That's okay. Um, and I think similarly, it's like regardless whenever we have this kind of discussion with someone, that's almost every time that kind of question comes up is who else has done this? Where else has it happened? Um, and so being able to just very quickly turn around be like, "Yep, here it is." Um, we've done a few times where we've like gone out and try to find it and it's like there's there are these things out there but everyone does like not a good job of publicizing the work they do or they publicize it but then it's like in a one-page case study and you're like well that does not give me the information like you know it's like oh cool I need the details I'm going to be designing a you know however many dollar project. Um so I think that's really really useful in terms of you know you've exactly said it.
I'm here tonight not only to thank the members of the CEA for using their voices, but also to say how excited I am to continue the important work of those who have come before me, especially the amazing Lori La Lama. The teachers I walk al work alongside every day are truly incredible, creative, compassionate, and constantly giving of both their time and their own re resources. And that brings me to my concern. I'm deeply afraid of seeing vital programs and essential staff being cut. What's happening in Wayne is unsettling. Our Clifton team is worried and rightfully so. But you, our board, have the power to support one Clifton by voting for at least 4% if not more. Please don't ever doubt the value and dedication of Clifton staff. When you have a chance to give them more tools, more support, more room to shine, please take it.
Yeah, I'll start and then if I miss anything from the business office perspective, um Mr. Yates will jump in. Um, so if you put something out to a referendum or a public question and you ask to raise additional funds in through your tax levy, um, through a referendum, when you do that, you list very specifically like we are going to do this construction project for this amount of money or sometimes it'll be we're going to maintain this position for this amount of money. Um, I had just had a district that had they went out for um they needed new bleachers and like a new media um I guess like the media stand at the bleachers. Um, if those things fail, then in your next year's budget, and I'm not sure how long it goes on for, but you cannot fund those things from your budget because the public has told you that they do not want to fund them.
Are there any questions? questions to the club balances. Thank you, Miss Carlo. Thank you. Moving on with our agenda letter. Sorry. Number six is the barbecq school district school principal reports. Mr. Diaz, presidentia, members of the board. Now, please help me welcome Miss Enriquez to provide her monthly board report. Let's give her a warm applause. Good evening, President Wendia, governing board members, Superintendent Diaz. I have submitted the principal's report in writing. I hope you've had an opportunity to read it. Um, can you go to the next All right. So, our highlights is we did go from I believe it was at 80 87% attendance. We're going back up. We are at 89%. Um, we had a really good community event. The weather was a little iffy, but we've made the choice to move it inside. Um, and we really appreciate everyone's creativity that they brought to the event.
Yeah. And this this is exactly what I was talking with with Chesta and with uh Brian that uh if we could um offer offer or or make aware just just make aware to uh the parents that um that speak Spanish because they may not uh they might not even know that this is an opportunity for their kids to go to an IB elementary school. Yes, and I will tell you that we have um upped our communication on social media and really trying to reach families. Again, if you're a member of the district, you know that it exists. And so we've been working with the communication team and especially on that recent rec recent event um here at ELC we tried to get outreach to families who um if you don't have a student in the district already um communications team worked in making sure that information got out to the community to say even if your um student isn't enrolled in ELC please come and see us and um get ready for we have our kindergarten screening coming up and uh invited them to that event.
I'm not crazy about that out there. No, that's not what we wanted, but No. But I'll tell you what, you know what? They never gave up. Nope. Absolutely not. They to the bitter end. That's the way it should be. Absolutely. Yeah. So, another highlight of the game here, that character called Venture from Norwell. He has to get in close and does this damage where he can burrow underground. He really did, man. He He did. He hurt us, didn't he? Yep, he did. Yeah. Good aim right there. Taking out our healers, which we talked about earlier. And tell you what, that was what that was a lot of fun to watch. Really was. What's up next, Scott? All right, so that game three. So, we're down 2-1. So, right now, game four. Okay. is the Parisio. Oh, it's one of my favorites. Yes. So, it's a hybrid game mode.
They have to go to all those town meetings to be able to present that and be able to do the talking and and dealing with the towns. So and the the families and all that. I do think that aspect of it is important maybe, but not necessarily like the numbers aspect because I don't think you're going to get a superintendent that actually has that numbers experience. This guy, so we've got that. Is it now a two-part question? Do you have that down, Tracy? Yep. Address your experience with regional district budgets if applicable. Yeah. Can I ask a question? Uh, is that appropriate for this? I'm not sure answer a question. Lisa has a question. If we got a superintendent that didn't have a lot of budget experience, would you be able to work with Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my job's to Megan's point, my job's to help deal with budget, and that's I don't I don't see a problem.
I only one more time, please. um strengthen strengthen partnerships with community leaders and organizations to enrich school activities and programs to enhance cultural community perspectives. So if we take um right you got that. Okay. So F you don't have any changes. So that was that was I'm sorry. So on G we'd probably do the same. Ju just one minute thing because I think Joe you were you were hung up on on the enhanced cultural community perspectives. Could we just flip the words cultural and community enhance community cultural perspectives? Well, that's not what I thought you said. I think you said cultural community. Oh, cultural and community perspectives would be the way to be able to do it too. Put it I think that and is and that's I'll take credit. You get that? I got it. Yeah. So, if we go to GP, do we change it short again like we did uh before?
not like we need to write down recommendation, do this thing, but just noting that like that information gap is something that is certainly out there and would certainly be helpful. And I, you know, I I do want to lend credence to exactly what you said of like Midwest is ideal. Um, you know, I I think we like to sit here at times and say, oh, we're so unique here in Michigan and I but it is right to an extent. Like we do see these really big swings. Um and you definitely see some of this stuff happening in some places and you know folks might be oh cool that works there but we need it to work here. Um even if it absolutely still could but they just they need to see that empirical data um in you know specifically where they are because again you know not to downplay anything but it's like you know these are very expensive projects what that folks are going about and they want to feel confirmed that it's going to be worth it kind of a deal.
Let them teach. Let them thrive. And in doing so, let our students thrive. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Christy Wilson. I an American history and civics teacher at Woodro Wilson Middle School. I also have strong ties to this community. My grandparents met at Clifton High School, now known as Christopher. My grandfather dedicated 38 years of his life to teaching math here as well. My mom, aunts, and uncles all went through the Clifton school system. My aunt started her teaching career as an art teacher at Woodro. My uncle spent years as a PE teacher at school 13, the high school, Christopher, and school 5. I started my schooling at school one and my entire 12-year teaching career is here. Needless to say, my family and I are invested in the Clifton Public Schools. I'm here tonight because like many of my colleagues, I'm deeply concerned about the impact of potential budget cuts on our students.
So, you cannot put them in your normal budget moving forward. So, say it was something like a roof project that maybe you greatly need. If you were to do that through a bond referendum and it failed, then you're stuck not being able to fund that through your budget and you know, you really are kind of lost as far as uh I do not off the top of my head. Um I think it's I wouldn't want to guess off the top of my head, but yeah, it's definitely the first one. even if it was a year, right? So, just think about that timeline. So, now you're three and a half to four years out from replacing maybe a roof that's in critical need. So, second questions, we submit them as part of our budget process. So, in May, when we submit our budget, we are saying here's our budget.
We want to thank We want to thank Joom. Um, every spring I submit for uh an opportunity for students to get a a spending amount in the book fair. So each student was able to get $20 worth of books. Um, so thank you again to JM. And we go down to our data for third quarter. So, we have second grade, ELA, and math. There were some games in our uh benchmark three. Uh we lowered some of that yellow and excuse me, the red and the orange, which we want to see. Um same thing in grade three with ELA and math. Um, we just took the AASA, so we're very hopeful that those scores have increased from last year to this year. Um, we're very excited about our SFA data this quarter. We hit our winter slump second quarter and we did see a decrease. This quarter we saw an increase overall.
Awesome. Thank you, Dr. Perkins. Okay. Given that we have move through all the way to number eight right now, do we have any old business? Hearing none. Do we have any new business? Okay. Did you say new business? New business. I have one. Um, this is the idea of the mascot. Earlier uh in the newsletter, we had uh shared with you where we're going getting ready for homecoming for next year. Um, I had tasked the business department earlier this year to start thinking about uh how we want to go forward with creating some costumes for our kids when they go to the homecoming, but also costumes of characters that could go out into the schools to visit the ELC building, go out to other schools just to um, you know, really get the kids excited. So, um, we asked the um, the company that we're working with to give us some ideas.
Yeah. So, it's a little bit where you have to capture an area and then you have to push it. So, it's a combination of what we've seen so far of the the capture and then escort. So, capture then escort and you got to take it to a certain place. Okay. That's the goal. Okay. Hey, uh you we got we got time here, Scott, for uh something else that happened to me I can maybe share with you. Yeah. What else happened? Well, you know, you know, Baker is here. You know, my grandson talked to you about that while the brains of the operation. Yeah. The brains of the operation. Well, I just want you to know he was refusing to listen and take a nap. I I know. I'm sorry to tell. I got to tell you. I got to be honest with you. Got to be real.
I just feel like he's a strong leader and if we don't have somebody that can manage their own department then I would totally agree and think like yeah we need somebody that the superintendent but like Aaron's pretty seasoned so he knows how to manage an accounting and a finance department. He understands numbers really well. So I have a lot of confidence in his work. Realistically there's only so many regions out there. I mean, you you're gonna have a hard time finding, you know, if you're looking to get a slew of people with regional experience, you may not have that pool, but I mean, you know, there's a learning curve, but I mean, there's a learning curve in a lot of things. So, this is an important one for sounds like that question is good. Yeah. No, I think we need I mean, I guess comfortable in my ability to handle that part of it, right?
We could say continue to support or continue to provide all students access to advanced coursework, that kind of thing. Got plenty. Yep. Any other changes for Jean? Well, what is the advanced course? I understand extracurriculars and enrichment programing, but what is what's advanced courses? Honors, honors, AP any any of those advanced pathways. Okay. And then the enrichment is what we would look at at the elementary level. H address barriers to participation by providing resources such as transportation, financial assistance, and academic support. That's important. I like I mean I think that's an important bullet. Address barriers to participation by providing resources such as transportation, financial assistance, and academic support. That we're not limited to those things, but that's such as examples, right? Say what they're participation in. cultural enrichment opportunities. I don't know what we're going to say is um I just had address barriers to aid in greater participation by and then the rest is the same.
So getting as close to similar as you can is is helpful. Um so yeah just plus oneing all of that in terms of you know even if it's not a direct incentive it is something that would be very helpful to immediately point to. By the way, we're we're hoping to also either uh at the time of the workshop or afterwards issue sort of a handbook guide book that would hopefully address uh what you're talking about. And just real quick, an anecdote, when I moved to South Carolina in the 80s, my neighbor across the street had a bumper sticker on his car. Don't tell me how you did it up north. So, it's exactly exactly that kind of attitude. imately I used to work in Indiana um on climate change stuff and yeah the moment you said oh New York did this or California did this conversation over so totally totally feel that I I I want to ask a follow a quick followup to that which is I mean I think part of the part of what I'm hearing in this discussion is there's there's clearly a need to do this and there's a need to tailor it for some of the decision needs will it be commercially successful that that's a that's a key decision need that that is there.
Specifically, reducing the levy from 2% to 0% could result in a loss of $3 million money for our students. In addition, Governor Murphy issued a recent statement about how the Clifton School District will be one of the 20 districts affected by the elimination of federal ESSER funding. With both of these items weighing on my mind, I felt compelled to speak here. I attended the three strategic planning meetings. We worked together to help develop goals for our district over the next five years. We talked about the incredible programs we have in place, but we also acknowledged our concerns about staying competitive with the surrounding schools. If our funding is cut, I fear these goals will remain just that, goals and not realities. At the first district planning meeting in Dr. Robertsy's state of the district speech, he reviewed the budget which included that our district is 21,272,923 under adequacy.
Here are things that we cannot pay for in our budget that we need to get approval for the taxpayers to get additional tax levy for. We can't then go back and say, "Oh, we asked you for it. You said no, but now we have the money. We found it." Right? So, it's part of the budget process. So I have another quick question. Um, Miss GH, you were talking about uh, you know, building money into the capital reserves enables us the opportunity to dip into that uh, not the reserve funding but the source of revenue that we get from the tax dollars, right? Um, when our expenditures as they do every year uh, go past what our revenues do, right? So just for my say there's a scenario we're halfway through replacing our heat pumps because it you know sounds like a very complicated process very expensive process right now we reach a point in our budget where we still got half the school district that doesn't have this problem fixed but we're using all that revenue now to cover general budget expenses salaries benefits programs whatever the case may be what what's the answer then right because we've went up to the full amount uh of the this the $7 million that we put into the or $8 million we put into the capital reserves.