the world that can't happen if their own schools are teaching them to alienate each [Applause] other anyone else appreciate all the input from all of you guys um normally historically we don't address questions to the board the reason is that as a board we make decisions as individuals we cannot and we cannot come to consensus and address you guys and answer your questions that quickly we have to come to consensus um Dr gainy has worked on this project a lot and I'd like her to share a little bit of where the decision not not to adopt and I and I think correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think we elim I don't think we ruled against this thing I think we just did not adopt it is that correct it was in the policy and we removed it we did it was proposed in the policy and we did not adopt that policy no it was already in the policy and then we amended it and took it out did that come from the library Bill of Rights yes Bill yes okay so well I just want to um start by thanking everybody for for coming tonight um because it it means a lot that you care about the students as do we um in regards to literacy um we I have a passion we have a passion for literacy in with our students um so many of the things that were shared tonight are exactly spot on and spot on with our vision um if communication was not done and so the method that it should have been done um I think we can agree we can make make better in that and move forward um together uh we do not have a certified librarian and and those statements are very accurate in the fact that having a certified librarian would help us have that objective book selection process which we don't have we don't have an objective book selection process we don't have a reconsideration um process for if there is a book in question we don't have committees that can review that book and a decision can be made for the best of the students I I also think it's important to remember that there's a difference between public and school libraries and that's why it's so important to to have a certified School librarian in your District um public libraries don't have the same um goals and Visions as a school because as it was stated several times tonight we want our collections to be um connected and aligned with our curricular goals as as a district it's not about banning or or censoring to to any degree um and and nothing has been removed from the Shelf other than um a a book that was not the right age level was shifted to another Library um we are still doing Scholastic book clubs I understand that you as a group may not feel that that is the same as an inperson book fair and I respect that um but that is kind of where we're at I I'm actually I I know there are many feelings in the room tonight but I'm I'm very excited about where our libraries are going to go I feel like um this has been a time for us to to stop to take a step back take a breath and see how we need to move forward to make things better um for our students and libraries and and the board knows specifically how passionate I am about libraries um you can visit my office I have a ton of books I love book clubs I I love to read and and make myself better I I'm I'm saddened to think that that you you think that there would be any other different Vision but I'm here to tell you that that is not the vision to take books away to censor books it's truly the exact opposite is to take a step back hopefully find us somebody that can help us get our processes aligned so we can do what's best for students um and we need to align to the the new literacy plan that's in the state um all of those things are part of our mindset and vision um and that's what I wanted to share tonight perfect thank you and I'll kind of tail onto that as an as an individual board member and not speaking for the board these are my personal comments um uh when we did the high school project in the renovations we were discussing Library specifically The Architects all wanted to get rid of libraries they said libraries are outdated they don't need anymore it's not part of the future Amanda and I were very adamant that libraries need to be a part of that and we really fought and were successful when we saved the library at the high school so we're going to have a stay there Library I am huge book fan I I think everybody should read them I don't know if I don't think we've I know we have not banned any books I've never voted to ban a book and I doubt if I ever would I think I agree with with a lot of what you guys have said tonight I I love books I want to incorporate them I think kids should have a choice we agree on a whole bunch of stuff where I have a problem and where I have a problem personally adopting this is this is a partisan bill this Library Bill of Rights was a partisan Bill like it or not it received only Democrat votes for and only Republican votes against it's not a bipart it's not a nonpartisan we're a nonpartisan board I don't want politics in the school keep it out I don't care what side of the aisle you're on politics is does not need to be in this school so that's where I have a problem my second problem with the with the Bill of Rights again Library stuff and and books and banning I'm I'm in agreement with all you guys I I wholeheartedly agree with you but it's funny every one of you guys mentioned politics and Parson in your speech tonight and this is a Parson bill and we need to keep politics out of school so um the second part is I like low control I know a lot of you guys are talking about not letting us I don't want to dictate what people read I don't want to again I don't want to ban books but I don't want somebody in Chicago doing it either I want to have local control we are representatives of the community and the community needs to decide what they want in our schools and I think parents have a huge input and I like to keep the parent input and do what we're doing and you're right we probably need more transparency I want diverse opinions if I have a a committee I want all different sides you know I own a few different companies and when I have makeing decisions on my companies I want different input I want to hear both sides of the story and I want to hear different opinions and different viewpoints and I want to learn from each other and that's what we do you know when it comes down to it we have a lot more in common than that divides us and I'd like to focus on that like Amanda said we're on board it's not we're against anybody we're here for the kids and only the kids again politics needs to get out of our way and we need to concentrate on what's in the best interest of our children so that's my soap box so but again appreciate you guys coming out and exess your opinion I know it's it's a a heartfelt and and very important to everybody and education is the most important thing that's why we're here and that's we want to do what's in the best interest of our children so all right anybody else want to say anything or are you guys intending to hire great Point thank you yes yeah um actually we've talked about this from it's been on the the conversation long before all this came up but as the Mana said we Dr gy sorry we need a certified librarian and that is one thing that we're missing and I think I would love to see it um I think Chris's is ADV Dr it's not on the agenda for tonight but it is um in the in the works for next school year yes exactly it is an upcoming it is definitely something we are looking strongly at and and pushing toward yes my recommendation to the board members is that we find a way to do it I I think it's important I think we need it and uh again I'm not speaking for the other board so it's this is me talking but I can I clarify something sure mentioned the Bill of Rights um that's the American Library Association um the national governing board that's completely separate I think from the bill in Illinois that you were referring to they're two very separate things I wanted to this is the Illinois Bill is one I pulled up so okay yes than okay I I'm proberly right you're right I am not a library expert by any means so sure thank you I'm just doing what's in the best interest the ks all right I have a question um this didn't get into a question yes but I just want to I'm the park viw and element and Eagle View um Library um Aid I guess um are you thinking about hiring a certified which I agree with it needs to be um someone here within the school district are you thinking of doing that at every single school or just one in particular to at this point in time we are just really trying to look at Staffing for next year and and so um we're we're digging in as to when was the last librarian we had certified librarian that we've had because we've had AIDS for while um so there's a lot more information that we need okay and so you're not sure what would happen to us currently that work for the school district as the library Aid we would not want to lose anybody any of our current employees okay is is is what I'm saying okay okay thank you me awesome again you know the the Board of Education our job is a 30,000 foot overview we're not in the weeds we're not making the this person goes here this person goes here that's to these fine folks we have we hire great people we give them the authority to make their own decisions and we hold them accountable and so far it's been great we have a fantastic team and these these guys are on top of it this we we are very very lucky to have our administrative team across the board so all right all right board members anybody want to say anything or dokie all right let's get into some business here let's see oh I missed one correspondence that's already been sent around and we had some more comments posted so everybody's got a copy of those so mark that off the schedule here and we'll move into our give a moment for everybody to leave if they would want to if there I mean you don't have to stay you can stay for the whole meeting I don't I'm not trying to he wants to kick you out right now I don't want to kick me out I'm just i' I've been in enough board meetings in my life that that's right but sincerely thank you all for bringing your concerns we do appreciate it I had no idea no public it's a public meeting I'm sorry but all right you're now there's some seats that opened up so uh everybody would be awkwardly wanting to leave at different points it's just easier if you get them out oh that's a great idea thank you all right we'll go into our consent agenda first one Dr walk us through that please you've got your minutes and your financial reports as as usual um we have some Personnel items we've got a resignation JMA Ro rodenberger um is a PA professional she's retiring at the end of the year we wish her well so we have that resignation um we've got employee of of certified staff I know that we've got some some new people going to be new CSD people in the audience Amanda Bandy is going to be our new art teacher I don't think she's here she's a currently a part-time art teacher and she's going to move into the full-time position um August hangle is here I saw him there's Mr hangle he is um an Eagle View student teaching right now and he's going to be coming over to Parkview to be one of our special ed teachers we got Haley storm where's Haley there's Haley she's going to be our CMS special ed teacher because Mrs rep is going to be moving into the English language arts class that we have um that is a shock to Mrs uh Haven right she's didn't get in on the on the on the on the little chain of information did you wow um Hannah Phelps is here she's going to be our new high school social studies teacher she's in the front row uh and then we have Emily Bala uh middle school science teacher and so we're very excited about these hires um it's going to be a great year next year we've got two leaves of ab absences Elizabeth mfy um she is going to give birth and so around 520 she's going to be off if the doctors know what they're talking about uh Trent mafy will also be taking a leave um they are married so um we wish them both well with their child and we've got Patricia Lakin uh who is going to be on leave from the uh March 19 18 to the end of the year so she's currently on leave um there's no extracurricular assignments no non-certified class advancements we do have some vacancies um we are still thinking about the library I said it wasn't posted tonight but we are going to post for a full-time art teacher at the middle school and we'd like to post for a full-time stem teacher at the middle school as well to round out our exploratories for next year and so um with your consent I I recommend the board approve the consent agenda as presented perfect questions comments concerns hearing none any be like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented I'll make the motion thank you Tyson second I'll second thank you Andre roll call please yesy yes yes yes yes I am excited about the stem teacher um that that's really going to I think we got a something on my table that I think might be relevant to that but I'll let you go through the agenda thank you appreciate that all right next one is the enrollment Report with in your packet substantial on that and we'll start off with our building report sure all right um I'm Courtney Miller and I'm the assistant principal at CMS and um um these are some pictures um I'm going to speak about them and then there are pictures that kind of go along with what I'm going to speak about these are just some highlights from second semester at the middle school um we held a fundraiser for um Elsa she's a girl who lives in waterl um one of our neighboring communities and many connections with her family um she is um battling cancer and she has a bucket list that um her family um would like to fulfill for her so we held a fundraiser for her at our last home volleyball game which um perfectly fell as uh a game against waterl so their Community came over we had a fundraiser for her and at that fundraiser we raised $2,189 um to give her family yeah it was it was a really great night so those pictures on the right are from um the fundraiser and that's a picture of Elsa at the top um we also had an incentive for the month of January for students that had um no referrals at all uh they got to visit uh the reptile guy he's along the bottom there he's holding a snake we have some students holding snakes and holding some of reptiles um the students really really loved this uh Miss Dent loved it too I almost put a picture of Miss Dent up there but I didn't I didn't um but uh it was a really fun time um our volleyball girls um ended their season recently the eighth grade had a record of 15 and n and that's our eighth grade team right there they um conference Champs and then the seventh grade team um had a 17 and8 record so they were really fun to watch this year um in the middle at the top that bright light is a picture of um the Monroe County Electric Live Wire demonstration they came a couple weeks ago um and they showed you know the dangers of electricity and how live wires um you know students students need to know when being around electric stuff and they did this for every PE class so every student in the building got to see this demonstration and kind of a smaller group where they couldn't just kind of hide in the bleachers and not pay attention so um if that was that was a really great demonstration and they were very gracious to come do that for us um we're preparing for IR testing coming up April 3rd through 14th um upcoming grade level field trips each grade level has their own field trip coming up so the fifth grade is going to um Monro County Conservation at the Sportsman's Club sixth grade is going to visit Camp wartberg seventh grade is going to visit Botanical Gardens and the e8th grade is going to go to the movie theater to watch The Hunger Games movie which is going along with that book that they're reading in their class right now um we are going to have a couple of our um wonderful teachers and some of our amazing students show you just two highlighted um projects events that have been going on at CMS so I want to start with Amber Haven she's our fifth grade teacher one of our fifth grade teachers and she has brought three student students with her to share about um a recent project that they have been working on in class and um after her then we'll move on to miss dent and she's going to share about um our uh production drama production we had earlier this year so than go ahead okay um I am here to introduce you to the um experts in the smart motor field research project that we're in I'm just going to let you know who they are and a little bit of the background information and then I'll let the engineers talk to you um so Dr gainy Mrs Miller and Mrs M approved this field research project through um marville University in St Louis ultimately it's through Tufts University in Boston funded by the national sence National Science Foundation and um what they are doing is giving us these Smart Motors we are one of 10 schools in the St Louis area the only School in Illinois performing this field research um these motors are in front of you and the girl are going to talk to you about how to program them but what tus University is looking for is this um authentic learning environment to see how machine learning can help make classroom learning more tangible more efficient and more engaging and more meaningful so most of the schools nine actually out of the 10 have stem clubs and um art teachers who are doing stem in their art classrooms conducting this field research with 10 to 15 students at a time Columbia Middle School our fifth grade scientists are um 72 students at a time performing This research so ultimately what tus University is doing is they are looking for um us to build learning Ms and projects that are almost like um a recipe book so that when this is produced for the masses our research and what we've done can just be handed to other classrooms to use and to pick up easily so without further Ado we have um they're going to introduce themselves actually but we have fifth grade engineers and scientists who are going to show you one of their creations with the smart mots I'm memini and I was the programmer for the project I'm Marina Landry and I was the project manager for this project I'm Bley leafer and I was the artist for this project I'm going I stop you right there I do want you to talk louder okay okay great when you're coding the motors first you'll start first you have your box your motor and whatever sensor you're using with the project now for this project we used a we used a slide sensor because it was most beneficial now once you've plugged this in you can turn on your motor with the switch right here and it will turn on and like where's the switch right here on so when you arrive on the main screen you might see some data points in the box so you're going to click one of the buttons on the side until you get an X shown right here once you've done that you click this white button until all the data points are gone once you've deleted the data points then you press the button again on the side until you get a plus then you use the rotary knob on top of the motor to move up and down and whatever sensor you've plugged in to go left and right whenever you've put the cursor wherever you need it you can click the white button on the front of the screen again on to add the data points once you're done adding the data points you click the side button again until you get a play sign and then you press the white button on the front and might move a little bit and then you use whatever sensor you have two so you just you just coded this robot right so you and you deleted old data points with the X you added data points with the plus and then the play button remembers your data points and that motor on the top spins and moves have you ever walked outside and looked at your local tree and you may notice that there's a shadow there and and it varies throughout the time of the day and I'm going to explain how the sun rises in the East the it starts low on the it starts low in the sky the tree blocks the light from the sun creating a longer Shadow for that time of day at 12:00 p.m.

one the sun is not moving the Earth is just orbiting I'm going to explain how this model um helps us with science so um this project helps us with science because the Earth rotation is helping the Sun move throughout the day which is creating the lengths of the Shadows at different times like Marina said it starts in the East and sets in the west this is helping us show a more efficient way of it us seeing the shadows in the time so and then okay you can move it that's all so each Friday sorry each Friday or this week it was Thursday the last day of the week uh we have build days and it started with um just have fun build get to know the motor because as you can see here it took you a little bit of getting to know your motor and getting to know the buttons so the kiddos took notes and they really explored and and um learned what to do and now we're applying it to the content I would say one class per period is all it took for you to get to know how to code and so 3 weeks now we've done the actual content connection um this was the sun rising in the East setting in the west showing the length of Shadows changing throughout the day and giving that Hands-On authentic modeling because we can't obviously bring the sun into the classroom right um this one is showing the layers of the atmosphere starting with closest to the earth and moving on up and then the students supported this with popsicle sticks in paper and they learned different facts about the layers of the atmosphere so this model had to have some sort of moving component and so this group not this group but another one decided to show a meteorite burning up in the mes mesosphere so that's their moving element here so us being a part of this field research we can turn both of these projects into those learning mats that can become used um by more and more classrooms you guys really great I'll collect those once Miss done is done and something I forgot to say right before they started but it kind of goes along with what what they're sharing is um we got final approval last night um from the city of BM to have our PTA funded stargazing night for fifth grade so that is going to be April 11th that's the flyer that you guys got out here so we're excited to have that funded and we don't have to write um a grant for that anymore so I tell the board that if you've not gone to the stargazing night before you you really just need to go and for the families of the um the fifth graders it is it just it's impressive and it's awesome if you haven't done it before it's it's I mean the amount of work the fifth grade team has with all the little stations and stuff and you just get to have and they've got so many telescopes and just it's it's an outstanding night and I'm going to stop peeking out you guys go okay so next Annie D is here with some of her cast members from Matilda Jr and um she's going to share and the students are going to share how this program has been so positive for them and for our school and um I just want to say I attended this Sunday afternoon production and it was sold out it was standing around so we brought in some extra chairs and his D gave up her chair to someone else in the back it was it was a packed house so it was a really awesome production so I'll let you share more about that thank you so much um we do have some additional photos here um taken by our photographer also featuring a prop that I've been holding um so brillan and Leah are going to pass out some scripts while I talk about how our production started these are yours to keep they were extras that we had purchased with the rights um for this production through Music Theater International Matilda Jr is a condensed version of the Broadway production of the same name and it tells R doll's Timeless story of Matilda um but this is set in an educational settings so these Junior eyes versions are able to have glossies um of both the text within the story that the characters and actors will be saying as well as theater technical terms such as blocking choreography stage left versus stage right so it really helps students with that introduction into theater by condensing down what would be a 2 and 1/ half hour production to about 60 minutes we started in December shortly after Thanksgiving break with auditions and then coming back from all those snow days in January we started our rehearsals and performed Valentine's Day weekend so we only had about five or so weeks before performances started in total we had 80 middle schoolers performing on the CMS stage and we had an additional 25 students ranging from fifth grade up backstage in the booth helping with costumes painting everything so students were truly at the helm and I am simply organizing the chaos it seems um we have students who help with all of the choreography who help run the lights the sound the spotlight all the microphones who help keep backstage running smoothly during performances um and who help make sure that our middle school students have a successful show as well those students are currently rehearsing their own production um in addition to working on the Matilda Junior show so they take on a great level of responsibility at the high school level so that students like brillan and Leah with me tonight can have a very successful and enjoyable performance um in total that brings us to about 105 students participating in this production um many of whom about 40 or so this was their first ever production um to Performance so I'm very excited and I'm very proud of them and everything that they did brillan year as a sixth grade student she was in susal with me last year in my first year within this position as drama sponsor and I've invited her here to talk about how she feels that she's grown since being in the drama club on up yep uh theaters has helped me be a better student by learning how to be a good performer and helped me be more confident in myself drama club has also helped me be more Cooperative focused social and respons responsible my memorization skills have also improved in the past [Applause] year additionally with Productions such as Matilda we need some specialty props um this is the fake Amanda if you know the story of Matilda Amanda thrip is thrown by pigtails which is seen in the top left picture on the board however I am not going to throw a student by the pigtails so a local props Artisan his name is Philip we he made this out of complete foam down to the shoes so the wig is glued and sewn into a foam head that he painted himself to make it look like ears eyes eyebrows everything um it has gotten a little scuffed as it hit the floor a few times um but he took the costume pieces and attached them to the body um and then he also made the shoes from foam so in case it were to ever not fly appropriately when it was released and accidentally bump into someone it wouldn't truly hurt them so everything that you see here is all foam with some Thin wire in the shoulders and arms to help give it some structure additionally Leah and brillin can you help me again please they're going to pass out some foam pieces of cake that I will be collecting when we are done here um these foam pieces of cake were also made by the same um props Artisan here in Columbia they were used in a um song called Bruce in which Bruce long bottom needs to eat a chocolate cake from um trench bow and you as you feel it you can squeeze it from the top down so that he could pretend to eat it um and then shove it into a laundry basket that we had um drilled into the table and hid with a tablecloth which was truly a bed sheet um so we were able to um acquire these two props through the profits that we make from concessions and ticket sales um all in all these two items along with his labor cost us approximately $1,000 which may seem like a lot for some foam but for the time that it takes to build these he dedicated about 3 and a half weeks to making these come together and come to life for us um and he lives here in Colombia he is a father of a student who attends IC but he's excited for the partnership that we've now built as some specialty props and those cakes are also covered on the sides with a plastic a liquid plastic coating so that our Bruce could even put chocolate pudding on his face to look like the icing had gone onto his face so these cakes and this prop will last us for years to come um Leah here was our Miss warmwood Matilda's mother you can see her in the bottom photo bottom left photo um Matilda is or Leah excuse me sorry is an eighth grade student um she has been in Productions since she was in fifth grade which is before my time in this role so she has had a number of directors um lead her through the drama production and I've asked her here as well to give her thoughts and views on being a part of the drama production as she leaves the middle school and goes off to the high school now one thing I love about drama club is the sense of belonging and inclusion I feel while participating in various drama club rehearsals and performances there is always a place or rule for everyone and I have never never felt excluded or lonely I also really love to see how the show comes together by the end of the play season I always feel nervous before going out on stage before a real performance in front of an audience but it is so worth it when I get to see my fellow castmates and friends so happy up on that stage after watching everyone work so hard during the rehearsals and then getting to see the end result of everyone performing by the end of the season that's one of my favorite parts of being in drama drama club it is truly so much fun thank you we are so thankful for the drama Productions that we are able to put on with your support um and I look forward to continuing our Productions we have like I said our final production of the drama Club season for the high school will be coming up at the beginning of April and then we are already looking at season selection for next year for the high school and middle school um to bring even more fun drama club performances to the stage and especially as we complete the the construction over at the high school um hoping to make sure that our drama club stays as prominent and as successful as it has been in these past few years thank you so much thank [Applause] you we love what you've done the last few years with the with the drama program I mean and and I look forward to seeing next year once the the the auditorium is up and everything's as an Alum it's been great to come back and be in this role now too was exciting to know that these group of people are going to actually be in the new Auditorium yes it is so [Applause] exciting mine didn't work get I was G to let you play with mine got tell you guys also every time you bring in a group of students I am so impressed with not only the students the teachers and the offerings here it's really really great to see so thank you for we had to narrow it down to just these two this time and put on the back burner so it's good to have a lot of choices a good problem to have having the having the kids come in and present every month has been a a nice addition so enjoy that yeah very impressed all right we'll move on to our assistant superintendent report Dr geny to go after we might need to start rearranging I know uh so many amazing things are going on um with that being said we have our district shoutouts I would like to start with Eagle View which is Michelle Gillum our school psychologist Michelle is a fantastic support for the students and staff in our district as one of our District's two School psychologists she supports both Eagle View and Park View Michelle does it all she coordinates and executes IEP evaluation assessments she writes hundreds of pages of evaluation reports and IEPs annually she educates and supports families throughout the IEP process she collaboratively problem solves with school teams in both sore and tier 2 and she steps up whenever and however she can we are lucky to have Michelle to support us all here in Columbia a big shout out to Michelle from at Eagle View then we have Park View um Mrs overfell I always say that um wrong the art teacher a huge shout out to Mrs o our amazing elementary school art teacher her positivity and infectious smile light up the classroom every single day her passion for art is truly inspiring she encourages all of her students to explore their creativity and do their very best Mrs o goes above and beyond dedicating countless hours to making the art show at the park viiew open house an unforgettable experience for everyone we're so lucky to have a teacher who puts so much heart into everything she does thank you Mrs o for all that you do at the middle school we have Mrs Henning she is our new behavior interventionist and she deserves a shout out as well I want to give a huge shout out to Mrs Henning for her incredible dedication and flexibility in stepping into a challenging role during a critical time of need while serving as our district behavior interventionist Mrs Henning selflessly took on the responsibilities of the crosscat teacher when the regular teacher was unable to be in attendance she has not only navigated the unique needs of our crosscat students par professionals and Ever Changing schedules but she has done it with Grace and ease thanks to her expertise and the thoughtful interventions and schedules she has implemented the classroom is thriving Mrs Henning's unwavering commitment to our students and staff is truly remarkable and we are Beyond grateful for her she is a true godson shout out to Mrs hen and at our high school we have a shout out to Mr Christian Avis Rouse he added the girls basketball games to the pep fan schedule this year and that was a huge addition for a music program he has his band cleaning the bleachers after games which helps make our school sparkle and shine and just finished the basketball season bringing great energy to all home games big shout out to to Mr Christian AIS Rouse curriculum um in resources I am very happy to announce that social studies um does have a preview for the board and community that is set up in the back um behind Dr Grody and Mr Meyer um and they are set up by grade levels to which I will bring a recommendation officially to the board next month but I thought it was important to have it on display um so everybody could view it if they wanted to view it our social studies committees um have been meeting since early in the fall um and and it has been a good journey um we did not have many social studies programs to choose from you will notice that we did grade level bands and really that is for what is best for students needs so two through five is McGraw Hill IMPACT program in the center is a TCI program for grades 6 through 8 the standards are the same it's just a different type of program to fit the needs of those students in that grade level band on the far side you have McGraw Hill again which is best for our high school students because they all are doing coursework and in order to do coursework we need some specific resources and mcra Hill was the best match for that as well um I just asked that if you want to take a handout you only take handouts that have the QR codes um because the other ones are just single copies I would prefer those be looked at in here just because I don't have more than one copy but please anybody in the room board members I will probably send something out to the community it will be open um if somebody comes during the day I will try to be tracked down so I can come in and answer any additional questions but we are really excited um it was it was a navigation process to do it grades 2 through 12 but we did it and I'm excited um we are uh preliminary stages of an Ela grades K through 8 curriculum um what we have done so far is we sent out a teacher survey to all okay through eight teachers to get their feedback on what's going well what they would like to see um I'm getting my building administrators in on the instructional process so myself and building principles have been going into e classrooms um to see the resources they're using and see the Kids In Action um I meet with my admin team tomorrow to go over the survey results and then we will continue with our teacher leader teams hopefully we will have more news as the months progress as far as an Ela program super excited to share our first college career pathway um the construction pathway has been improved it is state official um so why I'm so excited so many reasons I'm excited when we all sat down at the high school to start talking about this we all kind of looked at each other like we don't know what to do and I was like I don't know either but we're going to figure it out um and through a lot of teamwork we did so the construction pathway is going to be off the ground um and is state official um I did meet with our a teachers to talk start talking about a second pathway for the next year so a lot of good things happening there excited Europe trip I wanted to provide you an update uh Mr post and I are still in communication the student meeting that they had on March 5th 84 students we were worried he wouldn't get 20 um but 84 showed up that was just to get the general information um but then they had the parent meeting and there were smaller numbers so we are in conversation he's been keeping me up to date on everything just to get my thoughts and then he gives me his because he's done it before we're thinking because right now A 2026 trip will be the same year as Spanish and German so possibly offering a backto back that way the Europe trip then is on an alternating year and maybe some of the students that want to go this 2026 would want to wait for more time um for 2027 so I will continue to give you updates on that but I just wanted to provide where we are and there was definitely interest so we're happy we we moved forward and the only other thing that I wanted to share is we are currently working with our district in building leadership on how to collaborate so we have a collaboration initiative um each one of our school Improvement plans has a collaboration piece so we have um some really great professional development coming up for the district and building leadership involving collaboration how do we do it at at the district level how do we do it at the building level and how do we do it um at with our teachers so all of that is coming up August 4th and 5th and October 6th and 7th good things ahead we're excited thank you Dr yeah um I get to follow that after she followed the students this is the boring stuff um I did get a check as you guys are well aware we had a bookkeeper that um left left us and when we transferred our systems over we found out there were some Shenanigans she has pled guilty our insurance company did give us this was when we originally found it $250,000 in restitution of the money that we could prove was stolen from us um she did plead guilty she is currently incarcerated and we received a $60,000 check and I just want you to be aware we have to turn that back over to Travelers so that's money in money out so her restitution has been paid and it is um being forwarded to the insurance company that was that made us whole on our loss um next month uh an Noble will be here she's going she's the uh young lady from steel that does our bond sales we're going to be talking about bonds um it looks like this will be our last sale of bonds because Arbitrage is no longer on the table and so instead of earning that extra interest it's better to just sell all of them at one time you've got to pay off your bonds within 3 years and our construction project would be able to use those funds so um next month we will start our last sale of bonds um for those of you that aren't aware we had a storm last week it was kind of windy uh the fence around our our our construction site actually got blown down but they got it up within a couple of days so I was happy to see that but more importantly um if you haven't been to the back of Eagle View there is a sun shade that is over all of the playground equipment if you it's a huge sun shade that got installed Andy wilbacher who's a local guy um he installed it and the next day I was out at Eagle View thinking oh my God what am I going to see cuz I mean it's just one big kite type it stood it's standing it's there it did not budge and I went I will be filing a claim with our greenhouse because the hail did not act as kindly toward the greenhouse but our sun shade stood so I was happy about that um and then finally we'll we will have executive session there will be um some action items after if you agree so um that said that's the superintendent report for this month sounds good thank you very much move on to our Island for Action the first one is the approval of the 2025 26 student fees yeah and there's just minor changes Park View planner went from 3 to 4 middle school planner went from 3 to 5 and uh a curriculum material fee in third and fourth grade was added to support the OG program it's just easier to have a fee that gets you the same cards instead of having families go out and try and get the right index cards and so that's an OG fee which is um Orton Gillingham yes okay um right now we do not have the information regarding lunches school lunches but I've been here for 5 years and we've never had to change our price on school lunches so I don't assume we will again so those would be have no changes um if we do end up having to change those I will bring you an addendum but at this point in time Administration recommends the board approves the 2526 student fees as presented perfect any questions from the board comments hearing none may you like to make a motion to approve the student fees I'll make the motion Thank you Lisa a second I'll second Adam seconds roll call please Adam hkin yes Andrea Cory yes Greg Meyer yes Lisa Schumacher yes Tyson Serge yes perfect our next item is the approval for the non- Reemployment of non-tenured teachers yeah and this is we we added financial literacy a while ago and we have a uh a pair professional that also works as an aid or as in that classroom and so what we're doing is we're moving away from that as the the elective we're moving towards stem financial literacy will be folded into either math or social studies so we'll still be hitting those standards but um middle schoolers to get a true love of financial literacy at that level is just it doesn't make its own course and so we're going to move to stem um and so the young lady is a great teacher she did a fine job but this is just a a change of program and so Administration recommends the board approve the non- Reemployment of the non- teacher as presented and so that I'm clear she will be full-time as a pair of professional with us okay so she so she's just not going to have the teaching part anymore to lose a good teacher yeah all right any questions comments concerns then may like to make a motion to approve the non- Reemployment of the non-tenure teacher I'll make the motion thank you Tyson second I'll second thank you Andrea roll call please yes Craig Meer yes Sher yes Tyson sear yes Adam hkin yes all right item C is the approval of a non-tenure teachers yeah this is that yearly task um Everybody kind of moves up if they if they've worked enough days to earn a year of credit uh Administration recommends the board approve the non-tenured teachers as presented and I will note that Mr Avis Rouse Mrs rodenberg and Mrs vulmer have moved to being obtaining tenure in this this year you get the four years and it's always a nice mile marker it doesn't really change anything other than you have tenure so well done but you can't be thrown in option b anymore so H they can't be put in option b anymore right any questions comments maybody like to make a motion to approve the non-tenure teachers I'll make the motion go ahead Tyson I'll second you all right Tyson made a motion second Lisa roll call please Craig Meyer yes Lisa Shoemaker yes Tyson search yes Adam hkin yes Andre Cory yes all right next item is the approval for the I HSA membership for 2526 Illinois High School Athletic Association um we recommend that we stay with the ihsa as most public schools in Illinois do Administration recommends that the board approve the membership and as always the there are no fees that go with that they they wave them because they make the money in their postseason Play Perfect all right questions comments concerns he anybody like to make a motion to approve the ihsa membership for 2526 I get two at once and then nobody I'll make the mention thank you Adam second I'll second T seconds uh no money so we just do it a r or a Voice vote all in favor I any opposed exensions right car anly next is the approval of to amend the 2425 school calendar yeah we've used all of our emergency days plus sum um the plus sums do not need to be made up those are called active God days in the Illinois State system uh our last day will be May 28th but Administration recommends that the board approve the 2425 final calendar as presented and we can submit it to the state and be done with that yearly task perfect questions on the school calendar so a school continuing till the 28th of May is graduation still on the was it the six 18th yes and we set the graduation and then don't change that because people have vacations and travel plans that they make to come into town and whatnot so so then one of the finals week for the high school will be the week of the 19th or prior to graduation uh the seniors will have their finals prior to graduation and then the other ones would move accordingly any other questions me like to make a motion to approve the amended school calendar I'll make a motion thank you Andrew second I'll second all right all in favor I any opposed exensions all right next item is the approval for the scoreboard Marquee fiber and power bid yeah yeah and so we engaged with digital scoreboards to get new video scoreboards for our gymnasium and for the outside um Lowry gave us the quotes and they did the electrical work and I believe that the scoreboards are getting installed either this week or next week but it's going to be sometime soon for the inside the outside we needed to get the fiber and the power to the scoreboard from the um Press Box with that we asked for bids because the quote there was was was more we had three companies put in um and the ADL Communications is the company that was the lowest bid they came in at 83500 and um they actually offered a $55,000 deduct that their base bid of 835 was the lowest bid amongst all of it but then they also said that we could do we could take $5,000 off of this if we saw cut a little bit instead of bringing the wires overhead into the into the um concession stand where the power is coming from the Middle School it's going into the concession stand then to the um the scoreboard and then the fiber to connect is going up to the the Press Box long story short instead of having the wires go overhead they're going to go underneath and then cut a little hole and and replace the the stamped concrete um Mrs Pollock and Kurt Steve both agree that that would be um nice it would be good it keeps then we won't have wires hitting it and everything and it's a $5,000 deduct so uh I would recommend that the board approve the ADL Communications bid for $78,500 to get fiber and power to the new scoreboard for the digital scoreboards with the exception of alternate two yeah we're not going to do alternate two what when they're doing is they're going to add a box alternate two with is looking at possibly getting fiber to the greenhouse I think it was alternate one it but they that was alternate one yeah yeah so we're going to do alternate 2 we are going to do alterate deduct but we're not doing alternate one which would get fiber to the greenhouse we're going to look at possibly Wi-Fi and if Wi-Fi doesn't work um this bid does have a a junction box and so you can do the fiber later to the greenhouse should you want came anything you want to add perfect thank you for putting all this together for us right comments questions concerns here n would ibody like to make a motion to approve the scoreboard Marquee fiber and power bid as presented without alternative one and with alternative two I'll make the motion thank you Adam second I'll second thank you Tyson roll call please Adam hkin yes Andre Cory yes Greg Meer yes Mr shemer yes yes all right next one's a big the approval of phase two phase two bids is the um the portion of the high school that has uh the gymnasium attached to the backside uh phase two will begin sometime after August 14th when they give me access to the front of the building so the new the current temporary entrance will no longer be the temporary entrance that will be where the new construction of the gym is happening um and we're going to have the new entrance our new entrance will be going into the new office in August so um we went out to bid we had all the bids and I've got um the base bid packages it's going to be total of 10 milli2 55,56 and that 58 I got it written down here as a motion that needs to be read you want to pass that to Mr hempin being on the committee has made the Motions in the past it's been lucky for us because we're coming in on budget I'm going to ask that he make the motion again well Also to clarify we had a meeting a few months ago where we said we were potentially over budget and I clarified that we weren't really over budget we over projections great news is we the actual bids came in 3 million under what we were expecting so we are right back on track and even with inflation everything else we hit the nail on the head so so thanks to the committee for that it's that was a uh major major win for us in the district so we're back on schedule I think or budget budget thank you yes we're back to the right on the original budget exactly got to trust the process right all right any comments concerns questions on phase two would it be like I make a motion on phase two well I was going to make it not on phase two um so just an update on phase one as everyone in the community can see as they're driving by now especially when the fence is down um that's the next you will see that there is a lot of activity going on at the moment uh within the next three weeks we expect all of the what we call Flat concrete work to be done all of the structural steel to be up by mid April and you're starting to see some of the walls being built uh with the metal framing so it's really starting to look like a structure um and over the next few weeks uh borring more crazy wind um because that's one weather event most people don't think about you cannot hang steel when the wind is blowing cranes don't like to operate um safely anyway so um but I also just wanted to thank all of the teachers and students for being patient because we are literally working right outside their windows an occasion um it is a disturbance and it is impactful so um just wanted to thank all of the the the staff and the students at the high school particularly as well as the middle school because it does cause disruption with drop offs and everything else having all the construction going on so a lot of thanks to you guys but also just kind of an update of what you should expect to see in the next few weeks lots of concrete trucks lots of steel workers um you know they're they're trying to get all that foundational work done they're starting to run electrical above grade uh they're roughing some of that in so it's it's really kind of awesome to see um and and really interesting to see it up close as to what they're doing they've got some of the SE they should have finished pouring the steel that's up right now the concrete on the second floor so um it's really moving along quickly and they're doing a lot of great work so we did tour a couple of us did go on site today at our construction update and got to get up close and personal with it so it's really um they're really doing a great job and they're they're paying attention to the detail the concrete looks great um so anyway with that I will move that the board award the phase two bid package as recommended from pecker construction for a total contract of 10,255 52658 c and that the resulting Phase 2 contracts for each subcontractor be assigned by the board immediately upon this award to Pekka construction company pursuant to their a133 agreement between the owner and construction manager as a Constructor with the district thank you well said thank you all right we have a motion do we have a second I'll second thank you Andrea all right roll call please Lisa Sher yes yes Adam hin yes Andre Cory yes Greg yes all right motion carries this is a very very exciting time for Columbia School District that is huge so thank you thank you all right that concludes our items for Action in this section move on to our discussion items which is our facility study I think we got a little bit of a jump start on that thank you Adam I will say though the as Adam said we walked around the stuff and um I was standing over where the band room's going to be and the Steel's not up there yet but you can see where the Steel's going to be and I'm thinking it it doesn't look right it's not like it doesn't look like the right size and then when you go it's just weird how as you walk through it the the studs in the walls without drywall on it it just the size seems to start changing cuz you're you know at first you're thinking now this doesn't look right this is like weird and is this big big enough and then when the walls go up you start going oh okay it starts it's it starts becoming more real or more visual for me so it's fun yeah and just uh you know as Chris alluded walking through it is it does change as as the perspective changes when it's wide open sometimes they look huge and then you put up your Framing and it looks small and then you put up your drywall and then the room looks big again or you know more like what you expected so it is it can be deceiving but um excited to see the orchestra pit is forward um so we will have an orchestra pit in front of our stage I am very excited about that as someone who is a big fan of the Arts I know that's a big deal for the theater folks as well as the band folks and the the audience it's amazing how much difference some live musicians make and add to it a production um and then our theater should sit what is it's over 400 over 400 which again i50 so what we have at the Middle School uh you know it's going to be more than double the seating so um when we have things like Matilda Jr and people are standing room only if we can pack this house to where it's standing room only again then that's great um but just wanted to share that we will have 450 more comfortable seats um also in a theater setting so it'll be the people in the back will have less obstructions uh to see this stage um you can see how tall the stage is going or the the back of house is going to be now um so it'll be awesome to be able to do more things with our props um and with our stage itself and you know more lighting and just a designated space for that type of things many of us are very very excited about that so um so yeah that's I think that's where we're at and storage for foam cakes all right anything else exciting times for the for the district so all right let's move on to individual board member comments and you have anything they want to add this evening last month I had asked about reading the couple articles in the journal about student board members but can we just table that to next month and then then I'll probably need to meet just with Dr gy and Dr Grody to kind of discuss it a little bit so we can put it on and as an agenda item perfect like that idea all right anyone else right board pres prerogative you guys have definitely heard enough from me tonight so I won't bore you with anything else um we do have an executive session this evening for the purposes of appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of a specific employee of a public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against the employee of the public body or against a legal counselor for the public body to determine its validity pursuant to 5Cs 12/ 2c1 Andor student disciplinary cases pursuant to 5 cs202 C9 Andor placement of individual students in a special education program or other matters related to the individual students pursuant to five ilcs 1202 C10 with that would anybody like to make a motion to adjourn into executive session I'll make the motion Thank you Lisa second I'll second do a second roll call please Adam H yes Andre Cory yes CER yes sh yes tyon search yes all right we are going to go into executive session now so we got to unfortunately clear the room there are two potential items for Action as a result of our executive session thank you you are are more welcome to come back and listen to those e e e all right we are back in Open Session it's 10:44 pm. thank you for rejoining us as a u result of our executive session we have three motions on the table and I'll go ahead and make the first one I make a motion to approve the transitional contract for Dr gainy to become our next Super intendent for the 26 27 school year would every like to second that I'll second thank you Andre can you roll call please Adam hkin yes Andre Corey yes Greg Meyer absolutely L say Schumacher yes Tyson search yes all right the next one I make a motion to approve the administrative raises as presented do I hear a second I'll second Thank you Lisa roll call please Andre Cory yes Greg Meyer yes Lisa schoemer yes Tyson search yes Adam hin yes all right next I make a motion to approve the non-union non-certified raises as presented I'll second thank you Adam second roll call please Greg Meyer yes Lisa Schumacher yes tyon search yes Adam hin yes Andre Cory yes perfect motion carries anly all right now would like to officially welcome Dr gy as our future superintendent to replace our most excellent superintendent Dr thank you very much so thank you all very much made a really really good choice so welcome board and we said the eagle has landed so yes yes officially officially fact right that's right all right perfect any other new business no here know like to make a motion to adjourn I'll make that motion thank Adam second I'll second all in favor I all right that concludes our meeting at 10:46 p.m.

My computer's not open. That's okay. I would like to introduce an outstanding eighth grader at Middle School North, Mr. Cameron Trice, and he's going to lead us in saying the pledge of allegiance.

So I want to congratulate Cameron All right. And then I'd like um Melissa Wilson to come up. Melissa Wilson uh is our secretary to the assistant principal and our building receptionist. And um she just has such a warm and welcoming uh demeanor. and she has created just an outstanding um you know front office where everyone feels welcome and um is just a joy to have around. I've even had parents tell me that they now come into Middle School North um just to get some Melissa Wilson therapy um because she's just so kind and warm and and has been uh just excellent at um efficiency and just improving all things. And so we're really proud of her and she was actually just named our um staff member of the year officially from Middle School North. And so I'm proud to present Melissa and then Amy Franklin.

Oh, here here. Here. Thank you. If you could join us for the pledge of allegiance, please. To the flag of the United States of America and to the for it stands. One nation, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Well, hello to our two student representatives who will kick us off with some news we can probably use. Go ahead. Lots of news. All right. Good evening, everyone, and happy first day of spring. I hope I hope you've all been enjoying the warm weather because things are really starting to heat up at CHS this spring. Our peer health educators unified sports basketball tournament last Wednesday was a resounding success for everyone involved. I lost my spot. There we go. Players from each school had a great time with all the activities and Chesher High's volunteers had a blast helping run the event. News 8 even came to cover the action.

And congrats to Joseph Grineer for finishing for winning the Connecticut Intercolastic Ski League State Open. Turning our attention back to the classroom, juniors are getting ready for some standardized tests in the coming month. The class of 2026 will be taking the SAT in school on Thursday, April 3rd, and they'll have the NGSS assessment the following Tuesday, April 8th. We we know they'll do great. Now, many of you have seen the two of us walking around school at around 7 p.m. and asked why the heck we were at school so late. Um, many activities at our school run long after the last bell. And those students dedication has certainly paid off. For instance, I just came from robotics and I'm going back there after this. I'm probably going to be there until 10 p.m. And it paid off because we recently finished fourth at our regional competition in Waterberry.

Mr. Eckie here. Mr. Grippa here. M here Rosenberg Mr. White. Thank you. Uh let's all stand for the pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. So, I'm excited to uh see what we have for hands-on science instruction at the elementary level. And I will turn it over to Miss Salano. Well, thank you, Miss Herrian. Super excited to showcase our two science teacher coaches who because of approval through the board of education budget last year, we were able to hire both Stephanie Lopez Smith and Stephanie Conungle. We are very excited to have them talk to you tonight about the program that they are running with fourth and fifth grade students across the district. um with your help and with the help of the Cheshire Ed Foundation, they started this year off with robotics instruction with robots for all of our students to use and they have delved into in the second semester aggracience.

And it focuses on uh the importance of land in agriculture. So we found this little quote that really resonated with us. Education is not about the learning of facts but the training of the mind to think. And this is really our our motto for kids is it's it's about how we can change how they're thinking in order to change how they're learning. All right. So when we were approached with robotics this year, we really wanted to make it um an engineering problem. We really thought about STEM. So we had to pose this scenario to students that would then lead into uh a problem that they were solving. So the scenario is to have a robot who's working at the school to move items that are too heavy and that it would be just too time consuming for uh teachers and administration maybe maintenance. It's just all a lot of work.

For people participating remotely, please remain muted and video disabled until shortly before it is your turn to testify. When I call your name, unmute yourself and your time will begin. After your minute is completed, staff will mute you so that we can move this hearing along in an orderly and efficient manner. Okay. Our only item on this agenda is House Bill 1088HD1 relating to school impact fees which exempts housing developed by the Department of Hawaiian Homelands from school impact fees. [Music] testify superintendent. [Music] Good afternoon, chairs, vice chairs, members of the committee. Ducha, deputy superintendent with the department of education. The department stands on its written testimony provide and provide providing comments on this measure. The department is open to working with the legislature and the department of homes and is open to eliminating the construction cost impact fee for DHL. probably as as well as any other government affordable housing developer.

and we submitted testimony in support of this measure and we'll stand on that testimony and available for any questions. Thank you members. Questions? Partner with Hawaiian Homelands. Good afternoon chairs, vice chair, members of the committees, Katie Lambert. On behalf of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands, we'll stand on our written testimony and strong support. We do want to note that our testimony makes reference and attaches the 10th um emergency proclamation for affordable housing. Um we're actually in the 11th proclamation, but the exemption that exists there for school impact fees for DHHL is still in the 11th. Um we also want to make note that um we um have no objection. We did receive uh uh prehering notice from the Wahhouli Hawaiian Homestead Association about um their proposed amendment and we have no objection to that. Thank you and available for questions. Thank you. Tom Yamamaica, Tax Foundation of Hawaii.

So, uh I'm told that Julie Bella is first. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, Julie. Be sure you speak up, Julie. Be sure you speak up into the mic. Okay. Okay. I don't want to overkill everybody. How trust me, you won't overkill me. Just as you won't with that mic. Well, once I get animated and going, it gets louder and louder. Um, so proud to introduce our instructional lead team. Um, they are here and watching. If they're not here, they are watching. But uh this our main ILT team, our instructional leadership team includes myself, my outstanding assistant principal, Miss Sharp, and our amazing instructional coach, Miss Sodto. So, just want to get started. Uh we it stops and starts, I always say, with the standards, but namely it starts and stops with the students. And so, here's some pictures of our students collaborating and in their academic teams.

They're defending their answers. They're respectfully disagreeing. Students are expanding and they're adjusting their thinking as needed. Um so we're excited to see their progress. Um this is a summary view of our implement implementation dashboard and you can see here that we have on our look and learns um and then our implement and our measure. So the learn part on the bottom is just the videos. I think that's um actually my numbers are a little different on mine. I had 40% so I'm kind of wondering about that. Um yeah, so that's the amount of student of teachers watching the videos to help improve their implementation and then this the um implement is the look and learns done by Miss Sodto and then the measure is what we're doing on our rigger walks with Miss Sharp and myself and we try to triangulate and calibrate that information um into trends and into next steps for feedback for teachers with resources resources and tools to keep furthering the effort.

However, this is March Madness and we can't go to the dance without a Cinderella. And for that, I have the science labs. I think the students are going to have a surprise for us. Grass for the cafeteria down here in the likes, the number three seed. That line is getting out of control anymore. The kids just love them. We can see them go on a run. Remember, in March, it's not always the best team that wins. It's the team that gets hot and goes on a roll. Yeah. We just don't know what's going to happen. That's why they call it March Madness. [Music] Let's go ahead and start in the learning conference. Upper left, upper left hand corner, the learning bracket. We got the 1C, the students, the student body. They're here every day to learn, bring the energy. They're facing off against the auditorium.

Thomas Carrera. I looked at all this. The only thing speaking to me is homecoming. You want to start the likes region? We got our number one seed, the homecoming against our number four seed. Another popular thing with students and teachers. Maybe, maybe not. But you asking are the test retakes. So, we got our homecoming going against test retakes. I think it's going to be homecoming. Homecoming. Homecoming. Big core memories being built. Not hard to see why that would be advancing into our tournament. Absolutely. Again, number one seed for a reason. All right, Wildcats. I'm here with Sean Blickan. So in our first round match up, we got our two seat prom just around the corner. Less than two months. Tickets go on sale Tuesday, folks. Don't forget or wraps from the cafeteria. Do you ever get a wrap from the cafeteria? Um I have, but it's pretty expensive getting all day.

the sun is overhead which makes it which makes the shadow shorter and then the sun sets in the west at 5:00 p.m. depending on the time of day the sun this the shadow will be about as long as the 7 a.m.

thank you all very much sir for

I pledge allegiance to the To flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all Mr. President, I move we adopt the agenda as presented. Next, I'll turn it over for the middle of the day. So, I would like to uh start with our student Cameron Trice and remember this guy. Remember his name because he's going places. So, um I'm honored to recognize Cameron today as our in our student spotlight. Uh his op optimism and joy for life are truly contagious. uh making a posit he's making a positive impact on both his peers and his teachers. He leads by example. Um striving for greatness in both academics and athletics. Um he's just he always has a smile um he his kindness, his resilience, his ability to lift others up um just make him an exceptional student and a perfect choice for this recognition.

So tonight I'm thrilled to recognize Amy Franklin in our teacher spotlight. Amy's a true team player and um she consistently goes above and beyond to support her colleagues and her students. Um her dedication to creating engaging, resourceful, and meaningful learning experiences is truly inspiring. In fact, um I did a formal observation in her class a few weeks ago and I've been a principal for over two decades and it might have been as close to a perfect lesson that I've ever observed. Um just does a fantastic job. Again, she's kind, she's professional, um she has great commitment, and she's definitely a leader at Middle School North. Thank you, Amy. What's your favorite lunch? You know what you want to do after? Still early. You don't have to Remember, it's still math. So, next on the agenda is public comments. question. Hearing no comments or questions. Do I have a motion?

This was far from our only newsworthy event from our sports though. Our cheerleading team finished as the CIA Class L runners up which is the best performance from our cheerleading team in our school's history. We can't wait to see how they do at the New England Championship this Saturday. Our fencing team also got in on the record setting action this year with our men's EPA team once again finishing as state champs and our women's saber team setting a school record with a third place finish. Our hockey team has joined the success streak by beating AMD in the CIA division division 2 semi-finals this past Tuesday, March 18th. We wish them the best of luck as they advance to the as they advance to the finals on Saturday. We've also got some individual shout outs for two exceptional athletes performance this winter season. Congrats to Dan Irish for finishing seventh at the New England Championship Track Meet.

and we're expected to keep to compete at the district championship in Springfield, Massachusetts in a couple weeks. A long way from Massachusetts though lies an isolated town called Bumont. CHS Drama's cast and crew of Foot Loose has been working tirelessly to bring Bowmont to our Johnny Thorp auditorium where I've been living for the last few weeks on March 27th, 28th, and 29th at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are on sale and can be purchased at the door. So come and enjoy a trip back to the 80s. Also held in the John H. Thorp auditorium will be our annual unified theater show on April 4th at 7 p.m. We would love to see all you there to support our unified friends as they shine on stage. This has always been the most exciting part of the year at CHS and this year promises to be no different. We can't wait to see what else our students accomplish from all corners of the school.

So I am going to turn it over to both of these wonderful women to bring you through what this this year has been like for our fourth and fifth graders. Hi. Hi everyone. Uh welcome to our robotics and agriculture debrief. Um, it's so wonderful to see everyone tonight. Um, I am Oh, I hope it doesn't go too far. I'm Stephanie Lopez Smith, as Marlene said. Um, this is my first year with Cheshire and it's great to see everyone. And I'm Stephanie Concus and this is also my first year with Cheshure. And uh, thank you for pushing up the meeting for me. So, uh, we'd like to walk you through just a little bit of our STEM lesson focus over the course of the year. In the fall, we implemented a robotics program with all fourth and fifth grade students across the district. And our aggracience program started in February and is continuing through April.

So to save time, the students were asked right, how do we design a prototype of this two- wheeled robot that can carry uh material all around the campus, possibly even outside, right? That was going to travel on different terrains, um navigate different obstacles, and be user friendly for both teachers and staff. So the scenario was set. Here's our problem. The engineering problem allows students to navigate the process of engineering, right? And it's through this process again that they're able to define and focus on their question every day, identify the problem, and work together to walk through the brainstorming, the prototyping, the testing, and all the collaboration that comes into play when you're trying to solve for an engineer problem, right? Um, so we'd like to introduce you to a robot that fourth and fifth graders uh not only learned how to program but also had to build.

But would we like to keep the requirement for the land dedication for future public school sites should any development produce more students that would exceed the capacity of the existing schools in area. Thank you. Thank you Ricky Fujitani, executive director SFA. Aloha Kenyon Tam testifying for Ricky Fujitani from the school facilities authority.

Good afternoon, chairs, vice chairs, committee members. Tom Yamamaica from Tax Foundation of Hawaii. Um the uh school impact fee program has had some difficulties. Uh one of which is that uh because of the current restrictions on the fund or and and the and I'm talking about not only the school impact fee fee program but its predecessor uh none of the money has been spent. So we have about 29 million currently doing nothing uh in this program. So, um, we kind of raised the question and and, uh, not only that, but, um, the auditor in report number 19-13, speak up, please. It's hard to hear. Okay. I'm very sorry. We also note that the state auditor in report number 19-13 uh has called attention to several problems regarding the administration of the school impact fees and has raised constitutional concerns. Uh and for that reason we think it may be a better idea to just get rid of this program entirely.

You can see that it's always incorporating all the literacy skills, reading, writing, listening, and speaking. And there's always a lot of text and a lot of evidence and elaboration, text in hand. There's a example of our students teaming using the summary thinking mat structure of thinking on the left and on the right the connecting new learning thinking. You'll see a lot of evidence of task sheets and tools and agree disagree cards and roll cards out there and just uh heavy on the text. Um so this is just another example of student teaming. I do not think our videos actually came out. So they didn't. But uh just between year 1 and year two, you can really hear a lot more back and forth between the conversations with the kids and a lot of, you know, show me, prove it. They're going back into the text.

This is uh Sodto's look and learn data and we're proud to say that she's uh really done an excellent job in moving teachers across the progressions from 101 2011 to 301. We don't have any teachers anymore in 101. And uh we have uh latest up here seven out of Oh, I could look at my notes. I forgot to do that. and they're all filled out so nicely. Well, I could just do I don't seven out of 16 core teachers have progressed into 301. We're really excited about that. We're just at the tip of the edge of 301 where we're really getting into that before, during, and after the task expanded thinking, self-checking and cross-checking, student evidence against success criteria. So now it's all about evidence. before when we first started that it was about is very um concrete kinds of things you know do you have your roll cards out do you have a map out are you engaged in a thinking structure now it's like okay does your learning target align with your success criteria align with your task align with your evidence let me see that evidence and let's ensure that students have made that progress towards the learning target so um This is our rigger walk summary data.

An inanimate object if you will, but you know, a historic place here in the building. So many memories. So memories being built, amazing performances by the drama program. And did you know back in the ' 50s that served as the gym floor? I did not know that. That's you learn something new every day here on Friday funday. So students against the auditorium, the one versus the four. I think as a member of the student body, I would be letting everyone else down, all 2,000 of us, if I didn't put the students ahead. All right, advance them. Advance them in the brackets here. We're going to move the students over. They're going to the lead eight, folks. No surprises there. We have a strong student body. They show up every day. Hey, they learned. They're the number one seed in that bracket for a reason. All right, Wildcats, who am I here with?

They're not cheap. You can't get them every day. More of a special treat. Maybe a cheat day, you know. But they got they got a spinach wrap, they got flour wrap, maybe a sundried tomato wrap. You can choose your own topping. So I mean custom made wraps. I've been anticipating prom for freshman and sophomore year. So, honestly, I'm thinking prom's going to go on. I think prom. Prom's going to move on. Something that you're going to remember the rest of your life. Thanks, Sean. All right, Wildcats. I'm here with Tio. Tio, what year school are you? Freshman. Freshman. All right. So, we still have some first round matchups in here. We haven't touched the leading bracket or the living bracket yet. Or you can go with that learning bracket. I'm going to do leading. Leading. All right. We got number one seed, the teachers. You know, we're here leading every day.

one the sun is not moving the Earth is just orbiting I'm going to explain how this model um helps us with science so um this project helps us with science because the Earth rotation is helping the Sun move throughout the day which is creating the lengths of the Shadows at different times like Marina said it starts in the East and sets in the west this is helping us show a more efficient way of it us seeing the shadows in the time so and then okay you can move it that's all so each Friday sorry each Friday or this week it was Thursday the last day of the week uh we have build days and it started with um just have fun build get to know the motor because as you can see here it took you a little bit of getting to know your motor and getting to know the buttons so the kiddos took notes and they really explored and and um learned what to do and now we're applying it to the content I would say one class per period is all it took for you to get to know how to code and so 3 weeks now we've done the actual content connection um this was the sun rising in the East setting in the west showing the length of Shadows changing throughout the day and giving that Hands-On authentic modeling because we can't obviously bring the sun into the classroom right um this one is showing the layers of the atmosphere starting with closest to the earth and moving on up and then the students supported this with popsicle sticks in paper and they learned different facts about the layers of the atmosphere so this model had to have some sort of moving component and so this group not this group but another one decided to show a meteorite burning up in the mes mesosphere so that's their moving element here so us being a part of this field research we can turn both of these projects into those learning mats that can become used um by more and more classrooms you guys really great I'll collect those once Miss done is done and something I forgot to say right before they started but it kind of goes along with what what they're sharing is um we got final approval last night um from the city of BM to have our PTA funded stargazing night for fifth grade so that is going to be April 11th that's the flyer that you guys got out here so we're excited to have that funded and we don't have to write um a grant for that anymore so I tell the board that if you've not gone to the stargazing night before you you really just need to go and for the families of the um the fifth graders it is it just it's impressive and it's awesome if you haven't done it before it's it's I mean the amount of work the fifth grade team has with all the little stations and stuff and you just get to have and they've got so many telescopes and just it's it's an outstanding night and I'm going to stop peeking out you guys go okay so next Annie D is here with some of her cast members from Matilda Jr and um she's going to share and the students are going to share how this program has been so positive for them and for our school and um I just want to say I attended this Sunday afternoon production and it was sold out it was standing around so we brought in some extra chairs and his D gave up her chair to someone else in the back it was it was a packed house so it was a really awesome production so I'll let you share more about that thank you so much um we do have some additional photos here um taken by our photographer also featuring a prop that I've been holding um so brillan and Leah are going to pass out some scripts while I talk about how our production started these are yours to keep they were extras that we had purchased with the rights um for this production through Music Theater International Matilda Jr is a condensed version of the Broadway production of the same name and it tells R doll's Timeless story of Matilda um but this is set in an educational settings so these Junior eyes versions are able to have glossies um of both the text within the story that the characters and actors will be saying as well as theater technical terms such as blocking choreography stage left versus stage right so it really helps students with that introduction into theater by condensing down what would be a 2 and 1/ half hour production to about 60 minutes we started in December shortly after Thanksgiving break with auditions and then coming back from all those snow days in January we started our rehearsals and performed Valentine's Day weekend so we only had about five or so weeks before performances started in total we had 80 middle schoolers performing on the CMS stage and we had an additional 25 students ranging from fifth grade up backstage in the booth helping with costumes painting everything so students were truly at the helm and I am simply organizing the chaos it seems um we have students who help with all of the choreography who help run the lights the sound the spotlight all the microphones who help keep backstage running smoothly during performances um and who help make sure that our middle school students have a successful show as well those students are currently rehearsing their own production um in addition to working on the Matilda Junior show so they take on a great level of responsibility at the high school level so that students like brillan and Leah with me tonight can have a very successful and enjoyable performance um in total that brings us to about 105 students participating in this production um many of whom about 40 or so this was their first ever production um to Performance so I'm very excited and I'm very proud of them and everything that they did brillan year as a sixth grade student she was in susal with me last year in my first year within this position as drama sponsor and I've invited her here to talk about how she feels that she's grown since being in the drama club on up yep uh theaters has helped me be a better student by learning how to be a good performer and helped me be more confident in myself drama club has also helped me be more Cooperative focused social and respons responsible my memorization skills have also improved in the past [Applause] year additionally with Productions such as Matilda we need some specialty props um this is the fake Amanda if you know the story of Matilda Amanda thrip is thrown by pigtails which is seen in the top left picture on the board however I am not going to throw a student by the pigtails so a local props Artisan his name is Philip we he made this out of complete foam down to the shoes so the wig is glued and sewn into a foam head that he painted himself to make it look like ears eyes eyebrows everything um it has gotten a little scuffed as it hit the floor a few times um but he took the costume pieces and attached them to the body um and then he also made the shoes from foam so in case it were to ever not fly appropriately when it was released and accidentally bump into someone it wouldn't truly hurt them so everything that you see here is all foam with some Thin wire in the shoulders and arms to help give it some structure additionally Leah and brillin can you help me again please they're going to pass out some foam pieces of cake that I will be collecting when we are done here um these foam pieces of cake were also made by the same um props Artisan here in Columbia they were used in a um song called Bruce in which Bruce long bottom needs to eat a chocolate cake from um trench bow and you as you feel it you can squeeze it from the top down so that he could pretend to eat it um and then shove it into a laundry basket that we had um drilled into the table and hid with a tablecloth which was truly a bed sheet um so we were able to um acquire these two props through the profits that we make from concessions and ticket sales um all in all these two items along with his labor cost us approximately $1,000 which may seem like a lot for some foam but for the time that it takes to build these he dedicated about 3 and a half weeks to making these come together and come to life for us um and he lives here in Colombia he is a father of a student who attends IC but he's excited for the partnership that we've now built as some specialty props and those cakes are also covered on the sides with a plastic a liquid plastic coating so that our Bruce could even put chocolate pudding on his face to look like the icing had gone onto his face so these cakes and this prop will last us for years to come um Leah here was our Miss warmwood Matilda's mother you can see her in the bottom photo bottom left photo um Matilda is or Leah excuse me sorry is an eighth grade student um she has been in Productions since she was in fifth grade which is before my time in this role so she has had a number of directors um lead her through the drama production and I've asked her here as well to give her thoughts and views on being a part of the drama production as she leaves the middle school and goes off to the high school now one thing I love about drama club is the sense of belonging and inclusion I feel while participating in various drama club rehearsals and performances there is always a place or rule for everyone and I have never never felt excluded or lonely I also really love to see how the show comes together by the end of the play season I always feel nervous before going out on stage before a real performance in front of an audience but it is so worth it when I get to see my fellow castmates and friends so happy up on that stage after watching everyone work so hard during the rehearsals and then getting to see the end result of everyone performing by the end of the season that's one of my favorite parts of being in drama drama club it is truly so much fun thank you we are so thankful for the drama Productions that we are able to put on with your support um and I look forward to continuing our Productions we have like I said our final production of the drama Club season for the high school will be coming up at the beginning of April and then we are already looking at season selection for next year for the high school and middle school um to bring even more fun drama club performances to the stage and especially as we complete the the construction over at the high school um hoping to make sure that our drama club stays as prominent and as successful as it has been in these past few years thank you so much thank [Applause] you we love what you've done the last few years with the with the drama program I mean and and I look forward to seeing next year once the the the auditorium is up and everything's as an Alum it's been great to come back and be in this role now too was exciting to know that these group of people are going to actually be in the new Auditorium yes it is so [Applause] exciting mine didn't work get I was G to let you play with mine got tell you guys also every time you bring in a group of students I am so impressed with not only the students the teachers and the offerings here it's really really great to see so thank you for we had to narrow it down to just these two this time and put on the back burner so it's good to have a lot of choices a good problem to have having the having the kids come in and present every month has been a a nice addition so enjoy that yeah very impressed all right we'll move on to our assistant superintendent report Dr geny to go after we might need to start rearranging I know uh so many amazing things are going on um with that being said we have our district shoutouts I would like to start with Eagle View which is Michelle Gillum our school psychologist Michelle is a fantastic support for the students and staff in our district as one of our District's two School psychologists she supports both Eagle View and Park View Michelle does it all she coordinates and executes IEP evaluation assessments she writes hundreds of pages of evaluation reports and IEPs annually she educates and supports families throughout the IEP process she collaboratively problem solves with school teams in both sore and tier 2 and she steps up whenever and however she can we are lucky to have Michelle to support us all here in Columbia a big shout out to Michelle from at Eagle View then we have Park View um Mrs overfell I always say that um wrong the art teacher a huge shout out to Mrs o our amazing elementary school art teacher her positivity and infectious smile light up the classroom every single day her passion for art is truly inspiring she encourages all of her students to explore their creativity and do their very best Mrs o goes above and beyond dedicating countless hours to making the art show at the park viiew open house an unforgettable experience for everyone we're so lucky to have a teacher who puts so much heart into everything she does thank you Mrs o for all that you do at the middle school we have Mrs Henning she is our new behavior interventionist and she deserves a shout out as well I want to give a huge shout out to Mrs Henning for her incredible dedication and flexibility in stepping into a challenging role during a critical time of need while serving as our district behavior interventionist Mrs Henning selflessly took on the responsibilities of the crosscat teacher when the regular teacher was unable to be in attendance she has not only navigated the unique needs of our crosscat students par professionals and Ever Changing schedules but she has done it with Grace and ease thanks to her expertise and the thoughtful interventions and schedules she has implemented the classroom is thriving Mrs Henning's unwavering commitment to our students and staff is truly remarkable and we are Beyond grateful for her she is a true godson shout out to Mrs hen and at our high school we have a shout out to Mr Christian Avis Rouse he added the girls basketball games to the pep fan schedule this year and that was a huge addition for a music program he has his band cleaning the bleachers after games which helps make our school sparkle and shine and just finished the basketball season bringing great energy to all home games big shout out to to Mr Christian AIS Rouse curriculum um in resources I am very happy to announce that social studies um does have a preview for the board and community that is set up in the back um behind Dr Grody and Mr Meyer um and they are set up by grade levels to which I will bring a recommendation officially to the board next month but I thought it was important to have it on display um so everybody could view it if they wanted to view it our social studies committees um have been meeting since early in the fall um and and it has been a good journey um we did not have many social studies programs to choose from you will notice that we did grade level bands and really that is for what is best for students needs so two through five is McGraw Hill IMPACT program in the center is a TCI program for grades 6 through 8 the standards are the same it's just a different type of program to fit the needs of those students in that grade level band on the far side you have McGraw Hill again which is best for our high school students because they all are doing coursework and in order to do coursework we need some specific resources and mcra Hill was the best match for that as well um I just asked that if you want to take a handout you only take handouts that have the QR codes um because the other ones are just single copies I would prefer those be looked at in here just because I don't have more than one copy but please anybody in the room board members I will probably send something out to the community it will be open um if somebody comes during the day I will try to be tracked down so I can come in and answer any additional questions but we are really excited um it was it was a navigation process to do it grades 2 through 12 but we did it and I'm excited um we are uh preliminary stages of an Ela grades K through 8 curriculum um what we have done so far is we sent out a teacher survey to all okay through eight teachers to get their feedback on what's going well what they would like to see um I'm getting my building administrators in on the instructional process so myself and building principles have been going into e classrooms um to see the resources they're using and see the Kids In Action um I meet with my admin team tomorrow to go over the survey results and then we will continue with our teacher leader teams hopefully we will have more news as the months progress as far as an Ela program super excited to share our first college career pathway um the construction pathway has been improved it is state official um so why I'm so excited so many reasons I'm excited when we all sat down at the high school to start talking about this we all kind of looked at each other like we don't know what to do and I was like I don't know either but we're going to figure it out um and through a lot of teamwork we did so the construction pathway is going to be off the ground um and is state official um I did meet with our a teachers to talk start talking about a second pathway for the next year so a lot of good things happening there excited Europe trip I wanted to provide you an update uh Mr post and I are still in communication the student meeting that they had on March 5th 84 students we were worried he wouldn't get 20 um but 84 showed up that was just to get the general information um but then they had the parent meeting and there were smaller numbers so we are in conversation he's been keeping me up to date on everything just to get my thoughts and then he gives me his because he's done it before we're thinking because right now A 2026 trip will be the same year as Spanish and German so possibly offering a backto back that way the Europe trip then is on an alternating year and maybe some of the students that want to go this 2026 would want to wait for more time um for 2027 so I will continue to give you updates on that but I just wanted to provide where we are and there was definitely interest so we're happy we we moved forward and the only other thing that I wanted to share is we are currently working with our district in building leadership on how to collaborate so we have a collaboration initiative um each one of our school Improvement plans has a collaboration piece so we have um some really great professional development coming up for the district and building leadership involving collaboration how do we do it at at the district level how do we do it at the building level and how do we do it um at with our teachers so all of that is coming up August 4th and 5th and October 6th and 7th good things ahead we're excited thank you Dr yeah um I get to follow that after she followed the students this is the boring stuff um I did get a check as you guys are well aware we had a bookkeeper that um left left us and when we transferred our systems over we found out there were some Shenanigans she has pled guilty our insurance company did give us this was when we originally found it $250,000 in restitution of the money that we could prove was stolen from us um she did plead guilty she is currently incarcerated and we received a $60,000 check and I just want you to be aware we have to turn that back over to Travelers so that's money in money out so her restitution has been paid and it is um being forwarded to the insurance company that was that made us whole on our loss um next month uh an Noble will be here she's going she's the uh young lady from steel that does our bond sales we're going to be talking about bonds um it looks like this will be our last sale of bonds because Arbitrage is no longer on the table and so instead of earning that extra interest it's better to just sell all of them at one time you've got to pay off your bonds within 3 years and our construction project would be able to use those funds so um next month we will start our last sale of bonds um for those of you that aren't aware we had a storm last week it was kind of windy uh the fence around our our our construction site actually got blown down but they got it up within a couple of days so I was happy to see that but more importantly um if you haven't been to the back of Eagle View there is a sun shade that is over all of the playground equipment if you it's a huge sun shade that got installed Andy wilbacher who's a local guy um he installed it and the next day I was out at Eagle View thinking oh my God what am I going to see cuz I mean it's just one big kite type it stood it's standing it's there it did not budge and I went I will be filing a claim with our greenhouse because the hail did not act as kindly toward the greenhouse but our sun shade stood so I was happy about that um and then finally we'll we will have executive session there will be um some action items after if you agree so um that said that's the superintendent report for this month sounds good thank you very much move on to our Island for Action the first one is the approval of the 2025 26 student fees yeah and there's just minor changes Park View planner went from 3 to 4 middle school planner went from 3 to 5 and uh a curriculum material fee in third and fourth grade was added to support the OG program it's just easier to have a fee that gets you the same cards instead of having families go out and try and get the right index cards and so that's an OG fee which is um Orton Gillingham yes okay um right now we do not have the information regarding lunches school lunches but I've been here for 5 years and we've never had to change our price on school lunches so I don't assume we will again so those would be have no changes um if we do end up having to change those I will bring you an addendum but at this point in time Administration recommends the board approves the 2526 student fees as presented perfect any questions from the board comments hearing none may you like to make a motion to approve the student fees I'll make the motion Thank you Lisa a second I'll second Adam seconds roll call please Adam hkin yes Andrea Cory yes Greg Meyer yes Lisa Schumacher yes Tyson Serge yes perfect our next item is the approval for the non- Reemployment of non-tenured teachers yeah and this is we we added financial literacy a while ago and we have a uh a pair professional that also works as an aid or as in that classroom and so what we're doing is we're moving away from that as the the elective we're moving towards stem financial literacy will be folded into either math or social studies so we'll still be hitting those standards but um middle schoolers to get a true love of financial literacy at that level is just it doesn't make its own course and so we're going to move to stem um and so the young lady is a great teacher she did a fine job but this is just a a change of program and so Administration recommends the board approve the non- Reemployment of the non- teacher as presented and so that I'm clear she will be full-time as a pair of professional with us okay so she so she's just not going to have the teaching part anymore to lose a good teacher yeah all right any questions comments concerns then may like to make a motion to approve the non- Reemployment of the non-tenure teacher I'll make the motion thank you Tyson second I'll second thank you Andrea roll call please yes Craig Meer yes Sher yes Tyson sear yes Adam hkin yes all right item C is the approval of a non-tenure teachers yeah this is that yearly task um Everybody kind of moves up if they if they've worked enough days to earn a year of credit uh Administration recommends the board approve the non-tenured teachers as presented and I will note that Mr Avis Rouse Mrs rodenberg and Mrs vulmer have moved to being obtaining tenure in this this year you get the four years and it's always a nice mile marker it doesn't really change anything other than you have tenure so well done but you can't be thrown in option b anymore so H they can't be put in option b anymore right any questions comments maybody like to make a motion to approve the non-tenure teachers I'll make the motion go ahead Tyson I'll second you all right Tyson made a motion second Lisa roll call please Craig Meyer yes Lisa Shoemaker yes Tyson search yes Adam hkin yes Andre Cory yes all right next item is the approval for the I HSA membership for 2526 Illinois High School Athletic Association um we recommend that we stay with the ihsa as most public schools in Illinois do Administration recommends that the board approve the membership and as always the there are no fees that go with that they they wave them because they make the money in their postseason Play Perfect all right questions comments concerns he anybody like to make a motion to approve the ihsa membership for 2526 I get two at once and then nobody I'll make the mention thank you Adam second I'll second T seconds uh no money so we just do it a r or a Voice vote all in favor I any opposed exensions right car anly next is the approval of to amend the 2425 school calendar yeah we've used all of our emergency days plus sum um the plus sums do not need to be made up those are called active God days in the Illinois State system uh our last day will be May 28th but Administration recommends that the board approve the 2425 final calendar as presented and we can submit it to the state and be done with that yearly task perfect questions on the school calendar so a school continuing till the 28th of May is graduation still on the was it the six 18th yes and we set the graduation and then don't change that because people have vacations and travel plans that they make to come into town and whatnot so so then one of the finals week for the high school will be the week of the 19th or prior to graduation uh the seniors will have their finals prior to graduation and then the other ones would move accordingly any other questions me like to make a motion to approve the amended school calendar I'll make a motion thank you Andrew second I'll second all right all in favor I any opposed exensions all right next item is the approval for the scoreboard Marquee fiber and power bid yeah yeah and so we engaged with digital scoreboards to get new video scoreboards for our gymnasium and for the outside um Lowry gave us the quotes and they did the electrical work and I believe that the scoreboards are getting installed either this week or next week but it's going to be sometime soon for the inside the outside we needed to get the fiber and the power to the scoreboard from the um Press Box with that we asked for bids because the quote there was was was more we had three companies put in um and the ADL Communications is the company that was the lowest bid they came in at 83500 and um they actually offered a $55,000 deduct that their base bid of 835 was the lowest bid amongst all of it but then they also said that we could do we could take $5,000 off of this if we saw cut a little bit instead of bringing the wires overhead into the into the um concession stand where the power is coming from the Middle School it's going into the concession stand then to the um the scoreboard and then the fiber to connect is going up to the the Press Box long story short instead of having the wires go overhead they're going to go underneath and then cut a little hole and and replace the the stamped concrete um Mrs Pollock and Kurt Steve both agree that that would be um nice it would be good it keeps then we won't have wires hitting it and everything and it's a $5,000 deduct so uh I would recommend that the board approve the ADL Communications bid for $78,500 to get fiber and power to the new scoreboard for the digital scoreboards with the exception of alternate two yeah we're not going to do alternate two what when they're doing is they're going to add a box alternate two with is looking at possibly getting fiber to the greenhouse I think it was alternate one it but they that was alternate one yeah yeah so we're going to do alternate 2 we are going to do alterate deduct but we're not doing alternate one which would get fiber to the greenhouse we're going to look at possibly Wi-Fi and if Wi-Fi doesn't work um this bid does have a a junction box and so you can do the fiber later to the greenhouse should you want came anything you want to add perfect thank you for putting all this together for us right comments questions concerns here n would ibody like to make a motion to approve the scoreboard Marquee fiber and power bid as presented without alternative one and with alternative two I'll make the motion thank you Adam second I'll second thank you Tyson roll call please Adam hkin yes Andre Cory yes Greg Meer yes Mr shemer yes yes all right next one's a big the approval of phase two phase two bids is the um the portion of the high school that has uh the gymnasium attached to the backside uh phase two will begin sometime after August 14th when they give me access to the front of the building so the new the current temporary entrance will no longer be the temporary entrance that will be where the new construction of the gym is happening um and we're going to have the new entrance our new entrance will be going into the new office in August so um we went out to bid we had all the bids and I've got um the base bid packages it's going to be total of 10 milli2 55,56 and that 58 I got it written down here as a motion that needs to be read you want to pass that to Mr hempin being on the committee has made the Motions in the past it's been lucky for us because we're coming in on budget I'm going to ask that he make the motion again well Also to clarify we had a meeting a few months ago where we said we were potentially over budget and I clarified that we weren't really over budget we over projections great news is we the actual bids came in 3 million under what we were expecting so we are right back on track and even with inflation everything else we hit the nail on the head so so thanks to the committee for that it's that was a uh major major win for us in the district so we're back on schedule I think or budget budget thank you yes we're back to the right on the original budget exactly got to trust the process right all right any comments concerns questions on phase two would it be like I make a motion on phase two well I was going to make it not on phase two um so just an update on phase one as everyone in the community can see as they're driving by now especially when the fence is down um that's the next you will see that there is a lot of activity going on at the moment uh within the next three weeks we expect all of the what we call Flat concrete work to be done all of the structural steel to be up by mid April and you're starting to see some of the walls being built uh with the metal framing so it's really starting to look like a structure um and over the next few weeks uh borring more crazy wind um because that's one weather event most people don't think about you cannot hang steel when the wind is blowing cranes don't like to operate um safely anyway so um but I also just wanted to thank all of the teachers and students for being patient because we are literally working right outside their windows an occasion um it is a disturbance and it is impactful so um just wanted to thank all of the the the staff and the students at the high school particularly as well as the middle school because it does cause disruption with drop offs and everything else having all the construction going on so a lot of thanks to you guys but also just kind of an update of what you should expect to see in the next few weeks lots of concrete trucks lots of steel workers um you know they're they're trying to get all that foundational work done they're starting to run electrical above grade uh they're roughing some of that in so it's it's really kind of awesome to see um and and really interesting to see it up close as to what they're doing they've got some of the SE they should have finished pouring the steel that's up right now the concrete on the second floor so um it's really moving along quickly and they're doing a lot of great work so we did tour a couple of us did go on site today at our construction update and got to get up close and personal with it so it's really um they're really doing a great job and they're they're paying attention to the detail the concrete looks great um so anyway with that I will move that the board award the phase two bid package as recommended from pecker construction for a total contract of 10,255 52658 c and that the resulting Phase 2 contracts for each subcontractor be assigned by the board immediately upon this award to Pekka construction company pursuant to their a133 agreement between the owner and construction manager as a Constructor with the district thank you well said thank you all right we have a motion do we have a second I'll second thank you Andrea all right roll call please Lisa Sher yes yes Adam hin yes Andre Cory yes Greg yes all right motion carries this is a very very exciting time for Columbia School District that is huge so thank you thank you all right that concludes our items for Action in this section move on to our discussion items which is our facility study I think we got a little bit of a jump start on that thank you Adam I will say though the as Adam said we walked around the stuff and um I was standing over where the band room's going to be and the Steel's not up there yet but you can see where the Steel's going to be and I'm thinking it it doesn't look right it's not like it doesn't look like the right size and then when you go it's just weird how as you walk through it the the studs in the walls without drywall on it it just the size seems to start changing cuz you're you know at first you're thinking now this doesn't look right this is like weird and is this big big enough and then when the walls go up you start going oh okay it starts it's it starts becoming more real or more visual for me so it's fun yeah and just uh you know as Chris alluded walking through it is it does change as as the perspective changes when it's wide open sometimes they look huge and then you put up your Framing and it looks small and then you put up your drywall and then the room looks big again or you know more like what you expected so it is it can be deceiving but um excited to see the orchestra pit is forward um so we will have an orchestra pit in front of our stage I am very excited about that as someone who is a big fan of the Arts I know that's a big deal for the theater folks as well as the band folks and the the audience it's amazing how much difference some live musicians make and add to it a production um and then our theater should sit what is it's over 400 over 400 which again i50 so what we have at the Middle School uh you know it's going to be more than double the seating so um when we have things like Matilda Jr and people are standing room only if we can pack this house to where it's standing room only again then that's great um but just wanted to share that we will have 450 more comfortable seats um also in a theater setting so it'll be the people in the back will have less obstructions uh to see this stage um you can see how tall the stage is going or the the back of house is going to be now um so it'll be awesome to be able to do more things with our props um and with our stage itself and you know more lighting and just a designated space for that type of things many of us are very very excited about that so um so yeah that's I think that's where we're at and storage for foam cakes all right anything else exciting times for the for the district so all right let's move on to individual board member comments and you have anything they want to add this evening last month I had asked about reading the couple articles in the journal about student board members but can we just table that to next month and then then I'll probably need to meet just with Dr gy and Dr Grody to kind of discuss it a little bit so we can put it on and as an agenda item perfect like that idea all right anyone else right board pres prerogative you guys have definitely heard enough from me tonight so I won't bore you with anything else um we do have an executive session this evening for the purposes of appointment employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of a specific employee of a public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against the employee of the public body or against a legal counselor for the public body to determine its validity pursuant to 5Cs 12/ 2c1 Andor student disciplinary cases pursuant to 5 cs202 C9 Andor placement of individual students in a special education program or other matters related to the individual students pursuant to five ilcs 1202 C10 with that would anybody like to make a motion to adjourn into executive session I'll make the motion Thank you Lisa second I'll second do a second roll call please Adam H yes Andre Cory yes CER yes sh yes tyon search yes all right we are going to go into executive session now so we got to unfortunately clear the room there are two potential items for Action as a result of our executive session thank you you are are more welcome to come back and listen to those e e e all right we are back in Open Session it's 10:44 pm. thank you for rejoining us as a u result of our executive session we have three motions on the table and I'll go ahead and make the first one I make a motion to approve the transitional contract for Dr gainy to become our next Super intendent for the 26 27 school year would every like to second that I'll second thank you Andre can you roll call please Adam hkin yes Andre Corey yes Greg Meyer absolutely L say Schumacher yes Tyson search yes all right the next one I make a motion to approve the administrative raises as presented do I hear a second I'll second Thank you Lisa roll call please Andre Cory yes Greg Meyer yes Lisa schoemer yes Tyson search yes Adam hin yes all right next I make a motion to approve the non-union non-certified raises as presented I'll second thank you Adam second roll call please Greg Meyer yes Lisa Schumacher yes tyon search yes Adam hin yes Andre Cory yes perfect motion carries anly all right now would like to officially welcome Dr gy as our future superintendent to replace our most excellent superintendent Dr thank you very much so thank you all very much made a really really good choice so welcome board and we said the eagle has landed so yes yes officially officially fact right that's right all right perfect any other new business no here know like to make a motion to adjourn I'll make that motion thank Adam second I'll second all in favor I all right that concludes our meeting at 10:46 p.m.

So I want to congratulate Cameron All right. And then I'd like um Melissa Wilson to come up. Melissa Wilson uh is our secretary to the assistant principal and our building receptionist. And um she just has such a warm and welcoming uh demeanor. and she has created just an outstanding um you know front office where everyone feels welcome and um is just a joy to have around. I've even had parents tell me that they now come into Middle School North um just to get some Melissa Wilson therapy um because she's just so kind and warm and and has been uh just excellent at um efficiency and just improving all things. And so we're really proud of her and she was actually just named our um staff member of the year officially from Middle School North. And so I'm proud to present Melissa and then Amy Franklin.

Mr. President, I move that we approve the consent agenda as presented. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. All those in favor please by saying I read policy. Thank you Mr. Daniels. Um, tonight is the second reading of the proposed policy revisions. Uh, there's been no change since we presented these last month at at the board meeting and so we're recommending approval of the uh, proposed policy updates as presented uh, last month and this month. Thank you, Dr. Long.

And congrats to Joseph Grineer for finishing for winning the Connecticut Intercolastic Ski League State Open. Turning our attention back to the classroom, juniors are getting ready for some standardized tests in the coming month. The class of 2026 will be taking the SAT in school on Thursday, April 3rd, and they'll have the NGSS assessment the following Tuesday, April 8th. We we know they'll do great. Now, many of you have seen the two of us walking around school at around 7 p.m. and asked why the heck we were at school so late. Um, many activities at our school run long after the last bell. And those students dedication has certainly paid off. For instance, I just came from robotics and I'm going back there after this. I'm probably going to be there until 10 p.m. And it paid off because we recently finished fourth at our regional competition in Waterberry.

Until then, we hope you all have a great night and we'll see you at the next meeting. Great. Thank you. Any comments, questions from members of the board? Dr. I just want to let you know Lydia that I have already purchased my tickets. That's great to hear. Pre- purchase for Okay, that's just one quick clarification for the boys hockey championship. That's actually Sunday at 6:30. Uh it'll be held at uh the rink at Quinnipic. You can buy tickets on goofan.co or if you just Google CIA uh championship hockey tickets, you'll find it. Sunday at 6:30. Well, you just show up and get tickets. No. No, you have to buy tickets online. It's a CIA thing. So, for all of our state, it's going to sell out. It's going to sell out. So, buy your tickets soon basically. Thank you, Dr. Sen. Any other board members?