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16.7 million in the current fiscal year and we are proposing uh 20.3 million in fiscal 2022 which is an increase of 3.6 million dollars i really need to point out to the row regarding budget balance carry forward so we had a 3 million budget balance carry forward in the current year from 2020 from 2020 into 2021 we projected 2 million dollars but due to the decision to delay the ela adoption the english language acquisition adoption that's has increased the budget balance carry forward to that 5.2 million dollars which results in that 3.6 million dollar increase in budget capacity so i just wanted to make sure that that was clear okay and then again these are the non-discretionary unrestricted capital expenditures that you have seen in the past we are still going through the prioritization process leaving 11.9 million dollars we have ongoing performing arts needs school marquis athletics and then general school capital needs we've already made the request we are scrutinizing the request right now to have the leadership team uh prioritize those requests and allocate out the capital as quickly as possible and then go ahead santa cruz and then can you bring back a report on how most decisions check out those decisions so other funds so just really quick you can see the quantification of classroom site fund the almost 40 million dollars that we are budgeting for classroom site fund not only is the use of the funds expanded but the three buckets are now collapsed so we only have a fund 10 instead of 11 12 and 13.
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that again gives us more flexibility again adding the inclusion of support personnel under function 2100 so that's related to the dollars in the cost of analysis that the auditor general does annually and then you can see the details of the 733 dollars which 192 dollars per student is one time instructional improvement 3.1 million dollars it does include carryover and it does include funding the instructional leadership coach fte at the elementary class school which i believe you guys approved a couple of board meetings ago and then title 1 we have a 2.8 million dollar budget capacity listed but it does not include carry forward of approximately 705 thousand dollars we are anticipating that the state of arizona will be successful in their waiver to request that all the title funds be able to be carried forward due to the situation with the pandemic throughout most of 2021 then the bond fund finally a budget of 59.8 million dollars which accounts for all the available resources of all bonds sold not the available resources of authority but all the bonds sold to date which includes the sale that we closed on in august any other questions on any of those okay great one-time federal funds we will have continuing conversations about sr3 in particular but this is just information for you and the public so that you understand the quantification of these amounts by each of the funding sources these are the dollar amounts that you will see in the budget under the federal fund page in the actual proposed budget dr santa cruz go ahead miss betsy you made the comment that we'll talk more about this i know there's been a number of questions about some of the curriculum that's that's proposed that was proposed in a previous meeting if i can just make the statement for the public or the clarification for the public approving the budget is not approving that curriculum as ms betts indicated any curriculum purchased for that will still come back for specific review and specific authorization by the board so i i just know given some of the emails and comments uh where there's parts of the curriculum and people want to see more of the curriculum approving the budget is not approving that curriculum if we could just clarify that you bet and if i may add uh additionally you're you have a process or you're going to come up the process in place because part of the spend so we've already let me just go back a little bit we've already we've already spent the enrollment stabilization grant we've already spent our sr1 funds we've already spent the srt funds so now we have the sr3 but there's some um rules that have come through with it that we need to have community input and we've started that but we'll have more as we go forward so right correct we'll have a little superintendent council meetings the beginning of august i think it's right around well maybe mid august august 18th i think we're scheduling them for and that's where we'll go to representatives from every one of our schools at the support staff level certified level as well as parent level and we'll also pull in administrators to get their feedback and kind of like what we did with the chamber it's it's going to be around robin and we'll throw out some thoughts and ideas but we also want to hear how others feel we we need to allocate these funds and then after we get all that input we'll bring it back here and we'll put an application together but we'll make sure you're informed of the direction that we're going and the input that we receive from our stakeholders thank you so can i add to that i'm sorry sorry that's okay i didn't mean to do that and and if anybody wants unsolicited they can email me you the board uh anybody uh here at the district level with those thoughts and ideas well ahead of time i know that this has been publicized a little bit and so we welcome all of that information we're compiling that on a daily basis so because that you you presented some initial ideas at the last meeting right right for the esser spend so we haven't approved anything of that we're just starting the process of priorities priorities and then gathering information right and the reason that we wanted to start it is because there's sort of a soft deadline of wanting to have all of the applications for sr3 in around august 25th okay so thank you so again assumes the house budget is approved by the governor assumes a loss of 400 students could be more could be less you know we're hoping for positive uh actual occurrence of more students and also anticipates that the budget balance carry forward will be maximized in providing increasing flexibility for the 22 adopted budget so finally the estimated tax rates so the primary so the qtr is set at 3.5388 decreased by 0.1354 from 2021 13 and a half cents it was decreased so you can see that we levied 76 cents on the primary for fiscal 21 and that we are projecting this will go down to 3.69 for fiscal year 2022.
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the m o override was levied at 1.4 uh cents dollar dollar and four cent forty cents sorry a dollar forty cents for uh fiscal year twenty twenty one we expect that we'll go down to a dollar twenty six um due primarily to the loss in students and the loss in actual dollar amounts that we are expected to get and then finally the class b bonds we levied a dollar nine we are estimating a little bit of an increase in the bond levy in anticipation of a bond sale in february to make sure that we have the resources needed to complete all the projects scheduled for next summer in at the end of fiscal 2022.
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so finally the uh levy from 2021 to 2022 is expected to go down by uh almost 19 cents and then in comparison comparing that to the november 2019 election pamphlet we are lower than that projected by nearly 40 cents and that's per 100 of assessed value and dr sanchez yes go ahead mr i make these kind of comments every time we present this but just want to highlight again for the public the qtr as miss bet said is not a number that we said it's a number that's set by the legislature we seem to get a lot of feedback on hey you're raising the tax rate we don't in fact set the tax rate that's the qtr that's set by the by the legislature our budget is the levy that is set uh the amount that's passed on to property tax comes through the qtr the rest comes from the from the general fund and we highlight that the budget limit that we set is statutorily driven so we're following state statute and setting that amount so it's not an arbitrary amount that we set um we get blamed a lot when this rate goes up we hope that even though i just put the disclaimer and continue with the disclaimer that it's not us maybe for once they'll give us credit that it's going down even though it's not us similarly with with the formula the other part that we again don't set is rates go up and down proportionally to the overall tax base within our district boundaries and that is a set set by the county assessor so again our portion is to follow statutory formula and voter approved overrides and bonds uh but the actual rates and amounts are set by calculations based on your assessed value from the county assessor and and and legislative action so just try to educate the public with that but uh i know i know some here and some don't so thank you mr carr okay great bets and the last one is just a question to all of you do you have any questions any further questions board members questions comments miss wood thank you just one final question and i've brought this up before too but typically we had large budget balance carry forwards in several of the funds and in general and typically that's not our practice but can you explain why and how and what the strategy was and what our intention is going forward right so um so i think uh taking us back six months ago back in december when we were revising the current year budget drastically down very concerned about our significant drop in students but at that point in time the federal relief dollars came in so those are all one-time money in nature and we're able to spend those but what that does is it offloads maintenance and operations expense into a federal fund that automatically creates budget balance carry forward in addition in this very um very difficult time associated with how to project our number of students going into a new year and knowing that we are funded based upon current year students it's important that we try to utilize all of our resources appropriately to try to maximize those budget balance carry forward amounts into the new fiscal year giving us the greatest flexibility to be able to handle any possibility associated with a continued drop in students knowing that from for most of our staff it's our teaching staff and that we provide them contracts that we are largely obligated to to honor throughout the entire fiscal year so many of those costs are fixed so by trying to maximize the budget balance carry forward at least for this year gives us an opportunity to to be more flexible the other other thing that's important and ms humphreys you mentioned this about the fact that that three percent uh one-time pay that's paid over two times is one time in nature because we are using sr2 i'm sorry sr3 that is one of the areas that you have approved for the spend of sr3 that is using one-time money for a one-time pay but we are anticipating additional revenues from proposition 208 as well as really scrutinizing our budget in the in the current year and next year to determine how much of that budget balance carry forward is really ongoing money you know it looks like it's one time because budget balance carry forward but it's very probable that a large portion of that could be ongoing giving us an opportunity to make sure that we fund that three percent pay increase into 2023.
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thank you very much got to stay on cruise if i can just go right ahead mr thank you and miss bets i i think you need to give yourself a little more credit than you are um when when you came on board you immediately addressed the concern that our budget valley balance carry forward was lower than it should be and because it was lower at times we were having to to request tax advance notes uh which actually cost the district interest and takes money out of the classroom you set targets and have over the last few years inched us towards a proper balance and we again we don't want an over overly large amount because that means we're not spending dollars on the current students but we do want the proper amount on an earlier slide when you showed that budget balance carry forward you actually included on there interest earned you know what a nice problem to have instead of paying interest and taking dollars out of the classroom we're earning interest which allows us to put those dollars into the classroom so i compliment you and your team for managing the budget balance carry forward in a proper amount that actually is benefiting our students so thank you for doing that thank you mr car and if i could add with that statement any of the strategies that you employed and advise the board upon at least it's my impression that uh nothing that we did in that regard compromised the learning or the instruction of the student so we hit a balance and uh i think we were happy with the balance that we had mrs humphries oh i i did want to add thank you i i think that this you know this has been a complicated year and certainly school finance is a very complicated issue and so i think um i appreciate the clearness of the presentation i also really appreciate our voters in 2015 and 2019 coming through and supporting our bonds and override because that makes a huge difference for us and we are very blessed to be able to do more for our students because of those funds given to us by the voters board members any other questions any other comments seeing that there are none then we'll move to item 3.02 which is a request to speak regarding fy 2022 proposed budget the information that was just presented there is i don't have any requests to speak at this point with that being said then we will move to item and adjourning this public hearing is there a motion i move that we adjourn the public hearing on the budget thank you mrs humphries is there a second a second thank you mrs wood any discussion seeing that there is no discussion we will vote on adjourning this portion of the public hearing and moving back reconvening our regularly scheduled board meeting all those in favor of the motion please signify by saying aye hi hi all those opposed same motion carries five 5-0 public hearing is closed we move to item 4 reconvene the regular board meeting item 4.01 is a motion to reconvene i moved to reconvene the regular board meeting thank you mr carr is there a second second thank you mrs humphries any discussion saying none we will vote on the motion all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye all those opposed the same motion carries five zero item five is approval of the agenda 5.01 is approving the agenda for tonight please is there a motion i move to approve tonight's agenda thank you mr carr is there a second a second thank you miss wood any discussion seeing none we will vote on approving tonight's agenda which is item 5.01 all those in favor signify by saying aye hi i always pose the same motion carries 5-0 with item 6 superintendents report 6.01 dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members before i start with the report i'd like to recognize an employees of ours who passed away a couple weeks ago a teacher from desert ridge high school mr joel reichert he unexpectedly passed away and he leaves behind his wife as well as two children who are students of gilbert public schools so please keep the riker family in your thoughts welcome to everyone for being here tonight and online i hope everybody is having an enjoyable and enjoying a a restful summer here in gps our operations department is busy completing projects at several of our schools and departments and our custodians are deep cleaning getting ready for the return of the students and staff many of our teachers are taking advantage of professional development opportunities and our principals assistant principals deans are planning for the upcoming school year and summer school is in full swing and the students are sharpening their skills getting ready for the beginning of august all in all it's been a very productive and successful summer last week the district collaboration team met and interviewed 16 applicants for the soon-to-be vacant governing board position the district collaboration team consisted of myself the governing board president the governing board clerk a parent a principal a teacher and a member of the support staff we had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know 16 people who were willing to serve their school district and community thank you to all those that applied it is truly appreciated after the interviews we had to make the difficult decision to select names to recommend to the county superintendent originally we were going to send three names but because the applicant pool was so strong we felt four names would be better with the permission from the county superintendent's office we sent four names and those names are colette evans cody jacobs trina jodas and blake robeson we want to thank everyone that applied and spent time with us during the interview process we are very fortunate to have such outstanding individuals in our community the next step will be for the county superintendent to interview candidates that applied to gps as well as directly to the county superintendent's office i believe they may be interviewing some candidates this week and i'm sure they'll make their decision within the next few weeks again thank you to everyone that took the time to apply speaking of a vacant governing board position tonight is mr reed carr's last meeting as a governing board member mr carr on behalf of myself and the entire gps community i can't thank you enough for the time dedication and devotion you've given to the gps community for the past five years you remain steadfast in your responsibilities as a board member made compromise when you felt it was necessary and you showed people your heart more than anything again thank you mr carr for taking this journey with us i appreciate you and sincerely will miss you please give him a hand [Applause] before we move on i'd like to defer to miss eugetti she had a request to speak on behalf of mr carr miss you jetty thank you dr santa cruz can you hear me okay yes i would like to thank mr carr for his service to our gps board reed your knowledge of school finance has amazed me as very few people understand this very complicated part of a school district you have been so thorough in making sure that our district has been transparent to the public you have always been thoughtful in every decision you have made i have appreciated our differences as much as what we agree on as you have made me think about my decisions thank you for all that you have done and i and gps will miss you a whole bunch you truly care and that matters more than anything else in this world in my humble opinion are you was that the end there miss you jenny that was it okay i wasn't sure uh board members i will leave it open i think you got sidetracked go ahead direct when i said humble opinion i think you got sidetracked when i said humble opinion never get sidetracked on that you are indeed a font of humility board members um i would like to make some comments i i appreciate that you know board service is very challenging it takes a lot of time and effort and i think you know up here sometimes it's really hard to to work out our differences i know sometimes it's looked pretty uh messy but that that's what being elected to office and trying to work with others is sometimes about and um you know i think i think mr carr has had a deep desire to serve and um i wish him well in what he's going to do going forward um you know there is there's a balance and um board service pretty much has to come first in our lives and sometimes that's not sustainable for a hugely long time some people manage to do it but anyone that can give for amount an amount of time it's very appreciated so thank you mr carr for your service thank you ms humphries miss wood i'll just keep it short and say thank you very much i've enjoyed i've enjoyed and appreciated your time and respect and appreciate your thoughts and the way that you've shared them and the way that you have again brought um i think opportunities for all of us to look at things in specific ways and to come to the best decisions for our students and staff so thank you mr carr for my part i concur with all that has been said and i wish you will thank you for your service and thank you for your friendship dr record anything else for your report no sir that concludes my report for this evening very good mr carr is there anything that you would like to say if it's all right i'll wait till the end maybe make some comments at the board report section we'll do that okay thank you we will move to item seven request to speak to the governing board i do not have any requests at this time so we'll then move to item eight which is item 8.01 the monthly budget report so we get to see some numbers again dr mccord dr santa cruz if if the first presentation wasn't enough we'll hone it down to monthly so miss bets you're up again um good evening again uh this is a very short report but i just want to remind you we're talking about the end of may the current fiscal year uh not the new year so going back a year basically so this is our district operating fund grid you can see that under fund 01 you can see the available balance is the 23.9 million dollars roughly which is what we have budgeted for in the proposed budget to be uh approved hopefully approved by you later this evening also note the unrestricted capital outlay which again it shows the 5.2 million dollars what we we definitely expect to see in budget balance carry forward so that's all i have on this operating fund grid i just wanted to point out we had a meeting with natalie tenney earlier this evening and she indicated that we have been providing a great deal of meals and due to the federal reimbursement you can see that our revenues have continued to climb so our estimated revenues are now over 12 million when prior to that we were estimating a little bit over 10 million dollars so our nutrition services fund is in really good shape the other funds just wanted to point out the joint technical education fund there is a significant available balance again we talked about on the proposed budget that we have the room to be able to move uh approved staff out of maintenance and operations and move them into this jted fund so um it's just another reminder that we have the resources available to do that and then i thought you might find this interesting so these are school student based funds so i wanted to remind you that the auxiliary operations funds are all the funds associated with fees that students pay athletic fees school supply fees classroom supply fees those types of things and so in addition we have extracurricular tax credit textbook fund as well as gifts and donations so i asked staff to put this into context by school and entity by grade level and so we did that so as you would expect most of the available balance is at the high schools that's where most of the athletics occur and athletics were fortunately very robust during the 2021 school year you can see the junior high has a little bit less than the elementary but i wanted to point out the other so remember that as part of our auxiliary funds we also have schools requesting field trips and athletic trips so those are charged through transportation and those revenues that come from the schools go into a transportation auxiliary fund and most of this 1.8 million dollars is associated with that and in the past we have mostly moved maintenance and operations expense out of mno for fuel and into this auxiliary fund the other one is the device the device protection plan that was initiated when we went to the one-to-one initiative and so that money goes directly to offsetting the cost of repairs of chromebooks and and other um instructional technology materials so i just wanted to share those details with all of you dr santa cruz can i answer so so this is more than we typically see is that what you're saying no this is comparable to what we've typically seen we just we just split it out into the grade levels for you to have so you have an understanding of where most of the money is lying basically and then have we spent this then no these are available balancing these are available so this is typically what's available it's available after the revenues and expenditures have been identified to date again we're still three months out from this school year we still have expenses to pay through august 31st um so these balances will go down but it does give flexibility to our schools for the start of next year to be able to get their spend out there for various things that they would need to start school okay so the schools can use these funds to they'll have allocations of these funds for things that they need i'm just trying to understand what do we where do we where will we see these dollars spent so let's look at the high school as an example so a large portion of this is probably athletic from the athletic fees and so that gives the schools an opportunity to to prepare for football to buy football materials etc those kinds of things some of this is tax credits so some of this is tax credit so some of this is perhaps if you're like me putting that tax credit money in so that senior year when they have the more expensive um choir tour you put in tax credit for that's a few years to offset that expense for our family so a lot of this is not available for us to spend because it's not available for us to spend at all yeah except for in the other fund right okay it goes towards the students and their needs so i'm not showing you more than normal i'm just showing you how it's split out by grade level awesome i just was i just was asking those questions i'm not concerned about i just was trying to get more details so okay i understand now if it's athletic fees and it goes toward the coaches and the supplies and all that stuff and if it's tax credits it's what it's been designated for by those families so okay thank you you bet okay and uh so the bond funds this is the summary of our bond funds i just wanted to point out the encumbrance of 21 million dollars that's reflective of all the work we're doing right now to get all of our schools ready for the new school year okay come on there we go um i'm sharing the debt service fund with you these are the same information shown in two separate ways i wanted to bring it to your attention that we've been presenting the debt service fund as a budget controlled fund it's actually not it's actually more of a cash fund and so we're showing both presentations to you to improve understanding you can see the transfer in is associated with the fact that any cost of issuance not spent needs to be put into the debt service fund not be spent as bond proceeds so you can see that we've done that and then i just wanted to show that that our beginning balance plus our revenue so a total available resource of 25.9 million we expect to spend in in july as well as in january the total would be 25.6 million with a projected cash balance of 330 000 at this point so that projected cash balance will go into the tax levy calculation and will be applied against the new levy for next year so that that cash balance will go towards decreasing the tax rate slightly for the bond debt service fund okay and that's all board members any additional questions or commentary nope thank you again miss betts for that very thorough presentation we move to item nine is the consent agenda and we are looking at item 9.01 for a motion regarding the consent agenda i moved to approve the consent agenda thank you mr carr is there a second second thank you mrs humphries it's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda as presented is there any discussion dr santa cruz i was just going to defer to you miss eugetti but let us vote first and then i will call on you is that okay that's fine okay all right with the caveat that we will defer to miss eugetti after the vote all those in favor of approval of the consent agenda as presented please signify by saying aye aye aye all those opposed same motion carries five zero mr jetty the floor is yours thank you dr santa cruz i just wanted to say that uh the person who is going to be the new principal assistant principal at mesquite high school was one of my gilbert l kiddos liz labeck she was a leader in fourth grade and fifth grade in sixth grade and i could not be more proud of her and that's all thank you mr jenny she's also coming from mountain view all right so we wanted to to recognize that life is a continuous circle and it comes back around at us one way or another item 10 our action items item 10.01 dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members it is my pleasure to bring to you tonight for approval of natalie tinney as the next director of nutrition services for the 22 school year thank you dr mccord for item 10.01 is there a motion yes i'd like to move that we appoint natalie tanning as the director of nutrition services for the 2021 2022 school year thank you mr humphries is there a second i'll second thank you mr wood is there any discussion seeing none and we will vote on item 10.01 appointment of natalie tenney as director of nutrition services for the 2021-2022 school year all those in favor please signify by saying i i all those oppose the same motion carries five zero congratulations miss tenney would you like to say a few words sure dr mccord dr santa cruz members of the board i am so excited for this opportunity and i commit to doing a great job and continuing to uphold our excellent nutrition services department and reaching out to really be a part of the community and family here at gilbert public schools and i'm excited to get to work thank you thank you [Applause] and while we welcome mrs tenney to her new position we would be remiss if we didn't speak to the 28 years of service i believe of mrs deb mccarron mrs mccarron has grown the food services program in gilbert public schools over those 28 years and has refined every aspect of the program and been an innovator i think among food services directors in the state and is often sought for consultation from others around so we are appreciative of her service we will miss her we wish her well in her retirement and we thank her for her commitment to gilbert public schools dr mccord i i just echo everything that you just said and when i visited with debbie today i said you know could you always ask that person okay well what are you gonna do she she cut me off she goes don't worry about me i got trips planned i'm going here i'm going there i'm going to be busy and what i love that she said is and if you guys need anything from me i'm more than willing to come back and help in any way i can so thank you to debbie for everything you've done for us thank you we'll debbie to item 10.02 fy 2022 proposed budget for adoption anything by way of introduction dr mccord or ms betts would you like miss betts to go through the presentation again i think we've memorized it okay no sir thank you sir item 10.02 is in front of you is there a motion i move we adopt the fy 20 proposed budget is there a second a second thank you mr wood thank you ms humphries any discussion i would like to make a comment i i think that one of the things that um we've been stellar on is making our budget very transparent showing what our decisions are and and being fiscally responsible and i appreciate all the work that the finance department has done on that but also um the board has done on that and it's i think it's really important that our constituents know how their tax funds are being spent that's one of the great parts of public schools you know where your money's going thank you mrs humphries anything else seeing none then we will vote on item ten point zero three zero two zero two excuse me all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye all those opposed the same all motion carries five zero ten point zero three is advertisement for public hearing on fy 2022 instructional time model introductory remarks dr mccord yes sir thank you dr santa cruz governing board members with your approval this will allow the district to advertise the fiscal year 2022 instructional time model public hearings for the july 27 2021 and the second public hearing scheduled for august 10 2021.
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at both hearings the administration will make a presentation of the governing board in public the advertisement will appear on the arizona department of education website again those will be held on july 27 as well as august 10th so your approval is just allowing us to take that next step thank you dr mccord with that rationale is there a motion for item 10.03 i move that we approve 10.03 advertisement for public hearing on the fy 2022 instructional time model thank you mrs wood is there a second i'll second thank you mr carr any discussion thank you dr santa cruz just to clarify we discussed this briefly i believe at the last meeting or the meeting before but this is due to us change in the state statute and offering different models or opportunities to account for instruction and so per the state statute in order to change these models in any way we have to have these two hearings and you guys will give the details of how we're going to do this at those next two at those hearings before we approve anything and we'll have that hopefully we'll have more guidance by then from the state to give us that is correct uh our goal is to make sure that when we present something to you it's as accurate as possible and again a lot of these things are approved um you know late in the in the school year and so being able to scramble finish the current school year propose a budget for the next school year and then look at something like this which it can be complicated and so we want to make sure that our foot is stepping in the right direction and that we don't approve something that ends up being uh fiscally irresponsible in the long run so when we we have all that information we'll be bringing it forward thank you so dr mccord just a specific uh change um again uh there's no place to post it on the department of ed's website so we are posting it on that would have been good information yeah thank you yeah and there is probably an error in the posting i apologize for that so it will be posted on the gilbert public schools website perfect thank you for the clarification event yeah and once again the clarification is the advertising for the public hearing and that is what the vote will approve is the advertising so all those in favor please signify by saying i all those oppose the same motion carries five zero item 10.04 is increase in bus driver base pay by one dollar per hour for new hires with cdl commercial drivers licenses uh dr mccord any rationale i'll just start off and then i'll kick it over to miss betts in a second um currently it is extremely difficult to find bus drivers and i think as one of the folks from our cabinet says it's been difficult for several years to be able to do that it's a very competitive market and our goal is to always make sure that we find the very best people to transport our students to and from school and as that market continues to be competitive we have to be a little more innovative in different ways to attract those folks that are willing to do that to our school district this weekend on saturday over mesquite high school our transportation department put together a job fair where individuals who were interested in being a bus driver had the opportunity to come over to the school and actually drive a bus around the parking lot and get a feel for what that may be like and i had actually had the opportunity to do that miss betts had the opportunity none of us hit any cones so that was a good thing but we ended up getting some folks with some applications being put in and hopefully we've secured some drivers but we're a long ways away from what we need for to be fully staffed and so miss bets will you talk a little bit more about the the dollar amount sure so the the specific issue is that we have historically the last three years been short between 25 and 30 drivers and largely due to the pandemic we are down and so we're trying to do everything we can to attract and we're having some severe competition from our neighboring school districts as well so we believe that with an additional amount if you have a cdl it actually will be budgetary savings for a couple of years for those individuals because we avoid the cost of training them which depending upon the individual could cost between three and five thousand dollars so we think this is a good move in addition i wanted to share that one of the things i learned i was able to drive my bus with one of the trainers and so i immediately got the wheel and i'm turning hand over hand right to turn the wheel she says no bonnie you can't do that you got to push and pull so she's like you have to push and pull push and pull don't go hand over hand so i learned something about driving a bus so hopefully i won't ever have to learn to use it thank you for letting me share i think what's advantageous as well is that if they come in with the cdl we can actually put them on the road right away and so there isn't that time that we have to keep them out for training so it's an advantage thank you you've heard the rationale item 10.04 is there a motion i move that we increase bus driver base pay by a dollar an hour for new hires with a cdl commercial driver's license thank you miss humphries is there a second call a second thank you mr carr it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion i i just want to mention that this seems to me to be a perennial problem it's probably at least the fourth or fifth time that we've had to address the fact that we need higher driver pay in order to attract drivers for our schools and we we don't want just anybody we want people who are going to be careful and cautious drivers and and do a good job with our kids so um you know i i realize we do this it seems like every other year but it's really important that we have good drivers and and they're very much essential to our operation thank you ms humphries miss wood yes thank you dr santa cruz a couple questions miss butts where would this increase in pay come from does that come from mno or transportation limit so it's um so the transportation revenue control limit is part of the maintenance and operations budget so it's definitely maintenance and operations and um and we always have turnover savings as those retire and making a lot more money and we hire individuals at a lower rate of pay even with this in addition the savings of not having to go through the training we'll fund that and finally if we can find the candidates we did incur a great deal of overtime in the current year because of the lack of of drivers so much of the overtime savings will go to fund these increases okay thank you so much and then secondly do you think that um a dollar an hour is enough to be competitive as you look at have you looked at the other districts or how have you come to that one dollar an hour um we have an and in discussions with the leadership team and transportation the the addition of the dollar an hour if you have a cdl does allow us to put out a job posting that is competitive in the market today so it puts us in the mid-range of sixteen dollars sixteen thirty forty dollars uh sixteen dollars and forty cents thirty or forty cents um which is right about the mid-range of the starting salary in our local market here in the east valley and then based upon conversations with with both the director trace as well as the assistant director megan they felt that the dollar an hour for a cdl was an appropriate bump in the pay thank you any additional comments questions saying none we will vote on item 10.04 all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye all those pose the same motion carries 5-0 item 10.05 is an increase in hourly worker wages by up to two dollars per hour for hard to fill hourly positions dr mccord any rationale thank you dr santa cruz governing board members this is along the same vein as we were having discussions about bringing this the previous item to you this conversation came up because it's not just bus drivers that we have a difficult time filling positions for and again it's not this year it's not last year it's not the last five years it's it's every year and so we want to make sure that we have the best uh support staff that we can find for our students and our district and uh sometimes rates aren't as competitive as they need to be and we have to be able to give credit as much as possible to those coming in with some experience and so especially if they're hard to fill positions so for example if you have a paraprofessional in a self-contained spice class you're they're difficult to find and we need to have adults with our students in specially devised classrooms like that one and so offering up the ability to increase pay for someone coming on on the base is extremely important to us and so those be classified as hard to fill positions something similar that we do for certified staff and the funding for this would come from uh turnover savings as well as vacancy savings that we've uh we incur every single year so hopefully this will be able to attract uh more individuals and keep them here for longer periods of time thank you dr mccord you have heard the rationale is there a motion for item 10.05 so moved thank you mrs humphries is there a second oh second thank you mrs wood it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion um i i miss bets and i had a discussion about we just did a salary schedule last year could you just talk about um how this might impact the salary schedule and the more general look that we're going to do on that um so addition to these two requests these will not impact the gradation scheme that takes us from grade level 101 all the way up to grade level 135 or something like that so it keeps the structure of the of our compensation grid consistent but at the same time we also discuss the importance of going back to that and making modifications and quantifying the cost of making us more competitive across the entire range of positions throughout gilbert public schools so we will be doing that over the next couple of months okay thank you miss wood thanks dr sanchez just to add on to that if we could really look at that and make sure that we're not negatively impacting our employees who've been here and who have who have served you know for a year or years and somehow don't have a benefit because they've been here that would be a concern that i hope we will address so we made a commitment as we go through this this process again of making us competitive across the board that at the same time we do the same analysis regarding equity adjustments so we will quantify not only bringing the starting salaries up to a more competitive level but also addressing individuals that are already here within those ranges and bringing them up with equity adjustments to bring them more within the range that they should be in because of their time here at gilbert public schools so it is both a process by which we will address the starting pay as well as the retention of those that are here with us today thank you any additional comments or questions saying none then item 10.05 is before you all those in favor please signify by saying i i i i all those pose the same motion carries 5-0 item 10.06 policy development first read policy bedh public participation at board meetings dr mccord any rationale thank you dr santa cruz governing board member policy bedh public participation at board meetings this is something that we've discussed over time in policy committee meetings and our current policy enables the president to limit time based on number but that wasn't specific and we felt it was important that we became more specific just so wouldn't confuse the public in any way shape or form and so the addition uh to letter c in policy b e d is as follows as general rule speakers will be limited up to three minutes to make their comments depending on the number of speakers unless otherwise specified by the board president the following limits will apply 1-15 speakers is 3 minutes 16 to 30 speakers is 2 minutes and anything over 30 31 plus speakers is one minute and that is the proposed change this has gone through policy committee as i stated earlier and we are presenting it to you for first read this evening thank you dr mccord you've heard the rationale is there a motion for item 10.06 i move that we adopt policy bedh first read for public partition of public participation at board meetings thank you mrs humphries is there a second all second thank you mr carr it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion dr sanchez i was not the last policy meeting although this has been discussed at more than one policy meeting um just want to clarify you know the the intent here is not to limit the overall public input we welcome public input in fact we've expanded the ways that people can provide us public input both in addition to the comments here there's an official forum by which they can submit comments for a board meeting as well as the the email it's it's a putting in place a practical measure when we have a large number of speakers i know that uh going back to the entire time that i've been on the board when miss eugenie was president when i searched president when dr santa cruz has been president we've asked people hey if you have a common theme can you try and and consolidate your remarks and and you know we've tried various approaches on those nights that we have a number of responses um so this is done with some reluctance because of the appearance of time constraints but also done in a practical manner by to to allow the board to move forward with its business and just want to make sure that the public is aware it's not our desire to limit the input it's our desire to make the meetings relatively efficient thank you mr carr any other commentary discussion i i just think it's um it is important to put it into the policy it's already at the discretion of the board president but we have had evenings where we have had you know a number of people who want to come in and we want to allow as many as possible but there's also just a limit on what we as the board physically can be here and how many hours we can um enjoy that comment so making it short and sweet so everyone gets a chance to say what they want to say i think is a good compromise to help us get to those challenging decisions that we sometimes have to make thank you mrs humphries anything additional seeing none then we will vote on item 10.06 all those in favor of the motion please signify by saying aye hi hi all those oppose the same motion carries 5-0 item 10.07 policy development first read policy gccg professional staff voluntary transfer of accrued sick leave dr mccord any rationale dr santa cruz governing board members we bring you tonight uh policy gccg professional staff voluntary transfer crude sick time uh july 28th of 2020 we added some language to our current policy and that was uh due to co but it said for the 2020 2021 school year if an employee has exhausted ffcra due to coven 19 and the employee contracts coven 19 for a second time they may request up to two weeks or 10 days 80 hours for a full-time employee or for a part-time employee the number of hours equal to the average number of hours that the employee works over a typical two-week period of paid sick leave from the medical leave bank membership of the medical leave bank for the covet 19 related requests is waived for the 20-20-21 school year based on the direction that we've been going in terms of covid vaccinations being out there especially in the east valley we don't believe that this is necessary for our policy any longer but just know that we have the former language if for some reason we have to go back to it we will but we we want to think positively and head in that direction thank you dr mccord you've heard the rationale is there a motion i'll move to approve the first rate of policy gccg professional staff voluntary transfer of accrued sick leave thank you mr car is there a second a second thank you mrs wood any discussion seeing none then we will vote on item 10.07 all those in favor of the motion please signify by saying i i i all those oppose the same motion carries five zero item 10.08 development first read policy jfabc admission of transfer students dr mccord any rationale thank you dr santa cruz governing board members we bring before you for first read policy jfabc admission of transfer students again this is something that we have put through the policy committee we a couple times since i've been here and i'll turn it over to dr newman to be able to give any details related to this good evening president santa cruz governing board members and dr mccord as dr mccord had stated we have seen this several times as we looked at the last policy committee we've looked and examined and really realized that it would probably be in our best interest to go specifically back to the recommendation of asba which is what we've done several years prior to that so there are just some minor changes to the policy and some of those are we wanted to be sure that we put in a an exception clause in there and that exception clause will allow the superintendent or designee to make exceptions if needed for particular circumstances or instances and other than that um i'm going to actually ask mr carr to talk to some specifics if you don't mind of what you might want to do as well i i think as a matter of order we need to make a motion first and then i so so perhaps i can just make a a motion to pass it and then i may ask for a substitute motion with some changes if it's desire the board so i will move to adopt the first read or to approve the first read of policy jfabc admission of transfer students thank you mr carr is there a second i'll second thank you miss wood discussion mr carr defer to you dr santa cruz just again we've discussed this in policy meeting i did not have a chance to see the final version if you will until until today as i missed the meeting earlier this month i would like to propose just a few minor changes uh there's actually no changing in wording but you have before you a copy of the changes you'll notice that there's a paragraph highlighted in yellow that is word for word the same i've simply moved it uh to its location in this version it was the second to last paragraph just before exceptions in asba i felt like it flowed better and then you'll notice a couple of headers that i've added that are in blueprint that just allow for clarification of the sections again the intent was not to change but the but to make clear the section so as we move through credit for graduation requirements then kind of the next section talks about how we evaluate those credits between core and elective credit then the rights of the student to to challenge that through examination uh and then finally just putting a header above the exceptions so no no wording changes to what the committee proposed just a change in order and some headers so i i thank you mr carl then would you want to offer a substitute motion for your original motion i would like to offer the substitute motion to approve jfabc with the reordering as outlined what you have in front of you is there a second oh second and this is just the first read again it will go back to the first read will come back and uh we'll any discussion and then we'll vote on the amendment and we will be clear so is there any discussion so i i just i guess i have a question so there's really no change it's just the editing process i i felt like by reordering it it actually became clear for the parents and for those outside to understand what we were trying to communicate putting putting the credits and then putting the core credit that yellow paragraph at the end kind of put it out of order uh from a parental perspective so that was the intent was to make it clear for for parents to understand it all right thank you any additional discussion dr santa cruz i just i want to come back to this one this policy was i think the first motion that i made to address uh we've addressed it at least four times in the last four and a half years and made modifications uh i i i have to say i'm very pleased with the outcome and i think it's it's where it should be uh in my in my personal opinion so i'm glad to get this policy where it is and uh we've all given taken over time uh and learned it including me this is not exactly what i would have proposed four years ago but i think it's it's where it should be uh so i'm pleased that it may also be the last uh the last policy that that we discussed as it was the first one that i propose we discuss well let's hope the next person doesn't make it their first policy that's what happens as in all cases i'm certain it won't be the last time all right with that if there is no further discussion we will vote on item 10.08 all those in favor of the motion please signify by saying i i close opposed side motion carries 5 0 item 11 is request for future agenda items and 11.01 once again if you don't have anything for this evening please get a hold of mrs wilson and present your item to her so that we may review it dr santa cruz for next month's meeting i have 32 items to add to the just kidding don't push it mr carr all right item 12 is board committee reports uh 12.01 is the gilbert education foundation mrs humphries uh yes we will be gilbert education foundation will be having their board retreat um towards the end of july which means that we will be working very very hard it's just a nice word for we're getting together to work hard nobody wants to say we're getting together to work hard also i just wanted to report on a couple of visits that i have made i attended the summer educational technology institute i went in person both days and just was really impressed with the classes and the teachers who were there to learn and um the keynote speakers that we had were very very good and i just feel like there was a lot of good positive things and i really appreciated those teachers who were there and i know there were many who were taking the online portion as well to you know that's they come and attend and they get credit for attending but it's not compensated time so i just want to appreciate them for their work there and um just had a lot of interesting conversations and learned a lot about what we're doing in our district and i i really appreciated the the way that we're moving forward i think we have a really good team in place and then i was able to make some summer school visits to our elementary schools both title one our summer boot camp and then our regular elementary school summer school and just really impressed with what the kids are learning i talked to one high school science teacher who was teaching science for elementary students and teaching them about animals and their habitats and and how much she enjoyed that they're doing steam and i got to see some kids explode a little rocket off of an m m container with some alka-seltzer and water i mean just it's really amazing what we are doing in our schools and the kids are having a lot of fun learning and enjoying that time in the classroom plus because of these universal meals they can come in pick up their breakfast and then eat their breakfast in the classroom while they're learning and then take their lunch home with them so i think it's been a really wonderful opportunity i'm really grateful that we had federal dollars to help us do some of these summer school programs and um i'm just really impressed where we're going so thank you thank you mrs humphries item 12.02 city of mesa liaison miss woods i don't have anything to report this month thank you miss wood item 12.03 uh very briefly it's been quite active down at the legislature for the last fashion 150 days 165 at least 150 days and just for your information i believe asba is doing a wrap up on july the 14th thereabouts it's a webinar so if you are interested something that might be of value item 12.04 12.05 i'll defer to mr carr on those two items and then anything else he would like to add i do not have anything report from the town of gilbert regarding the finance audit committee some time ago we made the decision to add a second member of the public to that audit committee but we've never had any interested parties express a willingness or desire to put on that as of july 1st i do know somebody who might be willing to fill that role as a member of the public so if it if it's the will of the rest of the board or or the board as it moves forward i propose that i would love to stay involved with the schools and in that quarterly meeting representing the public instead of the board um i'll leave that for a future uh agenda item if you if you so choose um a month ago when i announced my resignation i expressed my my gratitude and to to many uh there's no way that i can fully express my gratitude to all at least not by name but i thank my fellow board members and dr mccord for your kind words earlier this evening um you know it's it's an interesting dynamic if you look uh seven years ago i was running a campaign to to be on this diocese in hindsight the election came around and i think i placed fifth out of five people on the uh on the ballot two years after that i i again ran and placed third out of four people on the ballot so i have the proud position of saying i have lost to all four of my fellow board members but i would point out the trend goes from five to three the next natural number if there were to be one would be a number i would like but let me clarify i have no intention of running for another elected position but i would like to thank the parents in our community i'd like to thank our staff and our faculty one of the great privileges of serving on the board is being out in the community and getting to know people that you don't otherwise know we have an incredible community i am thankful to the administrators the vice principals the principals all of the people in this building sometimes in education we we we see people maligned uh it's never enough i just convey to the public i have never doubted well while there may be disagreement at times within the board or even bored with with some of the proposals i have never doubted the intentions of our superintendent and his staff and the people who serve in this in this district they truly care about your children they truly care about our community they live here they love our community many of them grew up here and even those who may not have grown up here they chose to live here they chose to work here and i think that says a lot about them i have i ran my campaign both times i ran on a concept of bridge building and civility i hope that in spite of the few times when i have perhaps failed i hope that overall people will look back at my time and say that i added to the civility of our community that i was willing to talk with everybody i was willing to listen i was willing to adjust my ideas when appropriate if i failed to do that i apologize because that is my sincere desire i do want to do what's right but i want to do it in the right way i am a firm an ongoing believer in our neighborhood schools i think one of while while i have always supported the idea of school choice i have strongly felt that my job on this board is to make gilbert public schools that choice i believe that when we come together instead of simply saying oh i have a difference in going on our own ways and selecting to go a different way when we come together we come to greater understanding we build civility and we build community and i hope that that i hope that if anything that is my legacy but in the end i hope that you feel my dear my my love and my full gratitude for each person in this community thank you [Music] [Applause] thank you mr carr we're at item 12.06 miss eugetti i'm just really glad i don't have anything to report tonight after that okay all right we'll move to item 13 13.01 meeting dates dr mccord thank you dr santa cruz governing board members our next meeting will be july 27th tuesday it's a board business meeting typically we have one meeting in july to give you an opportunity to go spend some time with your family and staff as well so that will be our next meeting date and we're ready to come back and be better than we've ever been so we're looking forward to it thank you dr mccord we'll move to item 14.01 which is adjournment is there a motion i move to adjourn thank you mrs humphries is there a second i'll second thank you mrs wood discussion seeing none we will vote on adjournment all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye all those pose the same nay motion carries four one [Laughter] we are adjourned
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okay you're all set missed answer okay um good evening in the absence of chair hall tonight i'll be chairing the meeting um as the vice chair um our first order of business will be to call the meeting to order so i'm calling to order the meeting of the pelham school committee on thursday july 1st at 6 03 p.m we'll do a roll call attendance so when i say your name please respond with mr menino menino i miss barlow marlo i and miss dancer present oh i'm sorry i said the wrong thing but we got it all okay um the first sort of business minutes we don't have any so we're going to move on to public comment we do have a public comment document tonight so um we'll bring it up and scroll through it i'd also just like to remind everybody that this is also available on the arps website if you go to school committee and then to pelham agendas you'll find a link right next to the link for the agenda file okay for future reference this typeface is good i can read this dr morris am i am i supposed to scroll sorry i should scroll the document i've been scrolling slowly am i going too slowly well that's fine i wasn't just sure if i was supposed to do it thank you nope this one hmm okay thank you um all right we will continue on now to the superintendent's update yep and i have it's very brief i don't have much of an update because we met recently and uh school year ended um but i just want to share my appreciation again i know we talked about the last meeting for just nardisi uh for stepping in uh up in a row as well as mickey darling to be co-leaders of the school meeting with mickey tomorrow uh we'll work on getting a mentor for them to support them because we know that it's a big transition and a complicated set of circumstances of uh covets not gone from us right uh our world and we want to make sure they're supported as as best as they can be the other piece of good news is that we did receive a grant by we being the pelham school district to support a one week more intensive um academic experience we're still working on details because we just found that out last week but for students particularly students who are struggling at the early grades with reading given the year that we just completed so we are looking to compar partner with our amherst colleagues for just efficiency stake in terms of bus and and site location um because any time you have a site that you need a nurse and you know it would be pretty inefficient for for that to happen just for pelham but that was welcome news and um we're loosely targeting i believe the first week in august for that sort of one week intensive uh experience so that all that all those funds come from the department of education through a competitive grant process we applied to that's really all i have for tonight okay following that is the chairs update the chair's not here the vice chair doesn't have any announcements so i wonder if any of the school committee members have announcements that they'd like to make tonight no wow okay moving right along we're going to new and continuing business the first item on the agenda is a discussion and vote on the superintendent evaluation um i i think i don't yes so i i would like to just say be before i go into the memo that goes with this that for people watching um the superintendent evaluation is based on a rubric created by the department of elementary and secondary education excuse me secondary education and it has four standards that cover the whole breadth of of a superintendent's responsibilities and the school committee and the superintendent work together to create the goals each year within that rubric and it is required to have at least one element from each standard in the goal so that there is a broad set of goals for the district and for the superintendent so with that said i i think i'm going to read the memo so if we could just bring that up on the screen and people will be able to read it but i'm going to go ahead and read it anyway so dr morris attached please find the summary of your evaluation for the 2021 school year similar to last academic year 2021 was unprecedented in terms of the work of overseeing a school district during a global pandemic but september through the first part of april were fully remote for teachers and students as a body the school committee works together to identify and communicate to the superintendent the measures chosen from the desi rubric by which they will evaluate his or her work this year unlike last we did have some sense of what was coming and were able to incorporate the response to and learning from world events into your performance goals this final report summarizes the individual school committee members evaluations of your performance over the 2021 school year and reflects the official position of the pelham school committee all five members of the pelham school committee completed the entire evaluation form the evaluation was informed by direct observation and participation of the superintendent in meetings and events documents shared throughout the year as well as a portfolio of artifacts submitted by the superintendent and a survey of the superintendent's direct reports in central office and the schools your overall performance was rated as proficient at 3.6 out of a score of five an average of 2.5 or greater is proficient as defined by the massachusetts department of elementary and secondary education proficient performance is understood to be so fully satisfactory for the superintendent and all other administrators as well as teachers this is in the rigorous expected level of performance it is a demanding but attainable level of performance um i'm gonna open it up we i think we could um stop sharing now um i just wanted to read that i i felt it was it was meaningful me to read it rather than just have people read that on the screen um and i'm going to open it up for comments from everyone but before i do um chair hall sent me her comments since she couldn't be here she did have comments that she would like to have read so although strong evaluations speak for themselves i think it's important to highlight the unique challenges dr morris has faced in running a school district during a pandemic he managed to address the immediate public health concerns presented by kovitt while maintaining a focus on the budget teaching and learning and the other fundamental elements of a successful school district all through a social justice lens i have trust in and i'm grateful for dr morris's leadership so now would other committee members like to make their comments mr menino well this is the time of year that i look forward to uh making a few comments i'm delighted with mike morris's performance i've observed his behavior he's an honorable man he's a fantastic superintendent um what i like most about the way he runs the show is his collaborative decision-making style before he makes a decision he seeks input from every possible uh stakeholder that could be through conversations talks focus groups surveys whatever i mean collaboration leads to better decisions my only hope is that he'll remain um superintendent for the next 55 years um so i'm it this is nice to be able to say nice things about a good man very good thank you mr menino miss barlow yes thank you um i'd also just like to echo my my thanks and gratitude for mike morris i feel like his leadership style was exemplary during his most challenging time uh it was he really demonstrated a compassionate form of pragmatic leadership if you will um always thinking about the various constituents thinking about the metrics listening um and just exhibiting a lot of grace under pressure which is really challenging to do um and i really appreciated working with him and and watching him you know work with with the various constituents and and really making sure that he was sharing the credit um i really appreciated that he shares credit with thinking about all of the members of his team that helped us make it through an extraordinarily challenging year so i agree i really think that we're so fortunate to have dr morris as a leader in our school system so thank you so much thank you miss barlow and i guess i'll follow that up with i echo all of those sentiments this past year everything was upended everything we know about school about being in school and teaching school it was just turned upside down and you went through this year with such grace and you were so calm um provided leadership uh as expressed by in your your 360 review by the other administrators and people in the district and your collaboration with everyone i i think when people work together the end result is better than everybody and i think we saw that happen this year and i want to thank you for all that you've done and look forward to another year so i believe um it's too bad that miss kenny didn't make it but um we'll go on without her um i believe that we now have to vote on accepting that the evaluations so would somebody like to make a motion brenda my motion to accept the evaluation as written and a second second okay uh the motion has been made and accepted so we will do a roll call vote um mr menino menino i miss barlow eye and stance or i as well and dr morris is it appropriate at this point for comments from you sure i'll keep it brief because you and i have a meeting that starts in a couple minutes a different meeting but uh you know i'm really humbled by the by the evaluations and particularly the comments um tonight and and i think the thing i'd say is that it it only works because i feel like it's a team the school committee myself um you know it's not that means we always agree right because that's not necessarily the sign of a team in fact i think most teams the disagreement's healthy right and we dig into issues whether it's budget uh whether it's you know curricular which we've had over the last couple of years but you know i just appreciate that this committee keeps students at the forefront uh of its decision making and collaboration not just with me but with the team you know with the principal like this year with lee with doug slaughter who obviously you get to see a lot of in the winter and early spring uh and you know like tim sheen and you know other folks who are involved in pelham school because that's really how it all works and when there are hard moments and we've had plenty this year we're able to work through them because we're talking about it you know and you know slightly awkwardly for you all because it's public meetings and i know that's what you quote unquote signed up for but it you know this year the public part of it was perhaps a little more public than ever before in terms of how many people are watching but yeah i appreciate um you know your kind words but but i think as much or more just i appreciate the collaboration throughout the year and the good questions that get asked when we present that make us think deeper on the on the staff level and look forward to hopefully having a somewhat smoother year next year um and uh uh you know as i said before you know covet's not done we're not over with it but i think you know a year in or year plus in we know a lot more right and we've been able to do a lot of work in the building and we feel i feel really good about where we are and and steps we can take to continue to provide the high quality education that um pelham families have rightfully requested and demanded of us and we want to continue to build on the work that's happened and get better in the future so i appreciate all of your support um and i look forward to continuing to work with you in the future okay thank you um so moving right along warrants are the next item which we have none and i believe we have no gifts to accept so the next order of business would be a motion to adjourn that move to adjourn second bat uh roll call vote mr menino menino i miss barlow i and stancer i um the meeting is adjourned see you in august thank you
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thank you good evening everyone and welcome to the june 30th special board of education meeting if we could stand first for the uh flag salute 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 all thank you are there any announcements no one has any announcements i would like to announce that um we do not have a need for item six this evening closed session so we can end at the end of the meeting thank you caitlin has arrived hi caitlin okay our consent calendar is item number three are there any items on the consent calendar that any board member would like to pull do we have any requests for comment on the consent calendar we do not thank you do i have a motion on the approval of the consent calendar i move the approval of the consent calendar second i have a motion by dr kaiser uh second by mr tennis um we'll do a voice vote starting with ms dalby the dolby i kaizerai tennis eye robinson eye landau is absent it's approved four to one okay item number four uh this is a discussion action item from educational services it's the approval of the local control accountability plan that we reviewed in public hearing on the 21st thank you yes i'm uh the ed services team who's taking the lead i'll start us off um president thank you mr marshawn you bet so first before we get into the discussion action portion of this we would like to go and go over the yearly timeline that comes along with the um of the approval of the lcap so at this time i'm going to pass it over to my two directors tim karis and tina king all right thank you good evening so we would just like to give you a rundown of the lcap process in its entirety and so i'm going to walk you through the the graphic you see on the screen you also have a handout in front of you so you can follow along the kind it's kind of hard to read from far away and the lcap is really a a process that never ends before we get an approval on one lcap we're already thinking ahead to the next one specifically based on end of end of year data so i just wanted to lay it out as simple as i as i could to talk you through the process so in june late june as we are asking for approval tonight that is when the lcap gets approved also in june and actually before the approval happens we're already looking at state test data in a normal year sites are at the site level we are looking at a district level to evaluate needs moving forward into the into the next school year and we're also looking at things like attendance and suspension rate okay so really june is when that starts for the for the upcoming year in september the butte county office of education will notify us of their acceptance and approval of the lcap so after approval within five days by law we are required to submit the approved lcap to the butte county office of education for approval typically what happens is they work with us throughout the summer and early into the fall to make any necessary changes per egg code and they'll give us our final approval in september in december the state dashboard is released which gives us another dose of data to analyze and use for planning and then in january uh after christmas the lcap document is then populated by our contractor that uh houses the lcap it is populated from the previous year's el cap into the new year's el cap so we're never starting from scratch the last time we did that was the first lcap ever which is 2013.
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in february is the first community input meeting with the larger group um and that is looking at data and analyzing our progress towards our goals in march the state and cusd identified targeted student group parent input meetings happen and currently right now in chico unified and we hope this changes but our targeted student groups are bypoc students students with disabilities homeless and foster and our english learners in april following those smaller group meetings the focused parent group meetings we then bring the go back to the community meeting for more input so that's our second community meeting of the spring following that meeting based on the input from a variety of groups including students staff and community the cusd staff will revise the lcap based on that input then we bring it forward to the board as a draft plan in june as we did last week and then open up a uh public comment time where the public can comment via email or in whichever way they wish really and and we will answer questions and take that into account and then then we start the cycle over again with the approval and then we just keep going around and around each year any questions not a question just a reminder that we're mandated to hold those last two lcap the first the hearing and then the approval within one week of each other so we you know we can't we can't take longer i do have one thing to add real quick to to tim's presentation on the cycle here is that we also work with butte county office of education throughout the entire year they have trainings updates anything that comes out new with the template from the state department of education they update us on that and those happen frequently you know adjustments to the template do come out and they want us to know early so throughout the year we are attending workshops from bcoe and they're a close partner in looking at at what we've done and editing and bouncing ideas off as well remember dolby you had a question um similarly as just a clarification or make sure that i'm staying on track with different categories uh the targeted groups listed here those are the groups that are selected according to the dash the california state dashboard is that correct right those are the student groups that we see a significant performance gap okay so according to our scores from based on data right those are the students that are targeted because of their the scores within the subgroup categories in those categories are chosen um as a state and and by the state guidelines correct and we also add in our english learners um and they are currently not a targeted subgroup for us student group um but we we need that um input from that parent community sure thank you one thing i just wanted to add to this is the fact that it is never a new lcap it is a cycle it moves from year to year when we first started it the community helped us create it but the the priorities are set by the state those carry over from year to year and we adjust our work based on our outcomes from year to year mr tennis you had a question yes um can you clarify the um the goals of the lcap relative to the target categories versus the goals of the lcap relative to the entire district um all the goals are written and i think when we say goals really the measurable outcomes that we're talking about in lcap are the metrics so we use that term because overall goals are very broad the metrics we always write to for to close achievement gaps between groups that are significantly behind the all students student group okay so what that means technically on the state dashboard that is if there are two or more colors away from the all students student group so that's how those targeted student groups are chosen so there's no interest in the well-being of the district across the board through the lcap is all about about bringing the the various categories closer together that that is the focus of the lcap but that is not what the lcap is all about um services that we may bring in with the intention even of serving a certain population are available to all students so when we talk about go ahead kelly well i was just going to say the goal of the lcap is that all students achieve at or above standard all students and when we have students that are not or groups of students that are not then providing to the support to ensure that they are when we have individual students regardless of if they fit into a category or not providing them those supports that's the goal of the lcap is the success of all students so it's legitimate for any chico unified family to take an interest in what's going on with the lcap yes process said this before um we didn't get notification on these meetings that were discussed in my family and i did some research with other families that i know and i think the district could have done a lot better getting the word out about these meetings i'm here to tell you that in february we have no communication from the district at all that there was going to be an lcap meeting taking place and in march we also did not receive in my home any any information about this with respect to the april meeting i found out about it as a board member that it was happening and um that's when i began to wonder whether you know who was being invited who should come and so forth and so so i actually sent notice out to some people through social media um that there was a meeting in april but the zoom call or whatever there was no way for somebody to participate without going to their school site okay i have one contact who tried to go to their school site and it was locked so not an open meeting not not available i just kind of did some research across different school sites and i found varying levels of notice given to families so isn't it one of the goals of the lcap and i know the answer i'm asking a question that i already know the answer to that we be um you know making this information about these meetings available to our clients absolutely so typically this information has come to families through their school site and there are multiple opportunities for input when the school sites are developing their own school site plan through pta meetings it's shared through school side council meetings and then when we have these community-wide lcap meetings we have invited both targeted groups members of pta members of school site councils to come to those and i am not going to say that we did we had great communication this past year without a doubt i think covid and our typical communication methods probably threw us for a loop and we can always be better i will tell you though that we did send out a notification when all of the school site plans which are tied to the lcap went out those went out to every parent from the school sites we also sent out notification of the final draft so where we late in getting this all out to everyone absolutely have we met all of the legal timelines that we need to meet in terms of posting it allowing opportunity for community input we have done that my right hand person here erica has already said all right we won't we've heard you loud and clear and we have a plan to make sure along every step of the way every parent is notified through our aries communication system for next year so you know i appreciate the input and i cannot argue that communication could be better thank you for that explanation um i have a question because i think it's important that what you did in trying to reach out was important um you know to and i know it was to you and and it is to us after this information was out because i think everybody had it um by a week before the 21st did you of which of last last june yeah okay so last week and you've been in touch and and communicating was there any one thing that raised your interest in following up that people were interested in the letting you know that they weren't happy with what was in the lcap what was the feedback well we can hear the staff presentation i mean i've prepared some comments can i have just a point of order really quick because i think that we're bordering on discussion and i just want to make sure that we're not actively in discussion at just at this point and maybe save the conversation for um after the president for discussion yes and mr tennis just indicated that was his preference too so thank you thank you caitlin there's no more questions on the yearly cycle at this time really we do not have a presentation because we we had our presentation um last week on on the lcap so basically at this time we are passing it off to the board for their discussion on the lcap and discussion and action item and of course we're happy to answer any questions if questions have come up between last week and this week yeah now we're into the board technical questions for clerk clarification purposes can i just ask another point of clarification of course um so are we are we still asking questions of staff yes okay so we're not we're still not in board discussion because that will be after emotion that's after motion that's also after public comment which we do have okay thank you does anyone have questions of staff apparently not okay now we are on to public comment yes dr kaiser i noted that somebody had suggested that using a database to assess our impact on the social emotional and so i think that's a data set we haven't necessarily been able to gather in the past but do we have ways that we think we're going to be able to track the impact of the additional resources that we're providing yes uh the counselor team has been working on that or actually has worked on that and they have universal screeners for ready for elementary junior high and high school that will be given at the elementary level four times a year and at the junior high and high schools three times a year in addition students will receive shorter surveys we're still working out the the time frame on that but two and three between every two or three weeks is kind of what's been talked about so we will have that data as of right now we really have one time a year survey data right for the secondary students and then a universal screener for the elementary students so that's really positive because i think it's key that we have um since we're using emergency money in effect that we have a quicker and more wide base uh you know data set that we can look at and check so that's great yeah and that that database that you're talking about that system is called educlimber and that will be used to um to focus our our attention with our social emotional services on the kids that need it most and in addition if we're meeting the social emotional behavioral and academic support needs of students we should expect to see a reduction in absenteeism and increase in academic achievement a decrease in suspension and expulsion all of those indicators as well i guess the other aspect of this is now that the state is tracking the certification process for cte that we are having students meet that certification i think that's another aspect of that what we would like to track um somebody asked me what a concentrator course was and i was kind of shocked so you know there are parents and kids out there who aren't aware that if they do a three-course sequence so that again seems another piece it's a new piece of data for the state but certainly given the fatality of our cte programs i think that's something we really yeah i i agree and the cte is part of the college and career readiness indicator which in my mind is kind of the gold standard for the results of students going through chico unified and graduating how ready are they for their college and career okay any other questions a staff we're now at the public comment um plus we do have one request mr shepherd if you could contact that person please thank you i'll be calling jessica voicemail there's no answer thank you okay now we're to the board to discuss the agenda item any further discussion mr tennis um i have some comments these will be my last comments on on the item um so is that appropriate in accordance with the protocols or whatever um yes okay no we need a motion no you're you're right uh this i will move you're correct i will move the educational services the uh approval of the 21 22 local control account building plan all second now we're good to go yes mr tennis the floor is yours thank you um thought a lot about this i remain opposed to the l cap that is before us today for the following reasons which i've previously stated but will now expand on first i believe the equity shift that is central to this document will contribute to grade inflation at chico unified it will do this by elevating the priority of equity gaps or achievement gaps these are again are the disparities in academic and social emotional success that have been identified along racial lines socioeconomic class english learning housing status etc as a primary driver of district policy and educational services rather than the more straightforward bread and butter approach of our previous lcaps i would refer you to goal number one on pages 99 and 100 of this document with this change in focus toward so-called equity i feel that our teachers administrators and the newly minted equity alliance cohorts will forevermore be trying to chase down and erase what are being interpreted as racially based or class-based outcomes but since these disparities are almost certainly not the direct result of something the district is doing wrong i fear staff will feel pressure to take a path of least resistance which could be to simply inflate grades or water down the academic rigor of our various programs so that everyone can succeed equally regardless of their actual performance if you look back at how the this issue is is discussed on the state level at the california department of education and the state board of education it is evident to me that that is exactly the approach that they want us to take and as i've pointed out in some of my earlier communications the state is urging us to get rid of things like gait and calculus pathways and this is something that i feel we need to resist and that's part of what i'm doing with this no vote the trend of so-called equity leading to great inflation and diminishing academic excellence can be clearly seen at the university level where the csu system and as of last month the university of california have buckled to political pressure and stopped requiring the sat and act tests with student applications this will create a future for those colleges that is actually very inequitable because it will award credentials that would be acceptance and ultimately college degrees to students who simply looked good on paper rather than by accepting and promoting the best as proven through a rigorous standardized test this is a total departure from the past so success quote unquote in california's academic future may boil down to which school districts simply hand out the most easy a's secondly the lcap that is before us today with its heavy emphasis on racial equity is not in my opinion the product of any meaningful input from the community of chico as has been claimed and as would be required by california code section but is instead something that has been foisted upon us by academia and political appointees in sacramento with the goal of promoting a high-minded political ideology california code california code section 52062 stipulates that when formulating its lcap a district should notify members of the public of the opportunity to submit written comments regarding the specific actions and expenditures proposed to be included in the local control and accountability plan or annual update to the local control and accountability plan using the most efficient method of notification possible this document by contrast has been carefully word-smithed and incubated over the past several months in meetings that were not generally publicized under the cover of the covid lockdown and only sought input from hand-picked representatives of the target student categories their families or representatives that the state and district have identified as needing special attention gone was any early opportunity for the bulk of chico parents to tell the district what their families wanted and needed from our school system which we are paying good money for finally what public comments we have received on this lcap seem to be very negative and unapproving i would never have expected a huge amount of public input from busy parents in the middle of summer on something as arcane as the lcap process but it speaks volumes to how much connection chico families have with this draft we are voting on today that the comments we have received are negative and seem to be urging us to go back to the drawing board i would propose we send up to sacramento an el cap that looks a lot more like our previous ones which emphasized the old school values we were told on may 5th we would be in a meaningful sense leaving behind these were number one quality teachers materials and facilities number two to fully align our curriculum and assessments with california state content standards number three support high levels of student achievement and number four provide opportunities for parent involvement and input and number five improve school climate these common sense principles of the past have now been replaced with a much more nebulous very unstem like if i may trio of values inclusive academic learning inclusive social emotional learning and provide interventions and supports to teach social and behavioral skills as someone who values history literature science philosophy geometry geography and art there's little in the new lcap document that entices me to vote for a major change in course for the district that once again comes from academia and sacramento and really has very little to do with what we have done in the past or should be doing now thank you very much dr kaiser this is initially an aside but somebody named jessica tried to send an email and then it disappeared so i don't know if that was a person we were i don't have anything now i just saw it and disappeared so i don't know okay so um it's interesting to me that you didn't include gender because the initial change in education happened after the russians beat us into space and eisenhower's president panicked and at that point he said i don't care what gender they are if they can do math and science that's what we need that's me total math and science i one time got a b plus in my last calculus class because a junior college professor kept interrupting the teacher but you know it does happen the people who made the decision i have been chair of ge for the csu for the state for a number of years in the past there has been frequent complaints about the s.a.t they just finally came to a head because it couldn't be administered in the normal setting and the normal proctoring couldn't happen either and when they did that they discovered that it wasn't really an effective measure so i do not believe that not using these tests are going to change qualifications the universities are looking at the whole whole part of the student and that's really what we want because nobody goes to college absolutely knowing what they're going to be because all they had was high school high school is very narrow you get to college and the whole world takes on a completely different color and shape and you should be able to find what it is that you really are interested in so we have been doing lcap since 2013 we have always up until the covet situation gotten plenty of input and i don't believe that someone's education is going to be downgraded i think when you have more people with different aptitudes but very interested in learning in a discussion or a class that will spark greater learning so the context of this downgrading an individual in a class because other people that don't look exactly like them are there so i was the only girl in my advanced math class in high school because the other girl got married and by state law that kicked her out so the teacher would say oh question one was so easy nobody missed that i would miss it he get the question 10 the last one he said oh this question is so hard i didn't really think anybody would i'd get it everybody else in the class was a male you think they were lessened by me being in the class i think i was the only one in the class who went on thinking i was going to measure in physics and getting smart in college and choosing sociology instead but i still did statistics that was my second mandatory language in my grad school math so i don't believe this is a watering down i think it will allow all of our teachers to reach out all of our students and the way we do math right now in second grade is already very very different than the way we used to do it because we have realized that not everybody processes their information in the same way and that's an asset it's alby yeah i have a question for mr tennis um so just after hearing your points of concern how do you envision the classroom looks different under this elk cap can you can you paint a picture for me what you think how the classroom looks different under this elk cap as opposed to the previous lcap respectfully i think that question just doesn't have a fine enough point on it i think for me i think what i'm curious about is if you think that we should we should just spruce up our previous elk cap and send that to sacramento instead what is your concern with this with this el capitas it has been revised that is that is going to translate into the classroom how it makes the classroom look different and the teaching of our students look different i think that my objection is to the values that are put forward so it's your objection is to the interpretation of the lcap your your objective interpretation or subjective interpretation of the lcap that's that's what it sounded like sorry my um my objective observations of the lcap so objective would be measurable yes and unbiased yes so you're saying that your opinion of the lcap is unbiased yes okay and so then you should be able to speak measurably how you think it looks different translated into the classroom as opposed to the previous lcap well looks is a subjective word i mean that sounds like uh outcomes sorry let's say outcomes how are those classrooms measurable outcomes yeah measurable outcomes different for our students um that causes you to object to that cap in its current form well i mean as i stated i i am convinced that this either very strongly could or will lead to great inflation and how does that affect our students that's bad very very bad can you explain why you think that's bad great inflation is the thing that every single one of us up here on this stage should be about trying to make sure that it doesn't happen because if we had great inflation tell me your philosophy on grades i'm really interested i was kind of interested to answer the last question before i move on to a new one but uh great inflation is a huge threat to our entire society at every level yeah okay but let's talk about the philosophy of grading in general so what's your philosophy on grading and providing a grade to a student um i think it should be uh objective to use a word we've already put a definition on um yeah i mean uh and as far as testing standardized testing i i think that's a we're living in an imperfect world clearly but standardized testing is very important and so back to the sat example if we're going to talk about standardized testing do you realize that this that there are actual scientific studies that show that there's no correlation or not significant correlation i should say between sat scores and success in college and gre scores and success in a master's degree program actually it actually depends on the actual student drive and and you know meeting the student where they're at that's what drives their success in their academics not this test that they they took two or four years prior um there's a lot of academic studies out there in the world you know i mean i haven't done an exhaustive search but i'm sure there's plenty of tests or academic studies that show that testing is an accurate way to measure students um proficiency there are lots of professionals even just in this community who disagree with you who actually do look at those studies and and and analyze those studies i mean we could invite we could invite the more chico state professor professors to to come talk to us about those i know plenty of education department people who can talk to us about how standardized tests especially as far as entrance requirements go maybe as checkpoints as we use them for gauging student growth individual student growth that's a whole different thing but when you're talking about a standardized test that is a straight line across the entire population and expecting students from various backgrounds and experiences and education opportunities to meet that same line you're not measuring that student's growth you're measuring that student against some standard that was arbitrarily established by somebody years ago that isn't actually scientifically based anymore it's outdated it's an outdated system on this point of the sats and the sats i am thoroughly thoroughly unimpressed with the people that you're talking about who have concluded that it's good for our society or good for our academic system to get rid of the standard standards with the educated people i understand that so back to my original question about how this translates different in the classroom we're talking about providing students what they need where they're at so that they can grow student growth and grades can actually be a useful tool to empower students to continue to grow grades as they are in these terms that you seem to be reflecting on tend to be oppressive and students who are struggling and see that f and they think you know it doesn't matter how hard i try at this point i'm not going to be able to even bring it up to a d like that's what we're talking about here that's what equity is is is bringing the students up to grow to a point that they can reach as far as growth goes so my philosophy for grading just so that we can you know be on equal terms as far as our understanding of where each other's stance goes my philosophy on grading as an educator of 12 years is that a grade should reflect a student's growth well i mean clearly we have just very very different opinions because i think that f's are really really important and if people fail classes for whatever reason don't do the work i think that's really really bad if instead of getting them instead we give them a d or a c minus then we haven't done our job we didn't do the work if a student gets a 58 did they do nothing did they learn nothing but an f f it sounds like to you and f means that they learned nothing or they they did not learn enough to have mastered any skills but in truth a student could master the skills not have the time to do the homework or not have the the ability to perform in a certain way but have actually learned quite a bit i've had plenty of f d students who actually were very intelligent and had a lot of knowledge they grew but their their work output didn't necessarily reflect that in their grades that's why i'm talking about grades being a poor place to to place emphasis on that student clearly needs to adapt their you know what you say is total knowledge and proficiency to toward test taking and the skills that enable them to reflect that and agree because that's life that student is going to get a high a high score on their sats probably and may or may not be successful in college some of that some of those students who fall in that category they don't they don't do any of their work and then they are amazing in college or they become great great in the trades they still end up being successful even though they got that out but we're missing the point here the point is is that we are enabling a system that allows teachers and staff members to meet the students where they're at and to and to provide an opportunity for growth and to allow for their grades to show their growth rather than a specific standard that could be subjective yeah i think maybe i just like the idea of measuring students through testing and you don't right it's comfortable to you because it's what you understand i'm telling you as an educator testing students has value as far as measuring growth goes but when it comes to providing grades that is something that can can come with some bias and it can actually really hurt hurt students you know employers they like to see metrics that they can understand and well you know so i have heard in this capacity as a school board member from employers who say they want kids to learn the skills testing is i think one of the most important ways to measure that and my point about the danger in learning institutions handing out easy a's or easy d's for that matter is a threat to our integrity you know you're interrupting me uh as an institution of of learning and preparing kids for employment and life i'm also really perplexed by this idea of of handing out a's or handing out these you know if a student is is performing so let me give an example would you agree with a teacher allowing a student to retake a test as many times as they needed to i haven't spent enough time you know meditating on that to to to give you an answer right now so if they see the test multiple times eventually they're gonna they're gonna end up doing better and better and better right so would that be great inflation to you is that something that's not acceptable does that show growth i know it's not always the case that people do better on a test the second time around um because i've experienced this firsthand um but that's what we're that's the kind of approach that we're talking about here with this lcap is is meeting students where they're at saying let's let's allow for students to redo their homework and turn it back in as a learning process all the tests that we give let's allow those to be a learning process every test is not just a finality it's a process to continue to learn and to continue to demonstrate what you know and but but people would argue that that would lead to great inflation yeah to me i was just thinking the same exact thing as you said that that sounds like a nice warm moist environment where great inflation could foster and grow and become a huge huge who's redone all that work and who has put in the effort does that mean that they that they didn't have the growth that they didn't actually learn does that mean that they should still have the d instead of the a that they you know redid their work on and relearned it and and you know increase their depth of knowledge what if the teacher just didn't want to deal with the you know the headache of of uh you know the the powers to be the administration or their peers or whoever you know looking over their shoulder and breathing down their neck over the fact that they were giving a child enough for a d there there are there that does happen so so i don't want that to happen and but but that goes back to philosophy so are we just there to give out grades and to say learn this this way no and that's why i'm voting against the cell cap we're not just there to give out grades and that's why i'm i'm against this l cap today yeah dr kaiser tim we don't use grades as our measurements for our we do not thank you as our measurements for what in our lcap metrics we don't use grades to indicate student achievement we mentioned it in this lcap because uh through covid that was a a huge concern for us you know students missing credits essentially and because the learning loss that it indicates so that's why it was reported but it is not an official lcap metric um i'm going to step in my turn um i've been embedded in chico unified since 1973.
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and i've i've i've seen a lot um as dr kaiser has seen a lot at the university level where uh you know we've we've been there for a few years and i i take a great issue mr tennis with implying that there are teachers that are for some nefarious reason looking at how they grade or what grade they give a student as almost a political statement from my interpretation of what you said that's my interpretation i disagree um when you mention that there was too much mention of racial equity in this lcap i don't see any they're they're nothing that we that we are doing is based or directed at a student group because of race it's because of where they are in their educational growth process doesn't matter whether you're black brown green purple where you are and what your need is is what we're going to send to you in the way of help the as mr karis mentioned what we measure in the lcap is the students measurement against their their own growth toward grade level and the competency level that we try to bring everybody up to so that they can be successful as they walk out of high school i mean walking out of high school is just the first step there's a lot waiting for a lot of kids out the door of high school and there are a lot of kids when i was an instructional assistant which we've hired a lot of people to do to work with students that were struggling there were so many kids trying to be square pegs placed in round holes and it didn't work because we are all very different in how we learn how we test how we ex how we let people know what we know our special ed students with ieps especially with our our um our high achieving autistic children you won't get very many of them that can pass a test but if you sit down and evaluate what they know in a way that they can trans you know can can they're brilliant they're absolutely brilliant and if we're not recognizing that as school people as parents as employers if you look at what colleges are doing now for special education kids because they know their their brilliance is is not accessible by our our standard assessments that we've always used this school district wants everyone to exceed or to succeed to the point they're capable of and in order to have that happen we have to we have to treat kids differently because how they learn you know some kids you know what i mean there there's just so many different things that we need to take into account um and we have been that's why we are a successful school district the problem is we haven't had all of the resources and the tools available to make it better because of covid and the resources that we've been sent attaching that to our lcap and to the other plans that we've budgeted for we're going to be able to add resources that we at least i wished all along we could do and we couldn't afford because california doesn't fund education so i'm going to very happily vote yes on this lcap and i look forward to three years down the line when we've been able to assess periodically at least once a quarter with some of the stuff and for some teachers they're assessing every single day did what i taught today work did what i taught today reach 20 of the kids or 70 of the kids what do i need to re-teach every single day there's an assessment of what did i do that was successful and what did i do that wasn't teachers share best practices our our our faculty puts their heads together on a regular basis in the structure that we've provided with our our our district leadership councils and school site groups where we look at what's working what isn't working what isn't working how can we fix it i'm proud as a trustee to vote yes on what i think is an amazing job that we've done under the circumstances and i look forward to being able to monitor the um the areas that are working and look at what our teams are going to do to quickly fix the areas that we see aren't working can you any further discussion yes ms dalby thank you i just wanted to kind of address a small elephant in the room too um and and this is based off of mr tennis's comments about the public comments on the lcap having been so negative in the last in the last two weeks that it's been posted and um you know that the elephant in the room is a a political movement to demonize the concept of equity and and what equity stands for and this politicization of the word equity and equating that to critical race theory which is not a conversation we're having right now and to say that that chico unified is somehow going down the critical race theory road and we're doing it without you know transparency and we're going to teach the kids about racism that is not what this lcap is about this lcap is about meeting kids where they're at and making sure that they're all provided with with the tools that they they need and as individuals to to grow to reach their growth goals and that we will use our resources and our measurements to to assess that that success over the next few years with this the guide of this lcap um and so i think that the public comments that we've received that i don't know if we've received a negative comment that didn't mention critical race theory um to me that demonstrates a mis a misunderstanding um possibly a malicious intent in intended um uh confusion of the concept to to make this a political issue when we're really just talking about serving our each student with the the with what they need that's that's all i wanted to say okay the email showed back up she missed the phone call and she's saying she can respond to a phone call if we try again dr kaiser this is the same person we attempted four times last meeting to reach i don't know yes it is we were able to verify that we made one attempt at the proper time tonight and that's we're going to end it there do i have a motion on this item i'm sorry we did yes that's how come we had discussion okay then i'm going to call for a vote and um uh anticipating not a unanimous vote as you've had members indicate i'll call for individual members member dolby i'm happy to vote yes because we have been waiting a long time for those resources to put them towards this effort dr kaiser yes just like eisenhower mr tennis name robinson i the it passes three to one thank you members okay mr baltimore we are at the original budget point uh yes we presented to you the original budget at the last meeting and since then we do have actions taken at the legislative level and at the governor's level just to inform the board so that you understand the impact on june 26th or actually the evening of june 25th the legislature adopted or passed their budget that did include the 5.07 cost of living adjustment it also paid off all deferrals cash referrals which we thought was a good move it did increase special education specifically in the area of children ages three to five so it added additional dollars within the formula the ab602 formula for the students that age some additional dollars um related to career technical incentive grants what was the increase in that age i i know what they've been different could you start back at the beginning sure um not at the beginning beginning but that one issue of the differences at the different grade levels so we don't have the detail of how it's specifically per student going to impact the ab602 funding formula okay the state has allocated 260 million dollars for that purpose so it still needs to go through the allocation to determine the actual amount that it will impact the eb 602 but it is additional dollars that we will benefit from thank you we are i don't have a slight this is just an update um dr kaiser um i just saw and i'm not sure but i thought that the governor was saying that they would fund tk for all four-year-olds correct so that is actually one of the additional items as well um it adopts universal transitional kindergarten phasing in the expanded age eligibility for full implementation in the year 2526.
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oh 25 26 25 26 so we'll be phased in similar to when tk was originally adopted and they moved those dates back in the calendar year and then we're also seeing additional one-time money related to the a through g completion grant we don't have a lot of detail so as you can see these are just a few of the the key items we're waiting for a lot of the detail since then the governor has taken action to sign this initial it's partial so there's lots of trailer bills that are also going to be coming but one of the key provisions of what was ultimately signed is that unemployment insurance percentage rate that we have represented in our multi-year projection it was a 1.23 increase almost a million dollar expenditure in the current the next year in the 21 22 year they've taken action to reduce that back to the historical rate of 0.05 okay so our budget will improve based on what we showed you at the previous meeting by another million dollars so we were projecting a positive change in our unrestricted fund balance of 3.8 million this will add another million dollars to that so we'll be at a positive 4.8 you scared me for a second i thought we were going the opposite direction there i thought you said it's increasing another one or over one percent and i almost choked on my snack here no it actually improves our budget now in the out years we had already reduced that down to 0.20 percent so there is a little bit of additional savings we'll experience in those out years as well but not to the same extent we will experience in 21 22.
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um so there's still uh information that needs to come out uh there's still trailer bills that we're expecting and for the board and the community we will be bringing a 45-day budget update that will encapsulate everything that's included this after july first okay board do you have any other technical questions of mr baltimore kevin i have a question on the trailer bills is there is a cut off on how long they have to get those things through before they become a two-year bill right i'm not sure of that i would have to look into that timeline i do know their timelines i just yeah i'm not exactly sure the specific dates um i i'd kind of like to know before you do your four week the 45 day update to know just a couple of reasons but that's information i'd like to have any other quest technical questions members um do we have any requests for public comment miss daily we do not okay do we have any motions from the board relative to this item i move this uh budget second okay we have a motion for mr tennis the second by dr kaiser all those in any further discussion members all those in favor aye aye voice vote again i'm sorry i have to do another single voice vote again because right it was last one was not unanimous thank you yes kaiser tennessee robinson eye four to one approval and mr mr lando is still absent okay okay next item is um also mr baltimore we're going to review the educational protection act the epa that we first heard of last week and yes we also did a public hearing at the last meeting regarding these dollars as a reminder to the board and the public these are not new dollars it is really a mechanism to report back how it money was spent related to the bonds that were passed on uh propositions 58 and 59 we use all of those dollars 22 million in excess for teacher salaries exclusively so with that we ask for board approval thank you board members any questions of mr baltimore do we have any public comment requested we have no public comment thank you um board do we have a motion associated with this agenda item i move to approve i second i have a motion by ms dalby a second by dr kaiser to approve um all those in favor aye thank you approved four to one with mr landau still absent okay mr baltimore we're bringing now the reserves disclosure on the original budget yes we had a public hearing on this item as well at our last meeting for the board and for the public we are projecting a unrestricted fund balance of 32 million 27 551 dollars at the end of the fiscal year we also show that we're able to meet all of our reserve requirements the three percent requirement from the state the board's two percent requirement and the 1819 one-time dollars that were set aside as board reserves as well which leaves us a balance of 19 million 862 dollars that we are showing a justification related to cash flow enrollment volatility negotiations and fiscal solvency so we present this for the public for the board and we ask for approval thank you do we have any public comment requested public comment thank you on board do we have a motion relative to this item i move to approve second ms dalby moves to approve the reserve's disclosure mr tennis seconded any further discussion for all those in favor signify by saying i were we four eyes thank you okay four to one with mr landau still absent okay uh oh i got to write in one of these a couple of years ago this was fun um mr baltimore the butte county air quality management district and the carl moyer program funding bus replacement what's the criteria yes we have an opportunity to receive grant dollars to purchase an electric bus in the amount of four hundred and two thousand two hundred and nine dollars the grant would pay four hundred thousand of that amount so the district would have to pay two hundred and or two thousand two hundred and nine dollars towards that purchase um i will note that electric buses we have one currently that we have in our yard one that is ready to be delivered and then this would be our third the mileage in between charges we are not realizing as many as that we had hoped so we're not able to use our large type 1 bus for as many trips as we originally had planned however this would be a type 2 bus that are transporting throughout the day the ability to use them for smaller routes would exist we still think the technology continues to get better so it's really the battery technology that would drive us to replacing more and more of our buses that are diesel over into electric so we would recommend that we get approval from the board to apply for the grant and purchase a type 2 electric bus okay do we have any public comment requests we do not thank you board do we have a motion relative to this i move to take their 400 000 and get us another electric bus a second thank you i have a motion in a second to yes take their money and run um drive yes ms davey um so just slightly off topic discussion about this grant funding um it comes from um par in part from butte county air quality management district and i just wanted to put out there should be an announcement but um butt environmental council got approved for a grant also a small grant to provide workshops to classrooms about air quality and so we will be pushing for that next school year along with the resource and recycling education program so just fyi that there's more workshops coming all your way teachers great thank you and we can teach about our new electric buses yeah when we took delivery of the first one uh a number of us got to write it and um they're quite impressive we did have to add sound to them so people knew there was a bus coming because they're so quiet yeah that was one of the that's why my prius beep beeps when i back up yeah good thing just out of curiosity what does a non-electric bus cost oh for a type ii electric bus we're probably in the 220 000 range for a diesel okay do we have any requests for public comment we do not um we are ready for a vote we already did those steps oh thank you board members all those in favor of taking their money and driving i thank you four to one with mr lando still absent okay district-wide school photography one of the first questions the kids always ask is when are school pictures depending on how old the child is oh uh uh cat mr baltimore sure just a quick background a number of years ago we consolidated the photography contract district-wide really to provide the best and most best pricing and consistent offerings so that parents knew who they were dealing with and the school sites were treated fairly and the same so at that time we used life touch we exited that contract going into next year based on some challenges with performance over the last year but we opened up that rfp and we received one proposal also so the board and the public is clear we do not pay any fee for this contract it allows them to come in and market their pictures to our schools so i would like to give a lot of crew credit to rocio french she really took on this rfp drafting that working with our office managers because often it's the office managers who are working with the photography company for scheduling and follow-ups and that type of thing and so we did have a number of office managers looking at the rfp and we did review it with a couple of members that were noted and ultimately they recommended that we move to this new company so we are recommending that we um accept this proposal and with i should know the name thank you with dorian studios yes do we have any requests for public comment okay i'd uh just an aside this contract is is with a company that is in sacramento but they they have people as liaisons that are already here in chico and are familiar with our our schools and our process so um is there a motion associated with this item since i have really cute kids i move all second i have a motion from dr kaiser a second from ms dalby i actually have a question i should have maybe asked during presentation um is there any um because it sounds like there's no upfront cost of the district right for for for school photos but is uh i and i don't recall this as a teacher something i wasn't really in tuned to but is there a um a system in place to provide discounted photos um for students who may not have the means to obtain their their photos or a way for the district to support a program like that or is there anything like that in place at this time and i don't believe we have anything like that it's strictly voluntary so we have not used any public funds for that purpose okay the if there's a a group photo or yearbook picture produced from the photo whether it's purchased by the parents or not the student is included in that um in that format i understand there's several norms uh in schools that uh still create inequities that i'm always a little bit mindful of so that's one of them yep just i i got it off the question no i i i absolutely agree that even at the lowest cost it's still uh i think twenty dollars is the basic one or two picture price and for some families that's just not uh something they can do yeah especially with multiple kids maybe that should be a a good thing for our school sites to discuss um public comment thank you is there a motion associated with this item we already did because you have cute kids okay all those in favor of approval i i thank you four to one yes with mr lando still absent that's that's not a put down of mr lando we're all aware that his need to be gone tonight was um significant i did actually have a point of order in that how that's being recorded because his absence doesn't count as a no vote it would just be that it's a four to zero four to nothing um and there's only four members here there's it's it's rega it's reported as however many yes and no votes there are of those of us present right the absent vote is at the bottom of the list and it will just say landau absolutely i think i'm just hearing you say four to one and i'm thinking it sounds like four yeses and one no i just wanted to clear it it's recorded as an absence and not part of the accounting oh we're all i've already flipped the page i'm sorry um mr baltimore again you're on regarding the location mr baltimore's agenda location um for our meetings yes so um and in preparation for school starting this facility will be in use for performances and really will not be available for board meetings it served us well during the covid19 pandemic because we have some very nice technology here and staff was able to to set up but we were also able to leave the setup in place so as we go forward we provided four options for the board to consider we added some pros we didn't give you any necessarily the cons because we just wanted to point out some of the positives related to our schools we noted marigold a multi-purpose room it's one of our schools that have been modernized and new construction but it is good size the stage is lower at that school site so the board may feel closer to the public i know that's been one of the concerns that marsh that you felt maybe higher and away from the public the infrastructure is all in place to have meetings there there's a proximity to this cfa so from a technology standpoint staff could easily move between this site and marigold certainly complies with the american disabilities act with new construction and there is a room right off of the marigold area for closed session before or after a meeting we also note neil dao really almost all the same pluses the only thing is it doesn't have the attached room for closed session and kneel down so we would have to move across the playground to to do closed session before or after we could go back to marsh um you've experienced that but we do note that often the board has felt maybe a little more disconnected from the public and um and it is since it's the location isn't doesn't have as good a parking for the public as well you have to kind of walk into the campus to access it so um it certainly serves its purpose well it's large enough it's well lit and it has all the technology that we need in that space as well and we note the district large conference room we use it for many of our board meetings that are workshops but it's small and would be limited for the public so we kind of know those are four that from a facility use standpoint that we could enter into fairly easily but we wanted input from the board on where you might want to start meeting as early as next month thank you dr kaiser i'm going to strongly urge uh marigold i think that its accessibility is quite significant and since uh most of our current facilities improvement under our approved plan are focused on elementaries it's a really important thing for people to see elementary schools who have taken on a new a new character so i am very happy to suggest marigold ms dalby is it my understanding correct that uh there used to be a practice of rotating to different sites um for different for each meeting i'm sure that there's cons to that but i also know that there are some pros to that in in that we would be visiting multiple sites throughout the city yes we did try for two years the rotation of sites um and there were issues just with consistency in the public knowing where to go for the meetings that's the first thing that i thought of yeah and the setup and then we did try uh and you know and this is something that is still a possibility we had our regular meetings at a consistent location and then depending on the topic that we were discussing in our workshop we could go to different sites so if we were talking about facilities we could go to a site to see some of the facility upgrades and we can still do that as well i like that idea mr demis did you have actually i was really eager to hear from uh madame kaiser and you uh madam president because you've actually been to meetings and participated in meetings at these locations so so yeah no strong strong opinions here with me i mean i would just like it to be a nice facility that's open to the public um so i like this facility a lot so get me as close to this experience that's what i want um i'll i'll weigh in um we when we go when we made the decision to leave the city council chambers it was difficult to have the the feeling of public interaction that we had at the city council chambers when we settled at marsh the first thing that was most noticeable was not feeling close to the people that had come to the meeting that was why i i would not vote to go back to marsh i like the idea of going to marigold i think the lighting in the parking area and stuff is excellent and i agree that highlighting the upgrades at an elementary school is is wonderful and i um i think that not moving from meeting to meeting is good because there's so much stuff that has to go with us in the way of media presentations and things that i'd like to stay as settled as yes as settled as possible um so that uh we can you know we can continue to reach out to our public we don't want to mentally challenge our high-tech people either caitlyn i'll also add to your comments about marsh um which i'm obviously biased towards because i love that school um but uh it is difficult to access the multi-purpose room um from a parking lot i had to let a lot of times i was always in my classroom until like 6 to 8 p.m every day so i always let people through my classroom my classroom was kind of a gateway to campus from that parking lot so i would agree that marsh for that reason plus what you mentioned is is not the most ideal location either although it is a gorgeous upgraded campus yeah do i have a motion i move marigold do i have a second yeah i'll second that um i just pulled up the picture of the of the new facilities at marigold i haven't even seen it yet it looks like it looks great yeah it is uh okay oh we didn't was there public comment there was no public comment requested okay any further discussion uh would it be appropriate to maybe add a friendly amendment and or maybe we could just discuss as a different action item later on um to consider rotating for our workshops just to so that we do have a presence on multiple campuses and and give kind of give the love to everybody but have our our general monthly meetings um wherever we approve is that an amendment or should i just add that sometime later uh one is on the regular meeting location and and the other is is for the workshop meetings um and the the down part of the workshop meetings because we we did go through the rotation effort and it it really the public didn't like it because they didn't know where it was going to be next yeah i think i think my my reasoning for maybe considering that is just that you know if we're talking about i think even uh superintendent staley mentioned if we're talking about facilities if we want to upgrade a facility or we we're not sure but we actually have the meeting there or we're talking about facilities and we're at a place that we know needs the most work or you know there's been the most public comment that it needs the most work kind of thing and you know the public sees that we are we are all there to put our eyes on it not just in our own time but just as that effort i'm that's only an example of why i have this desire to consider it but i understand the challenges of the logistics of it as well okay i'm i'm going to um not allow the amendment to be attached to the motion so that we have two different issues if that is okay so i do we have any if i already asked for public comment okay and we have a motion and a second and no further discussion all those in favor of uh marigold hi okay we have selected marigold ms dalby if i might suggest down the road if if you'd like to bring that suggestion back to the board after we get settled with our workshop topics and things yeah we could even do it on a case-by-case basis and have it be an agenda item to it you know decide later on too so there's there's different ways to go about doing that i don't think tonight needs to be the decision maker thank you thank you i have a question yes dennis and cory what are there no items from the floor in this meeting just curious no it's it's a workshop meeting items from the floor are regular board meetings next is the any board member request to agendize an item at a future meeting yes mr tennis you know i was going to bring something up but i was informed by staff that it already exists so i should have brought this up during announcements but maybe we'll just pretend that we didn't have that conversation and i'll bring this up for a future discussion and you can correct me uh so i thought it would be nice if since we have so many more students who are going to be participating in oakbridge online in the future if those students both on the high school level and the junior high level were able to participate in sports programs that are at the schools i knew there had been discussion about once upon a time chargers were allowed to and then not allowed to but for oak bridge i thought they ought to be able able to and so i was going to bring that forward as something mr sheppard go ahead yes they are absolutely eligible to participate and they can also participate in clubs if they wish to attend they do band choir they do participate as a member of the of their neighboring school so they don't get to choose it's based on their neighboring school unless they unless they form 10 but yeah they are we welcome them to participate that's great so please note news media both print and digital or visual that students who are participating online through oakbridge can participate in sports programs at their neighborhood school okay i believe we have reached the end of our agenda we have no need for closed session so i will entertain a motion to adjourn iso move second we have a motion in a second all those in favor aye aye okay thank you board
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and do a uh call the meeting order do a roll call vote a roll call rather and remember that everybody has to specify uh where they are at uh geographically what municipality they're in um heather could you take us through that sure stephen is not here jennifer jennifer cornell present and i am participating from central lake michigan oh my gosh nice about eight miles away alan i am here in ann arbor sarah aaron ann arbor jeffrey jeff honey i'm here in now arbor camilla you're from san carlos california rita here from ann arbor alice here from ann arbor michigan frank uh here from eastport michigan adam all right adam here in ann arbor and then tom is not here and erica here and then all right um so we have an agenda uh that everyone um received a copy of and i was put out recording in progress sorry it has been recorded already by ctn but i also like to do zoom recording as a backup perfect um and so we have an agenda um that does put out uh is there any amendments to the agenda alan yes i want us to consider an amendment to the bylaws to allow three-minute public comment at the beginning and two minutes is too short and this was not able to be discussed when we initially passed the bylaws and so i would like us to be able to reconsider the bylaws to uh extend the time to three minutes so alan do you want to make an amendment to the agenda to have us reconsider the bylaws tonight or are you looking to really like to reconsider the bylaws tonight so that we could have in our subsequent meetings a three-minute time and if we could do it tonight we could there could be three minutes at the end of the meeting also i would hope what is that status of the bylaws in terms of their acceptance by they're going to city council at the next meeting so they haven't been in front of city council yet and i'm not sure how that would work it might be as simple as me contacting the attorney if you do decide to amend the bylaws it might be as simple as me of contacting the attorney he makes the change and then it still goes in front of city council at the next meeting or it might be some big thing that we have together i'm not sure but my hope is that it would just be simple if you decide to go that route okay uh alan do you want to make a motion on your amendment yes i move that we extend the bylaw that we request in whatever way it can officially be done the two minutes that the bylaws on public comment be changed from two minutes to three minutes and you want to add that to tonight's agenda i so move if this is the time to move it okay that's can we get a second okay all right uh all in favor of adding uh allen's amendment to the agenda raise your hand any opposed okay all right uh and then could we get a any any other amendments to the agenda okay um could we get a motion to move the amended agenda motion second all right second by frank um all in favor of moving the amended agenda favor okay all right so um alan we'll we'll find a spot on here that we can discuss the amendment that you want uh and you want to actually vote on i'm amending the bylaws here um thank you yep uh so uh next item on the agenda is the approval the minutes from last time questions on the minutes uh rita just say that um i looked for the minutes yesterday and did not find them and so i've only just skimmed them um so it's a little concerned that i have yeah and it's a rightful concern because it was in fact not showing up as attached it looked it appeared to be attached but it wasn't actually linked so alan pointed that out to me today so it is fixed now and i apologize for that because people did not have a lot of time to look over the amendment would it uh is it possible that we could come we could approve the minutes next time uh for two meetings ago just to ensure is that a formality that we could just get through that way we don't dwell on it i think so okay i think that's probably okay i think that's works yeah okay any objections to that okay all right uh we'll keep going then i think we're on to uh public comment uh i know we have at least one person with our hand raised um are there others with their hand raised hillary um no just eric oh no we've got two hands raised so i'm gonna allow eric to talk um about to talk so eric you should be able to talk and i will time you for two minutes okay thanks for letting me speak i'll talk extra fast since three whole minutes is too much really two minutes council allows three minutes are we afraid of an overload of community input so thanks for discussing that and thanks to alan for putting it on the agenda next counselor uh briggs kudos to you for actually starting the ball rolling as far as actual funding for this project that the voters voted to put forward and somehow it was zeroed out in the budget before come on i appreciate that that was a thank you for doing that and facilitating that i think there's some problems with the wording but it's a good start the step uh a good step finally something and i hope this is my final statement and i i hope uh that something will actually happen soon on that parking lot that it will now become a public space and not a parking lot it's isn't it time now the council is getting its great high rise which no one objects to on the y lot that's the perfect place it doesn't shade anything it's not public well it is publicly owned but it's that's the spot that's great build a big building there connect it to the to the parking structure but uh start doing something please on the library lot how many more committees do we need so thank you for the input i appreciate it um i just you know i'm a person i'm getting old i'm getting impatient about these things so i apologize if i was harsh but uh so that's i that's your charge get something done please thanks a lot i'm sorry i'm gonna have to leave early i've got another engagement but again thank you for letting me speak thanks eric all right and then robert black you're up next you should be able to talk thank you heather and thank you for this opportunity to speak before you again tonight um concerning agenda item 8 july 7th near-term activation discussion i support you in preparing well in advance of that meeting and that you set clear outcomes for that important first working session the questions you will raise in tonight's meeting along with questions i shared previously with chair zemke vice chair ralph and miss seiferth could be answered and distributed to council members prior to the working session reviewing this background information in advance allows more effective use of the limited time of the working session and will lead to productive discussions towards desirable outcomes concerning agenda item 9 subcommittees i invite you to explore the recommendations from the task force report but also review the subcommittee's garden outreach etc already created by the talented professionals of the initiating committee over the past 16 months their work can be merged effectively into the council of the commons creating a strong subcommittee structure now will guide progress toward your near-term objectives and i want to integrate reiterate lastly a third issue concerning process that i have raised at prior meetings we are still in the groundwork phase in creating an ultimate vision for this important project we are not yet at design phase however visions of potential future scenarios that can stimulate our collective imaginings at this point are still valuable norm tyler sketches in the task force report other professional visions from prior work on this site and recently another possible vision eloquently rendered by mr trendoff a nationally recognized expert of future visions all these imaginings are important to inspire us about what could be we can honor these visions now for what they are catalysts to an incredible future for ann arbor they help us imagine specific physical elements of the commons and establish a meaningful basis from which to engage critical partners of the commons bloc and to prepare rfps seeking professional guidance in the next phases of the work have a productive meeting tonight and thank you thanks mr black and then odile has a hand up so a deal you're coming up next you're muted hello hello all it's nice to see you assemble the game i wish you for a good meeting i said to every one of you just like you that three of us from the initiating committee made for the earth day of anardor he was presented then during that thursday and i hope you can look at it and we have also spent about 250 hours in making a garden next in the middle of the lot on the left of the elevator and also on the side anyway i hope you will go there and look at the beautiful flower and the 75 sunflowers that are growing up thank you bye bye thank you thank you any other public comments all right um so uh the next item is uh member news and updates um why don't we uh open it up to any members who would like to say anything and then maybe if we could at that point before we get into roles we could um uh add in uh ellen's amendment uh to the agenda and and have quick discussion then um if that's amenable folks but any uh member news or updates right yeah i would just like to echo some of the comments that were made by uh people calling in i um i i'm feeling a increased sense of optimism and momentum for this project and again um thanks to erica for stepping forward in such an important way uh as i talked to others in the community they're uh pleasantly surprised that the city has stepped forward and that this is hopefully the beginning of a strong partnership between the community and the city government i'm trying to read my notes here we we're continuing to make uh some progress uh our private fundraising total is up to 7 47 000 we've gotten a new 5 000 pledge um again a a this individual uh i think was motivated by the city uh making uh its commitment uh initial commitment to this project um and i i wanna uh thank uh robert black uh he was in town met with a number of us um for his enthusiasm and lending his expertise to this i you know i i don't know uh stefan trendoff uh very well at all but i i want to thank him uh again it's sparking and stimulating our collective imagination uh in in no way uh is steph fun or any of us saying that that this is somehow the path forward his his conceptions and his drawings but it does stimulate interest in conversation and focus uh the community's attention on this important project thank you thank you frank uh alice i think you had your hand up too oh you're muted alice just briefly i saw um i think it was on m live i'm not sure uh i think it was written by ryan stanton uh sort of a profile or a feature piece or whatever you want to call it about steven trendolf or stefan randolph and his drawings i think uh reading it and being on this commission or this council uh when i read it i thought well is he speaking for the council is he speaking for the public through the council who is he speaking to and what do we do what do these persons do there it seems like there's a conflict a public um conflict of the source and purpose of the information i don't know you know like if one of us were to present something unrelated to the council on the commons i think we would be up for criticism or something i don't know because something was slightly odd or disconcerting about that article just in that it didn't really mention the council on the commons much and um it was all about stefan and um and those drawings to me which you know i have a pretty good eye for these drawings were a little bit confusing so that's all i wanted to say i think it's important to recognize that we have to be clear about our own messaging and not let it be overtaken by um one or another's interest that may not coincide with ours definitely thanks alice any uh other comments okay um then in that case moving along if it's okay if there's no one else commenting i certainly want to comment on behalf of the initiating committee in general and to respond a little to alice's perception of stefan's drawings which represent first of all the initiating committee and i wish that in some way we would have a regular report of the ongoing activities of the initiating committee but we have uh formalized our nonprofit uh status as a michigan corporation and established a bank account and uh become formal and we formalized our 501c3 relationship with the library green conservancy so we are now in a position to be a fundraising element for the actual implementation of the uh recommendations of the task force and activation of the space however that might come forward and um yeah the drawings it so that that's a new news the drawings that stefan produced i encouraged him to do that as i had when we met in 2009 and in 2010 he produced a set of imaginative perspective even before the underground parking was completed and uh one of those drawings was uh as an image was circulated as a possible to give a visual sense of how this community commons could develop it was circulated during the campaign petition campaign which became proposal a and was eventually passed so this is not a new entry though he is an independent uh graphic designer and i asked him would he look at all the material that had been developed so far the physical elements the other elements and see if he could make a a collage of what he has heard to be to stimulate the community imagination not to end the discussion but to begin it because a visual representation of what are the elements is a good beginning point for scene for engaging community imagination in as many forms as it can so i see this and stefan saw this and i think he represented it in the article in the uh m live as a beginning point for community imagination and um i am glad he he did that this is a uh and we have uh i would we have not really circulated this beyond the uh what was in the m live which you only could see if you were kind of a subscriber it was a uh restricted to subscriber article but i would like that people to actually look at these and let your own imaginations be stimulated and uh see it more further for further uh pollinated proliferated as a way of engaging the public to see so what what do we want to change what new ideas are there let's see let's uh begin to engage the imagination so i'm very grateful to his work it is not to preempt anything that it is to give some visual impetus to the imagination now the guard the work on the garden has been mentioned and i think that's one of the things the initiating committee has undertaken and i hope everybody will go by there and and uh give a blessing to the flowers by the way by the elevator both to the east of the elevator and particularly to the north of the elevator and anybody that wants to get their hands dirty and is welcome to help weed there's a program set up for the summer that the garden group of the initiating committee has set up to take care of the weeding and the watering we did work with the dda to get the irrigation system uh functioning again and the dba has been cooperative and closing the lot to parking during the times that gardening is going on uh so we also have experience that the city does survive with a lot close to parking so i guess that's that is enough of a beginning report from the initiating committee there are more things that we could uh talk of but it's an ongoing group with its uh various subcommittees and uh is a partner in this whole process and that's why two people from the initiating committee are specifically designated as members of the uh of the uh council of the commons and i had suggested that while this individual member time is adequate in some way to give representation of what's going on in the initiating committee i think it would be desirable if beyond what individuals are doing that the initiating committee itself was given a time to report to the council of the commons we are linked together in the 2000 uh [Music] the last october uh resolution october five of last year that established both the initiating committee as an on the ground working group and the council of the commons as an advisory group to the city council and in some way from our work on the ground we are advisory to the council of the commons and we should all be seen as a hand and glove together that's my comment thank you thanks for me and for the initiating committee jeff yeah um i i just want to uh as a member of the initiating committee and also of course the council of commons and the library green conservancy i just want to reassure everybody on the council of the commons from my perspective that the initiating committee you know participated in the creation of the council of commons and i personally see us very much as but i i i see very much the council of the commons as being an outgrowth of the the initiating committee and and you know created by the by the city council but the initiating committee really is i would say uh very much respectful of the council of the commons and from my perspective we want to be very integrated with your uh or our if i could put on my counselor comments hat desire to uh be very inclusive about community input not to preempt any outcomes or decisions about how this evolves and to be collaborative and helpful by you know feet on the ground and working to you know staff and participate in in working groups okay uh and and and to to not be uh perceived hopefully as adversarial or you know some kind of threat or some kind of preemption machine or something like that none of that from my perspective uh i am completely respectful of the council of commons and will do go the extra mile to accommodate any concerns the council has um and uh so you know that's that's that's one of the people to be clear about that i also want to remind people that even though alan was um you know somehow connecting the the initiating committee with stefan tremdoff's drawings that was not a decision by the initiating committee that stefan uh would do those drawings or to you know transmit those drawings in in any particular direction and as as far as i know the initiating committee did not have anything to do with that m live article and i was not aware of that m live article in advance so i just wanted everybody from my perspective to hear what i had to say about it thanks that's that's all completely true this was me and stefan our old friends and he's been connected with this project from its beginning as an individual okay miller thanks adam yeah i'm gonna be more vocal today um during this meeting because like many other meetings um it's already been dominated by initiating committee members and i would love to hear other people's voices um so i just want to put that out there first and foremost um yeah i want to respond to alan jeff and also agree with what alice has initially offered to the group um i agree that the m live article could have had the impact of misinforming the public um we have not asked for any rfps yet and yet we already have members of the public creating illustrations and architectural renderings and then sending it out to the public and that's that's confusing even even for me as part of the council of the commons um i also just want to urge the um initiating committee members that while it's great to encourage community visioning uh these drafts are not supported by the council of the commons members um the council of the commons at large as an entity nor uh city council and we should be careful about the language that we use when we use words like we uh to encompass groups of people i have very different desires than alan and sometimes words can get tangled up and we're projecting our desires by conveying that they're the desires of the entire council of the commons so that's been frustrating to me um i just also want to say that i'm trying to read between the lines and i just really don't understand how um how initiating committee members can continue to preach about um their efforts when your actions aren't going through a democratic process um the group is still very small to my knowledge and it represents a very specific demographic um so i just want to call that out thanks camilla and i would like to i'd like to make sure that uh i have some thoughts on um the the article that was in m live and uh things but i i think i'd like to bring those up during kind of roles because i we've had roles on the agenda for a couple of times now and i think it's certainly based on everything that's happened in the last couple weeks uh high time that we talk about him so um unless there are any other points here i would like to yeah jeff sorry uh i i just wanted to uh to respond to camilla um i totally sympathize with her perspective uh i would however like to ask her if you have people that would like or know people who would like to join the initiating committee i and everybody else on that committee as far as i know would be delighted to receive and have them join we are totally open you know i mean there's a lot of work involved here and a lot of people aren't willing to make the effort to go out and do the gardening or to spend time in meetings or to organize fundraising you know we're all doing this on our own time and making an effort and i'm sorry that there's a certain demographic and we would be delighted to have more people so if you can bring other people in uh to us we would be happy to put them in in prominent roles in in the in in the initiating committee but you know somebody's got to get this done and we've been doing stuff and nobody else has been doing stuff and we've been doing our homework and nobody else's or a lot of very few people have done their homework so again i'm i'm totally sympathetic to your views and i hope that you can bring people to us we'd be happy to receive them thanks okay council member breaks thanks um i i'd like us to be a little cautious that when we're amongst this group we are in my sense is that we are wearing the hat of of a city commissioner um and we're representing um we're representatives of the city in this group i know that's a little confusing i've worn a lot of different hats in the community before and so um it's it's difficult especially when members of this group represent are here sitting here representing members uh different organizations and so it's important to bring bring those reports forward from other groups but i would like us to be careful not to use this as an opportunity to maybe recruit for other for non-profit organizations or anything different things like that i just think we have to be real careful about um thinking about what this platform is so i just want us to caution um kind of how we use this discussion time thank you erica any other member comments alice just briefly i think one way that each group that may be a separate group from the council on the commons but may want to report we can accept written reports at any time and those can be attached to any agenda meeting meeting agenda and i think that would be a highly appropriate way to say way that city council received reports from other commissions we can receive reports from other groups and that would be highly useful but to take our time our limited time but at a meeting of this group is i agree with erica we need to be cautious about the use of our time and the direction that our discussion goes thanks all right thanks ellis okay um in that case we're gonna move on uh and for our amended agenda um alan you made a motion to have uh an amendment to the bylaws i think we probably need to make sure we have the language uh figured out on this uh so that we can uh take a vote if it's so moved and amend the bylaws heather what is the process for for doing that in terms of our make a motion tonight saying that you wanted to amend the bylaws and then um i will figure out how that actually works with our attorney like i said before i think it could possibly just be a very simple change before it goes in front of city council but if you i mean if that's what you want to do you would you would make a motion and approve that tonight and then i'd figure out how that happens okay ellen do you want to make a motion yeah the motion would be to change the number two to the number three in the bylaw that rep refers to public comment time at the beginning at the end of the meeting okay second for that uh motion second all right and uh all in favor of alan's motion uh say aye raise your hand all right are you opposed all right alan the motion carries hey it worked i did i'm excited i eric lipson will be excited too all right thank you alice you have your hand just insert a comment uh i hope we don't have to limit our own speaking time for three minutes if we could all individually keep ourselves to three minutes to start with it might help us get through a meeting alice i will yield the balance of my time to even all right um okay so let's get into rolls because i think uh there was certainly some feelings that were brought up during the um during the membership member updates and speak to some of these roles and you know and certainly we have a couple of groups represented a couple of external groups i guess now we can officially say non-profit groups that have representatives here we've also talked about other um a little more ad hoc groups including members of a block ownership building ownership committee or something it's it's probably far beyond time that we identify and i do think the article actually spurred a really important debate um certainly i understand there's some hard feelings i can tell you i got a call asking uh why we did not hold a public meeting um where the drawings were presented uh in insinuating that what the meeting that the drawings were presented at was a public name and i corrected the individual and said that's not accurate we haven't seen the drawings in fact i have not seen the drawings and so um i think to some of the points that maybe camilla maybe erica made it is very important that we establish how we as a city uh commissioned advisory council establish under take in information and communicate uh externally where we're representing because i think there are a lot of folks that misinterpreted the meeting at which uh mr trendoff presented the the drawings to be a representation of this body and obviously that's not the case and uh you know and so it's it is very important that i think we uh establish what those goals are around the initiating committee and and the city has uh around the chain committing the library green conservancy those are two nonprofits now um and other non-profits frankly and i think we should probably have a standardized process for how we're going to do this because that will ensure that we're fair and equal to all non-profits uh in the community so those are my thoughts on this in terms of roles how do we how do we feel is best to take in information how do we want given that we do have a couple of representatives from a couple of non non-nonprofits on the committee who are according to the um the charter of this commission there to to bring that voice to the table how do we want to make sure that we have a formal um establishment of how we're going to receive information from external nonprofits and other community groups and then how do we want to ensure that that our roles of certainly the library and conservancy and the initiating committee as two external nonprofits who have representatives here are part of this so i'd like to start that discussion erica um i really liked alice's suggestion in terms of having written reports coming in i think that's a good efficient use of our time in terms of um being able to read information ahead of time and um i mean i do i like the member of dates at the at the beginning this meeting but i do think it it is um utilizing a fair amount of our time where we have pretty limited time each month to be able to um kind of move forward the work of this commission and so um i'm not sure if that's the most productive use of our time unless there's something a particular note that that needs to be presented very good sounds good other thoughts frank thank you muted sorry uh i i second that i i i think uh written written reports in advance would be useful it would uh uh inform our our conversations and discussions and would uh you know provide more time for the for the council to actually have interaction um so i think it's i think it's a good idea um yes i agree with that and i also um ask that we set a time frame um by which information is prepared and presented to heather to be included so that we have it it's really helpful that way thank you rita seems like we've got a fair amount of support for your idea alice um me yeah i agree with it as well yeah well if for instance so a piece of information came into the world with stefan's drawings should that properly have been uh presented sent to the council of the commons and his the the reason it was an article is because he has a relationship with ryan stanton he walks his dog they're old friends so ryan wanted to do an article on him and this was a an opportunity and ryan is interested in this and sort of covering it all but should that material then come to the council of the commons so that we can evaluate it or should it come to the facilitated meeting how does it inter intersect with our official process so i'll just speak for myself uh in this regard i think you know if uh i mean i i'm not an artist uh and certainly nothing by comparison to mr trendoff but if i drew some sketches and i was a member of this council i think it would probably behoove me to send them to the council you know prior to a group particularly a non-profit that had representation on the council um you know receiving a uh a hearing about it i think that would have been um a heads-up type of thing um and then i could get in the hands of everybody here which means it would then be added to the communication public communication um and i think to the point that camilla made around the democratic process for this having uh having that the uh how we're receiving information that have become part of the public uh debate is very important at least to me and um i think also then um you know ensuring that the that that uh you know there are always going to be groups the people who get together uh to do certain things obviously the gardening is another great example where folks have gotten together and pictures have been shared your wife sent in pictures uh prior to this meeting ellen and uh and i think that's a wonderful it's just nice if there is some transparency around those types of things given that we're all on one body here obviously if it were a group that didn't have any uh direct representation here um if they wanted to send us something that would also be wonderful but uh but i feel like it's we're sort of at a heightened level of standard when it comes to this because we're all here and and i think it's my goal for all of us to con develop consensus around something and uh and that would help my opinion should these pictures be sent sent put into a powerpoint or something and sent to all of us on the council of the commons i think that would be fine however they want to be communicated be helpful obviously if you would send them yeah if you would send them to me and then i can attach them to the next agenda and then that way they can be visible to the public as well good is that what people want i think that they i think that what we're hearing from several folks uh this evening is it's it's important that if there is in particular for um the two nonprofits that have representatives here the green conservancy and the initiating committee that that type of thing is very important for members here who are not part of those organizations to if there's something dealing with the lot the space that we're all talking about that we know uh so that it feels transparent to the public but it also feels transparent to us um so that would be my opinion well i i will facilitate that that's if that would seem desirable to me as well uh and i apologize if i among the various yarmulkes i wear is on here on the initiating committee and on my friendship with stefan and being seeking to encourage him to continue his imaginative integration of the many things he has seen as a citizen living in ann arbor observing the ongoingness of this whole thing and now and then be out there and people could do with it what they like i hope that we can really see it as a stimulation to the imagination of what other images there are maybe develop a competition of artists in the taubman center and the public schools to get more and more efforts to integrate the vision together i will make arrangements as best i can to digitally send that to heather who can distribute it and it could also be then publicly accessible rather than simply through the m live articles all right thank you alan erica uh yeah i was just going to say i think that it's the representation on this commission is a little bit the formation of it was a little bit confusing i think for um and unique in terms of city commission formation in terms of kind of representation though there are there is some president in terms of you know transportation commission different commissions often have representatives from different different entities across the city but because of uh the kind of heightened awareness around this particular site in our community i think there's also a little confusion for folks who aren't very close to it to not understanding the council of the commons is not even a typical commission way of naming a commission so there's there's going to be a lot of confusion from from folks that aren't very close to this to understanding okay what's the council of the commons what's the initiating community what's what the rigging conservancy actually has a more kind of non-profit uh conventional name in some ways um in terms of defining that but uh we just might all want to be really aware um that that that confusion exists in the in the community and and be extra cognizant of trying to um be careful of what we're wearing and being clear about communicating that and yeah i would just echo uh council member right sentiments too i think that the representation out in the community especially you know i think it's it's totally um okay and encouraged if folks have conversations you know around this in public and call other entities of the city or community members or organizations and ask questions i don't think there's anything wrong with that we're all citizens and we have the right to do that and certainly as a member of another organization you have the right to do that and uh so i think that's good i think the key is that uh we do need to have a process here where if there's going to be a communication a question from the council we probably want that to go through heather as a good point person for our council and meaning so the external uh approach of an entity on behalf of the council should go through there and then if anyone else here is is uh engaging in that on behalf of in a different organization then um they should just make that clear too and i think that will clear up some of the issues that erica brought up and certainly some of the issues we've heard about i've heard about at least you know prior to this so frank yes uh i i'm finding this conversation very helpful because uh you know i'm obviously on the board of the library green conservancy i'm on this board and i i'm i'm very careful not to represent try to represent this board in any way in my comments i feel i can i can speak as a member of the board i can't speak for the board of the conservancy either but i think role definition and communication this is this is a very helpful conversation thank you thank you frank camilla yeah i just like to redirect your attention to role making so in terms of in terms of a formal sort of establishment of um you know of roles that it seems like to me we obviously have uh uh heather why don't we start off by just making sure that we're clear um as to what the city um has charged us with as a commission so that we can then utilize that in our work next week uh and um and then we can also i think we've we've uh talked significantly about the membership here uh why don't why don't we get into that a little bit uh according to the resolution and i'm just going to redo the language um and then we can dissect it if we need to but the council of the commons is an advisory body to city council and the city administrator that will build upon the work of the center of the city task force by providing written recommendations annually on such subjects as funding needs and operations and maintenance model and the role of the council of the commons excellent and i think this is important to remind ourselves for a couple things a couple of reasons one camilla to to your point around setting setting that expectation our expectations are but then also to get our thinking in mind we're going into a good uh hopefully a really productive uh progressive um session next week and uh you know understanding that that one of the actions coming out of that should be recommendations to council around whatever that the charge of the meeting is um and i think that's particularly important when we think about what our what taking action based on our role is um so is there is there any uh question or confusion around that around that role i would like heather to read also the other part of that october 5th 2020 resolution that initially established the council of the commons because that described the role of the initiating committee as the on-the-ground community partner in implementing the recommendations of the center of the city task force and various other elements of that and i hope and i asked before that everybody actually need that recommendation whereas is that the initiated committee was about and the resolve to recognize it as an on-the-ground partner uh part of the block committee and interface to follow up on the public engagement at the center of the city passport but that also describes the role of the initiating committee that which is how come there we are here as designated representatives rather than simply as citizens who applied and [Applause] [Music] were i missed part of what you said you were cutting out a little bit there but i think um one of the issues is that there's been multiple interpretations of what that language is and one of them had anticipated that the initiating committee would the role your role your function was to get the council of the commons up and running and then the council of the commons would be the primary group and and many people thought that the initiating committee would disband at that point um you have not obviously you have now incorporated into a 501c3 uh group so that calls into question i think which i don't i don't know i'm not an attorney and i don't want to pretend to officially interpret the language that's in there um but the role is just how do you intercept them with the council the commons and you're recognized you're recognized as an entity and that resolution as doers but what does that really mean and i think that's the question and i think that's part of what um you all are all trying to define right now well it distinguishes just from the council of the commons which is specifically defined as advisory to the city council right we are defined as essentially i don't remember the exact languages on the ground doers and that's what we've been trying to get together and uh what the doings are in terms of the garden or design or a liberty plaza or any of that is sort of what the process we all together try and get to get functioning so that people are really maximally involved and i think that's that sort of got described somewhat in the in the short term medium-term long-term visions that most people put forward and we're dealing with the short-term elements of that uh in our meeting on the seventh right and i think we've got a few few hands up here alice unmuted herself and then erica did as well i think alan that the the part of the the main point here around the the description of the initiating committee is that on the ground doers seems to have had some scope creep into what the council of the commons uh is going to make recommendations on and i think what our point uh or what some of the points that heather brought up are are related to ensuring that uh you know even if obviously the initiating committee can incorporate into a 501 c3 there's nothing wrong with that but making sure that that uh that we're not running two parallel paths here is is probably very important um certainly important from a public transparency perspective so that's sort of what the debate is i think uh alice oh erica had her hand up for first oh i'm sorry erica either or is fine with me um i just wanted to say it from my perspective obviously i was um when i came on to to council i think there was um i understood from the kind of city attorney's office that the initial um the initial resolution that sort of it formed this this this commission um you know was a little was a little unconventional in terms of defining rules and expectations and so that was part of the goal of the the second resolution was to to clarify some of that it's still a little bit confusing because that october 5th resolution is out there um and and and so i think it's maybe there may be an important role for this commission in terms of of going back at some point and clarifying if there's something additional that um is important that wasn't in that in that resolution that that got passed by um you know in the resolution that that heather read off in terms of what our expectations are for this for this commission um if if that's not and not enough is captured there i think that's maybe important um feedback to give to council um from my perspective i find a non-profits to be an incredibly valuable part of the community i i run one so i i i absolutely uh see their value in the community but i think it's really important to keep those keep these functions separate nonprofits serve and very important advocacy and and fundraising and all great roles in the community um but city commissions serve a different purpose advisory purpose to council and so i i want to make sure that we're we're not blending the role of a non-profit with the role of the city commission and um to me that first that first resolution did a little bit of that more than i i was comfortable with as a council member so i personally look to that second resolution um for guidance if um i would look to to members of this commission for for more guidance on if if that's not sufficient or if we need to clarify it uh we got a few folks i think uh allison and frank you unmuted yourself oh assuming you're okay um i think arab to put it rather well that there are different roles and different purposes also heather's reading of the purpose is from that second resolution i believe and it's important to remember that as a succeeding resolution takes priority over the first one and i think it does provide some clarity we have it at the top of our agenda every meeting and i think it's worth reading every time um and the the way i think one way that we can um provide some definition between the role the groups that are represented on this council and the council itself is that we have the opportunity to go to to item number nine subcommittees and and think about perhaps there is a subcommittee that the inter the initiating committee members representatives on this council could call in other people to their small group of committee i think it's three to five people in a committee there are are permitted including members that are not representatives on this council but i think that might be a way to sort out these rules every every every non-profit that comes along could have this committee with one of our council people um being part of that and they would address as such things as a garden uh or as this or that because these these committees need to have a good focus for their work and then that's that to me would make every committee have the option to become doers to focus on an activity that moves us along in our mission to advise the council uh as to what is needed to accomplish the things we're recommending those are two things i wanted to say that our purpose is well defined and that we have within that purpose in that structure of the bylaws we have an opportunity to express various groups interests um whether they are the non-profits or not by having leadership from our council on the commons that includes other people to accomplish a certain goal a certain action and come up with a recommendation for council to implement that that's great great idea austin frank yes i think i'm unmuted um i i just want to basically support what what allison and erica have said i uh my concern is that we're uh we're getting we're getting stuck on uh something it's important i think the initiating committee is an important resource it it provides a certain amount of energy and activity but uh the city is looking to the council of the commons uh to move forward and i'm excited about the facilitated working group uh and i think that and the subcommittees you know give us focus and definition because i think we have to move as a group into this next phase uh in a effective way and i think we're i think we're ready for that and uh i would encourage us to do that thank you frank so in terms of um and we can bounce around a little bit on this agenda and uh i think that the key area of importance around the rules is uh we do need to since we have a couple of representatives uh um from the from two uh external now nonprofits on the uh council here i think it is gonna be i think it's important for uh all of us to be conscious of establishing how that how that relationship is going to work and and then how through maybe a subcommittee structure or otherwise um the interaction happens and obviously you all are a part of the council too um but certainly if there are things like visioning or activities or gardening or things like that you know that could be integrated as alice said and i think our our goal for this agenda item maybe morphs into the subcommittee if that's uh if there's a an interest in essentially linking um things a little more directly in that process what are folks thoughts about doing that i'm not here i understand what you're suggesting can you say that again yeah so i think uh i think uh what our our desire to do on this is you know is to essentially clarify for everybody here that you know the role of this council is described in that latter agenda and we do want and i think you're hearing this from a lot of folks to establish a clear interaction for how the library green conservancy and the initiating committee in particular are engaging in work around the lot and how we can better integrate some of that hands-on work into the policy advisory role that this council has and it was suggested by alice that we do that and through a subcommittee process does that help clarify ellen now and you're muted sorry all your music yeah yeah that that i'm a little i'm a little clear i don't quite we haven't really talked about what these subcommittees are that's i'm not sure whether you're suggesting the initiating committee become a subcommittee as some subcommittees be functional in terms of areas of development like the library like the liberty plaza like playground like children like that and stuff like that outstanding yep i think that uh i think that's been potentially a suggestion um jeff has had his hands up sorry go ahead jeff yeah i i just wanted to uh support what what alice said and i think that points to and what you said uh adam and and that points to the importance of our you know putting in place some subcommittees to so that we can number one start doing stuff right um i think and number two to um camilla's point bring in a lot of different voices uh to participate in the the roles and activities that are assigned to those subcommittees and you know there are some suggestions of of what the initial two or three or four subcommittees should be and i think we should act on that as quickly as possible so we can get a bit of momentum but i think that's that's where you're going to get the real action that's where you're going to get the um the diversity and that's where you're going to get the solidarity developing between everybody so i think it's important to get on with those identifying three or four subcommittees and getting on with that thanks thank you jeff uh sarah thanks i don't want to belabor this too much i'm still fairly confused as to i mean i understand what heather said like i understand the purpose of this um console of the comments i don't understand the initiating committee and the library grain conservancy and how those are different and how you guys work like why are there now two 501c3s that are like you know both have the mission of like improving this space i just i'm maybe i need a flowchart or something or we need to like delineate exactly what the different roles are but like i'm just not getting it yet and we don't necessarily have to discuss this here maybe this will come out more but i'm just still incredibly confused just to like how our work intersects with the work of two groups that now seem to be incredibly similar tonight can i add on to that um i think i i leave these meetings often wondering who's choose the tail and who's the dog in terms of you know the wagging situation that's a terrible analogy um but it also i feel like we were appointed to come up with recommendations first for you know what for city council consideration but this activity sort of just continues to happen and plans get made and then reported back to us it feels a little backward to me um versus you know in my mind i understand that there was an initiating committee and there was you know this original vision as to what things you know what we would love for it to be um you know by the will of the people and the vote but you know what's feasible what do the black partners want what is you know what what can we actually accomplish um versus just sort of this whole we're gonna we're gonna plant flowers we're gonna have this garden and let's move on to phase two so it feels a little frustrating to me just in terms of um where the lines are in terms of roles and responsibilities and if the desired outcome is for this committee to come to council with actionable recommendations that feels a little bit disparate from activity that's already happening so i i agree with you sarah and well not to assume i understood your point but from what i understood of your point i think there's that's why we continue to have this circular conversation every meeting that we've had so far so hopefully this maybe at the end of this we'll have some resolution around or clarity around that i i think that's part of the desire with this agenda item right is to we we do have two non-profits that have had designated representatives to this council uh they're going to do work that is in their mission and i think it's our desire here tonight to establish how that work is going to interact so that we can take it into account as we make policy advice to counsel that's i think that's that's basically the basis of this alan yeah well uh the council has expressed itself in quite a bit of detail on what it wants to see get the cars off get a block committee going activate the uh the public space and and that is what the initiating committee is seeking to uh pursue there doesn't need to be any new recommendation i think allen froze alan alan we're going to get back to you here um when you pop back on frank you've you got your hand up why don't we go to you and then we'll come back down when you're done uh i'm not going to try to give you detailed background here but the library green conservancy was formed as a 501c3 to advocate and participate in the re-establishment of our town square which we now refer to as the center of the city on the library block our emphasis is on the physical space uh represented by the public land on this block and to raise raise funds from the private sector to to help make this this happen um i i hesitate to try to talk for the initiating committee i think they have similar goals uh regarding the physical space but also the commons and commenting and that can take you all you know into other activities like banking and other social activities social betterment activities um because they because the the initiating committee was not an organized entity recognized by either the state or the federal government as a non-profit we were the conservative conservancy was brought in to serve as a fiscal agent for any grants that the initiating committee might want to apply for and we would be the 501c3 to facilitate that from my perspective you know i'm a member of the council of the commons i happen to be representing the library green conservancy but i don't i don't think of it that uh that i'm coming with my library green agenda other than to reestablish the town square and help build interest and financial support from the private sector which seemed would seem to be in complete sync with the council of the commons and i um so i i see myself just as an active participating member of the council and i happen to get this appointment through the library green conservancy but i don't view myself any differently than any of the other members so i don't know if that helps clarify anything it definitely helps for me frank um alice you've had your hand up yeah it's just um i i had a small little emergency here which i have to get back to in a little while um but um so i may have missed an important point but the back to our purpose stated every time every meeting on our agenda to make recommendations to city council uh building upon the work of the center of the city task force uh which is now disbanded it has uh you know it produced a a extensive report of community engagement and community shared community goals and wishes uh a wish list sort of um and i i think that that gives further um emphasis to this council in that we are basically the descendant or the derivation from that task force and it is our job to carry on for the task force to make recommendations that will make real the goals and aspirations of the city as they are expressed in the task force report so in a way that sort of um subordinates any any existing group to this new avenue for action which is this council's recommendations to city council and city council actually has to act upon it if we're going to get anywhere we you know there are anybody can volunteer for anything outside of this council and report back if they have uh helpful things to report back but i think maybe we we have lost focus on the fact that this counts this council is a derivation from is derived from the task force report basically and that that does not attach to any specific group it attaches to all the groups basically and that's where inspiration and aspiration can can be focused in a specific goal from the task force report maybe by a subcommittee if they're you know that that's why i look at it right now is that all of the groups that want to support the center of the city are equal in their opportunities and that the opportunities we can offer are focused opportunities every submit committee should have a recommendation in mind because i think that's where we will get the most unified recommendations to counsel but that helps us have solidity to a recommendation our goal as a group is to make the recommendations because without those recommendations nothing goes anywhere and at least from my point of view so i think that's where we're heading and i hope we get there really soon thanks alice all right allen you cut out just i apologize for my battery failure that i i have really low okay we plugged in again i hope my i moved to another place where it was more stable but the battery wasn't as stable so i'm back hello everyone that's okay uh jeff you've had your hand up yeah i just wanted to echo what frank said uh you know i i i was appointed here from the initiating committee i also happen to be on the library green but i view myself on here at the council that comes as a member of the council of commons and i do not wear the hat of the initiating committee or the or the library green conservancy and i respect and uh support the the primacy of the council of the commons and i agree with alice uh in her view of how this how this should be conducted thanks thank you rita um i just want to say i do appreciate this discussion of rules at first i was confused as to what we were talking about what rules and now it clearly makes more sense to me about the the levels of confusion um and i think that what i can say on this um is as an ad because i agree with much of what's been said is that um what i think we're seeing from some of the groups like the initiating committee in particular uh is the level of impatience with moving to something that's tangible and that is built on the fact that we're now what two and a half years post um referendum on the issue in which it was approved and so there are many reasons for the delay much of which is related to covert 19.
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um so i think we need to um regroup in that way and maybe readjust um and acknowledge the impatience i think it's real and reasonable um but move forward and i i do hope that as we move into the subcommittees that each of them has a defined scope um and that that is communicated clearly to each of them are developed by each of the groups so that we don't run into overlap among them as well because they could easily come into like more than more confusion than we have right now unless we have some clear scope on those that's all perfect thank you rita do we want to start talking about subcommittees because it seems like that is that is that it seems like we've correct me if i'm wrong at all but it seems like we have uh clarified uh pretty thoroughly what our role is here and and many folks who are representing both the initiating committee and the librarian conservancy have clarified how they feel they come to this and i think we've clarified how information should be communicated internally and externally um are there any other role clarifications that folks are are feeling they're hazy on i think from now on it's about making sure we follow that process so that a camera was jennifer or you sarah that said we don't get into a situation where the the tail is wagging the dog and have a situation perpetuate all right so let's talk about subcommittees um what are folks i'd just like to put something out there about subcommittees because i think there might be a perception that the subcommittees would be um doers you know activity people that are going out there and painting or you know doing something else but because as as i understand it because they are you know sub bodies of this larger body which is an advisory group these the subcommittees would also be advisory and the supporting the mission of the larger group which is to then provide recommendations to city council so i don't want people to get their hopes up that the subcommittees would be something like the you know the group that's been going out and and putting all the beautiful plantings out on the site um you would still be advisory erica yeah that was what i wanted to say is as well partly as i think um i would caution us not to try to create too many subcommittees um and uh recognize we're a relatively small group um certainly the the committee that i am the most interested in getting started and is um utilizing that funding that that council has allocated for the development of a physical plan and i i think our upcoming um special session is going to help us develop some recommendations on short term um some short term recommendations as well um that may there may be a need as well for a a committee that's focused on further developing what comes out of that working session i can imagine um but i do think that there's a very special role that nonprofits play in our community and i'm i i'm very appreciative of the work that volunteers have been doing to to do plantings and and you know to beautify the site the site that that's there and and to do things that government um doesn't always have the time or the resources um or the things move more slowly so um i i appreciate that that's happening um but you know i think we we want to make sure that we're we're moving towards what the the charter amendment um um voters asked of us and making recommendations to council for sure uh else um in that respect i think uh you know we could come up with a couple of examples right now of things that would be appropriate to assemble to sub-committee study and activity to result in a recommendation that we vote on to send up to city council for the action that is needed there so i'll just throw out a couple um and that would be to this to establish the priority of center of the city activities over parking cars structure maybe say it that way then rather than to say to get the cars off the top of the structure it might allow for instance how do we uh you know we recommend that city council well we've got to be specific i guess but that's what the subcommittee would decide how what we recommend in order to get for instance adam's suggestion of regular use of food carts for an activity on on the uh on the side but so there are two things one to establish the priority of center of the city activities over parking on the surface we used to be against surface parking lots why are we now trying to keep this one i don't quite understand but um but those those are two and and then the the corollary to that would be making it possible to have a food carts on a regular basis and try to make this a regular you know to recommend a monthly or two weekly to every other week or maybe every week on a weekend like farmer's market just because farmer's market can't always do food trucks it makes sense to have a place where food trucks can be and they're only a couple of blocks away so um those are two that i would think of i'm sure that anybody here can think of one or two so that's my suggestion of how to get started on subcommittee okay thank you uh else and what we can do tonight too uh is you know people can offer ideas and certainly next week i think we are going to see i hope at least we're going to see some really refinement of of ideas and maybe that will help us refine our subcommittee processes um just being conscious of time and thinking of this working session that we have um i uh that that could be a good suggestion too jennifer yeah i i wanted to build on that a little bit and i guess in my mind i had some ideas around just what subcommittees might exist and one of them i think dovetails with alice's suggestion but was more broad in terms of just ideas for near-term activation and what does that look like what is it what are the cost considerations what are the security considerations what are just the logistical considerations you know if a food truck comes do they need power and how do they access it um you know that sort of thing i think would be a really good subcommittee not being prescriptive around food trucks just in general but you know what does activation of the site in your term looks like and then what are our fundraising opportunities um you know should we if we want public buy-in and city council buy-in you know should we be looking at grant opportunities what does that look like you know are there actual funds available to supplement public funding for this type of project um you know really and not applying for it again not you know trying to activate any of these ideas or move forward with them but just to put them on the table and concise and sort of um well-informed and researched space um i think that that would be hugely helpful and then i think the other big piece of it is just the consensus like the consensus subcommittee which is not a good name either but um something around you know getting engagement from the the black partners and you know especially private sector businesses that are part of um that space what does a business that butts up to that space think about it um you know is there a potential loss of revenue around part you know losing that parking do they see it as a benefit you know what sorts of things would be great for that but um i guess i i considered subcommittees to be more sort of big buckets of research very very defined and targeted research around you know different areas of a plan that we might submit to city council for a recommendation and i agree wholeheartedly that i believe our working session will put a finer point on just some of the possibilities versus just you know hurdles that might be too too large to cross for us but would really give some solid parameters and construct to what those activities of the subcommittees might be so wonderful those are definitely good ideas as well are there other ideas folks would like to have we're certainly seeing some overlap here um that's great wow this could be a quick agenda item then so i just uh to uh make sure we're capturing uh all of the ideas that have been presented maybe uh and then we can i would really encourage us to bring this back up uh aft you know at the end of our or the end of our working session uh next week and and we can maybe hopefully refine uh those topics then ellen you just put your hand up yeah i uh one of the things i'm very interested in is what is the culture of the commons and the code of conduct that was specifically directed that we should be working on i gathered some ideas to that in my statement on short-term vision uh whatever element 5.2 i think that that is a a part of the community engagement which is maybe the overall topic here how to get people all through the community to know what's happening and to feel the part themselves part of it but what is the culture what is the code of conduct how are people encouraged to act to one another so this is a wholesome welcoming safe exciting interesting place and i would encourage people to look at at least those ideas that i laid out in my effort towards short-term vision it's item five which is about community engagement and management uh that what is the code of conduct and the culture and how we uh elaborate that and get people to respond and improve so there's actually a culture that represents the community as a whole all right thank you alan i think we've got frank i i didn't hear you over allen's call oh uh alice uh you wanna go first and then frank okay um i think uh some of the uh huh well i i'm kind of i kind of would like to go since it sounds like some of the things about subcommittees sound like they might those things might be part of this facilitated discussion i'd like to kind of uh toggle over to the july 7th near-term term this activation discussion oh boy that's a mouthful um what questions you have for guest speakers well i don't know who the guest speakers are but i would like to have someone describe the process of designation as a park or expansion of a park those that idea because we already have this element that is a park part we may want to be looking at how these can be integrated i know there's very divergent ideas about that but i think we need to understand the actual parameters what does it take to get designated or what does it take to expand what does it take to add area to a park that might be a good narrow place to look at somebody who can represent the park's planning that's just one i think there are others that would merit a specific um address from someone who knows including for instance the breakout panels in the foundation that are shown on some versions of the plans for the parking structure what's the intent there i think it was several that some of the block partners for instance would have interest in underground parking that they could have access to so that says to me we need to have either whoever the engineer is for the dda but um if we're not going to have the dda involved that seems kind of dumb if we're going to be talking about things with with about working with uh businesses and owners on the lot so that's that's i think those are the kinds of questions we need to ask very specific but which open up to a greater understanding of the complexity of this so real quick because i know heather is going to want to talk about this and as our as our uh primary facilitator i think on this and and camilla as well uh before we get into this real quick i did want to just offer up to frank and erica on a subcommittee discussion specifically we've had a number of things that have been thrown out by members um we'll capture those uh obviously and and create a list so that they are thought about and referenced during our meeting next week as well and we can refine are there other things on the subcommittee line item before we turn it over to heather to talk more about next week i guess i think it's a subcommittee but i just wanted to echo uh what allen said i think an underlying issue that uh underpins our our chances of long-term success is is the uh the culture of um this space including liberty plaza you know we all know the history of liberty plaza and how it's it's not a it's not viewed as a welcoming place by the entire community and we we need to really look carefully into this we need to talk to community groups we have to talk to the the people who populate uh liberty plaza and we really have to put that issue front and center in a in a way that is inclusive is understanding uh and is uh viewed as a positive cooperative effort to improve that perception in the community and in the actual activity of the space it's a very good point we've got a couple more folks uh erica and then sarah yeah i guess um i appreciate what frank says in terms of just thinking about what has been successful in the area and you know how and and how do we um what are challenges in the area in terms of building more public spaces i think that's important i would caution and for myself i would not be supportive of a subcommittee that focuses in too abstractly on um culture or quite specifically the comedy movement it's not that i don't think that that's interesting and um i'm glad that there are folks in the community thinking about that i think that's best left in the nonprofit space um but for this for the work of this group advising council i think we have i'd like to for my from my perspective i'd like to keep it very tangible and how we use the space and and activate it and move forward in terms of um the physical design and pieces like that that um i think we we certainly do have in terms of public spaces we have certain expectations in our in our culture and we have certain rules around parks and things like that and so i think to alice's point of you know would this be expanded into a park space that's an important conversation and how that would happen but um i'll just leave it at that all right that was good erica thank you sarah and then rita i'll just plus one some things that i think erica just said and that jennifer just said and maybe add a little spin on what erica just said just as like a maybe so i agree with jennifer um i think there should be a block partner subcommittee in the fundraising subcommittee for sure so i just wanted to like plus one of those um and i think the physical um activation i think we will get more understanding after our session next week um about what that looks like but i think the digging into some of like the challenges would be another good subcommittee i agree i agree that i don't with erica that i don't think we should have a culture subcommittee although i i think that the you know the equitable engagement piece is is interesting and i don't know if that would warrant a subcommittee but i think it definitely warrants attention like i think that we should be out there talking to people that use liberty plaza if that wasn't done previously and just really make sure or at least present recommendations for processes that the city could undertake to really make sure that we're understanding like the best use of this space um one of the concerns that i have i think i'm sorry if you can hear my children screaming is is around the commenting movement i feel that that's really tied to this space and i think that's that could be polarizing for the community writ large like i i'm i'm sure it's great i don't fully understand it i'm not sure i support it as something that like we embody as this group and sometimes i feel like that's being pushed a little too much on us so i would not be in favor of a separate that focuses specifically on that all right thank you sarah uh rita and then alan thanks um i think the the point that i would want to make in terms of the the culture is that i do agree very much with the equity issue that we do want this to be for me anyway welcoming for everyone and i mean everyone all layers of our groups of people who come into our city and who currently live here um that it should be totally welcoming and i think for me it would be a failure if this becomes a gentrifying issue that results in essentially driving people away who currently use the space i would be horrified if that's the result of what we do so that is something that i don't know how to express it i don't know how to include it in what we do but i feel it is extremely important i agree ridiculous too that's always been on my mind of uh you know we don't want to further encourage uh a narrowing of anything so if i could just say one other thing i i i frank and i had an opportunity to talk with someone last week who was there who actually really likes the place and i think we need to understand that there are people who really like it and um feel included right now and so that feeling is something that i did get a sense of on another event that i went to there that i would like everyone to have and that i think will contribute to our success ella yeah i i echo reader's last comment on the people who are there uh i think they are really the base for developing an improvement association for the liberty plaza and that if they were seen more as uh resources and respected participants in the creation of the place they use rather than as problems uh we would all be far ahead and the people i have talked to there have that same feeling that the community perception of them is uh is of them and that is not proper we should not uh reinforce that but i raised my hand on the question of the commons from the beginning of this this the uh this has been a community commons you know we cannot presume unless we want to advise a city council to drop the fifth word the defining word of the central park and civic center commons it is an effort to relate to the global movement of municipal self-management and while it is true that the commons is not a common phrase and understanding in our education that is a problem of our education and we all are participants in our self-education as to what the commons is actually about not to polarize us but to see there's great opportunity and creativity in this idea that is going all over the world so i hope we see that as something to learn about and i think i've mentioned before that in the structure of our country the notion is to privatize the commons and that is not the picture of this endeavor and what was actually voted on and argued for and people may have various views of it but i think our responsibility and somehow is to see well what is the content of this idea and how is it beneficial in the development of our community so i'm hoping that we see the commons as our opportunity and our focal idea which it connects how what kind of central park we have what kind of civic center building and focal point that we are creating thank you alan so uh jeff yeah i just uh wanted to briefly elaborate on what alan said i think you know people get uh overly concerned about this essentially what a commons is is you know a a user manage management of public resources right so there are certain procedures and ideas about how people sort of uh in a community organized to to to to use public resources and how and and that process is is managed by the users themselves and there are many possible iterations of that um you know this this whole idea was actually investigated in depth by a nobel prize winning woman called eleanor ostrom who wrote her phd thesis in several books on managing the commons which is shared public resources and so educating people a little bit about what she had to say about that how that could be done effectively to make sure that that the use of public resources is very inclusive and diverse and fair and equitable she outlined very clearly she has a center at the university of indiana she's dead now unfortunately uh she laid that out and there's been some elaboration of it but that's basically what we're talking about i'll drop it at that thanks thank you jeff so i think we we've got a lot of great ideas out there on the table for subcommittees we can certainly refine them uh as we get through next week's uh work session heather why don't you talk with us talk a little bit about uh and and camilla what your your vision is for next week so that uh folks can can react and know what to think all right i'll get us started so the first we have this divided into three parts and the first third of it is really that learning piece of everybody um understanding what systems already exist and where there might be opportunities to enhance those systems or do something different so what i lined up is a representative from our park system and then maura thompson from the dda will be coming as well i just heard i just received an email from the person from arts the director from park cities he's not able to make it he had a is a an important family thing that came up so i'm gonna talk with him tomorrow and figure out if there's a replacement if or if there's something else that we can do to get that information because i don't want anything to get lost in translation for me i think it's important to hear from people that really are are deep deeply working in the park system and have managed liberty plaza you know all this time and then their perspectives on how the library lot may or may not fit into the park system so i'll keep you posted on that uh but that that's what was originally established for that first piece and then also about renting the space too um i know allen's been through the process of renting the space in the past but i think it's a process that a lot of people just aren't aware of um so uh there may be somebody there that will walk us through that too just so that you're aware of how that process works and how people can apply to use the space because it is actually available for anybody and everybody to use right now they just have a permitting process to do that and then so with that um camila and i worked at putting a list together of some top some top activation uh things that came near-term activation um approaches that rose to the surface from the work of the center of the city task force as well as the vision um statements that you provided to to me before and so we wanted to walk through that and prioritize see what was really um people were really feeling like what they want to bring forward and then the third part is getting into how would that happen what can we do again with the systems that already work um to make things happen um if if we don't feel like we have the systems in place or the sport in place that we need to make things happen to activate the space in the near term then then what can we do what can we recommend to city council to move forward but my hope is with this is to kind of get at some of that impatience rita that you brought up before and that's why i wanted to solely focus on the near-term activation because i think if we can start getting more activity out there and at least feeling you know that this is a public space transitioning it over from a parking space um to to having people on that and having that activity then i feel like it's gonna we're gonna feel like we have momentum and um it'll be a resource for the community to enjoy so with that camilla did you have anything else that you wanted to add to that no i'll just reiterate that this is the hope is by the end of the july 7th meeting we'll have a pretty good draft of a physical report that we can give to city council members explaining recommendations and then outlining um how to um go about completing those recommendations um yeah i'm very excited wonderful uh alan's got his hand up here i just want to say thank you to both of you for putting in some extra time to make that happen and camilla uh you know thank you as well you're a member of the council here too and so we appreciate you uh stepping up on that regard too uh alan yeah i am this is very good i am eager that as much of this is available to all of us beforehand even if colin smith did not come we should have a report from the parks on the actual usage of liberty plaza i did get a report at one point from the initiating committee who used it for what time at what times the the church the uh sonic lunch and so forth and and what questions issues they have on the security from the police as to what the security questions they have there uh first martin if they want to give some report because they are involved in the oversight of that that we should have that report beforehand and similarly if there is a list of uh of activating elements in part to begin part two of this i hope that can be circulated ahead of time so everyone can have an opportunity to reflect on it uh the uh before the meeting that's uh basically that we should be well prepared for this facilitation and not trying to catch up with what we just hear for the first time well i'll ask about any reports that exist on liberty plaza i'll again i'm talking that colin tomorrow so i'll ask him about that if he can send those along um in the meantime if you have any questions specific questions for him or anybody else in the park system or the dda then that would be helpful to me and to them to prepare for the conversation on the 7th so just send those directly to me all right frank regarding the dda i'm very i'm very happy that maura will be there um i i would and i don't know whether i i spent some time on their website today but i i i would like to know something about the origins the dda you know its charter its mission and there didn't seem to be a statement describing that uh and yeah i know what the dda has done and it's done a lot of wonderful things but i i keep hoping and thinking that what we're about should be embraced by the dda you know we can build a lot of housing uh we can get a lot of business activity into downtown but we need uh welcoming public space uh i think we're all aware that over a thousand new bedrooms are going to be constructed literally within a you know a sand wedge shot in golf i don't i don't golf anymore but we're talking about the dte the former y lot the paleo lot all these places we're going to have a lot more people living in proximity to the center of the city and i would like to see over time and maybe more as the person for the dda begin to embrace this as part of their their mission to provide this kind of active welcoming public space ddas are established through enabling legislation by the state um so if if you haven't already run across that i can pass that along to you that can give you some insight into the why in general exist and then essentially their mission is to do public investment just for economic development and that can be done in many many different ways right you know and i've you know sarah was very enlightening to rita and i on a conversation that you know businesses benefit uh from public space uh it's there's an economic benefit if there's welcoming positive uh you know well-managed public spaces uh businesses in proximity drug draw real value from that so anyhow thank you sarah thanks frank uh thanks er or erica thanks um this perhaps gonna come up i could have brought this up in the roles section too but it's also kind of a question i i know that there's at least been um it'd be helpful to know from parks perspective um in parks commission perspective how they want us to be thinking about and discussing um liberty square i mean it's that it's uh this is a space that is worth thinking about and we're talking about or thinking about intersecting with but we actually don't have per view over um exactly and so i'm not quite sure how i think we need to come to terms of what that looks like moving forward as well um and and if there's tension around that how we we need to figure out how to how to address that that's a great point sarah to add on to that because that was what i wrote down too just understanding better from from parts like what would be the process for them to fund any ideas that this group came up with or any recommendations this group came up with um regarding liberty plaza what is what is their prioritization process for capital projects and where does this park exist on their list if it does at all uh else i'm trying to remember what i was going to say it had to do with the dda um but it also oh here's here's the deal there we have city institutions like the dda and like the aadld who are who are very prominent in the way things happen um and i think there's been an adversarial role adversarial condition going on for years and now and and that comes back to the fact that we had a public ballot to establish this center of the city kind of place the dda has has often narrowed their role and is seen a lot as the parking authority and that's not really fair to them but it also is a solid public perception that all they do is parking that they also are going to be doing renovation of fifth street and division fifth and division and those are going to be very important projects that should be mutually beneficial for all concerned same with the aadl the aadl has had somewhat negative impressions of what all this means the development of the library lot and has never been supported but it seems to me it could be a very mutually beneficial relationship if we were to look to transform it recently new york times had an um profile of this guy vergarian i think his name was died but he was basically a turnaround manager for the new york city public library they had a terrible park problem with bryant park and they were losing money and they didn't have room for this and there were all these problems and he had a vision that that all of those things would be good things if you know people could get a grasp on it it just struck me right then and there that he he described the new york public library as i believe aadl is it's important to our culture it's important to um the education of young people and all of these things is very critical for a city our size or almost any size to have a library that's active and supported in the community what we do on the on the library lot as we used to call it is very important to the library but the library is very important to all of us so these two institutions like the dda and and the in the um aadl need to become really strong partners with us and we need to figure out how to make that happen what what will for them what they will make that will happen that make that happen and what that will do to benefit successful development of the library thank you alex uh jeff yeah right now yeah i just i just want to support what alice is saying but also kind of extend it a little bit to the library specifically um because uh there's the same issue with the library here that perhaps we're dealing with when it comes to aadl and the drda the library for whatever reason appears to me to or at least the the people who run the library appear to be somewhat resistant to this public space and perhaps feel that some of their plans were changed as a result of its existence and yet the library is a critical partner and could be such a wonderful partner if there was more you know uh interchange and interaction between us and well you know between everybody involved in this space and and the library but so far as far as i can determine there there's been virtually no communication from the library on this about their future plans or how they see this or how they might interact with us and so i would welcome the library maybe coming and talking to us about you know how they feel about this and what they have in mind for themselves and how these these things could intersect because in most cities around the world the library is at the heart of the commons the urban commons and in urban development thanks thanks jeff allen following the same thought the library is the center of the commons all over the world and uh josie parker took great offense if some people who supported the commons did not support the bond issue the library put forward in 2012 or whenever it was and she holds the commons responsible for that the library board has not permitted a discussion on the commons and the notion of the block group was to bring the library into a discussion how to develop the whole block i wish the block we would see the organizing the block group as an important means of drawing the library into a block-wide discussion uh particularly seeing the potential of a civic center building which would be an extension of many functions of the library so we should be partners and there's been an unwillingness to communicate that i hope either the block group or personal contacts could bridge but the library is critical in the long run to the sense of what is the commons and how information is shared and the great facilities and programs that they do we should be uh right next to each other and it was interesting that went on their their their north wall they were putting up murals and odile went up and said how wonderful you're putting out murals for the comments they said oh no this is not for the commons this is for the library because the actual on the ground workers there have the view that the commons and the the library commons and the commons commons were two different things and and it's strange it's very sad and we need to make a bridge of that and i think that having is our short among our short-term goals the activation of the block committee to the block group to bring all the partners on the block together in some way is very important i do want to be uh conscious because i think there are there's a couple of important points that have been made here by both jeff and alan aron do we do you know for for the discussion next week or or for future discussion depending upon the agenda for next week certainly engagement with uh the black partners and the the library are very important uh and i think there's a universal sharing of that support i do want to be a little conscious of you know so i'm not i've not been uh part of these discussions as long as some of you but i do want to be conscious that we now do have an advisory committee to council we will probably have better engagement i hope uh then uh with uh the bolt lock partners and the library let's let's try and keep the context positive and constructive in that regard if that's possible uh sarah and then erica i've forgotten a little bit about what we're exactly supposed to be discussing right now but i think this library piece is really important and i i'm sure that we couldn't get a representative to come you know next week that's very short term but i think if if there is somebody or somebody's that we could engage with their subcommittee could engage with i mean i think it's a huge opportunity for them that maybe they're just not seeing because of some of the history i think you know especially as they start to open stuff up like it's the perfect space to be hosting outdoor events like my future vision for this like that library lane is like closed off to traffic and it's just all sort of one big like pedestrian oriented plaza and i think it would be really and i think there could be short-term recommendations in there too so yeah i think it would be really important for us sooner rather than later to engage you know maybe with them first and then the rest of the block partners just depending on timing but that i i think that that was that's a great suggestion i think that the library needs to be pretty high up on our list but i do forget what exactly we're supposed to be like we're just giving heather and camilla uh feedback on what they presented and also ensuring that if there are uh external think the question that heather had on the agenda external groups that we want to have as part of this and at least give her some leeway uh lead time on that uh erica thanks um i see that we're running over agenda time but i i did want to comment on and caution us not to bring um i mean we bring our perspectives from our history to this table that's just what we do as humans right but um i see i hear people um uh bringing perceptions about about the anne of our library and particularly um actually naming the director um and and not a particularly favorable um light around this this commission table and at the same time suggesting that we might want to have positive relations with them moving forward and i don't think that these kind of conversations are pretty particularly productive to building a a positive relationship with um a key block partner and so i would i would caution us to to to not do that in the future um i i um i think they the library has been uh is it is an incredible organization doing so much for our community and drawing so many people downtown and they have and they have been a place for for gathering for for many many years and so i thank them for all the work that they're doing i think that i have spoken with um josie parker and about this kind of is just um and just a few things to to share that i think are are okay i think she's you know i think the library is interested in engaging and providing feedback um at appropriate times in this process um i think that uh likely that like many block partners they're they're they're gonna be more it's gonna be more productive to to have them respond to different different pieces that we bring forward and different recommendations and get their reactions to it i don't know that they're necessarily gonna to come and engage directly to this group um is maybe the most productive use of their time right now but you know we obviously are we want to make sure that we're thinking um and and getting their feedback on on some of the recommendations that we put forward so as we you know i would urge us that after the recommendations that might come forward next week out of this this working session that we take the time to to form them and then before they go to council that we could then send them out to these these key block partners for some feedback and that's a good way to engage them um but they're not gonna i don't see them in engaging in a huge commission discussion with us i'm not sure that's a productive use of their time thanks erica uh frank yes i i just want to echo everything that erica said and she said it very well um i and i i try to live by my mantra is be positive and pleasantly persistent uh let let's let's stay on a very positive we all want the same thing at the end of the day here and that is a a well functioning uh welcoming space that every every partner every individual can can enjoy and benefit from the other the other thing i meant i wanted to say when i put my hand up was that i hope we're open to we have two hours uh on july 7th and it just seems like it's jam-packed let us be open to you know multiple sessions uh working sessions to get where we need to go if if that proves to be the case i hope we can achieve what a number of you have said uh at the end of the day on the seventh but this is uh we're gonna you know gonna go into intermediate and longer term but we may need more time for the short term piece to really be fully fully uh fleshed out thank you thank you frank and i think it's i do think it's going to be important that you know we uh you know obviously with any facilitated meeting um having our facilitators really guide us along is going to help us and i think we we should help them be successful at uh getting us to that to that end and that's that's our that's our goal here i think we all have mutual uh mutual uh urging of uh development of some some stuff some concrete stuff here so um okay well this was i think a great discussion i hope uh heather and camilla we provided some useful feedback um and uh and i hope that folks are feeling good about next week i'm looking forward to it um are we ready to move on uh the next agenda item would be i would bounce around a little bit that would be the next agenda um i'm almost wondering if maybe i know we've talked about building out agendas at this meeting maybe we want to think about that uh you know next week as we're building out this working session uh it seems a little a little premature to get into it tonight um so maybe we can allow the working session to occur and help utilize that to inform our next agenda does that sound like an appropriate action okay sounds good um in that case the next agenda item is public comment um heather do we have any members of the public uh yes robert would like to talk all right mr flack you're up thank you again uh bravo to you guys kudos to your good work together i'm sitting here in awe of your ability to speak and listen respectfully with each other and uh you have done a lot to what we call in facilitation work to resolve your recognize your commonalities and resolve your distant differences and that's great i think just to reiterate i think your should keep your agendas clear and straightforward for july 7th simple take a small step together and win get as much as you can in writing ahead of time as alice's comments about the same thing from your working groups underneath this advising the group to give you things in writing ahead of time that will help you prepare and then make sure that you use your time wisely to get the the learning part done well so that you have time for q a and then concerning the task force part the priorities as alan suggested get as much of that on paper to the group ahead of time so your your mental process of of working this and being prepared will be much more effective as a mastermind group together if you do look on page eight of the task force you'll find six recommendations that gold mine of work that was done by the task force well it's like the booster rocket that was jettisoned in space flight um the the initiating committee is actually still with you carrying the lunar module for you so don't lose them then you need that to get back home but um these meetings when i heard alice and jennifer speak about the interim action activation i was referring to number three in the recommendations of the task force and if you look at the page behind them and pages 10 through 14 you'll find a very clear action plan and set of steps that you can follow to build on that foundation when i heard let's see it was jennifer again and then sarah talking about the block partner subcommittee says critical work you can start informally that should happen it's recommendation number two from the task force and so i i ask you and urge you to just get into that and then lastly recommendation number one from that task force is where alan was going it says the responsible party in this case is the city council to define the culture of the commons so one of your recommendations to them is to say please do that and if you look down your action steps on your task action step number one a educate yourself about the comments and and action step number one c develop for the space so you have some clear foundational pieces that you can build on both from the task force and the initiating committee that will serve you well and i'm happy that you have done a great deal to um to repair your foundation so you don't turn out like champlain towers in florida that you're going to move forward from this and build a good strong process from here forward last thing i'll say is please set up a series of work sessions with specific themes to them that lead you to your objectives thank you all right thank you mr black for uh for uh joining us this evening heather is there i don't think there's anybody else is there i don't see anybody who has their hands raised i see that there is somebody on the phone so if you did want to speak you can press star nine to raise your hand okay i think that's it all right well um i think uh i would just like to point out that we are improving in our uh uh in our overage uh we are less over now slightly and so that's positive so i hope everybody has a wonderful evening can we get a motion for adjournment and set some move seconded got a few seconds um i hope you have all uh wonderful holiday uh look forward to seeing everyone next week on the seventh it's gonna be a great discussion you
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and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay future board meetings as a reminder we don't have one in the second half of june so we'll be back here july 13th july 27 and august 10th at our regular times we have nothing no revisions to the agenda except a few things added under hr and we'll move on to public recognition we have a recommendation recommendation to approve a four thousand dollar donation from the community foundation of wabash county for metro north elementary the little north preschool three-year-old program a recommendation to approve a 100 developed gift card from hardwood freight at marion for southwood high school robotics we'll take a second to approve the donations all in favor say aye all right next public recognition and if it's okay i will wait i have some things i want to say during the superintendent report but um perfect timing mrs boone just took a drink of water right there so she's going to share with us about the bridge program formerly known as the car program and uh just do a presentation and share some updates to for us so you're on thank you um i shared a google slide with you just now i did i don't know if you might it's not necessary to put it over there with the visual and then also help keep me from rambling what happened to you i'm sorry because yes it does first reveal what was your key favorite close that up a lot of fun however he came up with car and they tagged on your vehicle to success at a time where this program had needed some type of definition other than distance learning or blended learning and he came up with that very creative idea and it was an easy way to explain that we are an alternative situation and we do focus on credit recovery so as much as i like to teach you mr key favor i do respect the fact that you did that and that was a pretty catchy slogan we did decide to shift this however um because car was difficult for the people that we work with to catch into they were calling a car they had no idea what it really stood for and to say create an alternative recovery every time was a little bit of a mouthful and we still had to explain it so we tried to come up with a single word that defined who we are explains who we are and then capture that in a picture and laura laura lange bartles was a huge part of helping us come up with this and then kaiozan and his group helped us as well so with that we are moving officially to the bridge and our our focus is staying the same our mission and our vision is not changing we are going to continue to focus on those students who are in need of an alternative situation because there was some kind of barrier or something preventing them from being successful in the traditional school we're not looking to become a traditional virtual program that's not who we are we are focused on those kids who are at risk and who have struggled to find success in the traditional school and you can flip to the next one before you do though i want to say that this is a great memory though this student one of our students that we had last year summertime we were at the honeywell center a lot of family there of course that's her daughter too they had a professional photographer there to be there also so they are big deals with a lot of different situations and so you know of course this was during coven and all those different times but that was a great graduation that i was able to go to too so um that's an actual picture of one of our students that graduated last year and her family traveled from wages to meet us so we definitely are outside the box and how we operate and that's one reason why we have found ways for this type of student to be successful again just the reason why we chose the bridge because number one we're about bridging gaps and students educational um journey and providing second chances and helping them get over those risks and get past those obstacles that have prevented them from being successful quickly who we are very flexible learning environment we do serve only 7th through 12th grade students but our focus is on credit recovery those junior high students who came to us are typically been expelled or they have missed a lot of school because of social emotional issues that have led to truancy and extensive absences that have where students are on the verge of being withdrawn or being recommend recommended for truancy so therefore they come to us but they have a little bit more flexibility and again we we serve you can go to the next slide mr key favorite kind of further defines we we currently have over 300 students with us across 44 indiana counties we do use an online curriculum that allows us to meet every student's individual need when they come to us no matter when they come to us so everything is focused on that individual student at that moment when we see them and we are getting them enrolled and getting them moving forward we have five full-time staff and this is part of the exciting part right now we have five seem to be seven thanks to our leadership and the support that you all have shown besides the five full-time staff we have ten additional msa staff that help us get our teachers and are helping us um manage case loads of students we try to keep that case low between 15 and 20 to make that manageable because they are doing that other piece where their full-time job is in the classroom and they're doing this on top of and it takes a lot of effort to connect with our kids and get them engaged and keep them engaged so we have all of those we have that group of teachers and staff working with us and we're very appreciative i've served without you all with that before about how engaged and how persistent they are and going after our kids and doing everything that they can to make them be successful help them be successful just a few points of data and these are the reasons why kids come to us i know that's not hard to leave but every one of our kids come to us for a purchase or for a reason and none of it is just because they want to come to white's high school to bridge program it's all because they have been referred to us they've been recommended to us or they've heard about us because there is a struggle or there's some kind of obstacle keeping them from being um being successful the very front one with 500 and some of them we look at 528 and this was run this is not an updated one we've had a lot more since then but this was run between february of 2018 and the 21st these are all the applications what we've had 528 of those are in credit recovery mode right now 75 of our student enrollment is came to us because they are in credit recovery and in danger of not graduating another 25 of them outside of the 25 who are not in credit recovery mode of that group has been expelled and so they don't have options right now so that gives you a little bit of an idea of who we've got in our program and who are focused on and who are serving the other large the this outside 748 students that's because they just that's kind of cover-all where they've come to us because they weren't being successful in the traditional school and they needed something different than traditional public school and then that next highest is social emotional which is a huge piece of our student population especially with coped the social emotional aspect and you're fine to move ahead this next one this is we have as of today we have served over 513 students throughout this school year the 2021 school year it is a little bit down again i can only assume that a lot of that is because of the pandemic and lots of other virtual programs popping up however we're already starting to get a lot of referrals from other schools where those virtual students are now truant and have been expelled so it'll be interesting to see what next year holds as far as that's concerned and our graduation rate is something i'm really proud of do we have room to grow absolutely because we take kids in credit recovery mode and so it's a huge obstacle sometime to get them to that point sometimes we don't make it on time on their 2021 cohort but we do our best to help them hit that 2021 cohort if they don't we do not drop them we continue to work with them as fifth year seniors and try and get them through in our fifth year cohort as of today we graduated 78 students this school year and we are still working we've got a whole list of seniors we're still working to get through so our goal is to get them through by september and have them on this year's cohort get them graduated on time um i think just to highlight the strengths of our program were very relational because with our student population if we don't have a relationship with them they are not going to buy in and they are not going to engage so our focus is on building relationships working outside the box to meet our students and family's needs i am blessed to have a team of people that are have bought into this mission and are very passionate about working with this group of students and helping them do whatever we need to get them to succeed we excel at credit recovery and we also are very blessed to have licensed and highly qualified teachers working with us and working with our kids we do provide synchronous and asynchronous options so kids can be online with our staff if they need more accountability and are struggling with just being independent learners and then the one thing that i continually like to point out is that unlike other schools we've identified a very specific need across indiana that nobody else is plugging into yet and my guess is with covid other schools are going to try and figure out how to meet this need with some of those students but there's going to continue to be this growing need of mental health students struggling with mental health kids getting kicked out of school and a lot of schools do not want to touch that group because of the accountability and so again the i really appreciate the leadership in the district that really allow us to take this on because it really um isn't is daunting at times and the accountability is a factor with graduation rate that these kids aren't getting help anywhere else so we're just continuing to focus in on this group of students which makes us different than other programs like ours and then finally the things moving forward that i'd like to highlight we are in an effort to better meet the social emotional needs of our students you saw how many kids come to us and obviously truancy expulsions all of those things whether they mark that they have a social emotional hindrance or not all of that plays into that there's something blocking and something skills that they need to learn better coping skills so we are working on hiring a mentor position a licensed social worker who is going to be a mentor and bridge help us bridge that gap get in there meet families where they are see them in their communities build out resources in home communities and then whatever identify whatever barriers are keeping those kids from being successful and start putting in interventions and getting kids to move forward we're also adding a math teacher when we look at our scores with and with pathways coming down the line testing is critical to meet that graduation goal and so we've got to figure out a way to shore up those academic skills that kids have missed out on and as you all know as parents and educators that math is critical because it's building and when kids miss out on here it's a problem so we're going to have a math teacher who's providing direct instruction with kids that is going to be part of a system where they are shifted and have to do online face to face with that math teacher and obviously all of our goal in adding and adding positions and trying to continually improve is to increase our graduation rate and decrease our dropout rates and then another thing i'd like to highlight just real quickly one thing that's been exciting is we're working on developing a locally created pathway is we've been able to really network with some key stakeholders and communities that we serve johnson county huntington county and wabash county are our largest concentration of where our students are and we've really plugged into some leadership in the business world and in the just different agencies within those communities ivy i'm talking with ivy tech in johnson county who wants to partner with us and hopefully open up doors for our kids to receive certification to meet graduation pathways down the road and um she is also going to help us get things set up in the community for kids to start networking getting jobs getting job shadow opportunities job skills those types of things so we're really excited about that opportunity that's just a quick update i appreciate the time and you listening and if you have any questions i'd be more than happy to answer okay when your graduation percentages say you take the kid against the fifth year he graduates how does that affect the percentages for your graduation rate for our graduation rate yeah i mean just because he doesn't get in for the fifth year does that still count towards your it will count against our four-year cohort but it will go toward our fifth-year court cohort the deal with the state they allow for a fifth year cohort graduation it's not optimum but they allow they allow for that they don't allow for six but they do allow obviously for four it's traditional but they do allow for five also and they get different rates i mean yeah it's different so does that bring like you were 92 you're right 98 row high and then you were 78 this year well that's the number of graduates that's the numbers right yeah the percentage is lower that and because of all the situations you think about it sometimes you know tonya would get a student um that is really in the cohort of a graduate that might only have three or four credits and they need to have 40.
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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 all before we get started tonight we're going to have something that mr keyfavor would like to read yes um as you know chuck bear passed away and the funeral was today and i would just like to read the obituary that has to do with the educational part of his career and also him as a veteran czech bear chuck then enlisted in the marines and was sent to the vietnam war for a two-year tour after his discharge in 1971 he started attending grand valley state college upon graduation he landed a teaching job at la grill elementary in the fall of 1975.
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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 all future board meetings may 25th june 8th and july 13th all of those will be here at the regular time of 6 pm didn't see any revisions to the agenda so we'll just go right into public recognition uh recommendation to approve a 750 donation from first farmers bank and trust for staff appreciation meal provided by pizza king that happened last week recommendation to approve 400 donation 300 from hoosier chiropractic and 100 from dawn hess or northfield baseball recommendation to approve the anonymous donation of enrollment in the casey's reward program for southwood elementary recommendation to approve 200 donation from dairyland seed for south wood ffa recommendation to approve the donation of office chairs to metro north elementary for bachelor church christ a recommendation to approve 630 donation made in memory of mrs julia keyfavor to the little norse preschool at metro north elementary and a recommendation to approve the 19 donation from general mills box top for education for southwestern school recognition mr boone i guess you're up first i know that was the only one i just spiced it up a little bit no thanks for thanks for letting us come and talk about what's going on at southwood elementary school uh you mentioned the pizza king donation and last week was teacher appreciation week's staff appreciation week uh very much appreciate that i also had a lunch provided by norman and bunch of orthodontics and andrew dixon brought bagels for breakfast one morning and so i just appreciate our community partners recognizing the hard work and showing some appreciation for our staff throughout the week last week so um thank you for that a couple of things that i put on the spreadsheet for this week first being i want to thank our local kiwanis organization and i believe that there is a little bit of friendly competition amongst a couple of members of civic organizations in the room so i want to you know kiwanis is a is a noble group and i'm sure that the others are too but the kiwanis did make a donation they've done this for the last few years to our fifth grade um students or fifth grade readers who and so they every winter of late winter we get a letter from howard holden and he is overseeing this and fifth grade is allowed to select a novel and every student went home with a copy of the novel this year they voted on a few options and they chose pax uh pax which is about a uh fox that gets adopted by a little guy that was found in the woods i haven't read the whole story but actually we just brought four h pigs home yesterday and uh there is a pig named pax and barn it says obviously an impressionable story so um thank the kiwanis for that and then um i wasn't sure what else i could say tonight so i i asked the teachers to give me some material and actually i've got some tangible material um this is jane candle teaches sixth grade uh language arts does does all the reading and has a section of writing that she does but the book report assignment for the fourth nine weeks uh once they completed that all of the students turned their book report into a t-shirt and so this one was done by jelena um the wish tree and so like they they took you know everything that they've been learning you know throughout the year theme and just all story elements uh and incorporated that on their book report t-shirt summary on the back and they illustrated each one so i picked out a gal and again cameron did this one and this one is called drums girls and dangerous pie so the title in and of itself uh i might check that one out and see what that's about so but uh no just i know um all throughout the year just some cool things going on um was in mr jimmy's class the other day and they were talking about forces and different things and so they're going to be shooting off some rockets and racing some boats that they make and so just a lot of neat things which it's cool this time of year um one thing that's also happening at southwood elementary is some some test fatigue uh you know our third graders uh i read right there before spring break and then um the ilearn window you know it's a it's a month-long window and uh it ends this friday anything a month we've got all kinds of time but uh you know just the the tests that you have to take and then of course this year we had some kids that were in quarantine during the tests and so uh just like you know keeping track of who needs to still take what um and we're mr greg offense but we're ready to be done so but that's that's what i have for something all right well thank you very much i know you need to take off so you're welcome to go and thank you for sharing those things so have a couple of others so the southern high school community would like to recognize mr hickman and mrs kiefer for the outstanding performances from bannon choir students this last week the junior high band and choirs performed on tuesday the high school band choirs performed thursday teachers were able to navigate students coming and going during due to quarantine issues and still deliver an outstanding performance i was able to go to the high school performance and particularly mrs kieffer that was her last concert because of course you know that you accepted her retirement this is her second retirement there was some talk that you know they would love to have her back but uh i think she she would love to retire but you just never know what happens uh with who who applies for the position and maybe they can talk her back into it because a lot of kids were trying to so we'll see what happens there and then also according to the may 10th regular season poll produced by the indiana high school baseball coaches association southwood is ranked number one and 1a baseball they are currently holding 13-2 record way to go knights that was from mr mcdaniel and then mrs moore at metro north would like to graciously thank bachelor creek church of christ doctors gorman and bunch and msdwc for honoring celebrating and appreciating our staff last week and i'll probably say some more about that later too but a lot of things did happen of course mr boone shared that tonight also that's all i have this time okay comment agenda items only you have a 10 second delay okay moving on to can if somebody does say something since i went fast interrupt me uh consent agenda items approval of the minutes from our last meeting on april 27th all in favor say aye financial claims looked kind of like this time didn't it last time covered a couple weeks because we didn't have the one board meeting [Music] not much difference in payroll there uh kind of on a low end really uh just comparative just looking ahead some of the next payrolls maybe a little bit bigger as we end the spring seasons with coaching and the end of the year stuff with things like department chairs and yearbook and all that type of stuff um plus some additional pythons that we'll talk about here later so those could be a little bit bigger [Music] really not much to go over here since we talked a lot about it at the last board meeting because we covered it for the month of april this uh erd month of march this represents the end of april uh and so um education fund balance went up about a hundred thousand dollars so it sits at 6.5 million but um nothing else to really discuss we'll start to see those federal fund dollars again those are reimbursable but start to see new fund accounts being spent out of as we get those esser dollars in [Music] uh the other thing there and again we don't have to go over this but i always share with you guys and it's good for the new board members to to see uh i lay out our budget calendar timeline as we prepare i know it's only uh may but soon i'll start working on our 2022 budget and it just kind of lays out and maps out the timeline because there are things requirements and deadlines that we have to meet uh for uh submission and so just kind of lays those all out so that we meet all of those statutory deadlines when it comes to submitting our budget for next school year so start working on some of that stuff here and there it really starts to pick up over the summer but that just kind of lays it out we're looking to do our budget hearing and adoption probably around september which is typical but allow for some flexibility if that needs to get pushed back down the road we can still meet our timelines all right moving on to hr under [Music] there we go under employment uh catherine singleton paraprofessional at southwood high school effective beginning next fall stacey james special ed teacher at southwood elementary beginning next fall on their resignation we have jack givens an educational diagnotician at wmap and nick technology assistant at whites and those are both effective at the end of the school year number 124 employing 124 leave beginning we see the eight weeks there towards the end of june remove the human resources report washington second to approve from human resources i'll ever say all right i've just got about two or three little short ones over starting with um indiana school boards association obviously tracks all of this is just good data to know but they track all of the bills in this last legislative session which was the long session which was budget um they were tracking 179 bills out of 1025 interesting to know and of those k through 12 education bills unless the list that became law were 41 and then overall there were 219 new laws that were enacted by indiana general assembly so 19 of the new laws are relevant to public education so if anybody keeps track over the last four sessions that's 148 new laws for our schools so just interesting to note our little you can some of you can see it from here but our education indiana code book i don't know we'll need to get heavier shelves or something to hold all that all the time so anyway interesting to know yeah it's just interesting also just one again everybody's done this but also just thank all the partners that have helped us with the staff appreciation it's teacher appreciation week and we include all staff including of course you already took care of accepting the the donation from first farmers that was a total of 75 pizzas that were delivered to the schools and so we appreciate pizza pizza king for also helping with that bachelor creek of course that was mentioned too they allow people to go to where do they allow them to go to um on on friday to pick up something to drink so we appreciate that and you've seen all the other things that happen it's interesting to note another person called like on wednesday of teacher appreciation week and asked if there's something that they could do for everybody and i said well why don't we do it a different week because there's so many things going on with donuts and pizza and all those different things so it's great to have a community involved and supporting our our schools i also just want to recognize uh laura lange bartles putting that new website together she got some help from a lot of different people but organize it and hopefully you've had a chance to look at it it looks great it'll be obviously a work in progress um but it's uh that's really good and a lot of time spent on that and then finally our own todd daisy was a part of this but wabash area community theater gave us a little thank you wabash area community theater board of directors the cast of play on and all the patrons would like to thank you for your generosity to letting us use the norfolk auditorium the facility is first class and ventilation made all of us feel very comfortable we thanked you each night but wanted to put it in writing as well the show was a huge hit and appreciate the role you played in our success thank you again for your faith and trust in walmart area community theater we appreciate your support which was signed by the whole cast including todd daisy so thank you very much for that so i was not able to go but i did hear it was really good i know a lot of people that have gone so um you have anything you want to say about that did you have fun yeah we did and it was i was impressed i had never actually been on stage before other than direct in a student teaching experience but that was a couple years but to see and it's changed and there's been a lot a lot of stuff backstage that i was impressed and yeah thank you okay curriculum report let's hear about that testing yeah the good news is that's all wrapping up i did want to make the board aware that we received information from the department of education that they actually reduced our title 1 basic and our title 1d grants and so laura and bear and cheryl and chris and cheryl like all of us had to come back together and redo all that financials and so we're able to cover those costs but the new board members might be good to learn that even though we were promised these funds last summer we've already spent the funds and a grant that was approved they still came back and reduced the funds and so even money were promised doesn't always hold true and so um so we were able to make the covers it wasn't it was a significant amount but it was still a lot of work and so hats off to everybody that covered all that stuff and so it's not necessarily the the money too but all the time you just heard of everybody that was involved with that and just to do it and that's it that's frustrating and they i don't know why it happens like that but it does there's no rate ratio not on this particular grant but we usually hear things like they they miscalculated one year they had to include voucher schools and they didn't include doctor schools in the original formula we're at the 10-year cycle a five-year cycle of paying all that back it's i didn't hear this particular one but it's every time there's some new reason it's not necessarily always the state of indiana because it is a federal grant so they're probably just getting that you know they're just the middleman and has to yeah they have to let everybody know and be a spokesperson for the bad news but yeah but i was told i needed to end early because norfolk is looking for a presenter tonight for their we need to have an appropriation hearing an appropriation hearing is so that we can actually get permission to spend already said we're going to but we actually talked about where it's going to go but we haven't actually given ourselves permission to do that so under indiana code i actually have to open this meeting as an open appropriation hearing meeting and it is now open to the public and it is now closed but you're not here so uh so at this point uh we have on the board you see in the uh page it's up three price a resolution exhibit a uh to appropriate the funds that uh that we said that we're going to use last uh last time uh for the uh projects that are gonna be that the bonds are going to be used for yeah i don't i mean we explained it pretty well it's just uh we just have to have appropriations to allow us to spend the money that we get from the bond sale on those projects that we discussed from the bond hearing and that's all that resolution does is allow us to appropriate that two million dollars i moved to the resolution motion second to approve the additional appropriation resolution all in favor say aye uh the next thing is exhibit b a final bond resolution and i'll let uh chris i won't steal a sentence it's laid out in explanation to you uh really it establishes the amount to be borrowed the maximum terms of repayment the maximum interest rate things that we've already discussed it also contains the details about the bonds it includes a a resolution that ratifies the publication of the notice of sale of the bonds and establish the maximum cost an underwriter bank may bid for the bonds it establishes a bid committee who will award the bonds to the lowest bidder that big committee that is mike and myself and jim elizondo from stifle and then the uh it also includes the form of the second supplement to master continuing disclosure undertaking and the registrar and paying agent agreement which basically because of the securities and exchange commission they require school corporations to enter into a continuing disclosure undertaking as part of the bond issuance which means i have to report financial information um quarterly in regards to the bond per this continuing disclosure disclosure undertaking as well as requires us to annually share financial information to the sec's emma database which ice miller who is part of our legal counsel for our bonds helps us with that process you guys want that restated so that resolution was several several pages but that explains what is included in the resolution so to approve the final bond resolution as outlined in exhibit b all in favor say hi okay recommendation to approve the wolf commercial roofing for the high school roofing project yes so our we had our bids uh come in i don't remember the exact date on top of my head i think it was may 4th uh was when the bids were due we had three individual companies bid for that wolf commercial roofing incorporate was the lowest responsive and responsible bidder they're the ones that actually did our roof project this summer at the high schools so they are familiar with our roofs and so our recommendation is that we would go with a wolf commercial roofing at a bid of eight hundred and eighty four thousand five hundred fifty dollars and i think when we looked at what we thought the estimated cost of that would be it was around 920 25 000 with that so slightly under what we anticipated um and we were we were glad that a couple of those bids were open first besides that one that was like 1.2 million dollars so um so that's for both that is the total cost and it's understood along well with these guys so once they are approved hopefully then we can set up our meetings to get things scheduled they don't know exactly when they'll be able to start hopefully in july but that may get pushed back a little bit depending on materials and so forth on their end but again the deadline for that is to be completed by the before the end of 2021.
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and so yeah they're going to move them forward but that doesn't mean they're going to move forward that quickly just like white's residential is this the percentages can be low because of you know when they come in and also once they leave then they also if they don't go into another school and they drop out and that becomes another negative on the percentage for graduation also you mentioned indiana counties are we licensed or we just don't get out-of-state kids or is there a reason that we don't do that we're not working with honesty students right now just because of funding one thing that we have done is if they've been our student and some life circumstances for instance i've got one student i'm working with now and life circumstances dcs removed him from the home and sent him to his dad in chicago i'm not going to drop that kid in the middle of school here we've gotten funding for him so we're going to see him through this school year and then i'm in the process of helping him transition to a school in illinois for next year is that the big logo yes there it is it still looks like a car i saw that too actually that's not the we did shift it a little bit because when i saw this all i saw was an elephant or a car and so the font has changed so the font is going to be slightly different i haven't gotten the final one back yet but it's this is the basic of it the d is going to look like a v instead and i want to say one other thing too this kind of came up that the board knows about but not all of this so senate bill or house bill 1008 um i talked to you about the you know we've got the grants through all the wallabies county schools through ymca and then the one that was with real wage county through the internship and that uh meet their expectations so that did not pass but also tanya has had a connection of the person that she mentioned um as far as that helps uh and what is it what county is now she she well she's over the state of indiana but she has started her own she's a former teacher and she saw the same need that we did as far as kids falling through the cracks and so she started her own business and she called it was called indiana tutor and her goal and vision is to extend beyond indiana so when she pursued this this grant they actually changed their name to [Music] a bigger name so it's not just indiana tutor it's comprehensive tutor and she has listed us as one of her partners and she is now a referring agency to us so when she gets a kid that she knows needs our type she's sending us students left and right so we're part of that grant no we're not personally benefiting from the money other than we are getting referrals and she's upping our numbers yeah so just those connections really helped it was interesting i was going through it and i told chris to tim i said man we have we're part of this grant didn't even know i didn't know too much i didn't know anything about it basically and then i called tanya because when we had our graduation we talked about on this person and so she's the one that connected us not knowing that we'd really even be a part of it and like i said we're not getting the funding for it but yet we will indirectly benefit because she will be um pushing those students towards our program so and her staff is in the halls so and she took a list of where our kids are and so she's starting to set up tutors in those areas specific for our students do you actually need a personal a person that is dedicated to making outside contacts and the relationships with those that give you referrals that's that's going to be part of our mentor's role and it's part of my role that it's just been my role so far but that's been part of our mentor role and why i requested that position because that person is actually going to go out into the communities meet with our students meet with the families and then start networking with some of these key stakeholders to build out resources in the communities because it is relational it is and we did receive very positive support and even excitement from some of these agencies that we talked with in the local communities because they see the need they're business men and women they see the need so i'm excited about the possibilities for the future but thank you that's a great question i appreciate it all right this is limited to indiana because ohio is not that far away yeah just unfortunately we don't get funding though so the way that we can figure out funding we break the borders but there are kids that i would love to keep because they've done well with us and just because of circumstances we've had to let them go right okay we'll move out to the public cabinet agenda items only facebook land catching i think we have kind of a light viewership tonight as always consent agenda items approval the minutes from our last regular board meeting on may 25th [Music] financials claims i came across [Laughter] foreign if you haven't noticed payroll is significantly higher than what it typically is and you can see that is primarily from the uh sr2 fund account 7931 there which is what we use to pay out the stipends for the staff members so that's the difference when i saw that i was pleased for teachers and recipients of this type of that i'm thinking to myself that foolishness has to stop yeah i need a credit card bill at the end of the month so you do get a bill yeah so that's that um the next payroll will reflect a little bit of finalizing of the eca's with the spring sports um and summer school pay so it will be a little bit you know it'll be a little bit more than average but it won't be like it won't be like this so looks like a second to approve payroll on favorite salary financial summary doctor uh usually i just give you the end of the month report but since we this is our last meeting of the month i also threw in the cash flow stuff not much has changed with any of that stuff um i bel leave june 15th we usually find out what our revenue is uh for the next month so i'm hoping that will then show us what our estimated adm with the increases in student funding will reflect uh moving forward for that second half of the year um but i kind of threw out you know my best guess estimations with with that anyway that's always been reflected there but have a little bit more of an accurate amount coming in but things are still looking good uh currently have 6.5 million in the education fund you know and balances appear to continue to improve over time but again that's not a reflection of what our revenue outlook will be along with increases to the new teacher contract that we will be negotiating in the fall okay there are any questions before i go move on to hr under hr got a lot of stuff happening under employment chelsea kirkland preschool teacher salford elementary tracy kennedy and lori brewer summer secretaries tracy of northfield and gloria tara hopper summer school special ed metro north liz little silver school transportation south tom carthy summer school transportation door deb elliott paraprofessional shark creek elementary carla varner math teacher for the bridge program sample shoe paraprofessional northfield high school jeff fitticle pe teacher southwood high school excuse me tim gleef uh network tech assistant at white's jody chenoweth bus driver south jordan cheddar with summer school transportation for the south and that's just for the summer under resignation we have kayla frank paraprofessional metro north elementary holly robbins paraprofessional at southport elementary and a good height teacher at southport elementary and sandra harness data and financial specialist wmap under retirement jeff smith a teacher at livergood elementary teacher at southwood elementary janice speaker paraprofessional at southwood elementary and chris sigmund band at southport high school transfers phil special ed teacher moving to northfield a wolf prayer professional moving to northfield kenny etzer very professional moving to northfield jessica holly very professional two three year old preschool teacher at metro door barbara stanford cook going from four hours to 5.75 hours in northfield excuse me jade kendall sixth grade teacher to kindergarten teacher at southwood elementary school and finally matt brown sixth grade teacher the fifth grade teacher at church creek elementary and if you don't mind i'd like to read um we talk about relationships all the time and i'd like to read a couple of the retirement letters um and i will start jeff smith i i do not have his right now but jeff um i think some of these situations that happened he wanted to go a little bit longer but some family situations with health um he is also a farmer and so he is the primary farmer in that particular situation and with the health of his relative that it wasn't going to work out and so he's he's retiring a little bit earlier than what he wanted to but he uh really talked to us and just really said it was a lot tougher i'll just tell you he's a lot tougher than what he thought it was going to be when he came in and said that obviously very emotional um and that is good to see though it's not like you know tired of this or whatever you know very emotional not really wanting to do this yet even though he can with his age and things like that so that was really neat um i'm going to read part of jody liver goods too says my journey at south of elementary began as a kindergarten student in 1963.
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he heard him this was not an obituary but i heard today at the funeral uh he heard about the position um by relatives at the funeral home so kind of interesting there he met sharon dean a fellow teacher they married in on march 31st once libero elementary closed in 1980 he started teaching at short creek elementary that is where he remained until retirement teaching wasn't just a job for him it was a passion he not only taught but also worked with after school programs these included odyssey of the mind later destination imagination and robotics teams he and four other educators founded the summer school program science in motion where there were three levels grouped by age these programs enabled students to travel and camp all over the us science in motion was a great experience for the many students who participated over several years chuck loved sports and coached his daughter's basketball and soccer teams along with the girls summer softball league and the elementary girls basketball elementary boys basketball and football teams so as a tribute to chuck just wanted to read a little bit more and see how long you know all the different things that he did in education for msd of walt bush county and at this time we're going to observe him on silence form thank you future board meetings june 8 july 13 and july 27th all here at a regular time of 6 pm we have no revisions to the agenda with the exception some some things under hr so we will move on to public recognition have a recommendation to approve a 200 donation from dairyland seed for the northfield ffa a recommendation to approve 12 donation from melanie gibbons penn 25 from denise wood 25 from susan lyons riker 25 from carmen ernst 25 from kurt campbell 25 from deb cats 25 from the long sparring 50 from beth eakin 221 dollars and four cents from matthew all for the southwood high school to purchase 60 copies of tequila mockingbird and moving on then oh i guess we do need to actually accept us motion and second to accept the donations on the baby all right now then move on to the school recognition and before we move to that though i just want to mention that um according to the email i received at 5 00 pm tonight there was actually the media got a hold of us knowing that there was going to be 60 copies of this to kill mockingbird and so they wanted to interview our teacher who teaches that and also a couple of students so i guess there's a little clip at five o'clock today and hopefully we'll be able to see that um later on but we weren't at a tv today to see the five o'clock views a lot of times they put that on on their website and things like that it'll be interesting to see that information so and so for school recognition we'll just go in order um and we'll start with mr martin okay thank you well certainly we at sharp creek want to recognize and celebrate the life and teaching career of mr bear a longtime church creek teacher and who has very positively impacted the lives of many many young people over the years also we'd like to say a big thank you to current street staff who will not be returning to our building for next year that includes becky mast who has been a paraprofessional and has announced that she is retiring we wish her well in retirement we also know that pam powell's one of our special education teachers and uh alyssa spann who has been a temporary teacher in our building in fifth grade are both moving to uh northfield junior senior high for next school year we wish them well and going with the special ed program that mr spouse has is uh connie wolfe and kayleens are two of our paraprofessionals so we just want to thank them for all their time and efforts in our building over the years also congratulations to our staff member of the year connie wolf one of those paraprofessionals i just spoke up and teacher of the year pam campbell both of these ladies are extremely hard workers and they do every day show how much they care about students and student success so congratulations to them and i saw that there's already facebook there's laura did that's got pictures of all the uh teachers of the year and staff of the year from the building um and then just first-time elementary building principal it's just amazing how much elementary teachers the time and effort they put on what what would be considered by many to be above and beyond but i just want to say thanks to the teachers here late in the year that just go above and beyond and provide students with experiences and opportunities that make it special but also maybe provide some kids with things they wouldn't had an opportunity to do and see gary norman organize an old-school field day that was basically the whole day today and gary would be the first to tell you that everybody chips in everybody's part of it everybody supervises and helps but it's just a great day for all of our students sixth grade teachers tammy shaper pam campbell matt brown and alison saunders recently organized tammy was kind of believed that the camp outing for sixth graders which was very successful and many many volunteers parents some not parents but volunteers for years and years maybe started out as a parent volunteer but have continued to be a part of that experience a new location this year due to some covenant things uh worked out really well and i know there's some serious consideration for that change be coming to norm fourth grade teachers deb shingle kelly ross and kim baer took the fourth grade on an outing last this last uh friday to downtown wabash some parks and wall bags heard some information local history and information but we just appreciate teachers don't have to do that and you know kids could have probably sat in the classroom and been told about it but they got to go see and do and then the fifth grade teachers alyssa spann amber bretzmann and mary jo nguyen uh providing the students an opportunity they refer to as a red carpet event for fifth graders to uh pick out a famous person they're reading the biobiography and then dressing the park and doing the red carpet academy awards type show in the gym parents got to come watch and it was a nice thing for kids to get to host their parents but also participate in so just really thankful for all the hard work here toward the end of the year thank you and we have some natural paparazzis as parents don't we yes thank you all right we'll continue then with mr mcdevitt thank you um i'm just going to read precisely what the teacher sent me about because i had to ask for teachers any feedback on the students directly so this is from mrs rigby about lily b when she arrived on campus she was angry and disrespectful i slowly watched her change and grow she started talking about her family working hard enjoying class and earning credits then it came time for her to be released something happened that would just be you know poor choices something happened and she was told she had to stay longer an undetermined amount of time i was so afraid this would set her back and she would revert back to the girl we first saw but to her credit she's remained on the right path i'm very proud of her and even though i am happy for her to return home i will certainly miss her so that's lily b and i and mrs ray is spot on lily was was a young man it was very difficult to like when she first arrived and she is leaving as a young lady that we're all sad as ego so we just wish you're the best i also want to celebrate our staff member and teacher the aerostat member of the year was nick perlick i think many of you probably know nick very well one of the great things about nick is he is a quiet unassuming worker uh doesn't doesn't ask for actually he'd rather not be noticed and so he was a little i don't know i'd say uncomfortable today but i certainly did not enjoy the spotlight but nick just does a great job for us not only it was just solving the technology things that come his way uh but he's also willing to just step in whenever we need you know coverage here it'll help there he's just happy to do it and so nick does a great job but our teacher of the year was wendy gray and here's what uh one of the staff members who nominated her said about wendy wendy finds the perfect balance between developing positive relationships with their students and holding them to a high standard of performance her students respond positively to their leadership in the classroom and they respect her and want to do their best for her one of the really neat things about mrs great i didn't know this right away um but it wasn't about until halfway through my first year that i learned that mrs gray originally it was a license still is but she was originally just a licensed elementary teacher and taught kindergarten i thought oh my gosh because this little woman is great with teenagers and so what he does a fantastic job for us so teacher leaders wendy gray all right well thank you very much and we'll go next with mrs boone thank you sir tonight the car program would just like to highlight and congratulate our 72 2021 graduates we're still working on that number because we have several we're still trying to push to the finish line but at this point in time we're at 72 38 of our graduates actually traveled from all over the state and joined us on sunday for uh for our graduation ceremony and they were we had families come from terre haute from evansville from delphi all over the place so it was a really nice um a nice opportunity to spend some time face to face with those kids and their families so just wanted to highlight our students their hard work and their perseverance to getting to this milestone in their lives i also really appreciate this was the largest number of staff that we had able to come and so we had all of our staff who are involved in the park program there with the exception of two so that was really exciting and these teachers are just they are committed to what they do they're committed they're involved because they are passionate about working with kids and they are very skilled at working with this type of student and really finding ways to connect and build relationships and rapport with them so i just want to take this opportunity to highlight all of those those who are there and the investment and the oftentimes i call it the relentless pursuit of our kids when they um start falling through the class or they disappear for a while our teachers keep after it and they don't give up and that's one thing that reels our kids back in and that's often the key that changes their path so josanna corn kylie roman lindsey lovato amanda rigney wendy gray angela shavio harlan mark hewitt theresa uptight jackie sebesta and nick perlick and you heard mr mcdevitt mention a couple of those names so just really appreciate our staff and super proud of our students i also like to take a minute to thank mr mcdaniel for allowing us to use southwood with this kind of a crowd we didn't have a good place at whites and so it was really nice to just be able to go to our neighbors and use the auditorium and his prep and lori brewer and roger boone helping get everything set up and ready so that it was a nice it was well prepared we were in a nice cool auditorium on a hot hot sunday so really appreciate all the behind the scenes things that people like mr pawley and mr baker and aaron heiden did to make sure the building was ready for us so we just wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you to the southwest team as well all right a couple things along that line uh president mr daisy was there also one thing that was different that you did which i think everybody really thought was great was the carnations that they had tanya asked the graduates to take two or three incarnations and the people that there say a little word about how they um helped with their pursuit to to be able to graduate and i thought that was a very touching moment and a good thing so good job good job with that and then you'll hear a little bit more later on when she talks about the handbook because there's a few a couple changes there too that are kind of exciting too and i'll talk about that later too anyway thank you tanya all right i have a couple more from first of all from mr snyder he just wants to congratulate frank freshman hannah holmes hannah won the 100 200 meter run at the marion sectional on tuesday last tuesday and she is running tonight at the regional at marion also also he wanted to wish best wishes to spanish teacher joe joy edding custodian kathy steele and ryan's room teacher fred nissen as they are retiring at the end of the school year so we have i think the two teachers their last day will be tomorrow and then i believe uh kathy's last day is on friday is that right something like that pretty close to that and then just thank you for your work and thank you for your work and dedication for students at staff at norfolk enjoy your retirement also the indiana basketball coaches association girls on world mention allstate awards were recently brought to our attention congratulations to kyrah kennedy kirsten stout addie baker and emma hoover um of course the semi-state team i'll make sure i don't miss anymore and i believe that's it i didn't miss any denying you guys anymore so i believe that's it okay thank you so we'll move on to the public comment on agenda items online wait for the facebook feed okay consent agenda items approval of the minutes from our last meeting on may 11. as presented all in favor say aye financials claims the licensing thing appears for the skyward is that a for a full year that's an annual fee one year yep that's a very important software system there are three different components to that uh we didn't always have all those components uh so it makes it look a little bit larger because it has to be separated out our student information system school financials and our financials here payroll and all that so before it was split up in our school building eca so yeah yeah a lot of information but the idea we wouldn't ask us for all that information we wouldn't have to carry it but but yeah that's an annual feed more than a second to approve the claims as presented all in favor say all right payroll pretty standard payroll um i think i said this at the last board meeting um the ones at the end of may and june will be pretty uh significant just because of the stipends that we're paying out for everybody plus turning in you know the claims for the ecas at the end of the year for high schools and spring athletics and then we'll also start summer school payments in june as well so it'll be noticeably different significant it was a good word [Laughter] do we have much summer school do what we have signed up for yes that's an understatement 100.
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that's what we'll just get into yes yep i'll move to approve your recommendation a little bit so motion a second to approve wolf commercial to do the high school roofing project on third or south all right okay recommendation to approve payment of pandemic stipends and positions uh out of the esser grants so we are um in the midst of looking at sr2 right now and then there will be sr3 that actually mr gray gets to write all those grants and they actually show us what what we can receive and then we have to actually put in permission actually write the grants and actually have those approved and so the pandemic stipend that we've already discussed would be a thousand dollars for all of the employees and then positions uh we're still working on those but a couple of social workers a dean of students paraprofessionals of the buildings and and if you recall because i always have to look it up to elementary and secondary school emergency relief fund are those sr dollars that we're receiving and so we have to have that approved through the state but also we have to have board approval and so i am recommending that we you approve the payment of those pandemic stipends and the positions out of those funds and i will say though we may bring some other things to you because we also have s or three dollars that we don't have we haven't even had the grant given to us yet we know what's anticipated and what the monies that we will receive but we don't necessarily have anything to be able to write the grant yet correct mr dre that's right so that's the recommendation on the answer okay motion and second to approve the payment of the pandemic stipends and creation of the physicians under the essa grant money recommendation to approve a memorandum of understanding with the msd of wabash county teacher association so that's another one um so since these monies are available that can be bargainable and we're not in the negotiating season right now that really doesn't start until officially until the mid-september so basically we just work with the education that's what the msdwc education association that's all those letters stands for so i'm just recommending that this is a very simplified mou but it's basically just states that those stipends will be paid to the teachers that were here during the school year and finish the school year so it's all there on the board any questions just a one year deal in a second to approve the memorandum of understanding to actually pay the teachers uh that's for grant money all in favor say hi okay recommendation to approve the 2021 2022 grade configurations at metro north elementary to be pre-k through two and sharp creek elementary three through six grade this is interesting to know we've already discussed this a lot and basically the state also has to if we have a change in our configurations of our schools we have to basically not really apply but just make note of that but when i start doing that and filling out the jot form it was called they said you also have to have school board approval even though we've talked about it and had all that but i didn't really know that i think we talked about that five years ago that it could just be done by but it has to be approved by the board so it's interesting to know we haven't had any changes so but this is a change and it has to be approved by you as a the governing body uh for me to continue that jot form and i have to to forward the minutes of this meeting to them to have that changed so that is the recommendation we've already talked about a lot of fun reconfigurating as moving a grade changing grades within a building yes because they already identify that building as these grade levels yeah so that affects our title grants and we get certain amounts for different grades and so that has other ripple effects even if you change names too that has to be there's a lot of different categories that were typically we haven't ever investigated and like i said i didn't even know that until i filled out the job form and i actually gave him the letter that we sent to all the families but they said that's only for the charter schools because they don't have they don't necessarily have a board so the board has to prove that so you learn something every day you mentioned the grants but i don't want how's that going to change so um we have to spend certain percentages based on the percentage and the number of free reduced students in a building and so by having adding ability to sharp creek now we'll be obligated to spend a larger percentage of our title one funds there and since we're removing a grade from rich north we'll be required to spend less money there and so it's all a ranking system there and i was just thinking well it could also impact accountability um because metro north now has third grade which is a testing grade but next year they won't have a i don't know how they won't have a grade they they always go with the school grade above them so whatever shark creek's great is there's metronomes yeah i believe and interesting to note this will definitely change but a week ago looking just at enrollment um it was exactly the same that we'd look at metro north next year would have approximately 255 students and sharp creek would have 255 now that's going to change and hopefully more in both buildings but it was just interesting to know because of the preschool classes compared to a smaller you know we had that sixth grade class that has four sections they're moving to to the to northfield so it's going to be smaller there and then also we do not have the rise classroom next year there so in reality we're only moving one more section because we're losing the one room for the rise classroom and we're losing the one sixth grade section because there were four now there's only three and then we're moving up three so it's not not changing a lot necessarily so but it makes more sense that we can allow yeah well it makes sense because we would not be able to do the other uh preschools if we kept third grade there so i moved to a great configuration approved the great configuration of metro north and sharp creek all in favor say hi hi okay recommendation to approve an extended day out of state field trip for northfield's ap physics chemistry and calculus classes to go to cedar point on may 14th 2021 just in the nick of time they got to it [Music] we've had to actually approve stuff that would already in the past so so just for fun i've always thought about just saying no but you know you work at whatever you get the board meetings too but anyway this to approve the northfield trip to cedar point all in favor say aye aye they appreciate that that they're not going to ask for your phone number there's no unfinished business board policy we'll give a 10-second delay here for public comment on anything you do have a question okay aaron roth asks do you have any thoughts about making masks optional for students in the 2021-2022 school year we have no idea at this time it's too early to tell and that's not necessarily msd of walters county that would be the state of indiana and executive orders that are given to us that's the one sure items from board members do we have to follow that we don't have to we could there's been which boards have not followed executive orders i would think that that would be uh yeah i don't know yeah i don't see what language is in the executive order before we came to a policy that's contrary to an executive order i have a feeling though we have people storming the gates [Music] this year a positive way to figure out what happens over the summer all right so know what it is from board members work turn
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