can we pull that all right yes meg i was voting yes to your proposal uh before before we vote before we before we vote um can i just uh throw it up there really quick uh just to to diana's point and what we're talking about uh right now in terms of uh understanding um so i'm just gonna i'm just gonna throw this up really really really quick yes thank you arthur you read my mind i was just going to ask for that before we vote okay so review that again perfect if i can if i know what i'm doing okay all right share screen what is this called copy are you seeing uh the model yes okay all right so just again i want to make sure that we understand what we're what we're voting for so to to the point of this conversation uh there's no k8 listed in this model okay these are all tk sixes up here again this doesn't mean that these are the schools and you will notice down here let me make let me make this just a little bit larger you will notice down here that if we make azusa high school in glasgow high school a 712 the projected enrollment next year they are at 82.54 capacity the following year 81 the following year 77.
if we were to a convert one of these to a tk8 or b move arlington up here or dalton or pal or center whatever it doesn't matter but the moment that we add a school up here that means that right here this 3110 automatically goes down right because then you have seventh and eighth graders up here going to the k-8 and the seventh and eighth graders are not coming here is that 30 of them is that 60 of them is that right now it's well right now i believe that it's only between 60 and 70 because they only have one self-contained seventh grade and one self-contained eighth grade and so hypothetically speaking if you're going up the numbers right now say it's 70. let's just say they have 35 each i don't know if they do or say it's 60. but but max it just to see what the the capacity changes if you take off 70 kids yeah i will do that but just just again so we're super duper duper clear um that is with the understanding or that's what the assumption i'm sorry with the assumption that the tk would be ellington right if it's somewhere else and it's a bigger capacity or whatever but but again but let's let's play that out for a quick second and let's say this is uh 30 40.
right then it drops it down to 80 percent next year but again that is with a massive assumption that that the tk8 um would be uh would be ellington so this would be sorry this would be 30 40. uh this would be 29.85 oops and then this would be twenty two percent two per two percent essentially across the board but but again that's what the assumption that we're talking about ellington and we're only talking about one class if it was a a different tk8 with larger capacity and more room you know it could be more but we don't know we don't know but no matter how we cut it slice it or dice it whether it's a small school whether it's a large school at the end of the day it takes students away from the 7 12 right so i just wanted to show this just again as we are voting and as we're thinking about these things um this um just wanted to show you the data so you can see it and you can understand what adding a tk8 means to this what not adding a tka means to this any clarifying questions before we move to the poll all right lika right just waiting for one more looks like all right thank you lika so this is the our largest poll yet of today um so a meg thank you for bringing this up uh b thank you i believe it was miss wilson's perkins who threw out the idea uh so thank you again we do this together and so i appreciate these uh intricacies uh bri uh coming up uh so so now we have we have two models uh do we have it in us to go over just like a minute or two again we just want clarity what what what is our next step again we were trying to talk about this today ad nauseam and literally we were just paralyzed not knowing what is better and we said why are we trying to decide let the team decide what they want and what they need and what would be best for them so again does anybody want to uh speak into that or do we move uh straight into a poll or do you want to some time to think about it and then i pull you through email um we we are game to do whatever it is that uh you guys feel uh comfortable and should be the next steps i think we need to talk about the properties before we talk about staffing and all of that i agree with miss jones because there's a lot of things that could change especially with regards to adding that tk8 and 2 into the model 3 and i'd hate for you guys have to go back and readjust what you're doing and just have to look at it a second time so looking at the schools first i think is our best option uh patty i think agreed in the chat i'm sorry ms sanchez agreed in the chat i thought was the question going back to discussing about programs first or is i'm confused what the question was the question is do we move into now that we know what the models are do we move into start talking about the properties and the locations and the schools and you know which ones would be best and then once that's decided now we can move into support staff programs drawbacks benefits budget or no no with the models that the district has created knowing that it's not set in stone because you haven't had conversation about the sites yet we're going to bring program support staff drawbacks bring all of that to you based on the models that we created and then we're gonna talk about locations but again knowing that if we do it that way the moment that we start moving the locations and we start doing all that then we have to come back to the drawing board and adjust just those things as you guys are adjusting your your thinking okay so can um clarifying question um in regards to programs um just like you said we're not gonna name schools right now um but some programs are attached to schools so would the programs move to a different school or if because we close this school then those programs are closed because i think that affects the decision so right now the the we we would not we we don't have the mentality of uh quote unquote closing down programs um so just like uh mountain view the program was moved uh the same we we we're coming with that kind of same mentality and also the mentality of dreaming and growing and you know reimagining uh as well but but uh but i want to reiterate though let's pretend that we did let's pretend that the district you guys decided on the school sites and then we came with the programs it's like wait what happened to dual immersion it's gone oh we shut it down because you guys decided to shut down valley dale so we we shut it down well again remember this is a live input uh let's let's say we made a goofy mistake like that then you all as a team can say no no no no we don't want that program to be shut down it needs to be alive and we think it should be moved here so um i want to keep reiterating that i know i sound like a broken record and i apologize but uh there is lots of space here for this team to have influence so right now it's just about you know which conversation is first and i'm looking at the chat and it seems like and then based on the comment it seems like location uh seems to be uh what everybody wants to talk about first uh and then we mister mr ortega oh yes go ahead gabriel um given what the two models that we've developed is as this body it now feels like to me that there are clear uh program programmatic delineations that exist between one high school versus two seven twelves i think that that to me is one of the clearest obviously because i'm not here at the high school but just in terms of clarity about how we move forward like there are pros and cons right now to both models so without really talking about um location i think could we have an abstract conversation about these are the pros to this model in regards to the the offerings like what ms jones said earlier the band could be this size versus that size we could have electives here we could develop our ib program at azusa high school or the 7-12 high school at that property um because there are certain things that would exist within a 7-12 that wouldn't exist within one high school similarly there would be things that exist at one high school that wouldn't exist after 7 12 and locations is where we're still going around and those are important conversations for sure but like we are by by that decision we're going to get stuck with something but really quick uh mr fernandez i think that you are probably again i could be wrong but i think you're probably like two steps ahead of the game because talking about location um is not a conversation about is model three better than model four um i think that all of us are gonna have to make that decision ultimately uh but i think that the location um um is not about which model is better um i think it's about clarifying right um because we are gonna have to get to the everybody in this room is gonna have to get to okay well now that we see the programs you know in a 712 this is what it looks like in a heist in one high school this is what it looks like absolutely but i think that's that's no matter which road we take we have to get to that i i want to kind of propose something a little different and it goes along with what diana said and what gabriel said and it's about programs tied um to our ideas and i say this because when i originally talked to a couple of board members about coming up with a five-year proactive plan you know to reduce schools this is before you ever started this committee you know to try and say this is our opportunity to make azusa bigger better brighter the shining um you know castle up on the hill where everybody wants to come right well this is our chance to dream too and and i'm not throwing out i i'm throwing out just something that flew into my mind so hypothetically speaking with what diana's talking about about sites and gabriel's talking about programs and you say okay you took those two schools or some of the schools that are on there and you say okay if we have two 712s and we're not going to have any middle school campuses anymore well if you close down powell and dalton and you added lee to that now you put them on foothills campus that has been totally remodeled and modernized and they could be the magnet school where they do steam and vapa and all these fabulous things does do programs and sites need to be tied together in this conversation as the next step so that we're not just voting on one model or the other but what it contains in in program and site because i i want to add to that meg when you're done i'm sorry go ahead no go ahead i'm done i'm done i just it's sometimes and i understand the the interest in maybe separating programs because i know that we are not a district that likes to get rid of programs we like to enhance programs but when you have a magnet school like dalton or powell or the magnet schools that exist and have been developed for that reason to give those schools a clear identity that also serves the public you can't really separate those programs from the schools if you if you close the school you the staffs have been thoroughly trained for years to provide that kind of program and create curriculum for the students there that meets that need and and is part of the identity of that school you can't really close a school and then just put the arts program or this science program somewhere else because if that staff doesn't get moved intact all of the training that has been put into making that school what it is is dispersed all over the district and then you have to start over but if you have foothill middle school where you can put all of those magnet programs together and create a fabulous steam school then you can just also keep those staffs together and save on modernizing maybe a school that needs to be modernized that could also move there and keep the program intact at the same time yeah so being a super objective listener i think i think we are having conversations about locations um so so um i i mean that's what that's what again because how how do we so again if we came first right and we said all right this is what we're doing this is what we're thinking um right so i think the conversa again i i think i'm agreeing with the majority of people that are that are that are talking and that are chatting that i think having the conversations about the locations um because these ideas are tied to locations um that seems to be the the the next the the logical next step um and then once we let's pretend again this team said oh yes we like that foothill idea or no we don't like that foothill idea we want to do this or we want to do that then again we we will then start doing the support staff and the programmatic um impacts and the budget to that and you know all that good stuff um so i'm just going to throw it out there please review yourself if you completely disagree that we should talk about locations next you disagree you do not want to talk about locations next is that tonight or is that a future i'm sorry i'm like doing millions of things right now and i'm trying to listen today you know what it's been a day and there's a few of you in here that have been part of this day uh no so this this conversation will be for next wednesday so again anybody opposed to next wednesday we're gonna get right into talking about about locations and talking about again possibilities for both for model 4 and model 3.
okay i have a question okay if we and i'm sorry if i'm it's been already said or not but um okay so if we want to start talking about locations wouldn't we need to talk about the programs and be and and know that these locations that we talk about that these programs will be able to be housed at the locations does that make sense it does but again i'm trying to so if if we say no you district you go and figure out the programs and the budget and the support staff and all of that we're going to build it on what you have seen so far right so so we're going to come to you and we're going to say okay well we have hodge lee magnolia murray paramount valley dale this is what we envisioned for those sites this is how we're going the support staff is going to look like this and so there's going to be a lot of work to be done with that what i think i'm hearing from this group though is if we have the conversation first about the location and and even when when meg was talking and jenna was talking they really were talking about location and the effects of the of the of where this is going um because some some people might not mind their in this room maybe i don't know maybe their top priority is at the actual location of the site and they want to be equitable from north south east west i don't know and so i think that if we're having a conversation about the locations then it is okay for somebody to say look this is why i think it should be this location because then this could possibly be xyz and again we'll be taking copious notes and then once we start really rolling up our sleeves um around that then again we can bring that forward fully developed we move on uh arturo um i'm having a hard time with making all these decisions without really knowing what the repercussions of our decisions are going to be and so when we when and if when we do have the discussion about specific school sites and i believe that the specific school site for the high school has already been determined i would like some really hard data of what that would mean for our community and and what what the transfer over will actually be because in in the numbers it looks great but we're assuming a 100 transfer from say one high school to another when really that's not realistic and that's not going to be the case i mean being realistic right and so before we move to send these two options to the board i would like to see some actual numbers from the community to see and to have input from them as far as which of these models would be more feasible for our community at this point a thousand percent again we can do anything but again i think that that and this good you're bringing up right now but again that is down the road right as we get as we get uh closer and then i also want to put it out there i'm gonna say one more time nothing that we show today is in cement so i'm so the comment about you know like we already chose a high school uh we put a high school there yes but again this team can affect that and that team this team can say while we disagree with that decision we think that the one high school should be here um and that is perfectly okay and perfectly fine but yes we are we are chasing the same thing miss rogers we're chasing trying to be as detailed as possible uh it's just hard to be detailed when we have a lot of different things and so the more we can kind of get clarity on these models um and yeah if this team wants to say okay cool we feel we feel like a good spot right now but before we go to the board we would like to do a survey we'd like to do of staff or whatever absolutely not a problem all right we are grossly we are grossly past our time um i am going to summarize that we have said that next week wednesday we will begin talking about locations uh for both model three and for both uh i'm sorry for both models three and four um if you have questions between now and then please feel feel free to reach out start thinking start dreaming um and uh we'll we'll see you next week uh to start again conversing about which way uh looks like for model three what's the best way to reorganize and for model four what's the best way to reorganize knowing that we are not choosing model three or model four yet we we're we're way or we're we're a ways away from that so thank you again i want to reiterate how i uh how much i appreciate your objectiveness how much i appreciate you willing to embark on this uh this journey um and so on behalf of our kids on behalf of our community on behalf of our staff uh thank you so much for everything have a good night everyone
um so uh welcome to the april 22nd 2021 electronic meeting of the environmental commission this meeting is in accordance with executive orders from the governor to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the cove at 19 buyers we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues public comment will be by a telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities there are two one after the presentation and one at the end of the regular uh business this meeting so if you want to speak during either of these public comment opportunities please call 877-853-5247 or zero 888-788-009 nine these are both toll-free numbers and enter meeting id number nine nine seven three four one two six three four seven this information is also available on the published agenda in the public notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 18t channel 9 and online at www.a2gov.org watch ctn so um i call this meeting to order it is 705 pm um josh would you read the land heritage statement sure i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinaabe including adawa ojibwa and bottawatomi and wyandot peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the united states on lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous people the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807.
ready to go call this meeting to order due to the cobit 19 health emergency and in order for the board of education to conduct its business this board meeting is being held the video conference and stream live on youtube on the district website at www.event.org in addition members of the public may provide comment at this meeting through zoom by entering the url meeting id and password you see before you on the screen upon joining the meeting your participation will be muted to ensure that there is no disruption to the business being conducted by the board of education will the secretary please call the roll mr car angelo here mrs chair mrs true i see you you're there you're muted mr sismore here mrs moss here mr hung here mrs lack here mrs reese here mr winston i see you you're frozen and president becker here we have a quorum please rise to salute the flag here i pledge allegiance indivisible with liberty the new jersey open public meeting law was enacted to ensure the right of the public to have advanced notice of and to attend meetings of public bodies i'm going to ask those who are watching tonight somebody is not muted if everyone who is watching the meeting tonight could please mute themselves [Music] definitely hearing some noise in the background if you are participating by zoom tonight please make sure you're unmuted mrs becker um everyone is muted that may be coming from one of the board members okay board members i don't know do what you can the east brunswick board of education has caused notice of this media [Music] by having the date time and place thereof posted at the education offices written notice is also provided to the sentinel the newark star ledger the home news and tribune and the municipal clerk of east brunswick all board of education meetings with the exception of executive session discussions are videotaped for later broadcasts individuals who speak at the board's public meeting should be aware of these videotaping rules good evening bernie you um it's you still feel that um static feedback is coming from one of the board members um everyone is muted at this point um it may be just something with the system right now okay all right we're going to start off this evening with the superintendent's report dr valesky thank you president becker and good evening everyone and happy earth day i would like to start my remarks this evening with a recap of the public presentation we gave on thursday april 8 that addressed our current and forecasted enrollment growth additionally tonight i would like to expand on our initial presentation to provide a more comprehensive context for our school community and especially parents of our third fourth and fifth grade elementary students let me begin by restating the root cause of our enrollment challenges that prompted the recommendation for temporary classroom unit additions and grade restructuring scheduled for september 2022 based on current enrollment we have used all our elementary classroom capacity additionally we do not have the current capacity to expand special education programming at our elementary schools and this is after we have moved art and music out of their designated classrooms school enrollment projections quantified by a demographic study update for the east brunswick public schools performed by statistical forecasting in june 2019 forecast an enrollment increase of 411 students and this is for the for the range from 2009 2010 school year to the 2022 i'm sorry the 2023-2024 school year i need to highlight that some important numbers are not currently published in any reports and this is since september of 2022 this is september beginning this school year we have registered 331 new students 64 previously inactive students have re-entered our schools now those are students that are likely have gone to private schools and re-entered east brunswick we have also pre-registered 110 students for kindergarten 27 students are pre-registered for ela and 50 total registrations are in some form of process for either kindergarten or ela as we begin our recovery from a global pandemic the problem is bigger than a simple we are out of space let's just make more of it consequently the solutions to the multifaceted problems we are currently facing become more complex too in fact many of you are not aware that the board of education has been discussing facility capacities along with our aging high school and grade level reconfiguration options since may of 2017.
[Music] [Applause] [Music] meeting of the eastern township board of education to order pursuant to the open public meetings act adequate public notice has been given by the secretary of the eastern township board of education in the following manner posting written notice on the official bulletin board of the board of education office emailing written notice of the berlin county times in the courier post and filing written notice on the municipal clerk with the municipal clerk of each from township gonna have a roll call please mrs cappello here this is everhart mr fizzicaro here miss fleming here mr katherine here mrs noll mr lanzalada here mr megan here mrs ryan here we have a farm yeah she's the one all right thank you at this point in time we need a motion for an executive session uh promotions 2.1 to 2.4 whereas an njsa 104-12 allows for a public body to go into closed session during a public meeting and whereas the board of education of shrimp township has deemed it necessary to go into closed session to discuss certain matters which are exempted from the public and whereas the regular meeting of the board of education will reconvene following the end of the closed session at approximately 7 p.m now therefore be it resolved that the board of education will go into closed session for the following reasons as outlined in njsa 10-4-12 items 2.2 through 2.4 do i have a motion to go in executive session okay motion by miss ryan seconded by miss fleming any questions or comments roll call please mrs cavallo yes mrs everhart yes it's a yes no yeah thank you mr fizzy cara yes miss fleming yes mr camp yes mr lancelata yes mr meegan yes mrs ryan yes motion carries thank you will be in executive session till approximately 7 pm [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] uh [Music] any ideas [Music] uh [Music] so [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so do [Music] uh um [Music] uh township board of education if we could all please rise for the pledge of allegiance thank you today i'm going to go back into a trend we haven't done in a little while and i'm going to read out loud the um eastern township mission statement which is something that i would like to continue to do in the future as a way of affirmation of what we are about the mission of the eastern township school district is to promote excellence in an environment that engages students in meaningful learning experiences in partnership with students dedicated staff families and community the district provides a strong educational foundation that will empower our students to achieve their unique potential embrace self-directed lifelong learning develop the skills necessary for appropriate risk taking and responsible decision making respect themselves and others problem solve individually and collaboratively become contributing members of a diverse global society thank you all right we're going to move past presentations today because we do not have any presentations today so we're going to move into a public comment for agenda items only this meeting will now be open to the public referencing agenda items only how if your meeting or your questions or comments pertain to litigation student or personal items or negotiations we'd ask that you see the superintendent after the meeting since we do not discuss these matters in public please limit your comments to three minutes per person as again per uh per rule make sure you please state your name your address speak clearly um we will try to hold you to three minute mark but we'll do so as politely as possible again this is for agenda items only for non-agenda items we'll have another session after the meeting anybody for agenda items only seeing none i will close that portion of the meeting all right at this point i'm going to move to item number six annual appointments and approvals i need a motion to approve items 6 1 through 6 15.
board today is thursday april the 22nd it is a special meeting the agenda is before you this is the called order would you please join me in a moment of silence in item 1.02 and then i will lead us in the pledge please stand thank you please join me in the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for we thank you for your attendance at tonight's meeting and we appreciate that everyone is equipped with the appropriate face coverings please make sure they are worn appropriately covering both the mouth and nose we will move to item 1.04 approval of tonight's agenda is there a motion i move that we approve the agenda for tonight's meeting thank you mr eugetti is there a second well a second thank you mr carr is there any discussion seeing no discussion then we will vote on the approval of this evening's agenda all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries the agenda is approved we move to item two request to speak to the governing board we will play the recorded message and we have about 15 individuals who have expressed an interest in speaking to the board so please play the recorded message the board may make an open call to the public during a public meeting subject to reasonable time place and manner restrictions to allow individuals to address the public body on an issue within the jurisdiction of the public body at the conclusion of the open call to the public individual board members may respond to criticism made by those who have addressed the board may ask the staff to review a matter or may ask a matter be to be put on a future agenda however members of the board shall not discuss or take legal action on matters raised during the open call to the public unless the matters are properly noticed for discussion and legal action during the open call the board requests that speakers refrain from voicing complaints against school personnel or any person connected with the district as it may impact due process rights policy k e k e b and ked are provided by the board for disposition of legitimate complaints including those involving individuals forms required for use of these policies can be obtained from the gilbert public schools website okay we will move on to our first three speakers this evening we will a lot a minute 30 seconds per speaker the first three are dawn and i believe that's beeson angie draper and robin daughter honorable honorable members of the board thank you for your time you are intelligent and well informed and have surely done your due diligence learning the anti-mass paper from medical hypotheses has affiliation with neither stanford nor the nih and is little more than a list of generally disapproved theories you also know now is not the time to stop requiring masks in schools we are here because governor ducey lied saying his order aligns with cdc guidance it does not you know what the cdc says now is not the time to require to stop requiring masks in school infection rates of 6 to 13 year olds now surpass those aged 65 and over continued mask wearing can't hurt removing masks can now is not the time to stop requiring masks in schools critical thinking and public health are integral to not only critical thinking and science education are critical to public health and integral to the gps curriculum you must demonstrate your command of both and with your vote make it clear now is not the time to stop wearing masks in schools thank you thank you good evening last summer we heard a lot about how if teachers don't want to teach in the classroom they should teach in line i have also been heard and told that if parents do not like something they should pull their kids and take them to online so now those roles are reversed and those same people are saying if you have a problem with masking schools send your students to global well maybe they should pull their kids and put them in global if they don't want the mask on their children the global option has been there all year it's been massless all year it is not my fault or the district's fault that some of these parents have too many children that they cannot manage them and come in here and lecture you on them it is not my fault if they cannot keep their kids on task and off of video games those are parenting issues those are not your issues my daughter has a compromised immune system her health could be in jeopardy if she is in a class with kids who do not wear masks but some of these classes that she's taking as a junior in high school are not offered on global so if you don't want your children in mask move your kids to global you have the option you've had the option all year all i ask is you keep the mass in place for the next 20 some odd days and stop flipping our kids around thank you thank you hi i'm robin daughter i'm a little stunned that we're having this conversation i mean i get it people want to be heard but it's a no-brainer that the health and safety of our students and staff preclude the need for debate in this case most of the public comments support math wearing there's only one responsible choice continue requiring universal and correct use of masks while indoor on campuses per cdc guidelines i also implore you to continue mask requirements through summer school to ensure consistent student attendance since one day represents an entire week of curriculum i get that our governor decided to lift the mass mandates for schools however he does so against current cdc guidelines which i've printed out for you the board has repeatedly emphasized that school spread is not a concern because of our medication strategies you focused on teacher vaccination which is great but vaccinating teachers doesn't make masks irrelevant unless you have no regard for the health and safety of our student population and their families most of our students are not yet eligible for the vaccine of those vaccinated in this county only 0.5 percent are minors our students are not protected school exposure risks their health and the health of their families new variants have increased the spread amongst children and even mild covenant cases can have lasting effects it's unfair that our state leadership put you in this position but the only responsible choice is to continue the mask mandates thank you next three jacqueline mcclure todd seamer and cara carlson i know this is a polarizing topic and i know that if you spoke to different sides you would get different opinions i'm not going to talk to the numbers that scientists are saying or doctors are saying or the inefficiency of mass i'm going to talk to you guys about our parent bill of rights our bill of rights states that we as parents get to make the final decision for our children we get to have the final say in their upbringing in education health mental health and our children's fundamental rights this state is a this board is a political division of our state government therefore by law you guys are required to follow federal state and got federal guidelines which means that you must uphold our parents bill of rights we must have the medical freedom to do what we will with our children based on the existing rights it shows you guys are legally bound we get to decide what we do with our children and you are not allowed to segregate our children with online or district learnings and pull them from their brick and mortar stores due to a medical decision their parents made arizona is a huge personal right state we've done what you've asked our children have done what you've asked we've taught them online we've taught them in hybrid now it's our time our kids been masked for six months we know they're not the super spreaders we once stopped hello my name is todd seamer we have two children in gps schools my wife is a physician i'm also in healthcare i was here three weeks ago though so a little over three weeks ago is in this room full of reduce and force affected teachers i'm sure you all remember that meeting well many of you actually called it one of the hardest moments of your time on the board you shared data about the decline in enrollment and how that affected the budget and therefore resulted in reduction in force for gps schools parents spoke with their child's enrollment either opting for home school private or charter schooling several months later you felt the reverberation of their voices by having no choice but to let go of teachers because your budget had declined at that meeting you mentioned that there would be a marketing blitz and advertising campaign to bring students back feel free to ask around but i'm not sure you're listening to parents they aren't pulling their kids from gps because they don't know they were open or unaware the district existed many parents have pulled their kids because two reasons one in-person learning wasn't an option or two masks were required i'm not going to go over the science that delivers conflicting information on observational studies about the efficacy of masks on an air slide on air slides virus transmission i'm not going to go over the safety studies of the mental health and developmental delays of long-term mass use in an education setting i'm going to share though that putting a medical device on children is not your decision to make your educators not the parents of my children nor their health care providers the ball is in your court now there is no longer an executed order to blame this is your decision thank you good evening board members my name is cara carlson i'm a mother and a disability rights advocate and i'm asking you to make the only safe and science-based decision to keep masks through at least the end of the 20-21 school year my four-year-old attends kinder prep at a gps school we love her teacher she thrives here but we also have a two-year-old daughter she has medical conditions and truly unique genetics that are represented by my shirt when she was approximately 18 months old she was hospitalized by rsv that she undoubtedly brought home from daycare with her sister when we first take her took her to the hospital she had o2 stats in the low 70s i don't want my oldest to bring home a virus that could put her younger sister in the hospital or worse because the adults around her can't make the right choice to protect everyone i am also a member of the disability developmental disability advisory council and the statistics we've seen show that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities especially children are by orders of magnitude more likely to be hospitalized or die from covid than their peers we all agree that we love our kids we all agree we want our kids in school we all agree we want our kids to be safe so let's show these kids that we love and value all of them let's keep them safe in school let's be consistent and not add another erratic change to what has been already a very erratic 18 months for our community for our students thank you next three speakers jocelyn kozier craig moore and sam flynn it's been a very rough year for gps to say the least we don't have to tell you how far down our enrollment numbers are how sad we were to watch so many of our wonderful teachers get laid off because of it and i don't have to tell you who has been licking their chops this year the charter schools their enrollment has skyrocketed they all have waiting lists upon waiting lists to get in they're in the process of building more schools just to accommodate the families that want to leave public education we can argue the pros and cons of charters all day but the one thing it comes down to is parents want choice parents want to decide what's best for their children i have a first grader who's at a charter school he has an amazing teacher and is receiving an incredible education while the rest of the school district was yo-yoing in an out-of-in-person hybrid or online he was sitting in a desk with a teacher live in front of him this school gave each family the choice to send their kids to school or keep them online fast forward to this week when the governor rescinded the mass mandate for schools k-12 this school again immediately gave parents a choice we could send our kids to school with a mask or we could choose to let them breathe freely i'm sure you can guess what i chose i chose what was best for my child jill i've heard you say many times don't worry the families will come back to gps guess what they're not going to come back i've realized this myself do you think in any way i would pull my kid out of a situation where i have a voice and i get to make choices to put him back in a situation where my voice has not been heard no way thank you for having me science is ever changing especially with the coronavirus it's important we use the latest science when deciding our children's risks and forcing mass mandates i'd like to read a couple of quotes from the latest study done on the effectiveness of these face masks from the national center of biotechnology information which is a sublet of the national institute of health which dr fauci leads a randomized controlled trial of 246 participants there was no difference between wearing and not wearing face mask for coronavirus droplets transmission particles of under five micrometers to put in perspective a micrometer is a thousand times smaller than a millimeter do you really think a piece of fabric is doing anything there are however adverse effects to wearing them both physiologically and psychologically per the study these include hypoxia increased toxicity activation of fear and stress response rise in stress hormones and the decline of cognitive performance anxiety and depression just to name a few my son has personally suffered with more than one of these the school board should not have a say in a parent's decision on the health for their child mask choice is needed furthermore arizona statute 36-2271 states all parental rights are reserved to a parent of a minor child without obstruction or interference from the state any political subdivision of the state any governmental entity or any other institution thank you 158 that's the total number of new cases reported today in state of arizona for people under the age of 20.
business meeting april 22nd at 7 30 p.m kevin will crawl we'll call for quorum sure mr grippo here miss allen here ms ham here who's harrigan mr martelling mr parachimi here mr white mr chairman thank you uh regarding the pledge there was a fancy meeting in the hall earlier um some of us members object i'll forgo the pledge since we've moved on excellent well good evening welcome everyone if anyone's watching uh yes we're in a different venue tonight we're actually out of our homes um feels good to be back out here in the town hall chambers uh lucy and joshua welcome it's great to meet you guys in person finally um with that being said i think we'll start the report of student reps underway and the teams are playing a full schedule and there will be league and state tournaments in all of the sports um cheshire will be holding a college signing day in may for athletes who will be competing at the college level and finally the ciac has chosen has chosen excuse me cheshire high school as the facility to film a video for their upcoming ciac scholar athlete awards and this virtual award presentation will appear on fox 61 later in may the next thing that we have to share with you all is that the peer health education class at the high school is currently planning a middle school leadership conference and a high school leadership conference the middle school event will be held on april 28th and the conference for the high school will be held on may 19th in a normal year the st students from other school schools would be invited to attend these events but because of the pandemic only cheshire students will be in attendance and both students or both conferences excuse me we'll focus on everyday leadership and will include a panel of student leaders from the scene the senior class at cheshire high school um next from the or the rams against racism club at chs is hosting a virtual book talk on thursday evening april 22nd i think that's actually tonight well i guess it happened an hour ago and they talked about the short story barry and poem life is fine by langston hughes the english department is holding a virtual poem in your pocket day tomorrow in the library where students of the staffs are encouraged to do reading and the event will be livestreamed into english classes the student senate is sponsoring the sale of an updated super fan shirt sporting a mast gram and part of the proceeds will be donated to the cheshire food bank then lastly the theater department has finally completed the musical production of little woman and they're hoping to have a release date in the very near future and that's all we have awesome thank you any any questions from the board members that is a great question [Laughter] oh and mr salamini spent a lot of time recording that so as soon as that that video is available i'll you know we'll certainly promote it to the community and i'll share that with you as well even though now you're masked nice to be here mr zenski and i we're shocked today realizing that we don't have plaques for these guys because we've never met in person with them wow and so it's you know the year is almost over and here we are and it's so great to see you in person thank you with without a plaque it seems there's no other questions on board i just want to thank you lucy and josh for being here tonight it's great to see you in person meet you in person and looking forward to see you again soon so you're welcome to stay but if i were you i'd i just go home thank you thank you very much thank you good night uh dr sone do we have any public comment or emails at this point there was one email from uh john bester 45 trees road it's rather like i don't know if you'd want me to read it or just include it in the record it is a uh expressing concerns about students reading via technology he encourages um the uh the members of the board and leadership read a book by dr naomi barron entitled how we read um and so and that's that's the the gist of it yeah and just for a record uh to mr bester if he's if he's watching tonight all the board members received the email as well as someone so we went through it so thank you details there actually will be in the uh many minutes in its entirety yep so thank you for that moving on uh committed reports starting with curriculum faith monday um and um the the meaty part of the um of the meeting had to do with uh two presentations from the cheshire curriculum council first one was from um lori holm who heads up the academically gifted program in the district and so what was so interesting about it was that the ag uh the gifted program is um in many ways kind of flourishing in covid because with the remote learning the students now have um virtually 24 7 access to ms holm which is allowing them to finish up their academies the academies are the concentrated areas of study that the students go the gifted students go into and explore at multiple levels using a variety of media so um and then she did note that future in-person sessions are going to focus on the social emotional learning for these students in the agp program simply because in many respects some of these kids have different emotional needs or heightened emotional needs because of their their position in the school so and um anyway the other section the other presentation we received was from the social studies department and the team presenting was tim galvin from the high school and kristen giuliani giuliano from dodd gene montag from norton and kevin hanlon they were uh we're all in all in um attendance and presenting and so the foundation of the social studies program is actually um called the c3 which is college career and civic life framework for social studies state standards and the anchor point of the summary on monday was the connection of the four dimensions of inquiry with the c3 program so how that manifests itself is uh in the elementary portion um the c3 framework at this point has predominantly happened within the sixth grade social studies curriculum and making the shift to the other grade levels will be a priority in the next curriculum council cycle the middle school curriculum is pride uh predominantly grounded in geography standards in the seventh grade and history standards in the eighth grade um and the development of the curriculum not only includes these standards but also key social study themes connected to the connecticut core standards and then in the high school the alignment of the c3 framework emphasizes literary literacy skills democratic participation student inquiry and opportunities for application future goals are going to include encompassing more global a more global perspective in the program and creating a social studies learning library as well as exploring opportunities to increase the opportunities other opportunities for student-led inquiry so that kind of covered the curriculum council presentations then we received an update from kevin hanlon regarding professional development days and there was one held march 12th elementary teachers who participated majority of them focused on development sessions provided by our math curriculum trainers the re under the eureka or we use the eureka program and they had trainers available for our staff um middle school divisions and high school departments focused on the acceleration framework that we've been using all year um then um ms solano marlene solano talked about the summer program which we have all discussed here um it will be two weeks in mid-august designed to help kids transition back into school those who have been absent from school for so long and then finally we actually took up the topic of a real overnight field trip for the dodd middle school to washington dc so things are getting back to normal they uh mike woods just talked about um the steps he's taking to ensure a safe trip and a um informative and memorable trip for the kids and that pretty much covered the meeting so it was something it was action-packed any questions mr tim yeah thank you uh yeah a second ago i thought you just said that the summer program the summer camp program is two weeks of two cohorts five days over two weeks two days two out of three two and three okay okay i missed that part before thank you yeah um i have a question on curriculum actually going back a couple months i didn't get a chance to ask about it i was hoping to just uh early elementary grades george washington a couple months ago i had asked about it because i didn't i was unaware that george washington is not really in the curriculum and correct me if i'm wrong on this at this point for you know kindergarten first grade second grade um and you had mentioned jeff that he's you can't do everything and i understand that he said that he's one of many famous people i'm just curious like who else would fit in a bucket yeah i don't wanna i think that diminishes the role that george washington plays okay in our history just to frame it that way and if that's the impression that was received that's certainly not the intent i would want it to descend um and you know i i be honest with you i can't quote you where george washington is cited in k through 2.
knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past the thorough understanding of 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 all right thank you josh would you do the roll call sure uh commissioner graham commissioner needham i was here oh okay great and it is on lake superior split rock lighthouse okay about halfway up there ahead uh commissioner needham uh council member dish yes all right uh commissioner gibrandal here from ann arbor uh okay council member griswold here from ann arbor uh commissioner kellewart here uh chair brown uh present in ann arbor commissioner overpeck yeah and i am in a hammer commissioner mursky here and an hour uh co-chair mitchell here in ann arbor uh let's see commissioner buendia here from ann arbor and commissioner ferris all right i think you have quorum all right thank you josh um so the next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda um do i have a motion to approve the agenda as written i can't see anybody's hand so move their lot raised okay i have a comment or a question i guess for you steve council members and maybe staff you mentioned i think we talked about this at the end of the last meeting um public comment where we have put at the end of the presentation i thought the convention was that uh public comment was always at the beginning of the meeting so people don't have to stay on the phone for 15 minutes half an hour 45 minutes depending on how long the first presentation goes um am i mistaken with that and if if not could we move then public comment to the beginning of this and subsequent meetings so i hear a motion by john mursky do i hear a second yes rita okay a second okay so the floor is open for discussion raise your hand if you'd like to be recognized um yeah i can't see anybody oh uh i see no hands raised but i'll comment that i think this is a good idea um for the flow of our meetings and for public participation okay so um all who say aye raise your hand and say or say aye aye aye all opposed looks like it passes unanimously john good thank you so um i guess maybe i should have uh we should so um i guess this would constitute changing the public commentary now to rate before the uh right before the presentations which is the next item on the agenda all right so um i'll initiate public commentary then now and then i will mention it later so uh public comment this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call nine 1-888-788-0099 or eight seven seven eight five three five two four seven this information and enter meeting id number nine nine seven three four one two six three four seven this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automatic announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there is a delay of up to 30 seconds before connection is established so josh is anybody on the line yet i don't see anyone as of now give it a a minute and see if anyone joins us oh no i'm not seeing anyone okay let's wait another few uh seconds okay nice not hearing anybody um this is the end of the public first public comment period there will be another uh public comment period at the end of the meeting so uh the next item on the agenda are special presentations um so i'm going to uh trans i'm going to um give up the chair to vice chair rita mitchell and she's going to matter to special presentations and i will take the chair back for the next item on the agenda which is um approval of minutes okay i'm rita would you like to proceed yep thank you steve first off i want to say happy earth day everyone and um i am really pleased to have earth day as an opportunity to bring in information about the pollinator subcommittee that's been working to do outreach for what we are calling our pollinator allies in the community um and it's been um really gratifying to see the involvement of many groups and we found some people who are willing to share their expertise and observations for this part of the meeting prior to something that we'll be considering later so um our our mission just to repeat something that we've said to the group before for the pollinator subcommittee is to foster culture of acceptance and appreciation of pollinators in order to preserve and strengthen pollinator populations in ann arbor and we hope to do that through how we advise through the commission as a whole and how we help to work with others to educate members of the community and we're really fortunate to have three really great presenters tonight um our first one is mark charles who i've come to know through the group called wild ones he's been involved for over 20 years in the ann arbor natural areas preservation group as a volunteer he ran a nationwide program for youth-led habitat projects and he organized the first public culinary education event in 2009 in ann arbor yeah mark um and he's still and i can say from many conversations with him he's still pr appreciating local ecosystems and learning how to support them i think that is a really great way to start us off and mark thank you very much for joining us tonight we have things set up so that you can share your screen and your presentation and i'll just turn it over to you right now thank you commute got it sorry thank you rita and commission i'm welco i'm feel very privileged to be able to speak to you i'm mark charles i live at 2326 easy street in ann harbour and that's where i'm speaking from today um start my slides if i can manage that okay um why do we why are we interested well i guess i guess first a couple more things about me the the uh i got involved with native plants in the first place which preceded my interest in native pollinators and that happened through my daughter who was in an after-school program with our neighbor janine palms and as a part of that they had adopted a stream and and they ended up uh with with adult support creating rain gardens in ann arbor's brewer park and i know some some of you have been hands-on participants in that process i got it from there i got to learn about native plants found pretty interesting and as i learned about native plants i learned that a great many a great majority of our interesting native plants uh certainly those that have showy flowers all depend on pollinators for their existence the the the fact is very simple with if there are no pollinators there can be no fertile seeds for these large groups of plants and with no fertile seeds eventually the current individuals will die out and the species will go extinct the more we learn about pollinators uh the more we see how they are important to multiple environmental goals and and that we'd me to increase my efforts uh for supporting cultural and landscape practices that are healthy for pollinators primarily bees especially native bees certain other native insects primarily native insects that are we consider beneficial to humans but also to beneficial to the whole functioning of ecosystems which as we continue to learn is a more and more complex than we had imagined and each time we think we've got a a a a bit of a full understanding we've learned soon after that that no there's another magnitude beyond that that we don't understand the tiny things that run the world as eo wilson says this happens to be a service barrier in my backyard one of the big reasons for supporting pollinators is simply that they're interesting they're beautiful they are complex their relationship with flowers and plants are complex and if if people are free of uh in taught if they have not learned fear and not learned that every insect is something to be destroyed uh they're capable of just seeing them on their on their own uh the photo on the right is from our first uh pollinator education event that rita mentioned 2009 uh co-sponsored by bird park children's wet meadow ann arbor chapter of wild ones and ann arbor city natural area preservation photo on the left is from my front yard and this is uh a native bee uh kind of a small thing on uh coneflower echinacea purpurea now supporting pollinators is supporting a number of other goals that i know are important to you all one of them is they support home gardens and local food production certainly a matter of interest to us all they support native plants in the broad way as i've already mentioned and native plants are the fundamental along with soil quality native plants are the fundamental uh participants in the ecosystem they're important for a lot of reasons but in direct functional terms environmental services you might try to call it they absorb stone water they need less supplemental watering than most cultivated plants they require less of the kind of mowing and and tending that we tend to rely on gasoline-powered tools they're fire they call for less emissions and finally they tend to be more resilient in the face of climate change and extreme weather events now we've just experienced one of those in the past 24 hours and it'll be real interesting to see in the next three or four days how many dead tulips you notice in your yard and what change you notice if any if you're growing native plants it's important to know that as as more and more people learn about the value of native plants and native pollinators more organizations are implementing programs that encourage their members and the broader public to support these organisms wild ones is a national organization with a chapter in ann arbor since i don't know sometime in the late 1990s southeast michigan butterfly association is focused on butterflies master rain gardens is a organization we'll hear from uh in a few minutes uh broad environment groups like sierra club ottoman the nature conservancy various land preserve organizations there's uh just a great deal of increasing interest increasing support learning is happening and the word is going around there's there's lately a facebook group called pollinators and native plants and it has recently passed the milestone of twenty thousand uh members a number of the things that the city does uh certainly impact almost everything the city does impacts pollinators but there are certain things the city does already that are very actively benefiting pollinators so i'm pleased to say there's there's a lot of good news here uh habitat preservation includes active support for rain gardens a wonderful system of natural areas our system of green belts and green preservation both within and outside the city protection of of variegated stream banks and medians vegetated i'm sorry vegetated stream banks that have something other than turf grass i think your plan changes to chapter 40 also fall in this category in terms of cultural practices uh certainly integrated pest management which i know the commission has supported control of invasive species not only invasive plants but invasive insects and other organisms the increased use of native plants in all possible places that includes city streets and street extensions street medians it includes the city's own uh property includes uh private corporations and homeowners uh very broadly the support of native plants helps make our city more sustainable more resilient and a happier place to live in finally the efforts to train staff and promote training broadly through the entire city staff very very helpful and the gradual addition of appropriate requirements to city contracts for from everything from mowing um tree maintenance other things certainly will continue to benefit pollinators and the ecosystem there's a number of things the city has experimented with and there's certainly been a learning process it's certainly a good idea and probably a good year a good a good time period for us to think about what has worked some things that haven't worked so well some things that have worked that we can expand on success and the kind of initiatives that i think we have a start and can can really go forward with include the ones listed here on the right i'll just mention in terms of the uh the photograph that um this was the this was actually a county ef a joint city county effort in mary beth doyle park and on the banks of mallett's creek which as you know malette's creek flows and drains through most of a great part of the east side of ann arbor this involved third graders planting native shrubs with support from that volunteers and city staff and staff from the washington now county water resource commissioner's office also a volunteer to the photographs volunteer associated with that office and of course they had releases signed privacy releases from parents of all the juveniles why is this not going down i'm sorry i've got a minor technical glitch here there we go that ends my presentation the the contact information for the wild ones chapter which does monthly programs by zoom these days and hopefully with vaccination we'll be going back to doing them at the methi botanical gardens the photograph here is willows which is a native species very valuable to pollinators even though it's not pollinated by insects and this is part of a stream bed project at the mary lou murray recreation center here in ann arbor thank you again unmuted thanks mark that was great um i just wanted to ask one thing that you and i had commented on before and just to have you comment on the the um specifically the cone flower that had holes in the petals and what you see is the significance of that um that would be good for people in the community to understand oh see if i can get that slide back here some reason here we are okay what uh rita is talking about is here in the the purple coneflower image on the right you can see in this case you have a pair of semicircular cuts in the leaf petals just happens that they are a pair that are opposite each other and you can see another one here at the sort of the three o'clock position and maybe you can see one over here about four o'clock there are certain native insects that native bees that provision their nests with pollen they lay the eggs and then they seal up the nests and certain of them called generically called leaf cutter bees cut with their with their mandibles uh semicircular pieces of flower petals or certain leaves and use those two to to seal the opening of the tunnels in which they have laid their provisioned with pollen and laid their eggs for their young and and i guess my reason for finding for really appreciating that is that for me it's an indicator that when we see holes in leaves and petals that's actually very often a good thing absolutely yeah it it's a necessary thing if we have a world with no insect damage to plants it means we have no insects that are eating and that means we will have no insects and as i mentioned before if we have no insects we will have no flowering plants and possibly no food yes in the past our people 10 and 20 years ago very few people had this understanding so i can remember when there there was an outbreak of uh gypsy moth and gypsy moth larva and people were panicking that uh it's going to kill all the trees and so must be stopped at any cost well any cost turns out to be an enormous cost because the things that were sprayed even with people opting out and balloons and all of the uh discussion around those issues um those sprays killed desirable insects right along with gypsy moths they killed monarch butterflies every other sort of butterfly they killed dragonflies native bees you name it um so while they did succeed in knocking down the gypsy moss they they uh killed a lot of other desirable things and really damaged the ecosystem i think approach to invasive plant management is what we've seen with purple loosestrife and the people at that university down the road that that with considerable effort and care found an insect from the plant's native habitat that could survive here and that would not spread they had the biggest part was guaranteeing it wouldn't do any unwanted damage and spread to damage other plants they did that research it took time and money of course and introduced the insect and at this point purple loosestrife which was formerly a very bad pest in any kind of wet areas and a lot of roadside ditches and so on is really not a problem it's it it survives in small populations but it doesn't get out of hand pretty impressive i see three other people who would like to uh ask you a question mark so i'm going to start with john mursky okay let's see your hand john thank you rita thank you mark thanks for all the work that you've done in this area at the end of your presentation you listed a number of actions we can take and i'm wondering if there's one to add to it and if people on this meeting have more expertise than i can comment i've heard that it would be much better for insects i don't know specifically about pollinators but i assume also pollinators if property owners would delay the cleanup on their property until um the early part of may because if they're going around and raking up and sucking leaves and everything like that then there's a lot of insect larvae that are either going to be damaged or killed or sucked up and carted off and composted or whatever happens is is that indeed true and is there something we can do to better inform not only residents but in a town like ann arbor where a lot of landscaping and lawn care companies do that kind of work get the work out word out to them yes thank you for bringing this up um let me get click the right buttons here it just so happens that the uh the document that's shown on the screen here from the xerxes society speaks to that very point and i'd be glad to send you a copy of that where you can find it and download it from the internet uh and those practices that you mentioned are are right on target and they can be done at all levels they can be done by homeowners they can be done by landscape and landscape contractors they can be done by city staff on city property a lot of cultural practices are widely applicable and require widespread education specific training and in some cases enforcement through the city contractual process thank you and it would be could provide that copy of that and we can distribute it amongst the entire commission thank you sure steve you have your hand raised um yes i do yeah thank you very much mark uh for that presentation um i had a question about um you said that um some native trees were supportive of pollinators um which ones are in particular stand out besides willows that he mentioned oh thanks for that question uh i'm i'm sure you know that a great many of our shade trees especially are wind pollinated and of course all evergreens all pines and spruces and so on are wind pollinated but even among those one genus in particular is very helpful to pollinators and that's willows so any kind of willows whether it's willows weeping willows native or non-native are vital because they provide pollen that early bees can use early and they're especially important in the very early spring because a number of bees species emerge in fact two or three weeks ago now and are hungry and need food for fuel and they can get that from willows and and i've had a i'm sorry i had a an illustration on the last page of my presentation was showing up a native bee called a generically called a cellophane the colleagues genus on a willow other trees include some that the cities are is currently planting and some that perhaps could be included lyriodendron the tulip tree very beneficial something called the kentucky coffee tree doesn't really make coffee but it's called that gymnoclatus is the genus there tulip tree is lyriodendron also everything in the genus prunus that includes wild black cherries wild plums so those are those are trees that are they're commonly used in landscaping and that are beneficial to insects there are other the other thing that's beneficial to insects is native shrubs native woody shrubs for the same reasons okay well thank you very much see another hand chris graham and here i am uh still working on dinner i apologize uh uh wild ones have been a force in our community among those who care about natural features for a long time i uh regret i don't have time to be participate in more organizations than i do and do more than i do i would be there a couple of interesting observations over the last couple of days um red buds hawthorns our native plant survived the cold of two nights ago and last night just fine um some of you may have noticed magnolias around town that were extraordinarily beautiful this year because we had a southern spring where most of the magnolias come from great well at least yeah that we plant in our landscape and and uh they were completely crushed night before last just more crushed than i've ever seen them at the same year that they were the most beautiful that they have ever been so native plants are really important and i'm sure you agree and the wild ones all agree i'm not sure i'm willing to go to the place where we don't plant anything but native plants but at least we should do a lot more of that and i'm sure you agree yes indeed we could we could spend an evening on this but uh and we'd probably end up agreeing to disagree but i would assert that that any landscaping need any landscape design need uh can be met with the appropriate native plan i saw gabby raise her hand gabby that's throwing down the gauntlet do not disagree but a lot of clients would say oh but i need a magnolia people yeah hi mark thank you for your presentation i also wanted to thank you for sharing how you got involved with this and sharing your personal story on it which leads me to ask in terms of education and awareness you know you got involved with this because of your daughter what do you think would be impactful ways to get more families involved oh wonderful question um number one keep doing the things that the city is already doing hosting a a an open house and walk at mary beth doyle park this sunday morning from 10 until 11 and welcoming parents and and families with children to come with appropriate coven precautions and there would be somebody staffing an information table there and telling people about the wonderful wildflowers that are blooming at this time of year natural area preservation has had seed gathering of events which are wonderful for children because you base there's no way to there's no way to make a mistake gathering wild plants at native plant seeds wesley science center has programs washtenaw county parks has naturalist programs all of those things are very helpful and and we have we have to sometimes you engage the children and that engages the parents as i as i found out uh right there thank you thank you um are there other questions all right um i think we should move on but mark thank you so much these were um i think really helpful observations and um thinking a little bit about how we could maybe enhance what we're thinking about doing from our subcommittee approach so um we'll we'll let you know what happens next but thanks so much you're welcome to stay and uh watch with us um i'd like to start now with our our next speaker um and this is leslie kellman who is a master rain garden volunteer and known as the plant guru in the washington county um rain garden program i think that's great um and i have been very appreciative that she agreed to come and speak with us she has personally built three rain gardens in her yard and has some data i think on on the number of rain gardens in the city and their benefits so i'd like to just turn it over to leslie right now and leslie if you want to say anything more an introduction please do um and you said that you were okay with running your screen is that correct um i'll give it i've never done it before but i'll give it a try okay well we can help you if you need that don't worry just okay okay oops here we go is that out not yet okay um might be better if j if josh i can run it for you sure thank you i didn't change it so thank you yeah i know where it is let's get here we go all right i just want to make sure this is the right presentation this is the right one all right let me uh okay maybe get it zoomed in just slightly so that way we can here we go can you all see that all right yes okay okay okay and as rita said i am leslie kellman i am a master ring gardener i've been so since 2015.
we know from research that clustering certain grades around developmentally appropriate levels can contribute to more successful outcomes later in a student's academic career we are also acutely conscious of the social and emotional impacts this pandemic has had on our students and their families in an all candor we do not know the full scope of the pandemic's impact on our students social and emotional health nor do we have a full assessment of the academic impacts resulting from the pandemic but here is what we do know we know we will need smaller class sizes especially in our elementary classrooms as we take additional academic as well as social and emotional supports to the classrooms our classroom reconfiguration proposal is not in spite of the pandemic in fact it is in direct response to the pandemic additionally we also plan to offer summer enrichment to remediate learning losses resulting from the pandemic now as community members are well aware our current school transitions throughout a student's academic career are prompted by the facilities we currently have the pressing high level question is how do we create an organizational structure that does not increase the number of school transitions in a student's eb experience yet builds cost-effective elementary capacity ultimately supports the distinctive needs of both primary elementary and upper elementary students and provides an opportunity to explore the adoption of a comprehensive 9 through 12 high school model our plan building our success is a multi-year multi-phased approach it begins to address by september 2022 a forecasted shortage of elementary classroom capacity for both general and special education students grade restructuring for this initial phase we call phase one is critical to providing appropriate educational spaces for all students and teachers as east brunswick residential properties continue to be revitalized with families who are enrolling elementary age children into our schools we are witnessing exactly what the demographer study revealed we are being impacted by the migration of students primarily in grades one through three also high in our prioritization list is the creation of appropriate spaces to expand our special education programming we want to have the capacity in our home school settings for our students to receive high quality east brunswick special education instruction and related services by opening up classroom space in each elementary school we create the opportunity for inclusion in the least restrictive environment in a child's home school along their same age peers inclusive education benefits both children with and without disabilities and some benefits include increasing friendship skills social emotional well-being access to peer models heightened academic success the opportunity for engagement and extracurricular activities and a strengthened field of belongingness so our overall commitment is to build sustainable classroom capacity focus on equity throughout our school district and contain costs to minimize the tax impact burden on township residents so our solutions must address the following questions how much space do we need for the immediate and future needs of the district where do we place that space and how do we organize it how do any spatial solutions integrate into our existing facilities and grade level limitations what is the most cost effective mechanism to communicate with our entire stakeholder group some of whom are on this meeting tonight how do we envision our future teaching and learning environments what other opportunities to improve our students experiences present themselves as we develop solutions for classroom capacities and finally what security concerns need to be addressed in any new facility or any newly added additions to existing facilities so to recap what our proposal was for our grade level reconfiguration for september 2022 with phase one was to reconfigure elementary schools to pre-k through fourth grade hammer shoulde would begin functioning as an upper elementary school i want to re-emphasize that hammer shoulde you know today is the middle school hammer shoulder would re-begin re-functioning as an upper elementary school serving grades five and six we are not trying to push students into a middle school model we are trying to create an upper elementary experience for our students churchill with the addition of temporary classroom units also known as tcus would serve grades seven eight and nine and of course our high school would remain unchanged with its current configuration of grades 10 11 and 12.
do i have a motion motion by miss ryan seconded by mr lanzalata any questions or comments in pertaining to our annual appointments or approvals seeing none let's go to a roll call please mrs capello yes this is everhart yes mr fizzy cairo yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noel yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes to everything but 6.3 6.3 correct thank you uh mrs ryan yes motion carries thank you okay at this point we're going to move to item 7 approval of the minutes i need a motion to approve items seven one and seven two do i have a motion motion by miss fleming do i have a second second it by miss null any questions or comments about the minutes of uh march 25th seeing none let's go to a roll call please mrs cappello yes mrs everhart yes mr visicarro yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr lancelata yes mr megan yes this is ryan yes mission carries thank you at this point we're going to move to item number eight this is superintendent's report and administrative items i need a motion to prove items eight one through eight seven do i have a motion for that motion of miss capello you have a second second by miss fleming before you go to questions and comments i will give the floor to dr smith thank you mr fisacarro as in prior meetings i have updates on two continuing topics schools and budget first the budget update thursday may 6th is our final budget presentation when we will recommend the finalized budget for board approval that will be our third presentation after the preliminary budget presentation in february and our tentative budget presentation in march we are continuing to examine many options for possible savings and we'll share about any adjustments to the budget in our final budget presentation on may 6th there is a resolution in our board agenda this evening that speaks to a large part of why we are at this point it is a resolution about the reduction in state funding that our district and the other 102 s2 districts are going through uh over the seven year period that we're in the um that the cumulative i want to draw attention to the cumulative we've talked a lot about the the 7.8 million dollars in state funding cuts that we're experiencing over these seven years looked at cumulatively it's actually 32.6 million dollars if you think about you know the loss in in the first year carrying over for the seven year sequence the loss in the second year carrying for six years our loss this year continuing to affect us for the next three years of the seven year sequence my school's update uh i would like to share a point of light so this week marked all of our in-person middle school students came to school on monday and every day this week as we now truly have just two cohorts our in-person cohort which is 78 of our students and our remote cohort which is 22 percent of our students thus this is the first week since the week of march 9th 2020 that we have provided five full days of school for all parents for students of all parents seeking it our plan is to continue on this path for the rest of the school year and to use the experience from these coming weeks as well as from all the weeks of this year in our planning for september many thanks to all our staff across all roles for their tireless efforts this entire school year to provide the best supports possible for all our students in person and remotely there is so much for our staff our families to be proud of about this year i would like to give two special shout outs to our staff this week as it is after school professionals appreciation week so to our ecc director miss lea pearl leader and the recc staff deepest thanks for all you do and yesterday was our administrative professionals day nationwide and here in our district's greatest appreciation also to our administrative professionals across all our buildings every role makes part every role plays its part to make it possible for kids to pick out a book they love from a shelf to solve a math mystery problem to swing on the swings at recess to learn about kindness so thank you thank you dr smith are there any uh questions or comments to the superintendent's report administrative items seeing none let's go to a roll call please mrs cappello yes this is abrahart yes mr fizzakero yes this is miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noel yes mr lanzalata yes mr meagan yes mrs ryan yes mission carries thank you all right moving now to item nine curriculum and instruction i need a motion to approve items nine one through nine four do i have a motion motion by miss ryan second it by mr cantham any questions or comments pertaining to curriculum and instruction yes so during last month's meeting mrs ryan gave her policy updates uh before the vote which i think was a great idea so we're going to do that now so from curriculum and instruction we got three updates for for this month the first is attendance numbers like dr smith already mentioned um right now we have 78 of kids in school five days a week full day that's across the the district uh that's a five percent increase from last month and a increase from the month before um i think it's important to notice in in the last time we gave this update was february uh in february we had roughly 35 of our kids in school for four days a week and now we're more than double that so i think that's a testament to the to the building level staff the teachers paraprofessionals across the board and the building level administration so thank you for that i think it aligns with our day one goal from august 5th of making sure that families have the option to be in person as much as possible or remote if that's what they feel fit for their kids so i think that consistency both academically and emotionally is important second update is for summer programs uh we have our summer learning academy which is made possible through our sr2 grant and plenty of other summer programs and i think it's cool that the summer programs are targeting not just one group of kids but literally every grade is represented and it's not just academics we also have summer programs for emotional wellness as well so i think that's awesome um and lastly as far as grant money uh we talked last month about the mental health grant there are some percentages allocated for different things within the mental health umbrella um we're still working to see tangibly how we're going to use that money to to best affect kids and then additionally there's one more grant that we received part of the american rescue plan esther 3 that we're calling it so that we have not received the money nor do we know the strings attached for what the umbrellas are for that but you can expect that update next month thank you any other question oh there's no just going to ask about the summer programs and anish maybe you can answer are we doing anything uh above and beyond what we usually offer in the summer for learning loss or anything like that yeah so so part miss magula can can chime in if uh i don't explain enough but yeah so part of the s or two money is um for learning loss and then there's another allotment for learning acceleration oh sorry all right okay so um as part of esser2 um there are two buckets one is for learning acceleration and one is the combat learning loss so both of those are being used for the summer as part of the summer learning academy um that is above and beyond what we normally offer um so there are things that that are being done um but i don't have much specifics beyond that any other questions seeing none let's go to a roll call please mrs capello yes this is ever hart yes mr fizzy carrot yes miss fleming yes mr captain yes mrs knoll yes mr lanzalotta yes mr megan yes this is ryan yes motion carries thank you all right now we're going to move to item 10 finance and operations i need a motion to approve items 10 1 through 10 16.
477 that's the total number of cases of schools and daycares with active cases today in arizona 190. today's total number of hospitalizations due to cover 19 and 22 that's the total number of deaths reported today in the state of arizona due to cover 19. as one of your employed anatomy physiology teachers i employ you to continue the mass mandate in gilbert public schools for doug ducey's order he cited the cdc as evidenced with the mass mandate and as of this meeting the current cdc guidelines are not what doug ducey claims but are instead to prioritize universal correct use of masks and physical distancing in a classroom of 30 to 35 students i can barely keep them two feet apart from each other let alone three or six by removing this mass mandate you are removing another barrier to keep my students and myself safe while the majority of teachers are vaccinated not enough studies or evidence have been conducted on their effectiveness against the code variant asu has confirmed these variants are in phoenix and by removing the mass mandate you are inviting these variants into the classroom further jeopardizing the health institute of students and faculty as the staff you employ if you waive the mass mandate you are sending a clear message to them that you care more about a vocal minority than your own staff safety and work environment after the fallout of the rifts removing mass minutes will add another variable to an already chaotic school year we have been wearing masks for 150 school days we could do it for 25 more the blowout will be another work to workplace satisfaction it will cost you teachers it's already cost you one me thank you next three speakers are sue frye lindsey stevens and jason st louis thank you dr santa cruz governing board members dr mccor herb mr dr mccord thank you sorry i'm sue fry a longtime employee here in gilbert public schools and i was very proud of this board when you led the east valley way back in august to develop a mitigation plan to keep as many stakeholders safe as possible we have given choice interesting that that word has come up so often and yet gilbert public schools offered plenty of choices we offered an online choice we offered it in person choice when health issues arose we developed a hybrid choice people made those choices based on that mitigation plan we have 26 days left stick with the plan and the plan keeps as many people safe as possible and everyone in those places made their choices based on that plan whether they're in person whether they're online they knew what the ground rules were going in don't change them now people will have to make new choices based on new circumstances and with 26 days left and high stakes events like end of the year celebrations and graduations that we want to have in person thank you hello and good evening governing board i'm lindsey stevens a senior at highland high school and i represent a great majority of our concerns for removing the mask mandate in gps schools i was lucky enough to reserve my spot and i actually received my second dose of the vaccine yesterday however many many students who want the vaccine have not been able to get it yet this is why we please ask gps to give students and families the rest of the school year just a little bit more time 26 days to receive vaccinations um yeah we only have a bit three to four me weeks more school the final stretch and with impending travelers um due to graduations come the risk of spreading the virus to loved ones we know human life is the most precious thing we don't want to lose any more people from this horrible virus it is just a piece of fabric be strong be brave and thank you for your time thank you good evening i just want to make sure that if it does go to remote that students that are in person right now will have that not remote i'm sorry if the mask is rescinded the students that are in school right now will have the option to to go remote that they'll be able to transition from in person back to remote the last three weeks if that's the way this is going to go that being said it took me months and months to get my son to go back to school in person to the point i'd given up finally before spring break he came to me and said he was ready to go back to school he felt safe with the numbers low and knowing his classmates and staff would be wearing masks it's been a godsend he is finally getting that in-person social interaction and it's crushing me to hear him tell me if the mass policy goes away he wants to stay home i lost my train of thought yeah that he wants to stay home he's telling you he won't feel safe at school for math for for those that don't want to wear masks if the policy is kept as is for the last few weeks their kids will still go to school the next day for kids like mine and other families that are concerned about the ramifications of no longer requiring mass their kids are gonna they're gonna stay home start the new school year with no mask if it seems safe and appropriate vaccinations by then will be more likely available i've seen what happens at my gym when smash becomes strongly recommended nobody wears them i just want my kid to spend his last few weeks at school thank you our last two speakers are matthew oscarwick and amy peterson thank you for the board for letting me speak um i am i have a son who goes here to in gilbert i'm also a member of the american public health association and i'm also a member of the society of epidemiological research i have kept my silence the past few months as i've watched the board continue to make decisions to curry favor with a minority of gilbert student's parents sticking to the science regarding kovit again ignoring your duty as elected officials to make the hard calls when the overall safety and welfare of the whole supersedes their own apparent want to be uncomfortable not to be inconvenienced not to have to sacrifice but to call a special board meeting to discuss the need to modify or rescind face mask wearing requirement there's nothing to indicate a need to do such the centers of disease control still indicated in its guidance just updated march 9 2021 the continued importance of the correct use of face masks and the prevention of the spread of disease just because governor ducey's misguided revocation of the mask mandated for schools not based on any valid scientific principles or fact doesn't mean that the board should jump on the same runaway political bandwagon continued vigilance is the only sure way to make sure that all students teachers and faculty at gilbert public schools remain safe we should not allow battle fatigue or the misguided decisions of misinformed elected officials to allow us to think we have won the war we have made be done with the virus but thank you hi my name is amy peterson i'm a gilbert native i'm a graduate from gps and i am here tonight because i love gps and i love gilbert um the decisions that have been made this past year have been literal mana from heaven for the chart for the charter schools and for some of our neighboring districts i'm here today because i would love to see us retain gilbert at gps we have seen a loss of enrollment which means a loss of revenue which means a cutting of costs we have seen 152 teachers laid off that is going to continue to happen as we lose enrollment that will continue it's a basic business principle so i'm here tonight because i believe your decision is much more than to make a decision about mass to mandate them or to lift them tonight your decision is going to be a i'm sorry i'm losing my train of thought it's it's much more than keeping masks for the next six weeks of school this decision is one that is being closely watched by those whose trust and confidence is in gps hangs by a thread your decision tonight will be a very telling statement to our community as to what they can expect moving forward because the dangling carrot just isn't cutting it anymore i can promise you that this decision will weigh heavily on those trying to decide what to do with their children for the school year next year and i agree that it is only 26 days but you can't we can't just keep bumping out the goal post and how many i would love to know are sitting in this room with masks six feet apart fully vaccinated when does it end honestly when does it end thank you thank you [Applause] that was our last speaker we'll move to item three item 3.01 is discussion impossible action to modify or rescind face mask wearing requirements dr mccord do you have anything by way of introduction just excuse me i'm sorry just that um as everyone knows the executive order 51 20 51 was rescinded with the executive order 2021-10 and in that is where uh governor ducey removes the mass mandate we're we're here having a conversation tonight because it is also in our regulations uh the mass mandate but also in our mitigation strategies so we felt it was pertinent to have a conversation to be able to make decisions moving forward so okay so the special meeting is a result of what is already in our policy that we need to work with that is correct board members item 3.01 is in front of you uh we're ready to entertain a motion all of us have been given an opportunity to look at five possible prototypes and we'll leave it open at that dr santa cruz i would like to make a motion for discussion because i think before we actually put emotion on the table i think it would be appropriate to discuss this none of us have had any conversations with each other so um if people are open to discussing their thoughts and then maybe we can come to to some agreement okay board members there is a motion on table for discussion is there a second could you please clarify that again i just would like to give us an opportunity to um weigh in and give our thoughts so that maybe we can come to some agreement rather than trying to make a motion and then seeing which motion would pass i i think it would maybe be helpful that we could work towards consensus if possible um you know that's always my goal but um i just thought it might be easier if we discussed it first and then um maybe we could that would work better so your motion is that we have a motion to discuss yes okay i'll second that okay it's removed and seconded that there is a motion for discussion uh is there any comment i i can start if if there's so do we need to vote we'll need to vote on whether or not we'll accept that motion otherwise we have five prototypes in front of us and we'll move down the list or select one i i think that's well i understand it well i guess i guess we could vote i again i think it would be helpful to have a discussion a lot of times when we have something that we're working on we will go through a work study process and weigh in there we'll have other opportunities to weigh in um this was literally dropped in our laps on monday afternoon so we have not had a chance to go through our usual process um and i guess we would need to vote before we discussed but um that's my those are my thoughts the other option board members would be simply to put one of the motions on the table discuss that and get all of the commentary and mutations of comments out and vote on that and either vote it up or down and then move to another motion if that's the case so uh what's your pleasure although i seconded the motion i'm not sure with robert rules of order and hopefully somebody knows more about that than me that i don't i'm not sure what the motion i mean i i understand what you're saying yes and at the same time there's not really a motion there other than we just discuss and i i'll defer to my other colleagues i would just like to make i would i would think you would want to put a motion on that's kind of how we've operated over time and then discuss that and if there's amendments or someone wants to change that that motion then that can definitely happen again i think that's how we've been operating well we have done it both ways i've i've done it both ways we'll answer the board but i will withdraw my motion and i will put this motion on the table option number two the governing board hereby directs or authorize the district superintendent or his or her delegates to update face covering regulation related to the district's coven 19 mitigation plan as follows in adherence with cdc and adhs guidelines the current face covering requirement shall remain in place until may 28 2021.
[Music] george washington is not a standard a social studies standard but obviously he's an important component in american history and like many other important people throughout american history we have books that are inclusive of george washington and other you know american key figures in america prominent if not you know arguably maybe the most prominent uh in american history so we do certainly address many important figures through american history not only in our history curriculum but in our reading curriculum uh or in our um yeah our english curriculum so you know i i couldn't cite you exactly where george washington's identified at you know marlene i don't know if you want to elaborate on that or is that in all of the classroom libraries at the elementary level you've heard about these books they're these great biographies for kids and i'd be hard not pressed not to find the one about george washington in every classroom because they pick all of these um you know important historical people to to share and that the kids read about and also in second grade um with the c3 the the focus is on economics geography history and civics and we're talking to the kids about making a difference state local national international and examining people that make and have made a difference in those places and george washington is certainly one of those people who comes up as a topic who have have made a difference and in a great difference at that so it's interwoven throughout um and across the curriculum okay is there i'm just curious is there any criteria like if anyone is discussed in particular in the early elementary gates is there any i'm just curious like criteria that are used in determining who is addressed as a unit is there a criteria for who we discuss yeah i can't recall a single unit where it's one person right right for anybody i think we teach standards and and as marlene said important figures are woven in to the standards that we study if you're talking about american history you don't talk about american history without referencing george washington but the standard is not tell me everything you know about george washington you know and it's the formation of a country and what role did george washington play in that would certainly be uh discussed but it we don't have a george washington unit per se the same way we don't have like a martin luther king or any other prominent figure in american history abraham lincoln or no you know no no unit focuses on one individual i mean i don't know if that helps you or yeah no no i appreciate it and just anytime tim we can have that conversation and you know go into greater depth but you know i think that's just an overview yeah no thank you i appreciate that and just so people at home understand where this really came to my mind was the insurrection and what i view as the you know the precedent set by george washington to have a peaceful transfer of power it was important and we saw it up close and personal a few months ago and that's why i just uh i i put him in a different place than anybody else for that specific reason so anyway thank you thanks tom any other questions for curriculum uh andrew what what grades does that cover department of education and all the standards are i don't know if you've gone through them yet but they list why not um but if they're there and you know in their lesson plans too and um all kinds of real wealth of information so you could look and get your daughters in first grade sure yeah okay thank you fit great thank you thank you faith moving on to finance committee mr grippel thank you mr chair um you know i just wanted to say something real quick um you may notice that most of us aren't wearing masks tonight and uh this may be just indicative of how we are going to be going forward in the world and you know our high school students were wearing masks and before our meeting began we we discussed our own comfort levels and our degrees of vaccination and all that kind of stuff so so just so you know that we're not sort of trying to make a statement or anything we all discussed our comfort levels before the meeting began that's a good point we're very far apart and just uh yeah so we are distance apart for our guidelines so we can do this and the reason why the students weren't wearing masks certainly for personal choice but also we could not space them far apart enough they're sitting at the same table which i'm not sure people can see so we are we're doing our part but thank you for clarifying that i just uh took it for granted no problem um okay so uh finance committee uh we just had that meeting uh if you would like to see it in its entirety uh if he will be on youtube i'm assuming uh in the near future um and in that meeting we uh dr solon gave a great presentation on uh future grant funding and how we're going to uh what was the term bounce forward uh so um if you'd like to have more detail on that that'll be in the video um and the uh the one the one part uh in the meeting that we didn't get to discuss was the uh the bloom shapiro quote for um an audit of our student activity accounts uh something that really probably didn't have a lot of activity this year but has in the past where over a million dollars in i would call uh cash and cash equivalents passes through every year um and so we asked uh since the um the town was i guess going out to bid for a new vendor i think for for audit we asked them to to get a quote for uh to do an all-inclusive um internal control and operational review of our of our uh student activity accounts um and uh when we we actually we had a presentation on march 12 2020 which was the evening before our school shutdown where uh dr gad mr uh woods and um you see mr uh steve trophone and pretty much jeffrey and uh yes mr jeffries um uh gave a presentation on on their internal controls um and uh and it was a very good presentation and um so after that we we looked into the actual policy and we noticed that the policy had been updated since 1996.
um this is two pictures from different angles of one of my three rain gardens it's the one that i actually did for the class the other two that i did well let's just say they were i learned a lot from the class i tried them beforehand the class taught me how to renovate them and make them work uh next next slide okay so why why put in a rain garden um if you take a look at pretty much you know your typical landscape around town we've got the buildings we've got a lot of concrete and we've got a lot of turf grass the buildings in the concrete you know the sidewalks driveways and that are impermeable and the turf grass it's it does soak in the water but it takes a while because it's so dense and so you're basically interrupting the water cycle when you do that when that water ends up flowing into say the storm water system instead of into the ground so the purpose of a rain garden is to collect that water on site in a lower area so that it will infiltrate into the ground and so you are replenishing that ground water instead of having it running stormwind water system running into the river and creating issues downstream there um and there are really two parts you can think in a sense two parts the rain guard one is that low depression where the water is flowing in but the other part that really helps are the plants okay and i'll talk more about those in a couple of slides okay go ahead to the next slide there if you would okay um the mastering okay one of people instrumental in putting together the course and teaching the course is um shannon gibb randall along with susan bryan who is the master the rain garden coordinator for the county so shannon jump in anytime here on this one um okay and i got this slide from susan bryan um the nest you know mastering the rain garden coordinator for county and this is a slide that shows a number of great men uh i'm sorry rain gardens built in the city of ann arbor since the rain garden program started and as you can see there are about 380 as of the end of last year and in 2 2010 the first master rain gardener class started and that was in person class that met for about five weeks and primarily taught by susan and shannon with some other people staff coming in in 2015 they got an online a rain garden class too that people did again once a week and it class walk through basically how to put together a rain garden and both classes ran up until covert pretty much stopped the in person when the end of last year and it's now all online and even last year with the shutdown you can see there were still 47 rain gardens built and from what i understand okay the 380s in the city was a residential raid gardens that doesn't include the ones that you see that have been put in like for example down miller avenue at the schools at municipal buildings it private built private buildings and so on so we've got a lot more than that and from what i understand throughout the county there's about a thousand of them okay next slide please okay an important part of the rain garden as i mentioned earlier are the plants that you put in and as part of the program native plants are very strongly encouraged and they have very important port part now i was a high school science teacher that was primarily earth and physical science so i i tend to think more about what was below the ground here and one of the important parts of putting the plants into the rain garden is those deep roots the native plants have and the plants themselves help filter the sediment going into the rain garden those deep roots actually go in there and they help break down the soil so that for example if you've got a clay clay soil which we have a lot of here in ann arbor um the water those roots will help the water infiltrate into the ground soak into the ground within a day or two so you aren't left with standing water that people tend to become considered concerned about if you talk about things like collecting water from your property so they do that also those plants they require water so water is pulled up from those roots to enable the plant to survive but then you start taking a look at what is above the ground the part we see okay plants that we choose um they're host plants for a number of native species you think about milkweeds and the caterpillar not a native species but you can also think of and not a rain garden plant but if you've ever looked at say fennel or dill they are decimated by the swallowtail caterpillars okay so host plants that insects need for example in order to survive you've got the seeds that are for birds for small animals so they provide food they provide shelter to a lot of these animals so the more of these pollinator plants that you have in your gardens in your rain gardens the more diverse plant and animal life you will get and that really does help kind of stabilize the environment when you have that and the other thing that doesn't usually get mentioned is those plants are pretty and so as you look at them you know i when i put my rain garden in for example one of them is sitting near the deck and my one of my goals in retirement was i want to sit back and just read books because i never had time to well i find that i have a hard time reading them now because every time i see something land on one of those plants or scurry around or hear a frog i've got to get up and go investigate it and i see a lot more of that now that i've got that rain garden nearby um one of the plants that i can think of as an example when you start talking about diversity is mountain mint and i one day i was just chatting with somebody standing by the mountain mint i am not an expert on bees but i was able to distinguish on that one mountain plant in bloom probably about five or six different species of bees all on there at the same time so you know pollinators choosing pollinator plants for your rain garden as well as the other gate gardens very important both above and below ground okay so next slide okay and these are just some examples i took from rain garden in the rain garden in my backyard one of the rain gardens um you can see the monarch caterpillar on the swamp milkweed bumblebees and a couple of plants here one of my favorite plants just because it's so interesting is the rattlesnake master and that grape that wasp on there five ten years ago you wouldn't have caught me walking near a wasp but i saw that and i'm so fascinated just kept getting closer and closer um so so much diversity that you don't see when you don't have a lot of these native plants in there okay last slide please okay the master rain gardener program itself is still still going strong during covet in fact they've actually found that there's an uptick in people taking the course as there is a lot of interest in gardening now that we're home a lot more so here's a little bit of information here as i mentioned susan bryant is the master um the rain garden coordinator and she's with water resources commission you can get a lot of information from that master rain gardener website there including the information on the course how to put in your own rain garden and so on also available on that address is a copy of the regards um handbook you know how to do it and this is an older copy it's now downloadable that i got but it walks you through the course does week by week you know how to choose a site how to calculate how large your rain garden is needs to be how to i mean get in there and get your shovel in there how to dig it and so on how to get the water to the rain garden from your downspouts um and so on and then as you mentioned the course that susan and shannon teach is now available online youtube so you can do it at your own pace between the two of those by the time you go through the handbook and the video you really are ready to put you've got your rain garden planned and you are ready to pull out the shovel or hire somebody else to do it however there's also one more source of information for help if you want it or just advice or just a chat and that is there is a facebook page that you get access you can get access to when you sign up for the course and i have no idea how many of us are now on it but if you know people have taken the class that have this is their first gardening project ever they want to do something good for the environment for their families for their home and don't even know what kind of shovel to buy and i've talked to people when i've helped with the in-person class that are really at that point and then some of us have been doing it for years but you go onto the facebook page and you ask you know okay here's my site and you put up a photograph that you got off um google earth or something you know this is what it looks like water flows here what can i do and people jump right in you get your questions answered um and one of my problems was and the reason i got started was i was getting water in my basement and you know people ask about that well i'm getting water in my basement what kind of things can i do how can a rain garden help what kind of plants should i plant i've got sunny clay sunny and clay what works one of the discussions that's been going on last two days is what do you do about the rabbits the rabbits are eating everything what kind of plants are rabbit resistant and so the program itself is it's great as far as being able to do something you know as i've just mentioned for your own home for your family and for the environment as a whole keeping it more diverse keeping it more stable and so on okay thank you thanks leslie um so i think one of the questions that just comes to my mind is um where does someone find these beautiful plants that you've used in your rain gardens there actually there are a number of places you can get them there are a lot of native plant vendors um that you've got some that come to the farmers markets and urban ipsy farmers markets that are somewhat local and one of the handy-dandy parts listing oh here it is in the course pack is a list of resources to buy a rain garden no local made of plant producers also if you find that you want that rain garden but your back says this is not a good idea for me there are a number of landscape companies engineering so on that have taken the course and you can hire them to do it for you that's great um and again one of the handy-dandy things that susan and shannon put together as far as i don't know what to buy here's a spreadsheet that will also give you ideas so you can go to the farmer's market go to the native plant nurseries that are around and that's really one of the best ways to go in non-cova times though my favorite are the plant swaps and the master rain gardeners have a couple times a year other organizations have them and then if you go on the pace facebook page if you go on say if you follow the next door part gardeners love to share their plants we don't like killing them as many of us probably know so and then if there's something that you really want there are some online places but you can really do a great job filling up a beautiful rain garden um locally great um i see steve brown had his hand up first let's go with steve yeah hi thanks leslie that was a great presentation um so i around half of all ann arbor residents live in apartment live in an apartment complexes so i was wondering if you were aware of any programs either governmental or non-profits that try to encourage you know the owners of apartment complexes to put rain gardens as part of their landscaping um i don't know of any we've had people though in the courses um because i come i have been up until they were kind of down for a while i would help out in the morning before the class actually started and i know i talked with not with people that in their condos they would go through the whole process and then approach the condo association um i don't know for sure um shannon are you yeah there were a number of people that were from apartment complexes or that that wanted to do it or that um somebody who couldn't do it in their own site would work with somebody who was from an apartment complex so there definitely were people that came through the majority were homeowners for sure um but there were definitely people that came through to do that it is a bigger hurdle to get through the approval process for whatever your your um your building is but um yeah there were people that took advantage of the program to learn how to do it and execute it in that way okay um is there any way that we might be able to promote that um what do you mean promote it like that in terms of um the the master rain gardener program itself or being able to sort of reach out to um reach out to apartment complexes themselves to see if people are interested yeah i mean reaching out to apartment complex owners to see if they would consider that as part of their landscaping plans that's an interesting idea to think about because oftentimes there's a landscape committee it would be interesting to be able to give like the resource to a landscape committee that those kinds of things exist because i think one of the powerful things about rain gardens is leslie was saying is that you're you're dealing with a couple of different goals that the city has one is storm water management and one is the pollinator piece and so it's a real twofer in that way um and uh that's an interesting idea is to think about how to promote it with um many times those things are a little harder to control in those systems because um sometimes the things are piped underground and it's a little harder to get access um but not all the time you know so i think i think that's a cool idea yeah because the program is really set up to be able to help people in whatever the circumstance um is and if you have a difficult technical situation like there's folks in the program that help you through that yeah so okay um kathy griswold i just want to say that that i took the class from susan and i agree with everything that leslie said especially about how the facebook group is so helpful um i don't before covid there used to be at least one if not two potluck picnics and plant swaps every year and they were a lot of fun uh and all of the plants that i received in the plant swap are still alive so and multiplying so i would encourage other people to uh to take the class at least online so thank you um john risky yes i think since this is an ann arbor body we should also say that the city of ann arbor on its website has a web page on rain gardens and maybe that's a place to steve's question i was just picking up on his statement that would be a place where maybe we could actually explicitly have a comment that says people that are living in condos or apartment complexes um this is what you can do this is who you can contact that's all thanks leslie okay welcome anyone else i guess i would just one question leslie did you solve your basement problem yes i did i mean i had a little little trickle last year but i think once we yank that deck which is planned for this spring i'll be able to we'll we'll do a little regrading there too so yeah definitely great well thank you very much um uh any other questions for leslie among our group okay let's say you're welcome to stay um and josh i have to ask for a little bit of assistance um becky gayevsky is uh trying to get in she says she can see us but she has not been able to um get visible and audible interesting okay i'm not seeing her oh here we go oh thanks yeah got her hi becky wherever you are there you are okay hi i'll just give you a really quick intro and i just want to say thank you to becky gayevsky from for joining us from natural areas preservation she is a conservation steward and i've been fortunate enough to work with her a few times on on stewarding that i've done in parks and she is a great resource for us in the city and i'm so glad that she's part of our our team of people that work with us um becky i'm gonna just turn it over to you now and and um you know our theme so thanks yeah sure thank you rita um did you have the slides um yes josh is going to be running them for you okay awesome well uh while we get that going oh here comes great thank you very much josh um so again my name is becky guyeske and i'm with natural area preservation just a little bit about us for those of you who might not know who we are we fall under the umbrella of parks and rec at the city of ann arbor and we are funded by the parks maintenance and capital improvements millage our mission is to protect and restore ann arbor's natural areas and to foster an environment and environmental ethic among its citizens and the way we do that is through ecological or habitat restoration so kind of by definition of what we do we are restoring pollinator habitat and protecting pollinator habitat every day basically the way we do this work is both through staff using staff and volunteers and we have work days where folks can come out and help us do things like removing invasive species or doing prescribed burns collecting and scattering native seeds all the things that would kind of try to enhance the quality and biodiversity of pollinator habitat and we even do special events and work days that are focused around pollinator week so we'll do work days that are only focused in prairie areas or wetland areas where we've got lots of good butterflies and insect diversity we also support independent volunteers in restoring this type of habitat we have park stewards who adopt certain parks as their own and kind of work in there independently we'll make work plans together with them to try to achieve maybe goals that they have or goals that nap in general has and we'll kind of guide them through that process we'll give them support with our staff time we'll do volunteer work days with them so in addition to us doing all this sort of work we also empower other folks to do it if they have a particular park that they're really passionate about and they really want to see uh restored and mark is one of our stewards as a matter of fact from mary beth doyle good to see you mark um another way that we are supporting pollinators through our work is we use an integrated pest management plan which is basically we try all different kinds of methods to control our invasive pests we're not just going straight to chemicals or things that could harm pollinators we're going to first try pulling hand pulling or we'll try manually cutting or burning we want to use the methods that are the most effective with the least amount of impact on non-target organisms so we want to minimize as much off target impacts as we can so we're always thinking about what is a good way that we can accomplish our goals and not have any negative side effects we also provide a project guidance for different big projects that go on throughout the city so for example several years ago there was a big restoration of traver creek at leslie park golf course and this year as we speak right now there is a restoration of ben's creek at huron hills golf course so we are providing input on what native plantings would be good how can we attract more birds or get more wildlife into these areas so we kind of we get to dip our hands into all kinds of different projects in that way we also do site plan reviews when those new big developments are coming into the city we're looking at impacts that those might have on natural areas and pollinator habitats as much as we can we want to minimize impact to high quality natural areas sometimes you're able to get new park land out of that and we're also providing guidance on native plantings again like what what would be a good seed mix to put down here to get a good diversity of native plants to attract more pollinators next slide please so we also do a lot of outreach to the community and we involve folks in citizen science efforts we've been the ann arbor hub for the michigan butterfly network for about six years now i think and that is an effort that's out of the kalamazoo nature center it's a statewide effort they want to get all these different hub cities is what what they call them on board where these hubs can recruit volunteers that will go out and survey different butterfly habitats and record all the different butterflies that they can find so every year we train volunteers to go out to i think we have routes in about 10 or 12 parks now um and they'll go out and they'll record the butterflies they see the type of habitat they see them in how many they see and this all goes into a national database that can be accessed by researchers and other folks that are studying pollinator diversity and distribution so we're always actively recruiting more volunteers for that program and sort of collaborating with the folks at the butterfly network to get people trained in the survey protocol every year we partner with the leslie science and nature center for their annual monarch migration festival we will set up a table and talk about our native habitats and why they're important and why we need to restore them and how we can restore them we'll do little walks to help people identify native plants that are good for butterflies and will sort of assist them as they release tagged monarchs which is pretty cool they weren't able to do the festival last year unfortunately because of the pandemic but we hope that maybe this year we'll get back on track and we will have a presence there again we've also partnered with nwf ann arbor office in the past to distribute educational materials at public events like the green fair um or i think maybe there were some pollinator week materials that we distributed so we're we're always happy to have those educational materials and try to get them out into the community more we are also reaching out to the public through our informational webpage on pollinators that we maintain on the city website we've got posts on our facebook page our twitter page about pollinators and the importance of pollinators so um fostering an environmental ethic among ann arbor this is one of the ways that we do that we want to let everybody know what what sort of cool pollinators they can find if they plant more native plants in there in their front yard for example we just kind of want to spread the enthusiasm about pollinators that we all have as well next slide please and we've also collaborated with some external partners with nwf ann arbor is a signatory of the mayor's monarch pledge which is a program where mayors from cities and villages around the country commit to doing certain actions to benefit pollinators and there's a whole list of pre-determined actions you can pick and choose which ones you want to sign on for and then at the end of the year you submit an annual report talking about how did you achieve all of those different things that you committed to so we've been a signatory since i believe 2015 and um since then there are two levels of commitment i guess to this pledge there's like a leadership circle and then there's just like a signatory level so we've been in the leadership circle um for several years i'm not sure if it was from the beginning or not but for the last several years we've been in the leadership circle so we report back to nwf every year about all the things that we've done at nap but also throughout parks and um any other organizations that i may know of that's help that are helping pollinators will kind of just let them know like hey here are all the cool things that we've done um a couple years ago we also received a grant from the nwf to purchase native seed in order to enhance some of our pollinator habitat that was very cool we've also collaborated with the ann arbor office of nwf and a group of citizen leaders called the wolf pack to establish a pollinator garden at west park and that's been going great an additional project that we've been a part of is called project wingspan and this is um by the pollinator partnership we had an ecologist from project wingspan come out a couple of years ago to evaluate our pollinator habitats and give us some advice for how we could improve them like doing different timing of our prescribed burns to try to favor some more of the wildflowers that could come up and be beneficial to pollinators and as part of that after we kind of got all of our habitats evaluated then we also collaborated with project wingspan to have them send out teams of trained volunteers to collect native seeds from our prairies with the idea that those seeds would all be kind of collected and mixed together um based on the region of michigan that they came from and then redistributed out to other communities that may need some assistance with getting more seed and more diversity into their own habitats and as a part of that we were actually awarded some seed material this year that we can redistribute back out into our habitats to try to enhance uh pollinator plant diversity we've also worked with the washington county water resources commission hand in hand with some of their rain gardens where we've performed prescribed burns and invasive species control in some of these gardens that have good habitat for pollinators so we are always happy to partner up with other folks in order to sort of further our our pollinator efforts we're always looking for new ideas and uh new ways that we can get folks excited about pollinators and making better habitats for them and i think that was those were all my slides so there's lots of stuff that we've done and i probably went through it pretty quick um but yeah happy to take any questions thanks becky uh i think john mursky has his hand raised quickie i just realized we haven't talked at all about the university and i'm wondering uh what we might know about the university in terms of resources staff students arboretum botanical garden dot dot dot yeah that's a great question and actually we yeah we don't have as much collaboration with the university as as you might expect um you know we're on kind of friendly terms with the folks over there of course but yeah we haven't collaborated on a lot of projects we have had students from seas doing projects in our parks for like the general ecology classes um and we've pitched the occasional masters project over there so we're we're connected with the folks in seas pretty well but yeah not not as much with the arb or the bot gardens mark you look like okay sorry i just sorry i'm looking at electronic hands oh i see it mark thanks uh let's go ahead and mark just just to that point there's a brand new director now for nichols arboretum and mathi botanical gardens he just did a public session on tuesday evening so he's very interested in partnerships generally so i think that prospects in that particular direction are are very good right now and that was all i was going to say but emphasis i think mark hit it just perfectly because tony really wants to have partnerships that's great yeah anyone else well i can just say that i have learned a lot from nap and really appreciate the the kind of education and the um kind of the uh encouragement to um learn about a particular area and apply uh the kinds of training that they provide that that you've provided becky and others and i i just really appreciate nap and i love that um i didn't know until i saw in your slides that knapp had been involved with project wingspan which i think is really fabulous oh wow more hands uh shannon um i guess i would just like to say how important i feel like your organization is to the city and that with very few people you all leverage hundreds of us working for the city and i think that model is very powerful and um i just i think it's a really critical part of how we have the quality of life that we do because there is no way we could ever afford to pay for the amount of work that gets done by ann arbor citizens because you all run a great organization so i just think it's an incredibly critical and important piece of what makes ann arbor what it is and i just want to offer my gratitude that you all exist in the way that you do thank you so much yeah i think the total number of hours that we put in every year um it's something like a third or a half of all the total hours is is by volunteers the amount of work that happens so it is pretty amazing nowhere in our nowhere other than ann arbor would we have that amount of effort so i am also very grateful to all of you kathy griswold i want to acknowledge your excellent communication program uh i'm on city council and whenever i see one of the nap communications i say why can't city council have excellent communications like that and i have volunteered for nap and i i'm sure i will again but congratulations thank you thank you so much jonathan overpack sorry i just forgot to put my hand down oops okay uh chris graham a short story to tell um back years ago the university and the va hospital made a deal about a route for connecting fuller road around the va without using oak way or oak whatever the road was that came up the east side of the va hospital so they could enlarge the va hospital to the east and the route that was picked went right through a grove of native baroques that were 36 inches and there were a whole group of us that said no and while we were debating that issue it was very clear that that tract of land between what is now full of road and the va hospital was completely full of ammo honeysuckle and big buckthorns big guys they've been growing in there since the 1960s probably and in the process of this big debate almost the entire council and the mayor came out on that property to look at those trees and in the discussion it was pointed out that these plants these invasive exotic plants would completely destroy the natural areas of ann arbor and were in the process rapidly of doing so one of the guys who was present was a sierra club member and took the matter back to his group and said we need to do something and of course the question was what to do and what they did was mount the campaign to establish the millage to establish the naturalist program in ann arbor to do stewardship on our parks many of which had the best natural areas existing in the city first of all to control invasive species and with plants that large and that well established across the city in ann arbor this was a big deal and so in come all of these wonderful volunteers all the way up to becky and many employees over the years that have transformed our best natural features in the city into um in many cases thriving native ecosystems um and uh so 30 almost 30 years later we have this wonderful program that becky's a part of that um reaches out not just through the park system and on our public lands but has educated the majority of citizens in ann arbor when i started in business in the early 1980s none of my clients understood what a buckthorn was what a hammer honeysuckle was or what any invasive species were and now almost every client i meet knows very well what they are there's been a complete sea change i'm hoping that we have an equal secret about the native landscape across the city as a whole we really need to go back to that to have um the most sustainable landscape that we can have the most energy conserving landscape we can have the most pollinator-rich landscape we can have we're working on that but um maybe next month we'll talk about it the big deal is we have this really unusual program that becky represents and um the people of ann arbor have spent their tax dollars repeatedly in subsequent millages to keep supporting it and that's what's really special thank you i'm preaching i'm apologize i totally agree with your comments and thank you chris for the history and becky thank you so much for for coming to talk with us tonight um so that's really the end of our uh special presentations for tonight does anyone have any other questions or comments for any of our speakers right now before we move okay um you're welcome to stay if you want because we do have discussion of something that might be of interest to you if not you know i'll just say thanks again um and uh steve i think it's back to you for just a couple of quick agenda items yes um thank you so uh are you giving me back the floor i am okay so the next item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from our march 25th meeting i hope everybody's had a chance to look at the draft minutes um do i have a motion for to accept them to begin discussion or of the minutes so moved by mursky uh do i have a second um um are there any the floor is open for discussion please raise your hand if anybody would like to discuss or make some amendments to the minutes um i see chris graham's hand is still up but chris apologies that's hard to remember to take that down that's okay all right so i don't see any other hands so let's proceed to a vote um all who all who agree to accept the minutes as written uh please raise your hand or say aye aye aye aye all right anybody opposed hearing none on scene nine uh the minutes uh are approved as drafted uh the next item on the entire is unfinished business so we have one item on the agenda here that is the chapter 40 the title iii chapter 40 um modifications to try to encourage more natural features um and so let's see there was a document attached to the um there's a document attached for this um i think it'd probably be a good idea to display it and um um josh could you put that document up and on your screen um and while that's happening let me just say that i i finally got heard back from the transportation commission and from the disability commission and they both said that they've looked over these looked over they discussed this sometime last fall and they both had sort of decided that they were okay with raising the height limit from 12 inches to 18 inches and that they didn't want to revisit it so they did not want they did not accept my proposal to have a joint working group with the three of us to work work through these uh they wanted to wait and see what the environmental commission wanted so um i don't think we'll let's see how far we can get today but i think this is something that will probably take up more time than we have left tonight so but let's get started well thanks josh for putting this up josh can you blow that up a little bit more so i'm not sure where this document came from rita um this is a combination um so it has a sort of a header page um identifying some goals of what we wanted to do with chapter 40.
now one of the questions that has been posed by some of the community members through emails to the board and both to me is why not add the temporary classroom units at the high school and just move the ninth grade to the high school in phase one well after a review with our district's architect we've determined it would be extremely difficult to place those temporary classroom units adjacent to the high school we would incur significant costs to adjust the site topography reroute traffic circulation roadways replace sidewalks and parking spaces meet water retention and wetlands requirements are just to name a few but we are working on a more detailed cost comparison that will demonstrate those additional costs for the public this proposal in phase one still incorporates four building transitions just as we do now but now at different grade levels now i want to emphasize that no matter when we implement this grade level reconfiguration we know it will affect certain grades and they will have abbreviated stays specifically at hammershow but only during the transition period so for every one of you who has reached out to express your passionate concerns about the impact this grade level reconfiguration proposal may have on your child or children you know i humbly ask you to consider this what if we were able to build a substantially better experience for your child through this process and hopefully the ideas i'm about to share for phase two which we have previously not shared presents a clearer picture of what we hope to accomplish in the incremental steps required to get there so phase two includes but is not limited to first developing plans to replace the temporary classroom units with a permanent structure and we are required by the department of education to do that once temporary classrooms are placed on our site and the second most important thing is to position the district to consider a new comprehensive nine through twelve high school on the existing high school site that would support optimum 21st century teaching and learning for all our high school and all our high school students and finally we know the the president and his administration have publicly discussed investing in infrastructure repairs and improvements and should any federal assistance come through the states to support school renovation or replacement i believe it's imperative that east brunswick public schools be prepared in advance to either accept or decline such an opportunity i want to thank everyone for listening to this lengthy presentation all of this information is is essential however i know there will be more questions and our typical for the good of the cause format is not designed for a question and answer format therefore i respectfully request that the board consider postponing action item number one under facilities until our next regularly scheduled board meeting on thursday may 6th additionally i'm inviting all concerned stakeholders to join me on a zoom q a forum on tuesday may 4th from 7 to 9 p.m where we can have a dialogue on your questions and provide answers to them we will publish the zoom link and login information next week on our website now in other district news beginning this past monday we welcome back our students in all schools for five day week in-person instruction for those families who selected the option i really enjoyed seeing our students and lots of happy staff during my visits to school this week congratulations to chitti kindergarten teacher kim balak who was recently notified she is the recipient of the 2021 cooperating teacher excellence award from writing writer university which recognizes cooperating teachers who go above and beyond for student teachers kim mentored rider student carrie murano in the fall of 2020 and the district is proud and grateful to cooperating teachers like kim who used their talents to create the next generation of educators so congratulations kim also congratulations to our girls varsity volleyball team on winning the state sectional championship this year they played extremely hard for every point and a state sectional championship is an important accomplishment and we are so proud of this team for this amazing accomplishment go bears just a reminder third quarter report cards can be viewed online through parent access tomorrow friday april 23rd hard copies will be made available at the request of anyone without internet access thank you thank you dr valeski um board members dr volesky has made a recommendation in his report tonight to table the item on the agenda under facilities to table that vote for reconfiguration of grades and of proving temporary classroom units to our next board meeting so i'd like to open up the floor for any discussion or comments before i ask for a consensus on this anyone had wish to speak great idea okay please go ahead laurie oh i just did great idea sorry oh okay jeff is that your hand jeff i believe is frozen okay let me tell him he's frozen okay you're frozen can you hear me on the phone line yes we can all right let's it's i'm in an unstable internet environment so um this is me speaking this is jeff if if i'm still frozen uh first of all i i i i do want to mention a few things i did i did hear from very many members of the community on this and uh i appreciate dr valesky's suggestion in the mere fact just for the first fact let them know the community that you are hurt and and and some of the key points that were made um repeatedly in the communication i've gotten from the community i've really given a lot of thought i know there's a lot of commentary surrounding uh students with iep or special needs uh are we going to be equipped to handle all of that and and i i as a parent of an iep student i i respect that and that was a question that i had and in speaking to dr valesky about this if this adds any comfort to the community in this i i started giving some serious thought the fifth graders that are going to be impacted uh should this get approved will actually be if i'm doing the math right and dr valeski correct me the first graduating class that will experience either two or three years based on the time frame that you've told us for a build in what will be ultimately a 21st century high school that's replacing a 1957 high school long before the word internet wi-fi tech or any of those things were invented i think my perception of this is that what this proposal ultimately will do if and i could be mistaken but i don't think i am is going to provide the best opportunity for education for all students across the board and i think ultimately having a new high school and now talking about phase two i'm hoping that the public sees where this absolutely makes sense and represents the town and educational level and the expectations that have been set here uh so so with that i i support this being tabled i'm looking forward to hearing from the public and if what we hear coming back is anything based on the communication that's been provided to me in many emails phone calls texts and even on facebook i think i have to say and i thought about this i think we're very much on the right track but i appreciate the pump of the breaks because i do think the public needs to be heard so i appreciate your decision on that and i will support uh a delay in today's vote thank you yes dr baleski um i i also think that um scheduling the community forum is a great idea could you just repeat again the date and time of the community forum sure um and i wanted to emphasize too that there was never a an attempt not to have community forums uh i was hoping that we would have the opportunity to have face-to-face forums and given our current uh limitations on doing that uh really there is no other choice than to have a zoom type form uh let me see we've got a lot of papers here excuse me one second uh zoom will be a q a on tuesday may 4th from 7 00 to 9 00 pm open to all interested stakeholders and we will publish the zoom link and login information on our website next week and i'll also remind people in my normal communications during the week so we'll we'll keep everybody updated yeah thank you as i often remind the public um the board basically stays silent during um the good of the cause for the public because it's it's the public's time to address us but it's not a forum for questions and answers or for discussion or dialogue this is just the time for the public to come and speak to us and if anything needs to be addressed it's done following the meeting with one of the relevant administrators this is a great way to actually have a dialogue with the superintendent and his team about our plan so i i i also applaud this anybody else barbara thank you and and uh i also think this is a great idea and dr velesky isn't there an email if they want to send their questions ahead of time and give a heads up or what the areas that are interested the parents to talk about they can reach out to to administration yeah thank you mr reece the uh if you go on to the home page of our website uh you will find right there there's the for what we call the first tile the top left tile is uh entitled building our success there's faqs in there and you can go in there and the email address uh is listed in there um and i'm gonna i'm gonna look it up um i don't recall the i want to make sure i get it exactly right but i will i will interrupt um president becker let me let me look for it and i will i'll get it for you well if there's no other discussion i will ask the secretary to call the role mark mark ii uh jeff says it the best eloquently and since i you know graduated in 82 from our high school i think it's a great idea that we're going to be upgrading um i can't imagine what the children are going through with the outdated high school and i appreciate you uh dr boleski bernie and everybody for uh this forward thinking for our you know parents and students so i'm all for this plan okay so just again just to make sure every board understands we're voting to table the vote tonight to postpone the vote tonight and to schedule a community forum a heather i'm sorry i didn't see your hand i just wanted to comment i very much appreciate um dr goleski and the administrative team offering to table this um i think in reading the letters from the community it wasn't just um sometimes you get emails that are just a strong opinion but these were some very thoughtfully crafted letters and concerns and if people put that kind of time into it i'm so glad that we're going to have the opportunity to discuss these things answer dr valeski can answer questions um and i know that we are because of the growing population on a time crunch but i just think that this idea of slowing down to give the community time to answer some questions and to get a little more information is just such a solid plan of action so thank you for doing that problem president becker just before you take a motion or anything it doesn't require a roll call you can just do this by now i'm going to do i'm going to ask for a roll call because we're on zoom and um i had i talked to matt about this and he had suggested just doing a roll call so we will be voting yes or no on whether or not to support dr valesky's recommendation to table um i.e put off voting tonight and voting instead on the six for the grade reconfiguration and rental the tcus and to scheduling the community forum on may 4th okay then a motion needs to be made to do that yeah yes yes i'm i'm i swear i'm getting there joe but thank you so much i just wanted to make sure dr velasque you have your hand up yes ma'am i just wanted to make sure i got to the community about the email for the questions for the faqs it is questions with an ask questions at ebnet.org and if you put those up we will answer those questions and add them to the faqs you can see we already have started that uh so if you cannot make the q a forum on may 4th please be sure to do that so we can get those those questions and answers posted okay so can i please have a motion to support dr volesky's recommendation to tabling the item on the facility's agenda that would be a vote on the grade reconfiguration the rental of the tcus and to be scheduling a zoom question and answer forum with dr valeski and his team on tuesday may 4th from seven to nine pm may i please have a motion i'll move on heather second by jeff is there any discussion will the secretary please call the role mr carter angelo yes mrs chu yes mr sismar yes mrs gloss yes mr hong yes mrs lacks yes mrs reese yes mr winston yeah president baker yes i'm sorry call me whatever you like it's okay thank you martian carries that item will be tabled we will be removing it from the agenda tonight and voting at the next board meeting next on our agenda let me just go back on my ipad okay we have two presentations tonight dr baleski would you like to present our new supervisor of athletics yes president becker and the entire board it's my pleasure to introduce mr frank malta who's our newest supervisor of athletics and frank comes to us with a very um diverse background and and so we look forward to what he's going to offer to east brunswick and our east brunswick athletes and i had the pleasure of attending the signing ceremony the first signing ceremony that that mr maltha had overseen and i i just have to tell the board and mr malta how impressed i was with just the quality of the recognition of all of our student athletes who are going on to uh compete at their colleges and universities so with that mr frank malta thank you i think we need to be back on gallery view please thank you uh thank you for having me tonight and giving me the opportunity to introduce myself i've been in education for the last uh 24 years i've had quite a variety i've taught quite a variety of grade levels at the middle school and high school level i had the opportunity to coach at those levels as well teaching coach at those levels uh both male and female sports um and for the last 15 years i was at jackson memorial i concentrated more so with baseball during that time i did a lot of our strength and conditioning there and i also had the opportunity to teach adaptive physical education there which uh for the last eight years there was a was a wonderful experience and was one of my toughest goodbyes when i left jackson um it was such a i had such a a great rapport with our with our students um i'm looking forward to this position because i'm looking forward to the opportunity to work with our coaches and student athletes i think it's something that um you know just concentrating really on baseball at jackson uh this gives me a a wider range of of of kids and athletes to just be around and make a difference with and i look so forward to that i want to continue the sense of pride hard work and the traditions you know of our coaches and student athletes here so that's something that i'm looking forward to in this position um a few things just the you know my first site of our athletic programs here um you know the first thing that that struck me with our coat was our coaches you know i made it a a point to get out to games and practices even before i was able to start i was able to come to some games at night and and just see what we were all about here in east brunswick and i am so impressed with the teaching and you know the one thing i look for you know in other and other coaches is i look to the student athletes and i look to see how they perform in practice uh in games uh their body language um you know just the little intricacies of what they're doing uh in the course of a game and see how they're being taught and i think you know our coaches have done a fantastic job i am really impressed with them and i am looking forward to the spring coaches i'm looking forward to see to see that part of it too i got a great great chance to see season three our season three um athletes perform and now we're into season four um so uh we're starting our regular contests uh this this week uh we open up our regular season uh season three a couple highlights you know our our girls volleyball team uh did win a sectional championship as dr velesky talked about earlier our gymnastics team as well was a top team in the gmc and was a top five team in the state as well and both of those teams have a lot of our young ladies coming back so there's a bright future for them and we're i think looking forward to seeing them next year as well um so and the last thing here is that um i think we're going to we're going to continue to do what's best for our student athletes and protecting them and keeping them healthy we're following covert protocols our coaches are and our athletes are doing an outstanding job of that um and it is our utmost concern right now i think you know into season three and getting into the spring of season four you know our job right now is to keep our athletes and our coaches healthy and to keep them on the on the fields and courts and allowing them to play uh and you know something that we put together in district uh was a video was a video put together by uh john mcmenamin and daniel blaylock it's a wonderful informative video um and i think we're going to show it now um it is it is a three and a half minutes and just filled with a lot of information for our athletes in our community um that was a very fast three and a half minutes perhaps um joe bernie who's sharing the screen there we go technology is wonderful until it isn't um i will we could certainly invite you back uh this is uh it'll be spring for a while and we could have you at the next board meeting or the one after that to present the video frank that's fine uh you know one thing i should say is that our coaches um and our district we've put it you know on a lot of our team websites a lot of our players have had the opportunity to view it already uh we're trying to um get it out to our student athletes and to our our parents um so i mean it is it is a great video uh it is on youtube that it can be it can be viewed on there as well but i can just finish my last two slides so um moving into the summer you know we're looking forward to getting our athletes and bands back on campus with their workouts at night with their practices preparing for the 21-22 school year you know one thing i think that is that is just uh an awesome and awesome start to the to the next school year is the end of the summer hearing the band playing at night practicing uh preparing you know our student athletes are on campus you know and they are able to work out and prepare um and you can see we put our official start date our official start date for um heat acclimatization for football is eight nine uh the rest of our teams begin on uh 8 16.
do i have a motion motion any questions or comments for finance and operations seeing none let's go to a roll call please mrs capalo yes this is everhart yes mr fizzakira yes miss fleming yes mr camping yes mrs nell yes mr lancelata yes mr meagan yes mrs ryan yes nation carries thank you okay moving to item 11 personnel in a motion to prove items 11 1 through 11 10. do i have a motion for for that miss ryan for the motion and second it by miss knowle questions or comments pertaining to personnel seeing none let's go to a roll call mrs cappello yes mrs everhart yes mr pizzacaro yes miss fleming yes mr canton yes mrs noll yes mr mr lancelotta yes mr megan yes this is ryan yes motion carries thank you moving to item 12 now policy by which we uh we have a policy on the agenda i need a motion to approve items 12 1 through 12 3.
board members there's a motion on the table is there a second i would be glad to second it if we could add something to it mrs humphries well i i do um have some amendments that i can offer but if you'd like to offer another i would like to add something that was similar to what chandler did and i don't have the exact wording which is which which was i don't know dr mccord do you have that or they said may 28th depending upon let me i'm sorry you sent it to us today no chandler that that that it was until may 28 2021 depending on yes it was uh depending on the numbers yeah the numbers they didn't specify any numbers okay they left it very open so i could add this additional wording which is one of the options i put in the superintendent may bring to the board a recommendation if transmission rates climb significantly okay what was that last word if they climbed away if they climb significantly i did not i have another one where um it i actually mentioned the metrics and a certain place on metrics but is that is that a motion in a second then and then we can open it up for discussion i didn't second it i just asked if we could okay if my question is is that a second that you wish to accept i will ex i will accept the second if that's part of it okay all right so now we have a motion and you are open for discussion and to augment and shift any way you desire with that motion on the table so to clarify at this point the motion is as read on option number two has read on option number two with the addition of the superintendent may bring to the board a recommendation if transmission rates climb significantly which means we would have to come and meet again and have another discussion don't we cases don't we do that anyways haven't we done that every time this has happened anyways i don't i would prefer not to have that in there because we already have done that as you know may i weigh in changes every time something changes we meet again about this yeah i i i think we've used those words in the past and i think they've they've gotten us upside down and i would be it's we would need to define them by numbers in my opinion just because significant to me might be significant to 40 other people in this room and so so we'd have to be a little more specific sorry dr mccord mr carr i'll all withdraw my second until we can and then we don't have a motion to discuss the if if you withdraw your second then um that motion fails and we'll have to or do you just withdraw your second on the amendment and you still want to second the original motion i'm not willing to second that emotion okay not emotion motion i'm sorry than that although this is really emotional well then i'll put out a motion i guess go ahead just to clarify the second was withdrawn and the motion it sounds like yes well if i don't have a second then the motion dies motion dies for lack of a second so we are open for another motion unless we second that as it's written yes that that is correct if someone else wants to second it then it could go forward if you want a second and then have discussion you could always amend it moving forward [Music] if if someone else wants to i'm looking here i'm i'm trying to make my decision here i i will move based on option number three the governing board here by directs and not authorizes the district superintendent and or his or did his her his in this case unless something's changed delegates to update face covering regulations relate to the district's covet 19 mitigation plans as follows in adherence with cdc and adh guidelines face covering shall be recommended and encouraged whenever individuals are on gps property furthermore face covering shall be worn whenever required by federal state or local law or by membership requirements for related associations okay you have a motion is there a second a second it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion dr sanchez if i can clarify go right ahead going back to our meeting on july 28 of last year we directed the superintendent put in place a policy consistent with the executive order and actually put an expiration date on that of june 30th so at this point based on that motion last year our current policy should expire june 30th because that direction expires now that's not to say that this board couldn't act on its own but right now we've got a motion in front of us but i just want to clarify that in my opinion and and based on the discussion that took place at that meeting the policy expires june 30th um the the thought process here as i go back and look um you know i i personally have i personally try to stay consistent with things that are at least attempt to stay consistent with things that i've said and in this case i face a dilemma because i have advocated that we stay true to the guidelines i've also advocated that we stay true to the executive order and several of us have stated from this diocese that the reason we have a face mask policy is because of the executive order that being rescinded and i would highlight some people say why doesn't why didn't you act immediately we couldn't let's just clarify that uh when the when the policy was put in place it was five days after the previous executive order for those who are concerned about us not acting quickly we're actually meeting two and a half days after it was rescinded so we've met and had this discussion in both cases relatively quickly following open meeting laws so the question to me personally as i deal with this is how do i stay true to both statements and and i can't find a way to do that other than to say that that we continue to recommend uh and and encourage um that guideline i also spent considerable amount of time going through the public comments as i'm sure each of us did but i tallied the public comments [Music] removing duplicate individuals because i didn't figure people got i think there was one individual who expressed themselves seven times um between the comments and the emails and when i tallied those comments it was literally 50 50.
um and uh so at that time the the quote for the audit was twenty thousand dollars and that um at the time the finance committee uh passed to the full board uh a recommendation to uh to have that audit done uh since then there was a revision in the quote uh according to the uh information we have here it uh was reduced to twelve thousand dollars which is a uh great news uh but that still is expensive right in the grand scheme of things and um we never officially voted on it at the full board level because of uh funding questions as to how that would be paid for and so um i guess that's the one thing we didn't get a chance to discuss but uh mr maciana i was just going to ask if if we have the ability to pay for that or if it was discussed with the town as to how an audit like that would be paid since we're technically using their vendor uh and we're asking them to do a an audit of our accounts um or a separate audit of our accounts was there had there been any clarification on that um from the town well i haven't spoken to anyone from the town about it in particular but i'll just talk generally about the quote um which was provided as part of the bid um when we went out for new auditors for the town in school and the bid was won by bloom shapiro um and it was negotiated from twenty thousand down to twelve thousand dollars however you know the way the quote reads is that because they don't understand the full extent of what's involved and it's an operational review slash audit um they quoted 12 000 as the not to exceed number so if they spend less hours than the 12 000 we would not be billed 12 dollars as far as paying for it is concerned you know the reality is um the board of ed budget pays for its portion of the town audit so it's you know even though the audit report goes to the town council we do pay our pro-rata portion so the vendor really is a vendor of both the schools and the town as far as who's going to pay for it that's up to the board to decide you know if the question is can we allocate twelve thousand dollars to do this operational review you know i think the answer is that we can i was i didn't do the finance report yet but our budget operationally you know is in good shape and i would suggest that if the board wants to go forward we encumber this um and i think now that the the audit is is really wrapped up and the audit was extensive this year because it was the first year this firm you know audited the town and the schools so there was a lot of additional work but i think they are freed up now to be able to engage in this i haven't talked to them about schedule but you know if the board wants to agree to go forward and pay for it i think that's within the board's authority but as i propose there's nothing in general time for a motion on this i'm hesitant to add it um but we have another meeting coming up in may business meeting so i i want to know i would think the best time to do this is when things wind down this year and a lot going on this summer but i think in the fall if you look for a little bit positive communities i have to work on that and i feel the policy number from 1996 refresh it it's been an acquit it'd be nice to have some results from that so if anything has a change in the policy it's good to go for the fall um so you know i kind of want to know i mean this is going to be your purview but when could they start you know one could give you results get that button down and see if they change your tune in the on the estimate because this estimate goes back to last july and all things have changed or not in terms of cost but i can ask and you know let the board know sure sounds good okay yeah i was going to say since there is no motion that uh well uh hopefully no but it's good to know considering the year that you've had endure financially that we're you know looking in good shape with our budget so just want to kudos to you on that i think i can get that detail soon but the fact that that's when that position you'll do this is a good thing [Applause] this is the financial accounts we also had discussed something in relation to auditing the coaches making sure they were permitted correctly sort of wrapped under some of the different things that's on their policy which you guys are talking about i think the next meeting okay okay all right i just want to make sure that's still on the radar too that's all yes thanks pressure here so when they do the audit um it will we will they'll say either everything is kosher or you need fixes well they recommend the fixes do they the corrections do those come out of the audit or is that another level that would be the that would be the hope that would be the hope yeah okay especially because if they're going to do anything we'll get corrective measures but we'll have what before we vote we will have an overview of what that 12 000 is going to give us right so we make an information yeah well it's already it's it's already been laid out and when yeah the details is but it's been over a year it's actually been over over a year yeah talked about it so yeah but i'm hopeful there won't be anything to fix you know my guess is they'll probably find a couple minor inefficiencies but anything that comes out of that it can help with our policy reshaping for that you know again we will see but that's going to be under messianic's purview with the auditing firm okay thanks um let's see mr maciana would you like to uh give a uh finance report oh sure mr gripper i'd love to do that actually this month the board members do have the uh the financial report and the financial detail and i'll just give a high level overview this evening this year's budget is 74 million 593 926 we've expended our encumbered 89.8 percent of that budget we are looking very solid you know to end the year certainly within our budget um as we you know enter april which we're in now and may this is the time of year that we really start to um you know look at not only where the budget is but look at what we need to purchase that we haven't purchased this year as the board knows we you know for most of the year we had a 40 cap on non-payroll expenditures we raised it to 60 a couple of months ago and now we're releasing uh 20 more so that the principals can encumber up to 80 of their non-payroll accounts we do have the leeway to do that so the principals this month and next month will be entering their supply bid orders for next year their equipment requests quest for furniture you know maintenance requests and all the department managers do the same thing so our facilities manager will go in and start entering what we call summer requests so that we can look at them prioritize them so as we go through the finance reports in april and may you'll see that you know the numbers will be updated but i feel very confident that we will certainly meet this year's operating budget really the only surprise we had this year was covet related expenses um you know our typical expenditures that um you know we see taking us over budget in certain categories forcing us to reduce spending in other categories especially and and maintenance and and we really didn't have any of that this year fortunately some of that was because we controlled it but a lot of it was just um you know a pretty good year is outside of the you know large amount of money we did have to spend on covert related expenses i do want to give the medical benefits report but maybe i'll pause and see if there are any questions on the finance report for this month first not really the question but um was in our in our finance packets to the public don't see do detail out the uh um updates on the grant applications that you apply for et cetera and in the finance committee earlier uh the team get an overview of bouncing forward if we can make this available cbs website it's a great detail on what the grants entail but as well as what the school is trying to do to get kids back in school is fun especially for folks that have been remote and unreachable in terms of getting back to school it's a great information just going through it it's it's it's i wish i had this last week because i was getting a lot of these questions i could have pointed to so we should bring all this next week [Laughter] so um ben the state well actually cdc has now said that um they have recognized it that corona doesn't spread on surfaces we've we've known it but we've still complied with the cleaning protocols but now that they're out and it's official does that change our protocols and will that affect us financially will that benefit us or are we going to continue doing what we've here's what we've done so for the for the remainder of this year we're going to keep things going the way they are we still have the intraday cleaning that's being done and i think that you know that is necessary there is a sense of comfort that it provides to the staff and you know we still do have covid that although it's not spreading in the school but you know it's the precautions that we've been taking i think we continue that through the rest of the year the things that we could have stopped we did like the isolation room monitors and the bus room monitors you know we've seen that the rate at which we're providing uh ppe you know mass in particular has gone down pretty dramatically for next year in in the covet budget which is again i know that the board members know that it's separate from the operating budget and the covert budget we prepared will be covered by the grants we'll be receiving you know which we discussed in the finance committee earlier so what we built into next year's budget because we don't know what will happen in the fall we've built in for the first six months that we would have intraday cleaning in the schools we built in 10th rentals for the fall but not for the spring next year so as we get through the next several months and into july if we realize and the guidelines support that you don't have to do the intraday cleaning or we determined that the tents are not necessary we want obviously we wouldn't make those expenditures and that will free up you know those funds so that they can be used for other things such as as learning loss as we discussed earlier so we um you know that that's that's kind of the difficulty right now in budgeting for next year we don't know what we don't know there's still a lot of variables things are moving in the right direction between people being vaccinated with the infection rate you know decreasing we hope that continues and you know next year looks a lot more normal i know that we all wish for that so we're budgeting maybe a little bit more conservatively and hopefully we're surprised so that we can you know use those funds that we've allocated in the budget for better things what degree the variant impacts things and i think you know we'd rather be conservative when it comes to people's health through the rest of the year at least until you know we have better information over the summer hopefully okay see no questions please continue okay i will give you the update on medical benefits i know the board members also have this in their package so for the month of uh march which is the third month in the in the new hsa plan year unfortunately claims you know which had dropped to 735 000 in january and eight hundred fifteen thousand in february climbed back over a million dollars in march to about a million eleven thousand dollars um so that that's the bad news that those claims increased again you know claims are unpredictable sort of the good news in this month's report is reflected in the top section of the report we received 188 124 and stop loss reimbursements in the month of march and those are for claims that exceeded the 175 000 that were insured for so that was repaid back to us and then the second and larger sum that we received was 321 thousand dollars in prescription rebates i had updated the board last month that i estimated that amount would be about 250 000 it actually came in at 312.
and then subsequent is the um actual it's a cut and paste from chapter 40 from the city's municipal code for the section on trees and other vegetation so this is a what is displayed with the red highlights is just areas where we had some comments about height when we first talked about this um this chapter of the city code the issue had to do mostly with height and safety and i worked with council member griswold to come up with a list of goals that you see on the left then we wanted to talk about why are we doing this and it does have a number of environmental reasons and it also has an important one with respect to safety and even and the last one i think is also important the education in the community um from my perspective i would like to see us make some changes in this potentially more than just the height things and that's why it would be great to just have this discussion tonight um and the the reason is from my perspective that we passed i'm sorry i wasn't on the commission when when the integrated pest management resolution was passed by the commission and by city council but this really i think goes with this we would like to see um as chris graham and john risky and all of you have said we'd like to see less turf grass and the minimization of use of pesticides for control of whatever may be of concern to someone and so this is potentially a way for us to to start moving in that direction the relaxation of height of plants and the location of plants i think will help and i think that the other thing that as far as like a point of discussion that i'd like to have um is is the how do we enforce something or do we need to enforce something um when we're asking people to um install more native plants that make yards look different from the the simple um mowed turf grass yards um and i think we saw um particularly with with leslie's presentation tonight with the rain gardens that there is great beauty in these different looking gardens and and great function um and i think we'd like to see that and it really fits in with sustainability so um i'll just leave that as my my opening comments um and uh hi john what would you like to say i have a process question you uh want to present this and open it up for discussion you want to assume that we've all read it which i have but i don't know if others had a chance and um then just open it up for discussion right away what's the process or approach you want to take in terms of yeah um well could i ask um has everyone had a chance to read it that's really the fair kind of thing yeah and i can't tell um yeah yeah yeah okay is it pretty much yes for everybody i hope okay um so i guess i would like to discuss um i don't expect us to come to a decision tonight or necessarily to get into the very very specifics but i'd like to go over the concepts and talk about how things might change and i'd like to hear kathy has a comment or question right now too okay yeah i just have a suggestion in terms of process and that is if we can agree on what our goals are and we can compare our ordinance um to what's being done in traverse city and grand rapids just for comparison um i think that would be helpful and then we can go back and i don't think we need to wordsmith the actual ordinance i think if we agree on the goals and the other thing is we need to agree on what needs to go in the ordinance and what supporting documentation we need because if our goal is going to be to be education oriented rather than enforcement then we're going to need quite a few documents or references references to rain gardens would be one i mean we've talked about some of this tonight uh pollinators and i did talk to the city administrator today and i said we want education not enforcement and he said well i don't have the staff for that but then as we talked about it he said well maybe neighborhood so if we had education material online and we also had opportunities for neighborhoods to be educated rather than individuals i think we could significantly reduce the enforcement and i really see sustainability driving this and my main concern is vegetation hanging over sidewalks and corner site distance issues that i've had for a couple of decades but i'm willing to let that be secondary to sustainability because i think that's the community's interest right now and i also so think that's where there's funding to get something done thanks daddy thanks uh lots of hands um john a few quick comments um i really like the goals i like um all of kathy's comments i would make uh one two suggestions relative to the goals we emphasize pollinators here and i'd like this to be maybe a little bit broader and say something maybe like i don't know ecosystem benefits or something that takes into account also birds and other other kinds of creatures so whatever the professionals on this phone call that know this stuff better than i do i'd like to see a more expansive uh view of that reflected here and in terms of and i don't know if this is a goal or if this it should be reflected somewhere else when when i was still working uh the company that i had had large properties where we did a lot of conversions of turf grass to native prairies and other ecosystems and when we had to go to the city our discussions focused on intent versus neglect the city did not want this to appear that we were neglecting our property uh but that there was there was intent for a prairie here or there was intent for whatever it was and that will also then prevent people from coming back with an excuse who are really just neglecting their property and saying oh i'm just letting everything uh go to a natural prairie state which may be fine but i think we should have some kind of discussion along those lines of what is intent and with what is neglect relative to all this stuff so those are some initial thoughts thanks thanks um great shannon a couple of things um i think this is a great idea um i um there there are very few rain gardens that are in the right of way just just to kind of it's important to clarify this because i know of of two where people have the rain garden in between the sidewalk and the back of the curb there's very few places where people have that because it's full of utilities you have to get special you know i mean it's it's it's not an easy task to do that there's a lot of trees that are in the way and so most rain gardens are really happening on the other side of the sidewalk on your property side of the sidewalk so i think we should just be careful about how we're awarding this because it's really like we never allow you know developers to put anything in the right of way in terms of stormwater really stormwater should mostly be outside you know of the right-of-way because um it is important to be able to have a visibility and things like that and again there's just a lot of conflicts with um with the utilities and things like that they can happen it just has to be done really carefully so it's not your sort of low hanging fruit easy thing to do um i would also say that um i think we should keep it to 36 inches and not 42 inches um because i think 42 is really getting into the zone of blocking people's views and i i know that um you know providing view lines not destructive blah blah blah i think it's just easier for people to have a clear number than to have to kind of prove the case of you know whether this flower head is you know is blocking the view or not and there are plenty of plants of native plants that that fit that bill to be in the in that what they call the health strip you know um that can be that short and and there are lots of native plants that are taller too but we really don't want the super tall ones in that section because you know it is really important to have the safety piece here it really is i'm all for the native stuff in here it's a terrible place for grass to grow in general i think that all makes sense but um it's super important that um that we just see somebody coming i know there's some places like and i i'm also curious about this with like you know there's some places where there's like big shrubs and things like that that people have in these zones where streets are coming at intersections they're just behind the the sidewalk where they're just completely blocking right people's ability to be able to see around the corner and and there are some places like along huron where i bike on the sidewalk because there is no place for the there's no bike lane there and i need to connect to you know into the neighborhoods and if i'm coming down at this intersection of seventh and huron people coming up seventh they can't see me and you're coming too fast on a bike and so i think we really need to um start looking at these places where there are crashes and there are issues to really start some enforcement in some places where the safety really is an issue and i get it that people want to screen their house from the busy road kind of thing but we really have to be careful about that too so um i i would kind of like this to do two things one is to promote native plants and to be able to give people that you know the idea that you know that this can work to be able to plant things um in that health strip area but also to be really mindful about um just not not creating undue um you know challenges for people to see for drivers to see pedestrians and bikers um and again as somebody who works with nato plants all the time you can do it in 36 inches and under you really especially in that area because things tend to get shorter in that area because it's so hard to grow in that zone um so that's that's my two cents i i think it makes a lot of sense i totally agree with john too about you know intent versus neglect because it gives everybody it gives every anybody in native plants a bad name if you just stop mowing and then say if this is my native garden when there isn't one native plant in there you just don't want to mow you know so i think it's important to um for people to have intent and to have you know a design or whatever it is to be able to kind of pull that off and so i don't know if we can walk both sides of this thing in terms of the encouragement as and as and the enforcement but um i think it's great that you all are taking this on because i think that it can serve lots of goals of the city uh with this so thank you for for taking it on thanks we'll be back for advice for sure okay no problem um but i also i just want to comment that i kind of think of the things that that you just raised and john's um as one that of kind of courtesy that you design and maintain something in a way that's courteous for your neighbors so that they that people can see adequately and they can open a car door next to the curb adequately so that your plants that you like don't get broken by a car you can there are ways you can place things i think so just that's my comment um steve you're next i know yeah i agree this is good no this is all good i i agree with all the comments that people have made i would just like to point out a few things and that is that yeah that intersection between here on its seventh is a bit unusual because seventh has a significant dog leg there you know so that's a peculiar situation and uh but it is bad and um i do i think 36 inches is probably adequate but actually you know in my neighborhood uh it's not any of the vegetation that's blocking the view it's the parked cars especially the suvs and the pickup trucks so you know they are a much bigger problem than anything i could plant there and they i would say you know standing on the sidewalk they go up to five feet so that's 60 inches so uh i don't know how uh you know i when i think about relative risk it's more the parked cars for me than anything that i see here because you know the city has planted a lot of large mature trees in the lawn extensions and so these trucks can be up to two feet in diameter and uh and uh they can be you know uh they do certainly block a view but uh it's um not as bad as the cars that are parked along the street so um i just want to point that out and uh and the other thing is that i thought you know about the rain gardens and the lawn extensions i thought it might be a good aspect for storm water management to actually try to divert some of the runoff from the drains into like uh with a curb cut into a rain garden on the curt you know in the lawn extension but from the street to the to the extension yeah what you're thinking really has to be super planned um because they're generally not big enough for all the road runoff that's coming towards them and it has happened in certain places but it really has to be something that's kind of on a larger scale to be able to do that so it's happening in places where it's a new development and you can look at it that way but piecemeal it's pretty tough to um to be able to make that happen because it's generally they'd have to be very low your your sidewalk would get exposed on the side because you'd have to have it lower than the road right so it's tricky i understand that yep and uh okay so um but uh i think this is a great initiative now the question is um um who's going to uh who's going to take responsibility for this as a goal who's going to lead it kathy kathy's been the main person here okay kathy so you want to form a work group uh to share the some of the work if you need if you need one um i'm hoping that rita will will join me and possibly shannon will at least provide a review because she's she's got a great perspective because she agrees with me no just i'm happy to review yeah i can't be a normal part of the working group but i'm happy to review things oh okay that that would be great and just before for background i have been working on this since 1995 and i believe in the last two decades the situation has worsened at corners and ravina and jackson is another area that gets reported as being a violation on a regular basis and the hedge gets trimmed about six inches and then it grows another foot so i feel very strongly that that this is the right time because not only um is it sustainable in in terms of the plantings but if we want more people to walk and bike instead of drive they have to feel safe and we also have our vision zero goal um and just one of the technical details is that most people tend to if they're approaching an intersection they stop where they can see the oncoming traffic and if they can't see the traffic at the stop bar then they keep going and many times they're not stopping until the middle of or past the crosswalk and at that point it's too late to stop for the pedestrian who might be there so that's that's another real reason that that this visibility is very important um so i just want to mention one other thing and that is we went to court the city did uh regarding the language in 3.6 and this gets back to john's comment about intent and the language states that it has to be a planned natural landscape so it can't be just something that's developed or that was natural when you bought the land but uh when we tried to um argue that it had to be planned natural landscape in court and that was a matter of two neighbors disagreeing the judgment was against using the term planned natural landscape so i did i confuse people with that it okay wouldn't it all come around to like um you need to show the plan you need to have this documented in some way shape or form that doesn't stand up in court and and this was sort of a little wild area on the side of a property that was still being renovated and the neighbor next door didn't like it as i'm told and and sued and so um the the neighbor with the unplanned natural area was uh was fined and he fought it in court and the judge found in his favor not the cities because a planned natural area was considered to be vague and not easy to define could you scroll to that section josh so that uh that's that 316.