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advocate for making sure we have more teachers in classrooms the reality is however is that we we have brought in more teachers for classrooms and and so right now what i'm trying to do is get additional teaching support student support specialists at our schools which is what um john was talking about those even more teachers in the system who would push in and provide intervention um making sure we have professionals provide even another layer of intervention for for students these will be bilingual paraprofessionals where we can get them however with these additional layers of teachers also requires administrative support across the system observations and evaluations but with the with the meteor student population also requires additional support for staff because they need to when they pick up the phone they need someone who's going to be there to answer and so you know we have all of our elementary schools who have grown in staff from our high school who has grown in staff middle schools have grown in staff uh edmund has stayed stagnant throughout this process and all of the staff right now is needier and needs support okay i think i've answered you've answered my question did i the administrative staff is alliance fund which will continue to be continually funded by the state of connecticut the yes sir money was put for the extra teachers which is let's say one time or three after three years this estimate is gone so okay so in three years we'll have to reallocate additional funds to pay for the teachers but the administration's administrators will continually be funded basically through our alliance allotment correct yeah and so i i think it's important that i do speak to the additional positions that we've added through essa and so um certainly we're not in a position to do that next year um but certainly year year three um in year four meaning next year and the year after 22 23 23 24 24 25 um the expectation also is the needs will not be the same in the system right we we're not expecting to continue to be in in post pandemic mode in terms of staffing uh for the remainder of um and so the idea is through attrition we begin to start to fold those positions that we've hired through esser and we fold those positions into the general budget as staff begins to retire right and so if we've hired 15 additional teachers last year and so maybe next year we don't do attrition replace but certainly 22 23 i'm sorry 23 through attrition we hire 30 30 plus elementary teachers every year right in a non-pandemic year and so we start folding those positions into operating budget instead of us finding a new teacher we pull from the teachers behind where that's the funding and slide them into operation so our expectation is of course this is assuming we don't experience considerable growth as an example south street elementary school for the last couple of years has had three sections in every grade level um ais elementary school has had about three sections at every grade level if we maintain those numbers when when ais you know they lose staff because of retirement we would pull one of these esther teachers who's funded through esser and slide them over to ais the same thing at south street um again this is assuming that we don't experience growth at those levels so that that's part of the plan that in that regard to address those questions about the financial cliff because we know they're real um and this is why we have john and eddie to to help us with this plan well done sir i appreciate it i get it thank you thank you mr thank you so kevin's do me a favor scroll down a little bit to the bottom i see the 200 you know and staying on on the alliance there should be a total on the bottom or something oh okay you want me to grab the these numbers you want me to totally sum up those numbers right now i could add in my head i mean that's okay i was just trying to see right so at least in this braided document we have 320k planned against the 17 million if you want to call it i don't recall okay um all right so essentially what you're saying what's bothering me here is is the i from memory i thought we had put in the use of of these these these monies in certain categories to to total down to to the totals on the bottom but i right and we i'm sorry mr jeremy it is but the point of what you're saying is is that now we have a redeployment of the the alliance money in in terms of more specific uses than what was generally outlined a number of months ago as as things progressed to more realistic situation currently you're redeploying the alliance increase as opposed to a conceptual issue you had back in may when you're putting this together and you didn't know what the impact does was of this covet on all these other issues is that correct yes and thank you for saying it that way so we john i think we submitted the the grant maybe september first or um it was definitely the beginning of the school year right well after the budget was first measured right right and um the increase you know that that 2.5 million dollar increase that john and i were talking about the the board has not at least in my short time here um has not seen the detail in terms of that submission to the state right and um what we're sharing this evening is uh we knew we would get an increase because we have annually from alliance every year um we plan for that two 2.5 million budget in which about six seven hundred thousand dollars for salaries with contractual obligations uh many of those seven hundred thousand dollars had to go to contractual obligations maybe not all of it um i don't know the exact number uh but we landed on about 1.8 to park for staffing we just didn't have the specifics on what the staffing would be um and asked the state for a couple of months to uh figure that out so in the meantime we had submitted um teaching support because we knew we were going to do it uh we're modifying that uh submission uh to reflect the intervention support that we talked about plus the forces and principles okay all right so it's just the increase because i know 100 at least my thought process is 100 of the kindergarten salaries are all funded through alliance um so the six hundred thousand that you apply to would have to be for the increase in contractual obligations at least for those you know for the the the k through five or the kindergarten uh the kindergarten course but okay i was just surprised you know again it bothers me that the details i don't know how i tell you the truth i don't know how to let it slip by because i'm a nut to to like to see these totals foot so some reason slipped by me but uh all right as long as we have the understanding that you're redefining and reallocating the the increase in the alliance money in accordance with your current needs and demands are yes yes okay all right and so and last but not least because i understand there may be questions about all of it so i'll share everything with the with the committee and the the second part is i just want to walk the committee through positions that have been budgeted in a district i mean in terms of um how i am seeing the needs along with feedback from my cabinet how i'm seeing the needs for district office i want to remind the committee of some of the positions we had budgeted prior to this school year and so during the 2021 school year in the spring of 2021 prior to courtney leaving us we had a presentation for the budget and we had talked about pulling uh facilities and operations out of the finance department and and basically i think south's point was the district has grown the district is too large for facilities and operations to live in the finance department and so at that time we had budgeted going into budgeted in the spring for a chief operations officer in addition to the new and at this point courtney had already resigned um and so we had budgeted for chief operations officer and a chief finance officer right and so those are the we were basically budgeting for pulling out facilities in operation and chief operations officer was budgeted prior to this school year started so i just want to start there right and so that that's one position and then of course uh with me being elevated to the superintendent's office that left my office open and vacant i also want to remind the committee prior my first year which was 2018-19 i started when i started there were a number of new positions added to the district it was supervisor if esl k5 that's tammy swift there was a position of curriculum administrator i'm k5 that was dr anaraco and then of course there was a director of curriculum instruction and that was kara dr cara casamaro and so those three those are three new positions that were added to the curriculum um the curriculum uh resource center anna rocco's position was budgeted out of title one and tammy swift and kara's position was budgeted out of operating fund you might also recall that the principle that king street primary was moved to a central office position [Music] was then paid out of alliance i i don't know if you hadn't knew that level of detail but he was paid out of alliance he's our srbi coordinator this left and remain budgeted in a rocko's former position of curriculum administrator this is my long way of saying we currently have budgeted a curriculum administrative position in title one paid out of title one my position my old position still budget assistant superintendent office and operating in a chief operating officer officer position that sal recommended before leaving and we had budgeted for with those three those three budgeted positions one was one budgeted out of title that was ann rocco's old position one budget on operating funds that was my old position and one budgeted uh prior to the start of the 22 21 22 school year that was the chief operating officer position i will look to use those three budgeted positions to help outfit district office moving forward and i'll have some details for you on wednesday night and the staffing chart right because when you say stuff hard to follow absolutely i'll have the detail absolutely pictures pictures graphs and well not pictures and graphs well it will be pictures i don't care houses i don't know you know definitely you know we need we need uh who reports to who absolutely kevin i thank you for your transparent this new level of transparency sir that we were not used to under the previous administration well thank you sir appreciate it says you mr russo okay is there anything you'd rather i'd rather be ignorant than not ignorant [Music] not knowing i could retain some of it kathy may ask a quick question rich yes kate please um mr wilson can you remind me i know we had it had this conversation at one point and and i certainly hear mr russo's concern about making sure we're keeping our teaching staff numbers up but um there was a a recommendation at one point i feel for um and i can't remember you know what the cap number was or what the recommended number was for when you the point at which you institute an assistant principal at a school so there were different numbers recommended i believe the number we had used was 450 when making those presentations in the spring last year okay that's what i was wondering about thank you and i'll take a look back at the powerpoints because i i think courtney and i when we making those presentations we included that number in the powerpoint so i'll take a look while we're talking that's okay and kevin it's my understanding we just completed you negotiate salary negotiations with what for assistant principal and the upper level administrators yes your numbers do your numbers today do they reflect uh those increase in increases that uh are they are we using you're using last year's numbers you salaries are we going to need some additional funding yes that's a good question so the the actual numbers is a number we will have to negotiate with um with the union interestingly enough at the elementary level we have one assistant principal but she was actually placed um she was actually placed she was formerly a principal and she was placed as an elementary principal um and so we actually have to negotiate on the assistant principal's salary with dsaa that's my long way of saying we actually don't have a negotiated number for a system principle with the unit uh so even though we have one position that person was placed in that position we actually have to negotiate the salary uh with with the unit uh and agree on a number thank you and kevin for the record historically we've never had a budget a detailed budget comparable to the operations budget for the makeup of the alliance money no funding the funding in that account had always been lump sum funding and then with conversations relative to physicians uh as a general statement when it first came to us it was all kindergarten went in there and then as we went along it was used for for other things so there was never really any breakout and i repeat myself now this is something that my suggestion would be in the future is that you have a budget comparable to the operating budget you know i don't care if you do it in line numbers or however you do it uh so it makes things comparable and that's why i think we were taken back because we never got into the level of detail in in the alliance as to what went where and and and things like that uh but uh so if you just put that on your note and to to at least make things comparable so that you know we're more informed as to what the budgets are and what you're looking to have to spend it against my suggestion would be for each of those buckets you know do the same thing so that we know that of the x number of dollars in these budgets in these buckets or or funding sources another way of putting it it is that there is a definitive concept as to what the money is going to be used for to totally agree um and john ed and i it's something that we've been working on the poor guys since they've been here and so our our goal is to make sure we can present out on our bigger grants the same way we present out on our general budget i mean i think that's what you're getting at mr j so yeah the reporting on the grants have been historically poor i mean absolutely poor we had no reporting on the grants and and when you talk about the grants you know it's talked about lump sum lump sum numbers of some 35 forgetting the the care's money but some 35 thereabouts million dollars of which you know 14 or 17 is made up of alliance and title 1 and all that stuff but nothing more specific than than that and these numbers are growing and there should be more accountability at this point here and clarity is to what we're spending money on [Music] yes that that is definitely our intention um agree with you it's so you know it's not a it's a constructive criticism that's all it's in it's meant to be you know but okay anything else kevin that's it from from me i don't know if john or ed had anything else to add no well great job i i will make sure um i reiterate these things on wednesday evening but more importantly have the visuals and the presentations just kind of support what we're talking about tonight okay good any other committee members have any questions before we i have just a quick question rich and this is kind of unrelated but i was contacted by someone who is asking um there was a grant that was won for ais for um from the connecticut office of the arts and it was intended for what they call higher order thinking activities i guess you know because the schools were closed last year that this grant was not used and i'm just wondering if it's still available for use this year okay if if it is i i have to look it up and so it's easier for me to see um grants that are in what we call our e-grant system the higher order grant is not one of those so i'll have to ask tomorrow and see where we are with with the high grant and see where we landed just in terms of its expiration and uh was that carried over because of the pandemic um i i'm not sure it's a smaller grant so i absolutely appreciate it thank you if i made you a liar they all count though we we like all the grants coming in sorry mr oh no i apologize sorry it's the zoom if i can go just go off script for a moment where are we as far as getting an assistant superintendent to take some of the load off your shoulders sir yeah thank you i appreciate that question um and so part of um the presentation for reorganization on wednesday um i i will share out our thinking my thinking on how to how to restructure us um and and just a little snapshot of the thinking is uh turn my office my old office into um specific support for k5 and 612.

12. and we've we've had a consultant now prior to prior to my arrival as an assistant superintendent who said that the district should have two directors a k-5 and 6-12 and then we had the most recent consultant which i'll be uh sending to your attention this evening um say that we should have direct his recommendations actually assistant superintendent of elementary and secondary um but but the overriding uh recommendation is making sure that you have support for these two levels um and so that's my long way of saying mr russo i'm i'm going to recommend on wednesday support that looks a little bit different than how my op than how my office previously supported supported schools um one at a k5 level one at a 612 level and i'll have some more detail for the board on wednesday evening just just to make sure that you show up on wednesday um so i'll make sure i have that detail for you but i uh it's really connected to the challenges um that we've and this was long before the pandemic jonathan costa from ed advance recommended directors k5 and 612 this person our most recent consultant he actually recommended assistant superintendent k5 and 612.

i'm not going to recommend that a little different but i am going to recommend support for those two different levels and turn my office into a little different position i'll wait till wednesday night thank you i don't want to get trouble with the full board telling the committee everything for wednesday okay okay but this is your you know it's great and i like your future vision that's your job and a responsibility um i'm going to ask on wednesday if you would also in addition to the verbiage as kathy had mentioned just have some sort of a an organizational chart so we can follow who's on first and then again a visual is always good with your new positions to see who reports to them etc all right i appreciate it mr j thank you good okay with that if nobody else has any questions uh i'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second thank you okay so this committee meeting has been adjourned i thank everybody for their attendance and we'll see you all on wednesday thank you everyone have a good evening thanks

move to the consent agenda sorry bush in a second we'll vote on our computer thank you i'd like to say thanks for the prairie winds golf association that's pretty generous donation yeah that's a pretty high there motion passes move on to your state staff recognition excuse me in may we usually recognize the burlington mason teacher awards at the end of the year staff celebration that we have on the last day of school well again these awards they didn't get to us on time in may so when we got these awards in august there were actually errors on the certificates so we are finally getting a chance to recognize those people again the masons were so thankful that they recognized the staff members from each building and we do have award winners here um michael vander linden is the one from burlington high school he is involved in tech week they're getting ready for the play for friday and saturday so he was not able to be here charlie whitworth from the middle school and cindy dudley from the elementary school and again congratulations to these staff members for their hard work and dedication to our students in usd 244 so give them a we have some round here so i'm gonna let the building principals hand those out we'll get pictures um at the other side of the building um with them in front of a big wildcat that we have out there and if you guys wouldn't mind go and take them around the other side for a picture in front of the wildcat that would be terrific an individual shot if you want to get a group of two that would be great thanks guys for coming thank you thank you guys for your service [Music] section the concerns or anything sign up for anything welcome back move on communications there is a thank you card in there from the yearbook pretty nice are your books the technology is starting to pick up yes you're just gonna have we had a big assembly over us we were pretty excited the kids were pretty cool [Music] um i i would like since mr hill's here it hasn't happened but it's going to happen we have a young lady that the rotary club has who has signed up for the marines we do have another individual but he came really later he just came in the fold that is doing the the national guard uh jordan uh hardcoded signed up for the national guard but she had signed up for the marines quite a while ago and they came and we uh visited and they chose uh mj huff to go to the tomb of the elements of london soldier it's going to occur this week we're going to have an ipad our sister is getting to go and another lady i don't remember exactly who if you whenever you hear something that you'd like to add but she's going to be able to go there and uh it's the kind of the first time ever and maybe it never happens again we don't know where basically civilians could have signed up to go to uh deliver a bottle on the tomb of the unknown soldier because they don't do that very often i'm just telling you i don't think they've ever done that in 100 years so uh she's getting to do that she's going to lay a sunblock the tuna then soldier and her sister madison which we had school she's getting to go with her and she's going to video that uh we were going to try to stream it but we don't know how long the line's going to be and all that so i told him i said we can get just a young lady that i think is very well deserving as you can see she got 23rd in the state from cross country and has that very year there too so great student great kid so and i'm sure she is very very excited about it um against the 100th anniversary of the two of the unknown soldiers and in 100 years the public has not been allowed to approach the tune and so this is truly a once in a lifetime opportunity and if you've ever read much about the soldiers that guard the tomb of the unknown soldier if you've never done that i would suggest you take a little time because that is the greatest history lesson lesson for yourself to know one of the things that i'll just give you a for instance they are they have pledged never to cuss ever after they've done that i mean there's a lot of little things but just um uh our kids didn't come back from nationals they they did get to go to nationals in ffa uh it's always a great experience for we had some bunch of young ladies heard nothing but good things about that when they went to nashville this last week i would tell you this guys this is the first time and then the first meeting that i felt like we're somewhat back to some kind of normalcy i mean i know cove is still out there and we all have to we're dealing with it but i uh it was nice to be able to talk in a linkage about what's going on and not have to say oh we have this many kids that are quarantined or this many kids that have coped so and and i i still believe it's still out there to the point where we're going to deal with it more in our schools but i think it's nice that i feel like our kids are getting back i see a lot of smiles and kids seem to be having a lump i can just feel it in the air with the way the kids are right now and stuff so great great thing you know lots of things our district band we don't know how they did they went saturday and uh mr bossy told me the district band will be uh sent out here and hopefully he thought he would have it today we'll know if our kids get to make it onto the stage as well we can just keep going thank you very much elementary any questions or comments from the elementary report back to a veterans day ceremony this year just veterans and like a plus one rsvp that it's our technology on our halloween prairie day didn't overdose we anticipated but i think we have a solution for that because so that should be shared a lot of positive comments throughout the night i think people forgot what it was like to be at a wrestling tournament and it went very very smooth and we had so we go around and i try and do it every four or five times a year just celebrating the staff in front of kids so this year i had jc belcher and alex motz join me and they go around and pass out treats and interrupt class and i mean teachers love it they love being you know just this at this point in time it will say thank you for a good first quarter and the teachers like being talked about in front of their kids so we'll be doing it again this the sunlight christmas music what's that you came up with the name of that um [Music] and i did get a bookcase donated from the library so i don't have to take well last year i borrowed a card but it's a little bit looks a little cleaner a little more professional than what i did last year so then i we carry cooler around and make a pop and snack and eat it whatever okay we'll move on to special ed report questions or comments um and flexible with um maintenance effort just reopened we've already made the next record we're waiting to see if we get it so that's because i checked away on all the different data so from the state standpoint educational technology support guys nothing to add nothing was changed on the report just something to share with you a couple of you've asked about um kind of where are all the different things that you can follow that were late if you're not aware of the publications area this past year sandy locks retired last year michael anderland took over that area one of the things that they were to do was to incorporate more views of social media with the things that they were doing to promote and to televise so you know they're doing a yearbook plus uh this year where kids actually could log on to a portal and upload pictures and we talked about that so that all of a sudden the yearbook becomes even more personalized for that kid those groups of kids that are involved those pictures get screened so don't worry about that they get an adult screen from so that all happens there to make sure that they're appropriate but lots of different areas that you could follow even if you're a tick-tock person and i'm sure james and ronnie are tick-tockers uh so the whole thing is you can even follow along on tick-tock okay you guys do a good job michael's doing a good job on that yeah so lots of different ones that you can follow in addition to just the normal ones that you follow for the district which is us on facebook facebook twitter and instagram so just want to make you aware and share that with you any questions is there something like this on our website like where people can go no this is what's getting ready to go i want you guys to have it first and then we're going to be sending this out to jpeg and so forth so that they can follow along and have reference to that so that was kind of what i asked michael to put together for all right awesome us you move on to the superintendent's report we do have an american education week coming up next week so we get to celebrate with our staff and again we're just very fortunate to have the staff that we have uh working with the kids and doing great things they're just a i'd say just a blessing to us or our staff again couldn't do what we do without them so we're very thankful and we'll celebrate next week that we'll also have some looking some treats in the in the staff lounge as well that we'll put out there so again thank you to our staff and look forward to celebrating american education week this is kind of good news they even have hot off the press updated information here so anyway right now our administration directors are not proposing any changes to our health and absence guidelines um we think we might have hit you know after an adjustment you know we started out in september we had some input from our code advisory committee also from administration directors also from you guys board of education made some slight adjustments in october um and we're not proposing any changes so anyway uh quick information this is from laurie herman caught off the press at 5 59 today uh antigen testing numbers for october we had 50 staff and students that participated 170 total tests performed had only five positive tests out of those 170 tests and she figured correctly 97 return to school rate so that is excellent information and there's some really great people doing antigen testing for us in the mornings with our students and our staff so i don't know if you have any questions over the health and absence guidelines but we're proposing to leave those as is for right now [Music] so yeah i don't have any questions i mean it's good to hear those it seems like it's i mean the purpose is to keep his school in face-to-face education and i i think we're achieving that goal and i think we're doing it without the confrontation of masked no mask and i think that's very important we're not we don't have like lines drawn in the sand like we're going to do this for the rest of the year we're going to do that for the rest of the year we're evaluating and we're seeing what we need to do so also rory did share with me another part here she had she god bless her because boy she's working her you know she's working her tail off illness rates today again in our buildings all were less than five percent and covered positive rates were all less than three percent so she didn't have the exact numbers but she was working on those um so uh again we're doing really really well so anyway and then the last thing i guess i have um is uh the the the possibility i wanna and i shared this with you before um we have the ability to do what's called premium pay and our administration directors we put together a plan to encourage staff retention and attendance we have some positions that are not filled as lindsay has mentioned fortunately we're not in other we're not like other districts we don't have like 10 teacher positions or 20 teacher positions or 50 teacher positions not filled we just have a very few but i can tell you it's a challenge to find those those few people so we want to try to encourage against that retention and attendance we can use our esser three funds or s or two s or two or s or three funds either way for premium pay now they don't they don't use the term retention or like a bonus they don't want you you're you're emphasizing that we we have some positions open we're emphasizing the need for our people to be here we're emphasizing the importance again for the for them to i'd say be doing great things with our kids and so on and so forth so with that in mind um we've got a plan here and i don't know if you could drag that or not so we can put it up on the screen um to see and i don't know if you have questions about this at all or want to look at any discussion at all so the first semester we don't have an attendance rate for that first semester bonus no because because we didn't have it right exactly okay and i kind of modeled this after the topeka topeka is doing something very similar to this and so um anyway having said that uh this is kind of what we're looking at what we felt like we needed to do with this first semester to say people thank you just thank you for being here thank you for being with us thank you for you know doing great things with our kids and then the second semester tying it into an attendance piece um so it's not like we're taking money away from them again if they want to use leave they can usually then it would be like say five days in the second semester if you use day six or day seven or day eight you wouldn't be eligible for that thousand dollars piece uh that premium paid piece in the second semester um do we have enough money for us or funds yes we do yes we can utilize that in so3 funds remember we have to use 20 for educational loss if you will or working on helping kids to maybe minimize or to hopefully recoup and gain from maybe some lost time due to coping whether it be um than being sick or being quarantined or isolated and we're looking at some like i know like we talked about the linkage uh tonight or we're looking at some different ways that we can we can do use that money and we'll be talking about that uh on friday with our administrators and directors possible so if you've gone more in the second semester it's either all or nothing correct yes so you're not taking away money from people again it's not taking away from people yeah it's offering that opportunity yeah they want to take 10 days of leave less money on exactly so yeah this would be yes now there can be there can be a thought there too some people might say well wait a minute are you really are you forcing people to come when they're sick to work that can be a that no that's not the case at all again if you come to work and you are ill and it's obvious our administrators and directors are going to have to have some conversations with people to you know to have that that that that that conversation if you will so that you can't you have to we have that right to be able to ask them to go and get cleared by asking a physician a doctor to be okay to be in attendance if there's such that you know you see that people are not well how many days are they allowed during that semester for leave so if you're carrying 70 you only take four and you have to give up the rest before you lose that no no they would i say they would carry over if you were full if you were full yes but you can sell them back if your bank's full yes so i don't know if you have questions about either the first part of it in the second part i'll take any questions administrative directors you can chime into and you said you based this kind off what topeka did correct kind of with their premium pay and then kind of essentially now they started theirs at the beginning of the year and they put attendance in the beginning of the year they did with theirs because we didn't notice okay we didn't we didn't start this afternoon didn't feel like we could do something at the beginning of the year with attendance their uh their premium topeka 501 has if i'm not mistaken i think the lady uh told me to have like 84 you can tell her suggested three months so theirs is a whole different ballgame yeah a lot more sound now and they are offering so they and they are offering um well if i'm not mistaken i think it's four thousand dollars do you do the administrators you support them they helped to to develop the plan i like the idea do most people use more than five days in a semester depends some people will definitely they always do and you know some that um have already exhausted their for the year um but you will also have some that it may save them from it maybe i mean you have a few people i think they'll stay for using too just you know somebody by chance gets coveted let's say they even get it in your wallet or at work who knows they're off for at least 10 days has there been any thought put into if you're vaccinated for coping and you get covered that doesn't count against your five-day absence for that at all what if and i use myself as an example who missed almost a month of work last year very unusual especially all at once um and i mean as much as i would like the thousand dollars i mean yeah like instead of saying like if you are vaccinating you get code it doesn't count but we you know we could talk a little bit about like the pay for the incident and pay for about being vaccinated yeah i just hate birds counting against when they did everything they possibly could to sometimes that's just luck of the draw i mean you could get influenced and be up for just as much time so you know it's hard it's hard to draw those lines i'm just curious i think that's the biggest pieces it's very hard to draw those lines and keep in mind this keep in mind this is a bonus it's not taking anything away from anybody and that's good that's what we totally settled on as far as like what i live and rely on once a month that would not have changed yeah felt like five days the 95 we talked about that for a while is it 95 is it 90 and so we just took home that 95 days you guys would know your staff and what i mean so let's say i was vaccinated and i didn't get covered for my kid my you know like the whole class gets it or whatever then you could surely reconsider that we'd have a conversation we could come back and have this discussion again you guys always have that right to reserve the right to come back again it's kind of like when you go back to the health and absence guidelines you know we put it out in september we made an adjustment in october and now november we're not making any adjustments and we hope you know we won't have to make any adjustments moving forward we we may we we may have this plan we may make a revision it's very possible we also talked about uh well we've already had one class that i thought of maybe more so i made wrong but that's better modified quarantine so the whole class was that they still got to keep coming just in a separate location as a teacher not as much as a parent but if they were healthy enough and wanted they could teach from home and then those days might not count against them now that's more difficult to do so that would be something we have to look at but well and i think you always get into crossing the errors there because uh how do i say that i got it from some kid you know you really don't have that opportunity so there has to be something very specific like that in there because i don't i might say tonight if i got it drawn in i were talking from him well i really don't know right this is 16 just to get the extra but you know that means no easy job we hope that yeah we hope that we increase our substitute pool because it is it is down um and i was at the ksp conference this week early this weekend and there are people in much worse shape than we are well for example topeka 501 you do not you don't you don't get to go to indian services during the day they are down so many substitutes no end services during the day they can't let their staff go so there's no training has to be after hours or weekends and that's not that's not great so i have got two subs full time right obviously i see the attention i just think you hear you got somebody that has say a couple instances where they gotta miss a couple days and then they're like you know they're not getting them for whatever reason if they have a child to get sick a couple of times they've got to stay home then they're out now they're still getting their base pay i understand that but it's not like they're out and during the school year or something like that what's the general rule though you your employees you look at you know i i haven't possibly they never take off i mean just but you know do and they're usually the same ones so i think that's an incentive maybe those same ones don't do that yeah well i think one thing to consider is a little bit different in our setting is we also have breaks or holiday break i mean like spring break they're already off for five days so we're talking january february march april may five months they get a week off in march half of may's off so not even that plus if you a good friday they're off um then there's some in-service days so some certified would be there for classes now that doesn't mean their kids are gonna get sick on those days because obviously they never it's not and i think i think you guys are on the right track it's like we're not penalizing anybody this is just a is a moment's on top of and if if you happen to be safe during that time dang it you know i mean i understand but i think you have to have some kind of basis for if you're going to go on an attendance one way or the other if we went to if we went to 90 so thinking turns out to be 10 days so in january february march april may that would be that'd be twice maybe twice a month or more that's that's a lot of days off and in terms of thinking about it like 10 days into one semester it's no i mean we did discuss this even though we discussed options like for example do we just do it at two thousand dollars right at the beginning right now in december for everybody and not doing anything in january january through may in the second semester but we felt like we you know we wanted to incentivize those really great employees who are there regularly and because we can and for that recruitment and retention we want them to come back and be with us year after year after year and because right now again we're we're seeing we're seeing a lack of employees um and applicants we just we have and that's happening everywhere as we know hopefully a little bit better and i think we even talked and you guys tell me we talked about less than time oh and we talked about x amount of dollars for the prorating the days to different amounts but priority the days to different amounts as well as prorating the time they get hired in for those people we kind of like this disaster [Music] so you're trying to get people to attend and not use those days because you need them there yes so what about the guy that or the gal that is involved in multiple extracurricular assignments that takes them away from their schoolwork multiple days a year more than five professional professional league so they're if they go for track or they go for ffa or whatever will not count against them no we're talking about the the days that are specific to their discretionary for for a discretionary day because they have 12 of them they got to call that discretionary anything else would be a professional lead okay good question so it's not a league day it's it's a discretion it's a discretionary day yeah okay yeah i think those are great because those are questions that are going to come up absolutely do you think we if we do right when we talked about this i mean you did see a lot of people last year all straight from my building you know people that are at their bank they were finally trying to find days to burn their leave in the month of may when there are zero subs and so we had to block out some days because they're works up because they don't feel like the 85 today is a good trade-off for what their days are worth and i'm not here to argue that for her against them but you know like yeah i mean we need the people there so that's why we feel like it's important to tie it to that because it is five days is one day a month for the second semester and i think we all think that's reasonable there are going to be some situations that and i just i i have to apologize i was working on two different documents there was one sentence that did get left off here on this and the reason we had to do this and basically i'm going to read the sentence here staff will receive this retention incentive it's still employed by usd 244 as of november 26 2021.

good afternoon everyone i'd like to call this november school board meeting to order and i welcome all of you here this evening thank you for joining us and if you will please stand 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 next let's move on to tonight's adoption of the agenda all right um a second second thank you all in favor aye all right thank you all right moving on to call of the public i do not have any sheets however is there anyone that wishes to escape to us this evening all right information and discussion first one is i apologize student council report leslie she's at practice probably still possibly and miss deangelo's been out so well why don't we move on and if she comes in we can obviously have her come back up how about the yavapai county education foundation grant update um hi my name is lizzie cardiner i am a first grade teacher at tech i'm here quickly to present my project that was funded by the yavapai county education foundation early literacy plays a significant role in a child's educational success reading not only exposes children to letters sounds sight words and new vocabulary but it also builds knowledge increases listening skills and comprehension reading is also tied to achievement in other subjects data is proven that there's a large learning gap for children who have access to age-appropriate books at home compared to children who do not the virtue book club project i created gives every first grader attempt a free book on their birthday to help build or start their own home library this project helped to give families the tools they need to help their child become successful in reading i know personally my first grade students have all been very excited when is their birthday and they receive their free book they can't wait to get home to read it many who have not had their birthday yet are even counting down the days so they can also get their free book for to bring home through the apple pie county education foundation i was able to purchase enough book for the next few years to help our students in the community grow their literacy skills and foster love of reading thank you it's awesome i just want to say uh thanks to mr carter who's representing the education foundation i assume as a representative just to kind of be here in support of lizzie [Music] all right um we have lots of hardware in front of you guys we had two state champions uh ships this weekend um that i'll talk about we actually had three this weekend but the two that um have the trophies in front of you are our boys and girls soccer championships they that happened on saturday down at williamsfield high school and both matches were close and kind of came down to the wire but they worked really hard we had a lot of parents that participated down there and i do want to give a shout out to our coaches alan foster for the girls and todd kerry for the boys who have led their teams for multiple years and uh led up to this this point where we have the double state championship i believe for todd it's actually he's won both as a student and as a coach an athlete and a coach which is kind of amazing for for teenage high school can you remind us who they played the girls played northland prep which is in flagstaff which has been their nemesis and the um boys played cambodia yeah the third championship i wanted to mention is our mountain bike team which yesterday won their state championship and then in addition we had two girls there is avalyn somerville who was the points leader in the girls freshman category and addie holberg who placed third in the girls freshman category but they won the division two arizona cycling association championship yesterday so um i want to give a shout out to them and congratulations to the mountain bike team as well [Music] been and it's been close over the last several years the boys and the girls have been within within a whisker of winning the championship and so it was you know i to quote alan foster he goes if i can't he was so proud of his girls and the quality of athlete that he had he goes if i can't win a championship these girls i shouldn't be coaching so it was um he he's he uh he let him but the girls did did the work and uh and the same with the boys and we're really proud of what they accomplished enrollment um we continue to be up right we're about 150 adm over last year which is at our pre-pandemic enrollment level um we do anticipate um a revised budget in december is that correct mr livingston yes so it shouldn't be huge changes we got it shouldn't be as wholesale changes but we still want to make sure we get that revised budget with the current numbers that we we have from the state um you have a calendar in your packet make sure you refer to that but the big thing coming up is we have our thanksgiving feasts that have been scheduled at all four schools um territorial has so many parents that we decide to do theirs over two days so we start with territorial on tuesday november 16th and finish up on wednesday november 17th then we follow up with on thursday november 18th with heritage middle school china valley high school on monday the 22nd in del rio on tuesday the 23rd i will get times out to you but if you would like we would we encourage you to participate come on out and help it's a really neat event to see all the parents come in and other community members and grandparents and everyone else and um i know that that uh in heidi if i'm wrong there's kids that have told you this is the only thanksgiving that you're gonna get yes in some cases many times over the years yeah it would help if you could send us the times that you want us to be at the different schools right we're gonna identify that tomorrow in dlt and i'll send you um out the times that um to be there absolutely yeah on the same subject um didn't you send an email out that you're looking for funds for or for donating for donations for turkey dinners right so i'm uh we're collecting money for uh community i'm working with lori marley our homeless liaison our family resource specialist to identify families that may need to get a turkey dinner so what i do is i get the turkey dinners out at safeway and they're with when i add throw in the pie which you gotta have pine with cream it's about 70 to 75 dollars and so we're collecting money through the education foundation so they'll be the fiscal agent all the money goes to them it is a um they are a qualifying charitable organization so that could be a tax credit if you choose to um and you're allowed up to 800 that's separate from the school tax credit and so we're taking that money i'll go buy the meals and deliver them on wednesday um in the morning to families that laurie marley identifies that may have that mean i i told you you know i was telling somebody i've delivered to hotel rooms because that's where they were living that's the family i've delivered to rvs out in a pasture i've delivered to places that most people wouldn't want to live and there's there's definitely a need out there so um yeah it's it's um it's you know kind of sad to deliver these but kind of neat that we're helping out a family so so would you say that 70-75 feeds how many people um four to six is what it what i believe that they advertise it as but it includes mashed potatoes cranberry sauce the turkey rolls uh a pie with cream and green beans or something like that yeah okay so we just have to fill out a form as i understand and get back to you correct we have them actually have a lobby if you want to get one on the way out i can get chef for him and you get that back to karen and she'll work with the foundation and get it deposited then i'll based on how much we raise we'll go ahead and buy that many turkeys but you can take it from the foundation funds if we get the block already for the foundation this would be additional in addition to the foundation those like the special funds investigations outside the 400 limit there's 800 for the foundation and so you could it could still go towards um as an enrolled agent i can advertise this um there's a 600 deduction as a married couple that you can take as a deduction on your taxes even if you itemize yeah so yep it's in the office but yeah it's on topic if you've already done your tax credits on top of that um have you ever done your tax credit yet oh okay she can she can take care of it for you all right um i've emailed you all any well any questions about the calendar i've emailed you all about the advocate spending limit and i wanted to share that with you um so back i believe in the 80s there was a constitutional amendment that said that based on a calculation that only a certain portion of the state budget could be spent on education k-12 education and so because of some changes this year that includes um 301 which was a proposition the extra money that we get for there which is actually called the classroom site fund is no longer a proposition it was a state law now so it used to be not part of the calculation and now it is there was a restoration of district additional assistance and then on top of that there was some additional money put into the into the fund um with um 20 by 2020 which was the teacher raises that that came out and the calculation is based on prior year funding a prior student council sorry prior student council well if you think about what happened last year the state lost 50 000 kids last year so the numbers are low because of cobits last year but a lot of those kids have come back and this is a statewide calculation optional value so because of that it is anticipated that these all the k-12 schools and districts and charter schools in the state are going to have to cut 16 of their budget which works out for us to be about 2.85 million dollars and that number came from the ade last week i think it was 2.85 million but we won't know if we have to do it until march 1st when you're talking eight or six months of the 10 months have already passed for the school year so now there is a mechanism that the state legislature can take to waive that requirement requires a two-thirds majority of the both the house and the senate and we are hopeful that that will happen in january um it is an election year um this impacts charter schools and there's lots of um charter school favoring legislators in the legislature and so we are hopeful that this will happen we've been talking to our lobbyists and others and i know that there's been superintendents meeting with karen fan the senate president and the speaker the house and some others and we are hopeful um but right now we're just going as is until we find out kind of more in january once the legislative session takes starts in early january but i wanted to draw that number to you 2.85 million um it would be difficult to operate cutting 2.85 million in march triggers that like the fiscal year that's why it would be difficult to communicate all right you know it's it's you know we still have electricity that we're gonna have to pay we still have a lot of things that we've already paid for and bought early and so really at that point the only thing we have left is is salaries and again i i don't want to scare anyone it's i don't anticipate us having to go there but i it's important that you understand and know what what could potentially be out there so questions on that mr falcon yes so in the event that the worst happens or that there is an exception would we would we be able to fill our teachers everyone's who works in the district's contracts potentially now so that's the problem so late in the fiscal year you know we only have left that small amount which is i think what john is saying pretty much what it cost us to fill out that finish up the fiscal year that's what's so scary about this yeah but uh the good news is it's going to affect every school district in arizona from what you understand that is correct it's not just a chino valley issue um and uh you know it's happened before this is not the first time that this has happened and the legislature has has made the waiver um what i'd like to see is that the calculation is but you know it's almost 40 years old and if there is going to be that calculation it needs to be updated in my opinion and so hopefully part of that calculate or part of the legislation that would take place i i you know i believe it's in the constitution so there would have to be a rep for a constitutional referendum that they would have to do but they need to do that as part of the legislature could put that vote forward for the people to vote and do a temporary fix by waiving it yeah right so i don't think the legislature i certainly don't want to go through this on an annual basis questions about that all right uh vaccinations i've i included the current covenanting statistics summary cases are going up in the output count it looks like they'll be going up again next week the preliminary data that i have looks like it's already exceeded on last week's numbers so things are going up however to vaccination boosters are available for our staff for all for all employees of a school district boosters are available you go to safeway or walgreens and you get your vaccination there for free you just let them know that you know you work for a school district and there's also some other some other qualifiers if you are in the health field and age qualifiers so um those boosters are available um we are not having a booster clinic just because it's when we had our initial vaccination clinic they weren't available you know at retail establishments and so it's easy you know my mom went to walmart went shopping and got her vaccination her booster in one and her flu shot on the other arm and and they went bought a grocery so it's um they're definitely out there john just for the record i went to my marriage and i want to say if we in and out in 15 minutes for our boosters so very effective yeah listen who's an appointment peter and then last week there was the approval of vaccinations for children 5 to 11 years of age those use the pfizer vaccine which don't really work well out at mobile clinics and so um we don't have anyone in chino valley that i know i looked on both the safeway and walt disney's website today so right now there is no one in chino valley no retail establishments there may be physicians that offer it safeway's going to sign saying they have both they may have well if they may not have the children's dose oh yeah that's true so um on the website for safeway they didn't have anyone actually they safely didn't have any arizona establishments walgreens had the walgreens over on sheldon i believe in the um depot marketplace had availability for kids and i know there's some physicians that are some pediatricians that are offering as well so they are out there as things move forward there'll be more establishments when we get some establishment establishments in chino valley that are offering it we'll get that information to help the families but because of the storage engine issues i don't believe we're going to be able to have any vaccinations in kids because of the fiber effects being ultra cool storage there but um we'll share that information as we get it and again students and staff that are either vaccinated or have a positive copa test from a from the past are not subject to quarantine so getting those younger kids vaccinated will help out at the del rio and territorial schools and lastly last week federal osha came out with vaccination requirements for employers with over 100 employees it's murky whether you know and i think there's already been a federal judge or an appeals panel in in back east that has put a halt on on it but that applies to us or not i don't know i know that arizona has there's been a couple or at least talk about from the attorney general along with the governor about filing cases against the bible administration the federal government because they don't feel that it's legal and so i anticipate further legal avenues to try to put a stop to it um i spoke to our attorney on friday um on a different manner i just asked him about this he goes no one knows what's going on just wait um the requirement is the way the rules read that i understand is to work for an employer with over 100 employees either need to be vaccinated or tested weekly and we have the infrastructure we believe to do that weekly testing that should not be a problem to ramp that up and if you are not vaccinated you need to wear a face covering on to work so and that's the course folks right now i don't anticipate it you know the the deadline or the um implementation date was january 4th the um for the vaccination part i don't anticipate with a city map i imagine there's going to be court cases and if so we're we i think we're ready to do that but if i don't think we're going to have to at least so but we'll keep you know i've been sharing this information with the with our staff um so they should most of them should be aware of this um not to scare them i just want them to when this comes out i don't want them to say hey what's going on and i also shared with them because i thought about this at the time i don't think you know there's going to be lawsuits to try to prevent this and so um we'll come back to the board to come up with some implementation if we if we do have to do that questions about that lastly uh my evaluation is next month so be please be prepared to spend a little bit of time in executive session after the meeting um as required in policy i've included the evaluation instrument with you and cindy you wanted to mention something about that yeah uh just i know in the past we've always kind of done more of the informal evaluation what i'm recommending this year just because we do have a couple of new members etc is go ahead and fill out your evaluation of the superintendent the the one that's attached and once we get into executive decision executive session we can make the determination exactly how we want to proceed if we want to follow the guide we want to do it informal if we want to use this as our guide however it works out for us any questions concerns comments because i don't know what is our policy regarding the evaluation state i believe it states that the board may use it does it's not required to use this but may use it right i can tell you that in my experience so this will be my sixth evaluation that um i've given it out every year and the the board has chosen chosen not to use it um and i don't know prior to that and you've been you're on the board prior to that there's a very complex one beforehand which is why it was redone in this more logical simplified form and yes we played it once and every left after that we went to the informal so i just think it might be a good guide for us this year and then we can make that determination exactly anything else for mr schull all right thank you moving on to item 61 is our financial report for activity for october 31st in the 2021-202 fiscal year honorable members of the governing board administration staff guests a quick summary of our financial position at the end of october of the current year i'd like to just cover a couple of areas operating fund if you look at the operating fund budget this has come up before 2.8 of that is not scheduled to be at the end of the year spent or used so we're getting almost a three percent unspent balance we do loan monies short term through six different funds that are cash based and the only way the county will write checks against those funds is if we have the expense it really belongs to those funds at the time we submit the expense in another fund that has cash so it's like uh being a banker for some of these other funds once those funds came back our operating fund for about four hundred thousand four hundred sixty four thousand then our operating fund cash goes back up expense goes down we've got about three percent budgeted for not being used all things being the way they are now uh we've discussed that a couple times our capital budget is just over a million dollars 42 percent of that at the present time is either spent or encumbered to be spent and that's again a pretty good place to be a real quick rule of thumb would be if you've got a 12 month operating year like we do and we're not even to the sixth month or the end of december yet you better not be ahead of that 50 expenses so 42.75 is about where we feel we should be at that point with capital we may not spend all of that this year we certainly don't have to you've seen some recent vehicles you see our scissor another one adjacent ways fund our budget's around 400 000 there we have instead of penny on that yeah we do have a project over to the west at the farm a 2000 foot fire lane that we're looking at that will take probably half of that budget and there's cash in there right now to do that race is about 200 000 john i was going to ask you about that is that going to actually happen this year do you know well it's been part of another project that we may discuss later and whether we're going to do it on its on its own standard its own merits we we're not it was part of the bid that we're going to discuss and we probably will table that bid so it won't be awarded tonight that's my understanding it's actually on the consent agenda for y'all to refuse the bid and then we'll evaluate internally whether we want to um submit the bid in a different format the bid was too much and to cut the cut the bid lower it was the bid responses did not support us doing a smaller scale job job um or use the bid at a lower scale when building instead of two so um we're asking you to refuse the bid and then come back and and we may submit another bit for you restructure a little bit go from two buildings to one like that i think that's it there's some economies of scale if one general contractor shows up in those multiple projects pre-unit costs might be a little bit lower so if this bundle did not project really any questions then on the consolidated board report so far there's a couple funds i'd like to just bring your attention to one of them is one one it's a fun 691 and on the cash report there it shows fund 691 has a budget of about 650 000 that's our building renewal fund for all the heating ventilation air conditioning projects we've added to that a few we've got some roof analysis reports and some weatherization uh design project built into there currently we spent fifty thousand one hundred and sixty nine dollars in that fund and we just got another five thousand one hundred thirty five dollars from the school facilities board to spend on the weather innovation project at territorial schools so that is moving forward slowly uh when all those projects will be finished it's probably at least a year out before everything's done and also i think i think carolyn probably got a memo on this one with results-based funding did you see that memo about being funded i thought maybe i was the only person that got it so yeah for this year our allocation is 400 per student it was awarded for 410 students for a total of 160 4 366 for results case funding and that's that's kudos to the real school so we got 96 000 or 60 of it on november 5th [Music] would you like to go ahead and move into the student activity fundraiser yes i believe this is around 35 000 less than it was in february first time i saw this report and down to 116 000 but that's a really good sign just means [Music] last week we had a short meeting with cindy daniels small things that we definitely need to improve on but we know what they are the usfr compliance issues like the auction was one of them when we have an auction we want to bring those items together any questions on the student activity reporting thank you mr lindenstein all right moving on to agenda 7a through jay our consent agenda this is an action item and it does need a motion for approval i move that we approve the consent agenda as stated second all in favor item number eight a is our personnel report with supplement so on the regular personnel report there's one new classified two new classified subs three resignations eight classified changes three classified coaches nine extra duties and a slew of timesheets on the supplement we have two new classified subs three classified changes and an extra duty fairly straightforward stuff for this time of year nothing unusual or we are down for bus drivers right now um and i we are training lots of bus drivers but these bus drivers that we're training only want to do field trips which is helpful because that means we don't have to take a route driver off a route to do it but we are still looking for bus drivers um i'll be coming to you in december when we do a minimum wage increase maybe upping the the pay for bus drivers and then um chris walton our transportation director would like to implement a kind of an incentive signing bonus type situation for bus drivers as well and so we'll be possibly bringing that to you as well um other districts have done that where you get money a little bit once you sign on and maybe a little more at six months and a little more at one year that type of thing to make sure that they stay with us but um unfortunately you can't just take somebody off the street and put them in a bus they it takes a while to actually do training i'm getting their cdl and their bus served and things like that so there's some lagging time but we are always looking for bus drivers and have those positions available fantastical this is any other questions this is an action item so i appreciate the motion all right next is our substitute teacher daily rates mr schultz so two two things driving this um increase in the daily rate for our substitute teachers one is the minimum wage going up on january 1st 2 and you can ask every single principal here all four of them how many classrooms have you had to be in because there was no substitute teacher just today we are in dire need of substitutes and so we always daily somebody daily yeah we are we are short subs on a daily basis um so what we'd like to do is increase our sub rate so our current short term rate is 90 and if they've taken a class which the county offers they can get an extra 10 a day and if their long term assignment which is over two weeks uh an assignment with a length longer than two weeks um it could be somebody out on family medical leave act or that's typically what it is is uh either an illness or an early resignation they get they would right now get 130 um long term whatever we are proposing is 120 a day without the class 130 a day with the class and 150 a day for our long term assignments if you look on the next page there is a kind of an analysis and what's if you think about it on this our our last normal year our last non-coding year was actually 18 19.

are we ready to go well welcome to this evening's workshop session um we will get the meeting started call to order next we have our roll call all board members are present except for jennifer wills williams she is attending virtually watching watching the meeting thank you next please stand and join us in the pledge of allegiance 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 next on the agenda we have presentations we have a series of presentations that melinda stevens is going to share with us dr beresford and members of the board it is my distinct pleasure to introduce the carmel high school students who were recently recognized by the college board's national african american recognition program national hispanic recognition program and national indigenous recognition program each of these programs identifies students who have demonstrated academic excellence while working to create pathways to college for underrepresented students students eligible for this program have a gpa of 3.5 or higher have excelled on the psat and or have earned a score of 3 or higher on ap exams the students recognized tonight can include this honor on college and scholarship applications as a way to help them stand out during the admissions and scholarship award process carmel high school takes great pride in presenting these students to you through the following video presentation [Music] [Applause] thank you well thank you and we're extremely excited to to recognize our students and well congratulations to all of our academic scholars next on the oh and i do want to just point out there was one particular academic scholar whose mom happens to be on board so we are very excited to have kaya thank you laila do you want to put a little plug in for your daughter and tell her congratulations i just want to pull a plug in for all the students that were recognized today thank you for your hard work your persistence it is noted and wish you continued success and your mommy loves you next on the agenda we have consent and in consent this evening we've got the personnel report claims and payroll may i get a motion on the table to approve consent so moved second second any discussion all those in favor of supporting consent please signify by saying i i motion carries 4-0 and i do want to just comment as well um jennifer williams is online she is listening but she is not part of the voting um the voting group this evening we won't have that we have a policy that we're hoping to pass next in our next meeting so then whenever we do participate virtually we will be able to have a voting voice but until then we're happy that jennifer is able to join us ann is going to be hearing some really interesting exciting information about our workshop topics which is what we have next on the agenda we have our mental health workshop topics and tonight we have ms stephanie whiteside who's going to be presenting do you have a which one is ours okay i didn't put it on here so do you have it in just give me a second okay go ahead and okay for those of you who are watching virtually we're having some technical difficulties and we will be starting the we'll be starting the presentation momentarily okay dr beersford do you have anything you'd like to share with the community maybe about your your beard well thanks for pointing that out um and i probably can't see it very well because i'll go ahead and do a you know exposure there there it is and uh i would apologize for the gruff or the scruff but it is november and uh now for several years it's been a tradition of mine to uh offer the no shave november uh challenge and uh what the challenge is is to grow a mustache throughout the month of november and earn your mo bro status which would uh be if you go for that mustache or you could join bearsford's band of bearded brothers and just go for the whole beard and uh and for those who are not participating it's not a problem at all we welcome support of anybody but the challenge is to bring awareness to mental health reduce that stigma that surrounds mental health and encourage folks who are struggling to reach out and and really we want folks to know that it's okay not to be okay especially in this season of pandemic we've seen up ticks and across the board kids and adults that have struggled some we've also recently seen some examples of olympic athletes and professional sports folks that have come out and and talked about their their battles with anxiety and depression in different settings and and also talking about the steps they've taken uh you know to get to recover from that and to and to deal with that and uh and they're encouraging others to do the same so uh i've come a long way since the very first time done this uh challenge and uh and i feel like uh uh you know we're kind of maybe turning a corner where mental health has gotten getting the same status as physical health and so uh so anyhow for all of you guys that want to get away from the razor uh this is your big opportunity and uh but uh so we'll be uh sporting the beard uh you know at least through the month of november and uh and then we'll see how it goes a lot of uh guys across the district are doing it they've taken a picture of clean shaven picture and we're going to try to get a picture when we're in full for full beard mode so uh but it's kind of a fun way just to bring attention to a serious topic and uh one that uh we really want to uh to just take it uh you know this this little bit of time to uh to acknowledge uh the folks that are struggling with mental health and it's okay and and let's talk about it and let's get the help that you need so that's it so i apologize in advance that your superintendent will be looking pretty pretty rough for for about three or four more weeks are you guys ready to go yes we are okay we'll hand it over to the professionals and looking forward to this workshop all right well thank you so much and i apologize for the delay there um and it looks like we're still trying to get it projected but i'll just go ahead and get started i know that'll get going here soon so it was just a little over a year ago um last year when we discussed that we had partnered or started a contract with extension st vincent to provide mental health services to our students and it was very timely as we've definitely seen a need with our students and in the community and so i'd like to share just a little bit of information about what we've been doing this past year and then what we're going to continue to do as well so looking at the continuum of services as we know it's not a one-size-fits-all for our students so we want to make sure that we have a variety of services and supports and programming in place that can address different needs all the way from those that might be more preventative and really just there to spread awareness to help with you know healthy coping habits bullying abuse prevention also some of our building buddies are mentoring looking at our culture and climate as well as sel and diversity equity and inclusion efforts all of this really helps support the whole child and starts to promote some of those resiliency factors that really helps them find a good place for them to be in to learn and then we start to move into more of our supportive restorative type of services with that we're looking at our mental health partnership making sure that we're making referrals as needed but also even internally looking at brief interventions so that might be you know two peers may have a disagreement and just helping them with some conflict resolution it may be somebody's feeling really stressed about a test and we're just providing them some support for strategies on how to manage some of that stress with our teachers it may be professional development on what resources are available for our students and how to make a referral if they feel that our students may benefit from one of those resources and then also our social workers and counselors providing skills groups that really just help develop those characteristic traits or really looking at those resiliency pieces and then also coping and calming skills as well and then we get more at the um the more intensive end here with the responsive services and that would be our crisis assessment so if a student has expressed suicidal ideation or threat assessments that might also include assistance with coordinating services at a higher level of intensity or assistance so a hospital referral referral to residential services but just also making sure that no matter what that referral or where that referral goes to that we're coordinating care so that when that student returns to our buildings they receive additional support and also you know we're just looking out for their well-being and making sure that we're making that transition as easy as possible and as successful as possible as well so our mental health referrals in 2020 from august to october 18th when i ran this data we had made five mental health referrals for mental health assistance and um much of that was we did not have that partnership fully in place yet we had just started and just started hiring um but we also saw across the board that there was just a lower amount of those referrals this year um just just this year from august to october 18th we've already made 99 mental health referrals and we are sending referrals every day and this does not include self-referrals so some of the information john will be presenting you'll see that number look a little bit different because parents are also able to call extension st vincent and make an appointment to have an intake for their students so these are just those that are social workers our counselors are referring with parent permission and then we did have last school year a total of 323 referrals and that was from that october 18th date until the end of school suicide risk screens right now are where we're really taking a look at what we can continue to do to support our students so last year around this time so once again that august date the beginning of school until october 18th last year we did 41 suicide screens and those are completed by one of our social workers our counselors who are trained in the salon in the columbia suicide screening process this year from those from that same date range we see that there's been 101 suicide screens and so that's just within a few months um i do monitor those we continue to screen almost daily and so one of the things that we're really looking at is just the the stress on our students and the day-to-day stress that they may be experiencing and how we can continue to support them through the transition as we know um through media and then just through you know reading uh different research articles the pandemic has been very difficult for many students and so and for many parents and adults as well in our community so we want to continue to identify strategies to provide that support and also we're just grateful to our social workers counselors and our partnership for all the work that they have done to really support our students and to ensure that they are aware of any risk factors and that they're responding to that and that goes out to our teachers and our administrators as well i do think with this number going up it does demonstrate that they are very much aware and that they are making those referrals whenever they see risk factors present which is very important for prevention and you know harm reduction so looking at moving forward we always talk about that we want to continue to address the whole child and so as we look at what we are hoping to provide this year for families and students we're we've started some workshops so a workshop series related to social emotional learning and mental health and in a minute i'm going to show some of those workshops we have coming up we just last week did a conscious discipline hands-on workshop where families were able to look at the experience of conscious discipline within the classroom we had some make and takes where they were able to recreate some of the strategies and tools that we use in the classroom and they were able to take that with them we also are going to continue to support referral and linkage to some of those resources that our families need as we come up on the holidays we know that there's a lot of services available and resources in our community and our social workers and counselors are really at the front line of linking families with some of those resources we've also started our social emotional learning parent advisory and so we have over 26 members on our advisory we've already had our first meeting and we're going to continue to work with our parents and just really hear their voice as we start to um or when we actually continue our efforts with social emotional learning and then we have also updated our social emotional learning and mental health web pages on our ccs accounts so families are able to go to those web pages and they can find resources there's some videos as well that are helpful and then also if they're needing a resource many of those resources are listed on the web page we're also going to continue to work with our students just to develop those you know internal coping and calming skills so helping them just with that goal achievement and goal setting but also looking at strategies that continue to increase motivation really support positive social relationships and those healthy coping skills we also are continuing to look at stress management skills and promoting not only mental health but physical health as well because we know that our minds and our bodies are very much connected and so when we are able to you know really you know regulate some of our emotions and recognize some of the you know some of the indicators that we may be feeling stressed we often can feel that within our body and so just helping students be aware of how the brain works and then how that influences physical health as well is so important and then with our staff we have started another book study for some of our incoming teachers who have not had experience with conscious discipline we also are continuing to do workshops for those who do have experience but just want to be able to share some of those tools and continue to grow their knowledge of conscious discipline we've also been doing um just working with our advisory so we do have the whole child committee which is um it is uh comprised of principals assistant principals some of our psychologists social workers and counselors and so just working together to continue to identify strategies and continuing to develop that common language and then just providing consultation as needed um we often are meeting with teachers or with principals just to talk about those strategies for supporting students and then also ensuring that you know that they're able to identify beneficial resources that are really going to help support their mental health as we know um with the current mental health needs it's made it's made it so that a lot of our mental health providers not just with extension but in the community are very strapped and so people are seeing weightless and so it's really pushed us to be more creative and think outside of the box as far as referrals and supports so looking at is it you know putting in place a mentor in the meantime going to be helpful supporting those academics if you know they're really stressed or really struggling and how can we continue to support them so that they feel accomplished and effective and so just identifying some of those those other you know dimensions of wellness that we can continue to support to help them especially if they're you know getting into those services but i am very grateful because with having those services we have definitely been able to get our students in sooner they're able to get an assessment and then they're able to get the support that they need so before i hand it over to john ferguson i'm going to share some of our upcoming social emotional learning and mental health workshops that we will have available for our parents so we're really excited this year we really wanted to focus on k-12 and making sure there was something for everybody and so we will be doing workshops all the way through to may our next conscious discipline will be in january and then we also are going to um in december be doing our qpr which is our suicide prevention that we do for parents who are interested in becoming a qpr gatekeeper and qpr stands for question persuade and refer and so that is the same training that we provide to our teachers and to some of our older students as well when it comes to just recognizing some of the signs and then being able to respond effectively all right well i am going to go ahead and introduce john ferguson who is the program manager of extension st vincent mrs whiteside would it be all right if we ask we pause for a moment and ask some questions sure absolutely first thank you very very much um i'm extremely excited about well that we have made such an effort to provide the services within the school day for our students and that we're providing professional development for our professional educators for recognition um and as well as i guess educating the student that it's okay to not be okay and to reach out um a couple questions that i have and i know other board members have for the the columbia so the the suicide um screening you had said there were 100 over 100 this semester so far between august and october 18th what is the age range that we are looking at i mean is it across the board is it middle school in high school is it predominantly high school so we do see it predominantly in high school and middle school but what i will say this year is we are starting to see a rise in those that are coming in from elementary schools and so i've done a lot of retraining because i have had counselors and social workers reach out from our elementaries and say you know i i've just had to do a screen and i haven't had to do one in a while and so just making sure that we are re-educating has been so important because we have seen um that we are doing more screens for younger students and then all of these opportunities for people in the community for board members for i guess everybody these caregiver and student workshops are these all located on the the sel page on the web page yes we continue to update it i'll be adding these specific dates and then that will be updated but we had our um our fall lineup is on there okay with the dates and then also a link for them to sign up as well okay thank you mike well i'd like to echo layla's thank you and thank you for what you do every day for our students we really appreciate it the question i have is can you explain to me what the screening is is there something that triggers it or how do we you know why do we get those numbers that's a great question and so all of our um well our teachers that teach grades 5 through 12 do receive training in qpr suicide prevention training and so what that does is it really teaches them on how to be on the lookout for clues and cues and so they we talk about situational clues so you know maybe failing you know a a class that they really were trying to pass or maybe they've had a recent breakup or they've experienced some type of you know environmental stressor also just being aware of verbal clues so that might be direct statements or indirect statements that may allude um to just feeling depressed or feeling hopeless and helpless in their situation and so it goes over each of those clues so that we're just aware and on the lookout and i always say it's really important to pay attention to frequency and intensity so you know sometimes we might have somebody who's just having a bad day but if we start to see that okay there's many situational clues they've also made some comments i'm a little bit nervous or a little bit concerned and so that's when i may need to make a referral to the social worker or to the counselor and at that point it really becomes a discussion between it could be a teacher principal and then that social worker and counselor and they will kind of discuss what they're seeing and then the social worker and counselor would meet with that student in order to provide that columbia screen and the columbia screen is very brief it's only like five questions um they are very direct questions and really what we're looking for is um just really the where they're at with their wrists so it might be something where there's thoughts and maybe they've started to consider some of those thoughts and that might be related to you know some mental health issues however it all goes all the way to having specific plans or you know specific ideas for how they're going you know how their mind is thinking how they're feeling and also just not really being able to see kind of the light at the end of the tunnel there don't know that i have questions but i just want to express um how i truly appreciate this work that you're doing miss whiteside um this work is extremely important emotional intelligence and conflict resolution is something that we coach on in the talent development and hr part of corporate america and so it's great to see that we're getting a head start on ensuring that students not only have that support at home but have it at school and so um i think that it's a combined effort uh you know in ensuring that kids have that emotional support and so you know we know students learn first from what they see at home and experience at home but they also learn from what they experience at school and with their peers and seeing that emotional health is important in all areas is just really invaluable the next thing that i will share is i just love that you guys are putting together or offering a program around mentoring it's great to see that students are learning the value of either being mentored or mentoring others in school because they'll carry that on in a college setting or in a trade and trying to learn from someone else right so i really appreciate that and then with you know covid last year and this year we expect so much of our students we expect them to constantly be willing to adapt and pivot and that that can be a lot for younger minds and so this avenue providing children the opportunity to say you know i need help or i don't feel the best mentally right now i need support i think gives them that outlet there and as a last thing i'll share as a person that went through breast cancer last year knowing that my children had that support at school to feel free to come in and say you know i'm hurting or i'm sad i just needed that so thank you so very much thank you my question um stephanie and also maybe dr o um we didn't talk about it a lot but i know that this year and stuff has been a ton of stress and anxiety for our staff and our teachers so could you talk a little bit maybe perhaps about some of the things we're doing to support them also absolutely so we are very fortunate that we do have um the employee assistance program here at carmel clay schools that and we also do have mental health therapists located in the wellness center which i can just say as a therapist myself and then of course as a mental health coordinator i think is phenomenal because as i talk with my counterparts elsewhere i know how how important it is to have that support available to teachers and staff and i do know that many of them have commented that it has been very helpful to have that available as well this year we did do mind-body medicine workshops for each of our schools so we did hold those after school and we had them online and we had them in person as well and i continue to follow up with that and plan to continue to do that it's a really really great workshop and then there's also an eight-week group session that really helps as well but um the big part of that or the big takeaway with that mind-body medicine is it's all about that work-life balance and really taking care of our needs and being aware of stress so sometimes we're able to take something off our plate but sometimes it's not just because of the environment the pandemic sometimes things just feel like it's coming at us and it's not necessarily something we can just say well i'm not going to do that but really how do we look at that how do we regulate ourselves and how do we do things and prioritize things that are enjoyable and things that get our creativity going and really just build that resiliency and so that was really exciting to be able to provide those to our teachers and have those available we started those in august and were able to get through them by october and so now i'm doing a second round of reaching out just to see if anybody else would be interested to continue doing that everybody who has attended has says has said that it has been very helpful and that they've learned quite a bit from that as far as just you know things that they can actually apply today you know that would really help them with managing that stress and stephanie did a great job the only piece i'll add to that is i'm very thankful to serve in a district where not only are we taking great care of our students but also our staff and also a thank you to mr mcmichael recently we just extended or added hours on for our mental health therapist at our wellness center to uh serve our staff members and our teachers and i'm very thankful for that so thank you to mr mcmichael also thank you both thank you all right well i believe we're ready for is it justin ferguson um john furrier john john ferguson thank you well i just want to thank stephanie for for including me in this discussion tonight and i want to thank the board for giving us the opportunity to share this program i'm really proud of what we've been able to accomplish in the first year of the program whenever you have a new program that you're rolling out particularly when it's a partnership and a collaboration between a lot of different um organizations um it's hard to get that momentum going sometimes and we have not we haven't experienced that um in this program at least from a treatment perspective so i'm excited to share a little bit about what we've done i do want to read this quote really quick because i think it encapsulates so perfectly the spirit and the philosophy of school-based behavioral health programming successful and sustainable school mental health systems do more than co-locate services within the school building they seek to integrate partners seamlessly so that the diverse complement of mental health supports and services are tightly coordinated to meet the student body's needs efficiently and effectively working directly with community partners broadens the availability of potential supports that can be available to students and families enhancing access to mental health care so let me let me kind of break that down a little bit for us there's kind of four guiding principles as we looked at building and sustaining this program the first one is that we want to have high quality care and you get that by hiring licensed staff who have gone to school and received you know excellent training to have the skills and have the experience and have the knowledge to be able to provide mental health support to students you want to hire experienced staff staff who have done this work who understand how to engage students and families you also want to make sure that you provide curriculum so that it's an evidence-based process and treatment program so that there's some intentionality behind it and then you want to continue to develop your your professionals so this is this is a component that we looked at obviously when we were building the program but it's really an important component of sustaining the program as well a strong multi-disciplinary team is really critical for the success of school-based programming so not only do we have our ascension statements and counselors we have bachelor's prepared behavioral health techs who provide skills we've got prescribers that can prescribe medication but we really see our team as much larger than that and so we're going to be working with the school social workers and the school counselors we're going to be working with the school nurses and the sros so that we can collaborate around what are the needs that the the that our students have and how can we best meet those needs and then the third guiding principle is that spirit of collaboration um and that's that's really the component that i think is is that magical component that makes this partnership so strong in in many mental health interventions or treatments you take your child to an office it may be located 30 minutes away you've got to wait with your child they're going to get great care and then you take them back to the school there may be very little collaboration between that professional and what happens in our school-based program in a school-based program we can talk daily with the school social worker we can talk with the teacher frequently certainly parents are a lot more involved in school-based programming because parents are involved in schools a lot more and available so that's that's really a critical component in making making this program successful we have dedicated time that we set aside to to work with teachers school administrators school social workers so that we can really provide the best care to our students probably the most important guiding principle though of this program is that it's student and it's parent driven there are a lot of services that we can offer we can offer skills support in the classroom outside the support or outside the classroom we can provide individual therapy group therapy family therapy there are a lot of different services that we can provide it's really going to be the parent and the student saying this is what's going to work for me and for my family obviously i'm going to protect you know private information but we had a student recently that i was talking with one of our counselors about who got services last year for about three months in the spring and this is a child who had severe anxiety every day it was a fight to get the student to school the mother the father they were really wiped you know and there were lots of physical symptoms upset upset stomach headaches this kid was really kind of pulling in and not making a lot of those social connections and so the school social worker talked with the parent and said hey we have this program would you be interested in maybe talking with one of our counselors to see if this might be a good fit for you so the parents spoke with our counselor got the child into services we started doing some individual therapy we connected the child with one of our skills techs who could do some classroom work to some skills work and we we kept seeing these incremental changes you know school got a little bit easier to engage test taking wasn't as anxiety provoking at the end of the school year the family decided hey you know we're going to take the summer off we can see families and students in the summer but this family decided to take a break well about three weeks ago three or four weeks ago that student you know came down the hallway and she was checking in with her counselor who she hadn't met with since may and shared with her how well she was doing and she said i enjoy coming to school now i look forward to coming to school now and i've made a new friend and so that's really i loved it i love that story because i think it's a great example of what can happen when you've got the parent and the student and the community and the school system really partnering together to provide these services it's also a great example of it doesn't have to be an enormous intervention this kid did not need two years of intensive therapy to meet their need within a few months they were able to engage some conversations and build a relationship where they were able to make those advancements um so that's that's that's one example of some of the work that we're doing to get into a little bit of the program operations the referral process comes through the school social worker and so when the school or when a parent identify a student who might benefit from services they'll have a conversation and then the school social worker will then work with our team to make that linkage and to make that referral we also want to be open to you know families and students might need different resources and so part of that assessment part of that screening is to really find out what services are going to be best for that student is it going to be school-based work or would it be beneficial to link that student with something outside in the community that's really a conversation between the parent and the school counselor to kind of determine what makes the most sense also during this time we talk about insurance and benefits you know everybody has different types of insurance and insurance will cover different things and so one of the things we found over the last year is that we really do want to spend time with the family talking with them about what their insurance will cover because that's that's how we fund these services for the most part um also we talk about medication service linkage so currently we have about 20 percent of our students who are connected with an ascension prescriber and so it's within this referral and intake process that we explore if that's something that could be helpful to the student and then school placement and coverage currently all of our schools have ascension staff counseling staff located in in those schools and we're really proud of this because i think when we started the program we weren't sure how quickly we would be able to cover all of our schools and so over the course of the year as we've hired in new staff and placed them in schools it's really been a priority to make sure that at some level every school would have some coverage um and then consistent ascension in school meetings you know it's it's very important that you know we're collaborating with our school partners and so many of our many of our teams will talk daily they'll have daily huddles or they'll have weekly meetings or they'll have monthly meetings where they can collaborate and talk about the needs of the student and then we're in a constant state of program assessment and development and so we're always kind of looking at you know are the interventions that we're providing effective and really meeting the needs of our students and if we need to make changes we can do that here here's a few pieces of data that i'd like to share um currently since the program began we've served over 400 students we've served over 4 400 therapy sessions since students and families began and actually this morning knowing that i'd be coming to the board meeting i wanted to get the most up-to-date information we've we've provided over 5000 therapy services since the program began that's just in one year that's that's a real huge number and i i don't think when we started a year ago we really thought we would be able to meet that level of intervention so quickly we've provided over 3 800 care coordination services and what these are these might be skills services where our skills techs are working one-on-one with a student it also might be collaboration with the parent so if the parent wants some information or wants to be included in some aspect of the treatment that's that's what's included here as well i mentioned 20 percent of our active students are receiving medication services through ascension prescribers and we have a great linkage process to make sure that if a student could benefit from a higher level of care or medications we can get them connected quickly our staffing we currently have nine licensed therapists and seven behavioral health techs we do have some open positions we have four open positions for licensed therapists a behavioral health technician and then we're also looking for a clinical supervisor sharing a little bit of our outcomes you know when we look at you know an assessment of the program these are some of the things that we look at so we want to look at functional outcomes you know how is the student functioning in school how's the student functioning in the home what are some things that they have identified as goals that we can help them achieve student and family perception that's really important to us because from the very beginning we're sitting down with our students and our families and we're asking them what are your goals what do you want to get out of this experience and how can we help you meet that so these are not goals that are driven by me or a teacher or even a school social worker these are really goals that are driven by the family and by the student saying these are the things these are the barriers that are in my way and this is what i'd like to focus on obviously grades and attendance are outcomes that we can look at as well we find that you know many of the kids that we're working with after a period of time in services you will see an improvement in grades you will see an increase in attendance obviously that's not the only factor that you want to look at when you're assessing a program but these are some of the things that we do look at to help us identify the success of the program and then finally just some program success and barriers you know student feedback you know when we talk with students about what is it about this program that you enjoy you know we're hearing i have some place i can go to to talk about solutions i have somebody else that i can go to who's a caring person who i know i can trust the counselor feedback from our own team members one of the things that they have noted a lot has been the collaboration with the school system as well as the partnership with the parents many of our counselors have years and years of experience working in school-based programs and very often the feedback that i get from our counselors is i've never worked within a school system where the parents are more engaged and more involved than ever in this school system and that's an enormous indicator of success when you're working with a kid you know to be able to work with the entire family to have parents who are engaged who want to know who want to be involved it's a huge indicator of success for our students so it's a it's a wonderful piece of feedback to get and then school feedback i think the feedback that we get from our school counselors and our school partners is that it's nice to have another resource within the walls of the school that we can connect our kids to it's wonderful that we have a resource within the school where the parent doesn't have to take the kid out and miss school for half a day or an entire day based upon you know where that appointment is you know often with our appointments they're 45-minute appointments or maybe 30-minute appointments you can get the kid you can provide the service and the kids back in the classroom doing what they doing what they need to be doing so it's um it's wonderful to get that feedback and then finally some parent feedback another another story that i want to share with you about a kid that we were serving this is a kid who actually was doing pretty well in school however at home the parents were really really struggling both parents are professionals take a lot of pride in the work that they do work very hard very very busy people and they started having these conversations with some of their teacher partners about i just i i don't feel effective as a parent i feel like i'm i'm not giving my kid all that they need and i'm really worried about how it might impact my my daughter in in school so the school social worker the teacher they they said well hey why don't you talk to one of our counselors and see if that might be something that's beneficial and so one of our counselors they they started working with this family and very quickly they moved from doing some individual work with the the student to doing some family work and two weeks ago the the dad called our counselor and said you know i want to tell you they were doing some some structured reward system at home and some positive reinforcement and doing doing some things at home and the dad said i just want to give you feedback that for the first time in a long time i'm actually enjoying being a parent and i feel like i'm pretty good at it and this was something that they hadn't been feeling for a very long time and so they they wanted to pass this along challenges to our program so i think workforce shortages is definitely something that we think about and we talk about a lot we do have open positions i think nationwide we know that there are workforce challenges and so we're always trying to look at creative ways to make sure that we have the staff that we need to be able to provide the services that we want to provide to our students so that's definitely something that you know we're thinking about and talking about a lot and then the other challenge is just insurance and reimbursement there are lots of different insurance payers and some insurance payers you know have really great mental health benefits and then others may have high deductible plans or they might be out of network or there might be a lot of rules around reimbursement and so one of the things that we've really discovered that i think coming into the program i probably didn't realize i would be spending as much time talking about and educating about insurance as we have but you know it's well worth the effort because when you are able to kind of work through those barriers and get the kid into services get them the services that they need um it's it's really great to see kind of what can happen for our kiddos and that's all i have if you have any questions i'm happy to to take them well john thank you for being so thorough i will open up the floor to questions and then i have a couple of myself mike i guess first a comment i'm i'm really excited that we've got coverage of all our schools i know when we started this process we were trying to lay reasonable expectations out there so to me that's great news um and then second of all i just really want to thank john and stephanie dave woodward dr bearsford all of our staff because this is an important thing and i really also want to thank our community who supported the school safety referendum which is a key driver in allowing us to do that so um and i know jan you said about parent involvement we have an awesome community here um and it shows what their willingness to pay and it shows what their willingness to be involved so thank you thank you well john one of my questions has everything to do with i guess the workforce challenges and for our students consistency with a therapist and a counselor is very beneficial so i'm wondering what does that look like what has our turnover been and have we been able to be successful with having a a reliable resource for our students yeah well it's you know it's definitely been a challenge because you know i think we we have not been a hundred percent fully staffed yet um we've been close but what that has meant has been we we've kind of been required to to shift some of our staff to different schools or instead of maybe just being at one school you know our staff are split between a couple of schools um and so you know you you do have to be you know communication is the key when the when those kind of when you have those challenges because you need to make sure that the school social workers are aware of who's coming into the building you know what are their needs how are they going to be working with with the kids we did a lot of planning going into this fall year because um we knew we had had a little bit of turnover over the summer and we kind of anticipated that we might have a little bit of turnover in the fall that's not uncommon and so we really wanted to kind of think through how do we get people placed in schools where we're not going to have to worry about if if we have a hole or if we have an opening that we're not going to have coverage and so one of the ways we've done that is we have multiple staff at all the schools so we have a skills tech at all the schools and then we also have counselors who are covering covering all the schools and so in the schools where we have had turnover we've often had a behavioral health tech who's been there to kind of provide some of that consistency between the program and the school it doesn't happen a hundred percent of the time but we're really trying to once we've identified a counselor for a specific school we really want to keep them there because they they learn the culture of the school they learn the staff they build those relationships with not only the kids but but the team at the school and so we don't want to constantly move people around um so that you have to go back and relearn that relationship thank you louise yes so um how are you ensuring you have uh diverse staff to support a diverse student body that's right so that's that is a great question and i think um ascension you know diversity equity and inclusion is is a value that is is really strong at ascension it's built into their policies and practices it's built into their their hr makeup and so whenever we have a position that's open you know that's that's something that we're looking at um we've got a bilingual counselor we could use more bilingual counselors because you know we we have a lot of kids and families who could really um benefit from having that that relationship and certainly families that are bilingual i think that's that's something that we're looking at as well to make sure that we're inclusive thank you any other questions katie um mine's really just a comment i'm so thankful this is a time so much work and it i mean it happened years ago i love it when we were just as a board talking you know our strategic pant lane which we're going to talk about more tonight too about how this was important to us as a district and you know we may have started gotten the ball rolling but then it was like the administration and then stephanie your team and um it was it's just so amazing to be able to see it all to come to fruition and when when i see those numbers and i hear those great stories you know if it was just if it just helped one kid or just one family like all of it was worth it and i know that there's so many more than just that one so thank you so much for all the time effort that everyone's put into this because our families and our students and staff are definitely seeing the results so thank you i think it really does speak to this community though because i mean you can you can refer a kid to a counselor social worker out in the community you can you can put counselors in schools and refer students to go see them but if you don't have the entire community kind of rallying around and supporting this you're not you're not going to have the success that we've seen and one of the things that i'm very grateful for is that in all of our schools you know the from the school principals to the social workers they've they've really shown a commitment not just in their words but in their actions they've welcomed the program they've supported the program they've marketed the program it's really clear that they see this as a value to the students um and and that's that's really been a real key component of its success thank you very much dr beresford do you have any follow-up i'd just like to kind of echo some of the words of the board but this is a dream come true i mean i remember my first interview with carmel clay school school board it was talk to us about mental health and uh and also you know like mike had mentioned the school safety referendum our community said yeah we want to support our kids this way and then to hear the number of kids that have been i mean what was it 5 000 sessions and one of the big one of the big biggest benefits from this program is it reduces the barriers to to kids getting the help they need and because they what you described john was that you know they don't have to leave school go someplace else and of course this is just an option for parents to use but same time it's it's a very it's a lot simpler and i think the consistency of the help that the kids get with their sessions this is fantastic if you would have asked me do you think this would be going full force helping every building in 2021 i would have said i don't know that's pretty you know that's pretty ambitious this has been going on all year and so uh big kudos to both of you because you can't do that without a partnership that works and a collaborative partnership that works also i'd just like to uh you know the front end what stephanie talked about it's been a lot of hard work to get everything coordinated to address the needs of the whole child and to get the training and the and the pieces all the pieces together and uh not ended up being a great hire she went to work in a hurry and uh and got so many things going to support our kids and you know that whole you know kind of wrap-around service is that finding kids what do they need and how do we get it to them and and how we can coordinate our efforts so that we don't we have some consistency across the district not a good thing here and a good thing there a good thing there but we hope we have some consistency it's not a simple task and uh saying i just really appreciate the work that's been done to the benefit of our kids and i know i use this word a lot i'm going to use it some more tonight but one of the things you look at as a as an educational institution is that what are the barriers to engagement we have a great educational program and the only thing that can keep a kid from from growing is to not engage and not all of our kids are engaged and so that's a constant you know constant thing is how do we keep engaging our kids well mental health services learning skills things that may not be academic but by learning you know how to calm yourself all of a sudden you're calm and you can engage back into the educational program so it's all pieces together so kids can learn and grow and be good people and so i just really appreciate this work's been done what a great what a great workshop where we got to see a lot of the different pieces and so if you look at these guys and you wonder why they look tired they've been getting after it and and that last piece i would just add is that this has been done over two years of a global pandemic and and we had no idea when we went on this journey or this adventure that uh that this would happen and what a need became apparent and we are so thankful that we had some pieces in place to uh to help our kids that way i also talked to you a little bit about one of the things we have to watch is recovery because you know we we know when the stressor leaves when this pandemic's finally over with the stress doesn't leave with it um you know we'll still have to some work to do so i love the things that stephanie's been doing with the it's the staff and uh even our t-shirt which was let's root for one another and watch us grow a beautiful picture of a tree and and just those types of things where we just care for one another care for our kids care for our families and john picked up on the secret sauce of carmel clay schools which is uh active engaged parents highly highly trained professional staff with big minds and big hearts and then and then the greatest greatest bunch of kids you'll ever ever hope to meet so and that's just pretty inspiring so i really appreciate it tonight thank you thank you [Applause] and next on the agenda well dr beresford we jump to you for our carmel clay school strategic plan update all right well uh typically we do our strategic plan in the summer you know a summer retreat or sometimes i would like to call them advances because we don't like to go backwards like go forwards but um you know a lot of things going on and uh we're finally to a point where we can share some i will call this uh the first draft of the three-year plan and uh and i would love to take uh resp you know the you know credit for all the stuff that i'm going to share with you tonight but i actually have to give that credit away right away to our you know to the three people those side of me and another three or four uh that aren't here tonight and uh what i wanted to do um tonight was to give you a really a brief a pretty quick and brief look at some components that we're looking at for our next three-year plan and what i asked the team to do was to give me uh you know what are we can finishing up on because this is year one and then also what are we looking at in the near future and what are what are your dreams uh for the you know for the third year i like three-year strategic plans because i think once you get out four or five years it can get out so far that we we can't focus in very tight um so what i did was i asked i asked all my teammates here to make us a slide in their different divisions and then i asked them tell me your why tell me the you know in the context of where what you're thinking on these so we're going to start out with um with our curriculum instruction and uh i've got amy driving over there so um she's going to probably determine the speed of this presentation because she's got the power of the button but uh we'll start with uh with curriculum instruction and uh and start with just the why and that's the carmel clay schools needs to prepare our students for the future if we're gonna break it down to one sentence one big rock that's that's our job our students need to be prepared for jobs that have been created they're going to need to tackle societal challenges that we can't even imagine and they need they're going to need to use technologies that probably haven't been invented yet so we'll need to equip our students to thrive in this interconnected world where they seek to understand and appreciate different perspectives different world views interact respectfully with others take responsible actions towards sustainability and well-being and then finally we want to ensure that all students have a rigorous and differentiated learning opportunities to meet their individual needs and have the necessary knowledge skills and abilities to be college and or career ready to be successful in the future so that's a very well stated thing but it's a very difficult task to to to to do but um i think we've got the staff that can do that so let's look at the the big rocks uh from um from our cia group and the first one is literacy and we've had some workshops on literacy and we're we've got some things to finish off there but the main bullets under literacy is just to engage our students in explicit systematic instruction and then here's the big big phs biological awareness phonemic awareness and phonics using a multi-sensory approach now i wish i could explain exactly what that means but i think i i got a cursory idea of it because i i know a lot about hooked on phonics but really what a lot of that that that piece of this is that um making sure that our kids are able to read and and if they struggle with that that we are responsive to it develop structures for response responsive instruction and literacy some of this came out of legislation that was uh pointless to try to identify kids that may have dyslexia but what would you say amy it kind of opened the door to really engage in the science of reading and how can we effectively screen students to see where they are and what they need and how can we get that to them right away and uh and so do anything else you want to say and i would just say yes just to make sure we're focusing on the foundations of um learning to read so really looking at making sure that they can decode the words and then they once they do that then working on the comprehension piece but really coming back to the foundations and that's what those ph words are those phonological awareness phonemic awareness and phonics and you know the number one uh predictor of success in academics is the ability to read so uh this is the fundamental fundamental of skills that we have to have move forward and then of course providing students with access to high quality texts that have are from a broad range of formats and genres that again i'll go back to that engagement world that when kids see themselves in books when they see and explore other you know cultures or pieces and they can experience other world pieces or when they're just something that's high interest to them they're going to be more engaged and uh and that's that's you know just just so important uh next big rock is mathematics and uh and here we go we're going to go on the math program evaluation and carmel clay school is this something i learned in the last three years has a rich history in program evaluation and that process has put caramel at the top i mean of of achievement for many many years and that met so the math program is up for evaluation along with that process we'll be developing the curriculum maps and then working on that coherent guaranteed and bible curriculum for all students so we have some consistency across the board adopting structural materials that support program evaluation recommendations and the curricular maps and then provide the professional development to ensure responsive instruction and mathematics and that responsive instruction again is you know when instruction occurs uh and kids get it that's not a problem but when they don't get it what are we gonna do about it and how we catch it up and the next big rock is assessment and grading so integrating assessments for as and of learning to ensure greater relevance for students and and a lot of times when we think of assistance uh excuse me assessment you think of uh grades a b c d e you know and we don't have any ease anymore i think but um but the uh the grade piece assessment is much more than that assessment is being able to sort out or understand what you know and what you don't know and then how do we access what we don't know and learn so that that's the assessment part that's it's very important important when we talk about responsive instruction of that assessment's what's going to lead to us to what do we need to do about it amy anything else you want to add about that did i knock did i nail it okay they're working on me to be a cia member at some point in time we'll see how it goes and finally something you've heard us talk about quite a bit and that is closing the achievement gap and uh and and uh i really appreciate this approach because we've talked about it quite a bit uh and that is to establish a strong data culture that ensures us that the use of data that that will use data to inform instruction and planning and the significance of that is in education i think we've collected data for so so many years and sometimes we've collected meaningful data and sometimes it hasn't been so meaningful but the most important piece of data collection is is collecting meaningful data and then how do we get that data in the hands of the people on the ground floor which would be our teachers and then and have them highly trained on using that data in order to make a positive impact on kids and so um so establishing that culture that you know this is the data and what we can do it and how we can use that instruction how we can do that in planning along with that eliminate gaps in opportunities and access and achievement for all students so that's what this introspective look to see you know is there anything any barriers that we have in place that we need to remove in order all kids can can achieve and then assuring that all students have a rigorous academic content and and that they have the support they need to be successful in that rigorous that rigorous comment content and so that is the big rocks the big fours literacy mathematics assessment grading closing that achievement gap in the world of curriculum instruction and assessment so any questions for me or amy in this juncture and i know i'm hitting you guys with a lot of information so uh you know this is going to be an ongoing process so tonight's uh just our first step into the pool um lots of questions uh where do i start so one point one there was talking about the math evaluation evaluating that program um i just wanted to hear a little more detail on how do we evaluate a math program um what's the steps we go through that kind of thing sure so as as dr bears mentioned our program evaluation process is a very rich process that we've used for many years and we do this every six years for our major programs in the um in our curriculum and instruction division and so with our math program evaluation we start by looking at what are what what is the current practice what is happening now we look at the data and we do a really a deep dive into the data we look at what are the best practices out there what does the research say about math instruction and then also we do some unpacking of the standards because the indiana academic standards they change every so often so the last time they changed their in 2020 um so where we unpack those standards in this process as well so this committee is made up of teachers of parents of administrators and at times students typically will have high school students on here as it works for their schedule and so we first look at what what are those best what's what's happening now in our math programming and then what are the best practices what needs to happen in our math programming and then from there they develop recommendations of what what is happening what needs to happen and where where is the um the gaps and so from there those recommendations are formed and then those recommendations are used for the next steps of our program evaluation cycle and our curriculum writing and materials adoption so we look at those recommendations then they help form the curriculum development of the math programming and then also looking at the materials adoption of what are those materials that we need to adopt that best support the curriculum and those recommendations made in the math program evaluation so it's that first step in a series of other processes that we use and how long does that evaluation period or process take so typically the evaluation period um takes about a year so we're getting ready to start this in january and so we'll start that process this january we'll go throughout this second semester and then we bring in the curriculum writing and the materials adoption in the fall but still working with the program evaluation and so then by the next spring we would be bringing to you recommendations for materials for math to be incorporated in the next school year okay and then how do we feel like we're doing with you know you're talking about the differentiated learning um and just supporting that how do we feel like we're doing that with our with how do we feel like we're doing with that um when we look at our class sizes yeah so really when you're looking at the structures that are in place to really differentiate it's not necessarily the class size that makes the difference it's making sure that you have the instructional practices in place to be able to put those structures in place for example a math workshop where you might have the students start with a mini lesson a whole group lesson that may be 10 minutes long and then you may break into smaller groups so you may have the teacher working with a small group of students you may have another group of students that are doing partner work they're doing collaborative work and you may have another group of students that's doing individual work and then you rotate through those different groups so the class size i mean a class size of 50 students you know 60 students that may be a little difficult especially because the room sizes are not that large but having a class size in our middle schools our class sizes 29 30 31 32 that can work and in our high schools as well those larger class sizes work our elementary class sizes are not typically that large but it's not necessarily the number of students in the class size but it's making sure you have the structures in place okay and the last question i have is [Music] how do we ensure we have a good balance of formative and summative assessments in play for students and and so as you can see on um you know the strategic plan in the math and then also in the assessment where we talk about integrating the assessment for as and of so the assessments for would be those formative assessments those assessments that give feedback to the student as well as feedback to the teacher on how the students are doing and how the teacher might need to change their instruction so that's that formative assessment piece the um assessment as learning that's a part where we've not incorporated a lot of that but that's really where the students are doing some of their own assessments on how are they doing how are their reflective practice on how are they learning this how are they setting goals for themselves and that's a new area that we'll be looking at and then that assessment of that's where the summative assessment comes into play so the assessment of is how did they learn that that's the after the fact that um you know final exam that would be that summative assessment piece and so really having that balance and making sure that you're using those assessments for feedback for not only the student but then also feedback for the teacher and then how are you tweaking that the instruction for the teacher and the student on what do we need more of what do we need less on what do we need to practice more and so it's really finding that balance thank you with that one it's um near and dear in my heart i mean i i was a student that learned for the test and i would throw it away and so i'm always trying to figure out how to avoid that with my students or you know my kids just so that formative versus [Music] the formative versus summative i think is is a way to help with that thank you it's also a great skill uh to have because that's the way we operate you know we we're none of us are perfect and and in our profession but we probably go down the whole line here and find and talk about how um to get a little bit better you got to get feedback you got to make changes and you got to you know to get improved that way so it's pretty solid okay moving on i'm sorry so we were talking for the math program during the program evaluation i'm wondering if you recognize that there's a significant gap do we pivot and do something about that immediately or do we wait until [Music] this comes full cycle and we have new textbooks and we have an adoption i mean how do we approach that if situations pop up during a program evaluation so where you're referring to a significant gap in um right so so we don't wait for um oh you know we're continuously improving so in in all of our programming we have we do have every six years we have our different program evaluation pieces however we continue to look at our practices reflect on those practices and then uh make tweaks to those practices all along so if we're seeing that you know we're having um an area in a certain course say algebra one where our kids are really having a difficult time learning specific concepts and that's part of that um plc process or that professional learning communities process where they're looking at how are our kids doing and oh i noticed that mr mcmichael's kids are doing much better on this skill what what are you doing to help teach them that that i need to incorporate with my students because my students may not be doing as well and so that's that continuous learning piece so it's not just waiting until that program evaluation piece but it's continuously looking at our practice and and how do we get better at that but the program evaluation process allows us to take pause and look at all of the components of it and so we so that makes you sure that we're not missing one piece and not just tweaking and just you know going a lot of different directions we want to be able to align those arrows my second question on the assessment and grading um in some of our classes actually some of the grade levels it's not abc it's mastery and standard space yes there you go thank you standard space i know some schools like mit use some standards based which i find fascinating and challenging at the same time um what are your thoughts is this something that we're looking to do across the board i know my student my children um some of their classes at the high school were standards-based um but then at the end they actually received a grade i i'm not sure how that all works so if you could just touch on that that would be helpful sure so really all of our grades are standard space because our curriculum is based on the indiana academic standards and then you're looking at our grades are criteria and reference so how are our students doing compared to the standard now the difference is in the elementary school we call them standards-based report cards and the students receive a one two three four or five on very specific standards at the high school or at the middle school like you're referring to maybe in science class there might have been a class where they're saying okay here's the grade and the way the teacher shared the feedback on the grade was this is how you did on this specific standard this is how you did on this specific standard but then all of those indicators were then put into a grade you know an a b c d or f great so it's just the the reporting of it is how are you looking at as far as mastery towards that standard and reporting that but it's really they're all based on the standards we're not necessarily looking to change the way we're reporting the standards in when we get to middle school or high school that's not something right now that we're looking at i'm not saying it would never ever happen but right now that's not what we're looking at but it's really how are we making sure that the grades are reflective of what the students are learning and not reflective on other practices such as their responsibility that they turned in their assignments on time or that they did other pieces that really don't have tie into the grade itself there is a way we do want to report that out you know how do they work collaboratively in a group but that shouldn't go into the grade as far as the learning part of it and so we want to make sure the grades are truly reflecting what the student has learned and then also share information on how the students might be learning but not as part of the grade yeah i thought that was well articulated in the second bullet point under assessment gradients it's to accurately communicate what students have learned and really whether it's a 1 2 3 4 5 or an abc that's trying to communicate what the student has learned and then we have to make sure that we are we as parents and educators understand what does that letter mean so good ready to move forward all right next we're going to go into human resources so as i i go through this maybe you can hear the voice you know of the person around it but go ahead and pop that slide and see look at the big rocks there and karma clay schools has the absolute has the absolute finest teachers administrators and support staff that serve our over 16 000 students it's critical to continue to recruit hire develop and retain a diverse and premier workforce in order to serve our students families and the community at the highest level our students deserve the best and human resources team in partnership with our building leaders will strive to attract and retain the most qualified supportive staff in the state we are in a challenging time and we've well noted that with respect to hiring classified staff members during the labor shortage it's always important to look at creative ways to attract employees to the district especially now in the areas of transportation food service educare and substitute teachers so with that we'll go to the three big rocks from our human resources team and the first one of course is staffing and and i've always often said this is that um the most important thing we do is is to you know attract and and hire the best teachers that we can find and the best every every person that touches a student uh we have to have a very very high quality person we have to um continue to professionally develop that individual and uh and then make that environment that opportu you know the very best that that point of contact can be and to do that it's just um uh it's just imperative that we we get high quality individuals and we're fortunate because um we do have a lot of good candidates that want to teach at carmel clay schools but with a you know with the shortage the teacher shortage and it's not going away and it's not getting better um we have to we have to look creatively creatively and and look at different ways on how we can do that and they've got some great great strategies so we'll start with the first one staffing both certified and classified and there's some exciting things for me as a former hr student services guy but partnerships with universities and uh and under that cultivating teacher pipelines and what that really means is let's go to student teacher level and bring in the most talented student teachers we can find and then teach them the caramel way and and hopefully keep them and find the best the best as they're developing um one of the things that we've been looking for is to have more teachers that look like our students and teacher recruiting historically black black colleges and universities might be a way to do that so how do we form relationships there and uh and again maybe it'll be the student teacher pipeline as well as the teacher pipeline uh then you know having when we go into non-classified look at things kind of out of the box like when we had our drive a bus event where we were targeting uh where we uh you know brought that uh you know the buses out and i got to drive one for the first time in my career and found out it's not that hard and we had quite a few folks probably our best hiring in the summer ever i think was our at the end result of that of course we lost a lot too but but that was a great event and then also targeting messages to the candidates in other words instead of posting and hoping uh actually going to what's in our candidate pool right now let's target them right away and ask them here's some openings and we found some success that way too talent development onboarding evaluation is once we get a talented individual on our on our rolls how do we grow that talent and part of that's through an evaluation system but um i've said this before but you know when the state moved to a more prescriptive what i'd call a raider system of evaluation i think it really was a step backwards now we've had some relief from that and looking more at a talent development type evaluation model which is more motivational and actually focuses on specific skills that can be a much more positive experience for our for our employees but also can grow skills quicker and better and then enhanced and efficient onboarding processes for new employees so uh and that's one area it's grown a lot in the last couple years they've really put together a lot of different pieces to uh to get folks on the team and getting into the information that they need immediately and then to set that that that professional growth and professional development in in process and that's pretty exciting too and then the final piece was the working with our teachers association uh carmel's teacher association and keeping that relationship strong uh we have an amazing uh relationship with our teachers association and uh i can't speak any more highly of that it's you know their colleagues work very closely together and uh the most uh descriptive thing i can say about it is that everybody at the table wants the best for kids and uh and so that's pretty special and i don't think you find that everywhere so uh so that's the uh the big rock for human resources and we'll take a pause here if you want to ask any questions hey i got some questions okay um easiest question first so roger i think i alluded to this before so i'm just going to ask it one i can't say last time another time um can we survey our bus drivers to find out what motivates them and how we can do a better job of recruiting them that's a direct question can we do that yes okay what is to stop us from actually doing it since we can i don't know that there's anything stopping us i think it would be something that would come out of hr um as they both when we and we do some of this now i know i don't tom would be able to be more specific but when employ when employees leave for example that we we do exit interviews and try to gain insight and also as we we do talk to our drivers they have they have at least an informal representation and so there is dialogue it's not as formal as with the cta but but but they do we do talk to drivers and and get feedback from them on all sorts of things including um you know what they feel would would attract drivers and and some of that came out and was reflected in in the new agreement that we have with the drivers yeah i'd like to see some um exhaustive feedback from them um to just ensure that they have the opportunity to share any you know ideas and thoughts for how we can address this challenge with getting more bus drivers because my heart i mean it breaks when i see the long lines of traffic and i'm driving my son to drop him off and i want to drop him off down the street so i don't have to sit in the trap like and then it's getting cold and so my heart is still like aching at the idea of my kids having to ride their bikes or parents being inconvenienced you know and that one mile radius so i just anything that we can do to change the game i'm like open to that so i'd love to know a follow-up on what we're gonna do in terms of at least getting input from them or looking at modeling or looking at other districts outside of the state that are doing it well in retaining and attracting additional drivers and just if there's strategies they're putting into play i would just love to know that we've kind of done that research and found some well i think we have already we certainly talked to our counterparts in other school districts this is a common theme throughout the state and throughout the nation as you know and so we have we do interact on a local level as well as a state level and in some cases we also interact outside of the state i don't i don't believe there's um something that somebody's doing out there that's kind of a silver bullet that we're not aware of because if we weren't we may we haven't gathered all that information just ourselves but i mean collectively with all the transportation administration around the state locally and around the state i really doubt that there's anything that we're missing as far as somebody coming up with something that we haven't you know aren't doing or haven't thought of in some cases we've been recognized for being one of those districts that have has employed um some you know creative thinking and and in recruiting drivers yeah i think i mean i think we're doing a great job i mean and talking to some of our bus drivers they really appreciate how we take care of our buses and how we take care of them um i'm just wondering what we can do that's outside of the box even if it's the way that we are financing to pay for that position and if we can switch that up to better compensate i mean i i'm speaking for louise not the whole board like i just want to kind of push the envelope on that um louise before you jump off of that um uh one thing i failed to mention is um these are the big rocks and then once we establish and we're all tight on what our you know what our big areas are that we're going to focus on and then the next section of that is uh what strategies are we going to do to try to make those big rocks happen so the idea of surveying the bus drivers or any any of those things would fall under our strategies part of the of the planning process and i'm glad you said that because i should have said that start and fail too thank you thank you um and looking at uh building our staff recruiting um kind of our recruiting uh strategy and methodologies are we looking at how we're building our bench with ias absolutely and one of our best recruit recruiting tools that we have is working with our instructional assistants um over roger did a recent study over a third of some of our recent teachers have been ias with us and so one of the pieces that we do is we have an internal teacher recruitment fair that is just with our instructional assistants as well as our student and our student teachers and so each and every year we have that uh recruitment fair and it yields a high number of teachers that we currently have in the district thank you that was my next question what was our conversion rate so you said about 33 yes and then um do we do we gauge or do we assess our student experience in preparing for developing our teachers that kind of thing do we evaluate the student experience in classes at any levels i'm not sure i'm tracking with you what are you asking if we're surveying students on how their what their what their perception of their classroom is what their experience in the classroom is yes yeah i'm not sure how many of those we do that probably more under dr dudley's area well so just recently um we did a survey with our students and some of the questions were does your you know how does your teacher how do you connect with your teacher so does your teacher help you does your tea you know what what other things you know do you feel like your teacher cares about you how are you connecting with your teacher and so that's a survey that we did do some questions on that teacher-student relationship and how the student might get help with the teacher or do they feel like they have an adult in the building that is somebody that they can reach out to and so we did do some surveying on those pieces that are specific to the student-teacher relationship thank you um substitutes i'm assuming that's part of that classified strategy that will be coming because i know that's the sore spot right now absolutely and we've been doing better with substitute teachers and have put in putting many strategies in place and working very closely with kelly hackett and the team and we continually bring new substitutes uh on board but one of the things about substitutes it's a it's a trickle-down effect when you mention ias you mentioned substitutes so when our teachers go on maternity leave oftentimes the ias who have their teaching license will fill those maternity leave positions and then the substitutes may become the ias and then we're refilling so it is cyclical and we continue to do our best with populating our substitute teachers and we're also looking at strategies for that too absolutely all right we're moving on to business finance and facilities and uh it looks like roger's already warmed up so we're good to go um i tell you i i'm real proud of the work that roger and his team has done first off with her comprehensive financial plan and he's provided him and his team have provided a financial planning model that can be modified as different needs arise and priorities change so um you know it's not a locked in pieces because you don't know i wanted to steal the line was uh that roger shared the other day was that sometimes programming can make a facility obsolete before the actual facility it needs to be you know is having any issues because programs change and you have to be uh nimble and and keep a capacity to be able to react to the the uh the situations that we were come up upon and there's never been a better example of that than as we went through this pandemic we had to do a lot of pivoting um also uh you'll see and you're very well let me hear about a lot of the capital improvement plan and uh that allows school corporation leaders to identify when and how projects will be addressed and then they have to prioritize those needs also it enhances the budgeting process enables school corporation leaders to determine appropriateness of debt issuance and or cash on hand so we have to they that balancing act about having a a cash balance that's favorable to bonds but also um managing debt and keeping that uh you know that tax level uh when coupled with a comprehensive financial plan the cip helps school corporation leaders identify funding sources available for projects while maintaining a balanced budget and meeting the reserve and tax rate targets and then finally third big rock has to deal with continued development expansion of the culture of well-being so employee well-being is essential to providing an exemplary educational program in other words we have to take care of our people because they take care of our kids improving the health and welfare wellness of employees and their dependents minimizes healthcare expenses thus providing more financial resources to support the educational program so kind of the double the double edge on that is that by supporting our folks and helping them to be well and in the different areas um we also it also saves us money and uh which makes more money available so it's a it's a a good uh a good plan that uh is comprehensive advantage as if it's done as well um when you look at our slide here big rock is the long-term financial plan and uh of course when you're walking working with finance you're going to have some numbers so uh so the the big rock is that that carmel clay will maintain a minimum of eight percent cast balance reserves in the educational operating referendum rainy day funds with a goal of building a 12 cash balance reserve and so i know we've talked about that before and uh the advantage is to that is a lower um you know bond rate which we've experienced some real um some real advantages to that saving the taxpayers a lot of money um also continuing to maintain that level tax rate and uh and that's where the man i would call it magic but it's really strategy to how we manage money to be able to keep that tax rate level and then maintain the district's outstanding debt at a level not to exceed three percent of the gross assessed valuation of school corporation annual debt service does not exceed 15 of the total operating expenses and the net direct debt per capita not to exceed two thousand dollars unless approved by the board of school trustees those are all metrics uh that the state requires correct to manage debt and uh and so we have to follow those rules tightly from there i'll bounce down to continue development uh excuse me comprehensive facilities plans i'll go to the right there still facilities can be become programmably obsolete before they become physically physically obsolete so there's that line that i was so impressed by and thus facilities must be maintained both physically and programmatically at the highest level to support the educational program and you can see that there's a lot of that going on around us and touching a lot of facilities that haven't been touched since 1993 or were when our student population was much smaller and so a lot of good good projects going on and more to come and then finally in response to need increased mental health and physician services wellness center um i think dr ostrich mentioned that and uh that uh mr mcmichael authorized uh some increased hours i think we raised our capacity about 33 percent so that we can handle the and meet the needs of our employees um increase participation at the wellness center by a minimum of five percent so we're going to try to bump up the number of folks you know working out and going through the programming there and then increase the participation in fitness classes minimum of 10 percent and then expand the financial wellness services with a goal of reducing student debt a by a million dollars so uh we uh he added that was that last year or i covered years i don't know it might have been two years ago but uh we added pete the planner and uh and access free access for our employees to uh to seek financial wellness which is also a big cause of stress in a lot of people's lives and so uh and one of their direct goals is we have a lot of uh teachers that have a lot of student debt and how can we get some of that debt forgiven and and with a lot of programming that's out there that they can access so uh good good solid balance plan and with that i'll pause and take any questions i just have a comment is to direct the public's view to that third bullet point up there at the top i think that that is something that i know that we strive very hard is to continue to main a level tax rate um i think we're slightly biased but i believe that we not only live in one of the greatest school districts but also on the greatest cities and one of those reasons is because we do have such a great tax rate and i know that as a school board we and as administration we work really hard to make sure that stays that way so thank you for making that a priority that's because roger talks about every every school board meeting you guys get to get the scoop every time we're going to move into student services now and and really our student services you know why remains the same and which is karma play school seeks to establish a safe non-threatening learning environment that addresses students academic social emotional and physical needs so student services consists continuously working to lead the development implementation of a safe learning environment for our children and um and some of these you'll see we're finishing up on some of our our previous goals which is the completion of the school safety referendum goals so 2019 was when the the first school safety referendum was passed in the state of indiana and and with that referendum the goals of that was to have one highly trained school resource officer in every school district in the district adding additional mental health programming for students in every school across the district professional development and training for our staff to improve school safety and then the hiring of sros and establishing a partnership with a fully staffed mental health provider was initially laid out as a three-year plan for implementation with an internal deadline of the fall of 2022 and i'm happy to report that we are on schedule we're way ahead of schedule with mental health supports as you heard tonight but we are on schedule to to have an sro in every building at least one in every building this coming fall so the fall of 2022 that promise is completed so uh uh and that's another echoing okay to your thoughts uh that's our community that's our our city that's our schools and that's all of us together saying we want this for our kids and uh and it's gonna happen so uh and you can see the increase with the sro unit this year there's some really cool stuff going on and uh and that's only gonna get better and i can't uh uh you know when you guys uh you know uh hired me and i always had the the blessing of becoming your superintendent one of the big charges you had for me was uh um you know how can we make our schools as safe as we possibly can and uh and uh when i think about then and now um we've come so far and uh of course well it's it's a never-ending process and it's our priority every morning but uh i'm very happy with the way things have come to come out so far the second big bull is something we alluded to a little bit earlier which is covet 19 recovery and since the onset of the global pandemic schools work to provide education stability to students while grappling with the ever-changing requirements for contact tracing and quarantines that impacted both staff students resulting in increased behavioral and mental health issues which you heard a little bit about tonight student services staff will navigate supports and resources for staff and students in the post pandemic environment so a little bit about similar to what i i talked about but at this point in time as you can tell um if you've been monitoring our data cover data every week i think we've got our eighth week of uh single-digit positive cases at the high school level i think we're like six or seven in a row for the middle school but our elementary cases continue to bounce up and down and up and down we actually lost a whole classroom with uh i think maybe six or six kids maybe that were tested positive 20 were close contact traced and then so it made more sense to to have the teacher teach the class virtually for uh for those uh quarantines so we're still battling uh those quarantines we were fortunate that when the guideline changed if you have a mask on you will not have to quarantine we went from approximately right around 700 probably quarantines a week to drop to under 200 right around 200 just under 200 a week so uh um and that's uh something we really struggled with last year was the number of kids that were quarantining out and uh trying to keep up in school that way is very difficult um so anyhow we've got those pieces and uh you can with numbers trending and the new immunizations uh um i've told the staff that i feel like we're kind of turning a corner but we're not turning it like this we're turning it like like a barge we're just kind of crawling around the corner uh but uh but uh we feel like we're you know things are progressing and and we're hopeful for a you know a much different second semester um so there's that piece of it uh and and working through those challenges and then like i said before the next step will be what do we need to do to recover uh once the we we get back to the next normal instead of the new normal it'll be the next normal and then uh we'll go from there and then finally he has student assistance programming and local agencies and schools within our district have not had a formalized mechanism for effective collaboration so student services is going to establish a formalized process for increased collaboration and training amongst agencies and that includes carmel clay schools the carmel police department department of child services and probation with a goal to improve outcomes for students facing adverse life circumstances so i don't know if you're aware that we do have a probation officers and we allow give them space in our high school again to keep kids in school so they can have kids that are in those settings can easily access their probation officer and keep them in class and then also department child services works very closely with of course the carmel police department and and we just have a a lot of different services to wrap around kids but the goal of the student assistance programming going forward is how can we collaborate together so that everybody knows what everybody's doing and we can surround and kind of wrap around those students to try to to help them get on a good trajectory moving forward which is always the goal and so it's a good goal and it's a difficult goal but we feel like we've gotten a good position to make that happen so and with that i will take any questions you might have moving on i think so okay so just for the record uh mr woodward's uh did not have any questions on his uh his his area so he's he's winning the thorough award right i'm just just kidding oh you just yeah that takes him out i want to go to bed too but just real quick with the kova 19 piece if there's any um challenges learning challenges is that does that go under the that rock or does that go somewhere else meaning if there were any gaps that we've assessed through uh different scores or whatever or grades and classes is that under that rock or is it now that would go back to dr dudley and cia to uh to pick up that and their you know in their assessment and uh and hopefully um you know we just had a profession dr dudley did a really nice um presentation to our administrative staff about we really need to change the the nomenclature of learning loss because when you think about learning loss it's like you know you knew something now you don't but really it's about maybe how we can accelerate learning from the things we've learned you know from using some high engagement things with technology and and really uh how do we move forward now of course part of our normal everyday work of a teacher is kids that are behind how do we catch them back up you know and identify those areas which we talked about earlier so i think there's some real growth that can happen there okay moving on all right let's talk about technology and typically when i talk about technology with you all i'm talking about the integration because technology works with everybody and they're kind of like like a support service or you know or they're connected to everything so uh you know we're always talking about what they're doing for all of us and all the different divisions but actually um we're moving to some things very specific with our strategic plan in regards to technology and you know the fact of it is is that carmel clay school students and staff have access to to technological resources 24 7 365 days a year and that's the environment that we we work in and live in so it's our responsibility to ensure that the network that delivers these resources is secure and available to all of our students and staff so that's those sometimes can be contradictory how do you give access and make sure everything's available at that same time how do we make sure that it's secure and so we're talking about data security data integrity and data availability so with that um one piece that we're going to continue working on is cyber security and continue to harden and strengthen our network environment to protect it against unwanted access and of course that's includes everything from phishing to more sophisticated attacks um always review you know the constant review of our firewall firewall configurations implementation of recommendations from msisac association which is the association that works with cyber security and further enhancements to email security uh port security denied unauthorized access and administrative account review so all those are pieces on how are we going to keep our you know our systems uh secure and then we go down to a new thing that i think i've maybe hinted to you a little bit about but there's a thing it's basically a certification that you can get called the trusted learning environment and what that piece is well as far as the big rock goes is one of them is that we currently have posted a position to hire a data privacy specialist so that person would be really focused and not particular on cyber security but really more about how do we protect student data staff data how do we how do we keep that secure and safe and so with that we'd be implementing this process of a trusted learning environment which is from cosine which is a another technology leader and with that we would develop data privacy you know data privacy website and so uh you know as the world becomes more digital this is becoming more and more of an issue i mean you probably hear a story every night about someone's had their identity still on or their you know they're finding out private information so how do we protect that and what steps do we need to do to be a trusted learning uh environment and this will be a three year or more process this is not something could be can happen overnight but it's time for us to begin that journey and then finally uh the communication platform and of course that's our website which is a big part of our information sharing to our parents and community and then reviewing of existing communication products and needs analysis one of the things that happened with the pandemic is a lot of things were offered for free and and a lot of folks took them up on that but we didn't have a good handle on what all was there and and so it's really more backtracking and going back with uh do we need these things and what's what's the most secure way to accomplish the educational goals of that so any questions with that moving right along i'm glad because i was afraid you're going to ask me to say what all those acronyms meant and i was then christie's not here i don't know if you guys know him or not or did i wrote them down but dodged a bullet there finally we're going to talk about um our communications and uh and what our strategic plan is going to look like with uh communications and so the first one i'm going to kind of do these one at a time so for the first one with the district as large as carmel clay schools there's an abundance of information coming at both students and families each day just a plethora of information so we need to continue to establish reliable consistent and concise information delivery process in other words we don't want to overload folks we want to get the information that they need and and how do we do that in the most efficient delivery process and the best way to do that is to analyze the pathways with the people who are receiving the information to see what's the best way that to do that from there with so much that goes on with our district and and many of our families have limited access to and you know they may learn a lot about their school or their child's school or at one grade level in particular but how do we enhance our school-to-home communications so continue to train our school representatives on best practices in communicating home maybe increasing our branding established standards for branding frequency and content so the idea is to get our community more in tune with how are we going to receive information and where's a consistent place they can look and find what they need to know uh quickly and then finally is you know our students are the most appropriate storytellers and content creators we have because they're the ones that are doing all the amazing things so how do we tell the ccs story and we've already begun utilizing our twice monthly message to the community to highlight important and interesting stories along with the school board recap [Music] create social media tips and tools for schools to better represent the community online increase frequency and utilization of new posts on our website it's a whole package deal is how do we tell our story how do we get the information out and uh and get that communication out so uh our teacher you know not only our our kids but our teachers our you know our staff our parents our community is aware of what's going on in carmel clay schools and then finally um recently and you saw tonight on a slideshow that was created by students so i want to increase student internships and experience in community relations and marketing or whatever we have to offer here so they can have real life experiences and create and utilize student positions for content creation and on the ground reporting so uh we've got a lot of talented kids at carmel high school and even in our middle schools that are already in to journalism and communications and what a great experience for them to be able to put together a program much like tonight where you can see their work on the screen and so we'll continue that and that is the final set of big rocks well thank you dr beresford before we get to additional questions with regards to communications what are the next steps that you are going to be taking with unpacking the big rocks and presenting to us either through a report or what are the next steps yeah next steps was to get your feedback you know on the you know on these all the different big rocks and the different divisions and then uh once we get that feedback and then the next step would be developing strategies and uh and getting our strategy list going and uh and then we want to do pretty much something similar to what we put on the website um with our last strategic plan where we have um everything laid out and then and then we can mark how you know where we're at at any particular time with any of the big rocks so uh that's kind of the the the process we're looking at right now okay thank you now i know i've hit you guys with a lot of information so uh as you digest that and uh and uh you know um and then we'll just just keep playing this now can we receive your powerpoint absolutely yeah absolutely okay yeah questions with regards to the communication plan or yes katie um well you know this is like my cup of tea so i love this good job um emily and team um my first thing is i love the fact of establishing the standards because i think definitely with social media you see parents are like well my school told me this well why i didn't hear about that what is my school doing that so i think having like that standard of every school is different has a different personality but making sure that we're having some clear messaging that goes in between school so that people um aren't necessarily filling out the loop and maybe they were not the loop they just didn't get the memo or whatnot so i love having some of those standards i'm i think similarly to how we looked at canvas and making sure that there was like some standards across the board with there i know we're always continuing to work on that but just kind of in other forms of communication so i love that um i also love the part about telling our story i think definitely we've seen like there's a lot of misinformation out there and so i think by utilizing the um the opportunities that we have to making sure that we are telling about um what's going on in carmel clay schools i think is wonderful so i appreciate and applaud these efforts and i look forward to hearing more about them [Music] and just to piggyback on what you're saying about misinformation i do think it's important that we continue to utilize our website and other avenues as a way for people to find out accurate information because i think people recognize that there's a lot of misinformation out there and they're seeking what is actually the truth and we are the best at telling what's going on okay i think that covers this portion as well yeah so the next time i say i'm going to do a a like a strategic plan light i understand that's going to be a couple hours now i really appreciate you taking the time and good questions and that gives us all you know good feedback that we can use as we go through the next steps in developing the plan so appreciate that well thank you and next is reports and dr b that's all you yeah the last thing on the agenda is the superintendent's report and so i already hit number one because we talked about no shave november uh so first uh what on my list here is i'm excited to report that this afternoon we distributed a communication to the district everybody everyone in the district parents are launching our new curated resource web page and that explains the details for instructional materials and the differences between curriculum and supplementary materials and library books so by using this new website web page of the materials webpage parents can learn more about the three types of instructional materials used in carmel clay schools get the answers to a lot of frequently asked questions and then review a step-by-step instructions to log in with your student and view the books that's been checked out from the media center and then also in that same that same resource you can read book reviews and a short synopsis of the various works or books that kids check out so what a great tool toolkit for for parents to be able to to get actively engaged in that now these tools will allow families to easily access information about books and materials that are aligned with parental preferences so it's important because what may be appropriate for one family may not be appropriate or seen as appropriate for another family and so the collection of resources this collection of resources and these tools for parents is one of the good things that came out from that july board meeting where some concerns were raised about a handful of books that were located in some of our media centers now typically when there's an issue we work with individual families who have concerns about reading materials and by handling each case individually this promotes collaboration between the schools and the families and to ensure that media the reading materials are both challenging and appropriate you know to the student and then also it prevents unjust censoring of books so to address those concerns that were raised in in july we created a committee of district and secondary administrators media specialists classroom teachers and parents who read and reviewed each of the material books that were discussed during that night and then they shared their recommendations with me and that went through one of our policies uh in our policy where the superintendent can uh can form a uh a committee to do that and uh and they did a really nice job so i just wanted to report a little bit to you that two of the titles from that evening were not in any carmel clay school library four of the titles were removed from circulation due to really more periodic weeding process this is things i've learned you know through that but they have a weeding process where they review older materials that have not been checked out over multiple years in order to make room for new stuff coming in current more relevant materials so in other words just hardly kids check them out for over many years and then three of the titles remain available either in the library or in a resource collection and so i wanted to say that i appreciate the thoughtful work of that committee and i also want to give our media specialist a shout out for all the work they do like i said i learned a lot about our media centers through this process and all the work they do in curating our collections and making the media centers the media center such a special hub in our and most importantly i just appreciate their work and instilling a love of reading and also being a great resource for students and and parents you know they become really primary instruction on you know research and especially at the older grades on on doing research and finding good resources versus you know resources may not be as accurate and that's that then i have some in other news you can't ask questions sorry to interrupt but um one of the the statements i picked up on is that you said there were four other books that were that we're we were keeping but their resources so could you touch on what what do you mean by resources where are these located yeah well there's three titles and um and one stated in the stacks the other ones the other i think two were put in what i call we call a resource collection and what that is is uh like a lot of books uh like i mean i remember buying you know for my own kids where you'll have a story book and then the storybook is really to help parents uh maybe work through a you know a topic that their kid doesn't understand so you'll have like the book will be the story book in the back it says for parents or for caregivers and they'll say here's how you can use this book to help your child understand like i remember getting one that was about grief and loss and how to help a child you know manage that through a story you know so uh so those are what i would call something that would be put in a resource collection so it wouldn't be available in the library you know like in the stacks but uh but if there was a situation where a family may need some you know some resources that would be what we would call that resource area that makes sense resource collection so a resource for families not resource for the student at the school yeah well these these books are more intentional about for an adult and a parent okay to to read together a lot of the recommendations from the committee which were very thoughtful was that you know maybe this would be best uh you know this this topic would be best covered with an adult present and using the resources in the back of the book so uh and so how would parents access those um they just need conduct school oh okay and uh and so they're they're going to be in the library but not in the stacks i guess but okay thank you okay um any other questions about that before i move on to yeah and then i promise this won't take very long but it's pretty exciting though but first i wanted to just talk a little bit our football team season came to an end on friday night and they had very high expectations of course and uh but sometimes seasons come to an end and we want to say congratulations to brownsburg the bulldogs played a great game and and and the hounds came up a little short but i also wanted just to congratulate um our team and coaches and parents and really all who contributed to an outstanding season i've often said as a coach and as a as administrators it's uh easy to be a champion when you win um but when things don't go your way and that's when character is grown and uh as coach hebert said uh he shared that this team was a special group they were kind of like a band of brothers and uh and they met challenge after challenge you know with a great strong resolve and uh so i'm extremely proud of their efforts and uh and their heart both in victory and defeat and uh real proud of that group and uh they they did a they had a great season i did make it downtown to lucas oil stadium to catch the marching greyhounds who were named the 2021 isma marching band state finals runner-up on saturday night and i got to tell you um carmel was the first to perform so i got to see all of the bands that were in the finals all 10 of them and it's amazing to see uh you know that much talent on the on the field from all the different schools i mean hundreds and hundreds of kids but when i talk when i watch the hounds it's amazing to see such precise performance it's just so the precision of it is just incredible and then you mix that with really a high level of musicality i mean it was it was like being in at a concert but along with that was dance and the design of the whole thing and there's a lot of emotion in it and and they're moving all the time you know the only time they stop is for a big note you know it was just amazing it was incredible performance and and i'm just going to go on record by saying don't count the hounds out for the bands of america competition because we are right there and uh and i will tell you that i think indiana will be well represented um because band after band proved how groups of students can create art and music all movies and in a lot of detail so i'm very proud of our kids and the directors and parents i mean the parent crew that pulls that off is an amazing team and uh just all the people that are involved in such a wonderful experience that was really really pretty special and jim dandy did accompany me and he made it through two or three bands before he uh sacked down it was a long day for him because we also attended the uh the cheerleading state competition that morning and after early afternoon and uh our carmel clay schools high school state champs they took home the top prize in the large varsity timeout state competition and timeout i guess is a shorter time time you know span to do the performance and then also uh they just nailed their performance uh in the second competition uh again with uh like kinda like the band with incredible precision and spot on timing i said the only time that they stopped was when they were so precise that when they would stop all of their ponytails would hit their back at exactly the same time i mean they every detail was there um they were the runners-up in the afternoon for the division division a and i can just tell you they just nailed their performance in both competitions and uh and i was really taken back by the speed of their performance and uh um you know there's a certain cadence to it and they were just going so fast it was like and it was uh really impressive to see so uh and uh we're kind of coming to the close of the fall competitions now so uh i wanted to say for all the amazing students who worked so hard this fall and accomplished so much congratulations and i wanted to give out a special thank you to the school staff the volunteers the parents of these students who put in so much time and effort and uh support the hard-working kids that we have just a really really good fall so and that concludes my report thank you dr bearsford any board member have any comments i'd like to make before we close out the meeting fantastic well then all those in favor of journeying the meeting signify by saying i i motion carries thank you oh

so let's say for example if you resign tomorrow you're not going to get this we we have it with the 11 26 date on there november 26th because misty will start running payroll for classified that's their last day for time sheets for time cards so you have to be employed and i apologize because i i thought i had the most current document but i i just realized when i was looking up there i wish it was until christmas personally but i understand giving people before christmas too right we have to be able to run that december payroll so yeah we want staff to get this this premium pay before christmas because we talked about you know cutting it off at may one and then we talked about that problem that darla was just saying any other questions or comments do we have anywhere on here that yeah for the second semester that says it has to be the end date 5 17 22 you know so they have to be employed in 5 17 right yeah because like it was the first week of january quit and be like well you owe me this because i've been there for that time okay we're going to share this i'm going to share this with staff tomorrow and uh we will hopefully make some people very happy and i'll relate i'll relate to them the board of education greatly appreciates their services [Music] card review there's a link there that we want to go to right and thank you christy for pulling that up i'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because um quite quite honestly uh this you're going to see this information with the results reports and so i'm again just going to review this real quick lots of good uh let me get copy and paste here so i can get it up here online lots of really good information here if we look at the math and all grades you can see here that scrolls down there to a chart that's easy to read and you look by again you can look at the way i look at this and the way the state chooses for us to look at this and tell us you're again thinking you want to have numbers in the blue the green and kind of the yellow if you will those are levels four three and two you want to have much larger numbers in those in those two three and four levels and it's much smaller number in level one because again level two is considered grade level three and four are above grade level if you will if you want to think of it in terms of that in that scenario so again when you look at our numbers here for example for the whole district in that we have much less in the orange and again we have much more in the blue the green and the yellow and for our state assessments and we can go through a lot of this information um i'm not gonna go through every grade level but we'll pop one up let's for example if you can click on grade three scroll up just a little bit yeah and go to all yeah right there the grade level the middle one there you go right there and click on the first one a great level three there we go it will break down information for grade level three so our building again you're we're looking at ideally again we have much bigger numbers in the blue and much smaller numbers in the whole range and uh that's a perfect example of third grade and you know it's again it's just not it's just not a reflection of their great teachers it's a reflection of the pre-k work all the way kindergarten through second grade uh and in the third grade as well so again it's a collaborative effort and again you can see how they break those scores down there again looking for two grades tooth for too many levels two three and four to be much bigger numbers um i'm not again i'm not going to go over each one of those grade levels um we'll pop up if you would go to the math yeah and we're going to pull english language arts real quick we'll just look at the ela again you can see that there's a district component to this we will change that to all grades to from three right there to all grades and then you can go through this and look at any grade level that you want again our trends are very good overall with fewer in that orange category um again if you click on the ela piece you go to there you can go to science not all grade not all grade levels do science so when you look at the different grade levels i think it's five and eight if i'm not mistaken so if we look at science and if i remember right at science in grade five and in grade eight i think it's grade 11 grade 10 at high school i can't remember which one so you may not see because again certain subject levels are only just going to be you know for certain certain rate levels so again overall um our state assessments really strong you guys have had information when we share the linkage in regards to act information we're going to get some information on the kd and get that out also for the paper equals also for our social media again um really really good information and again we're not all about state assessments at all absolutely not there's so many other things that worry about state assessments don't get me wrong are important but we're about so many other things in the district that show a well-rounded suit so questions anything in regards and again the building administration will do during the results reports they'll include the state assessment data in there at that time as well so any questions you must have okay thank you move on to the board member reports there's a couple of uh ksb commission delegate assembly uh yeah yeah this is i have to uh apologize we didn't get that adjusted there nice link to vote yeah the convention was very good i'll have some information at the december board meeting from some information actually i was able to present i was one of the presenters so i got to represent burlington to present on some positive public relations uh in school districts so i had a very big crowd i was really kind of surprised i did the one o'clock session usually the one o'clock session right after lunch sometimes people take a longer lunch but i had over 100 people in my session and it was very very well attended so it's good to represent burlington okay we'll move on to the budget review for capital outlay and you have a bunch of information there that you've had a chance to read through the capital outlet working document if we could pull that possibly and you guys have that on your computer as well um kind of focus in on the 21 22 year that's the current year that we are in and you can see um some of the projects that we have going on or that have been completed up to this point so having said that uh 2122 yes thank you you got it right there so again this information again is you guys again you see this uh you know at least twice a year if not more uh some of the things that we're really looking to take care of um you know with different different needs our building administrators usually we have in september or october we usually have a chance to go through their buildings uh with their schedules and my schedule and a lot of different things happening we haven't had a chance to do that so we will update i'm going to go and meet with them in their buildings here in the month of november sometime and walk through and there may be some things moved and adjusted and so on and so forth as we move forward one thing the elementary school chiller if you'll notice there we have tried twice now once or twice once or twice to try to get that installed on the elementary school because the rain that we had we're trying to do that on the 29th i think it was 29th of october but we had so much rain they couldn't bring the large crane in we just sunk so we're trying to get that chiller installed somewhere here in this fall early winters as quick as we can and so that will be up and going and ready to go that's replacing a 1989 show or that we have gotten our usage out of that and then we've exceeded the life expectancy on that so um again we talked at the linkage about the track the track is absolutely terrific it's able to be walked on and run on and that type of thing now so if you haven't had a chance maybe you can sneak out there on a weekend or a weekday and then be out there and we may try to do a community walk or a community event for people to come out there because i know the track it's used a lot by so many different members of our community so i don't know if you have any questions on anything from 2122 they had some panels that were damaged so they're waiting for those panels to get back and replaced we are like 95 plus complete with it but with the rain that we've had and actually even after the storm knockoff margarito reports our roofs are in very very good shape i think i mentioned to you there's two kinds of roofs there's ones that leak and ones that are going to leak so hopefully this right this ring that we've had has helped us with uh issues and leaking just to make sure that we don't have leaking growth so anyway other questions that you might have had regarding 2122.

we had the end of 20 we were we didn't have any subs for the last quarter of 20 um or 1920. so i use those numbers um these are the numbers from 18 and 19 to kind of figure out how much we spent and how much this would cost and the anticipated cost of the members remain the same would be about 35 000 and you know it seems like a lot when the total cost is 120 but we're not feeling we're not filling in seats right now we're not feeling positive positions and so we have to do something and again we're hoping that this will be um this will put us in a better spot and more people would maybe take jobs or think about hey i can make 130 bucks a day rather 90 or 100 bucks a day and so we are hopeful that that is the case um i only know what prescott recently raised their rates and they're about ten dollars less than we are across the board but for us yeah how many hours and then today so what would they be paid an hour esi currently calculates seven and a half hours a day as a typical assignment that's what they use and do they get benefits no that's through esi so if they work enough that the esi is a large enough business that if there's they work enough so we hours a year the esi is required to give them some kind of benefits but that's not paid out from our funds correct so through esi they get lead they get paid leave they get everything else that we pay our employees depending on how much they want do all our subs have to work through esi or can they come in just as they have enough certificate or experience all of our certificated subs all of our teacher substitutes all come to psi that's the agreement that we have with the county and educational services inc our classified subs we hire directly okay just based on their resumes correct so all certified we have a contract with dsi to do that now we actually have an iga with the county and the county is the administrator for this and program esi is i think is our built through esi or the county you know yes so the esi bills us for the hours but we have an agreement for the county to administer this so all we have to do is put a call out to esi here's a here's what we need this next week or tomorrow right actually there's an employee of the county that is our sub coordinator that operates the system that does the calling out in the africa yes i think so i have another question yeah so if they're paying a flat rate then do we actually take taxes on that or is the esi responsible for so we we will pay um if you look there is a um we have to pay 15 in what's called employee related expenses so that would be medicare social security workers comp anything else that that esi has and then on top of that we pay a 10 administrative fee which is really esi's profit okay i won't say profit that's what they get and then they cover their expenses and that kind of stuff out of that their fee correct thank you any additional questions oh and it does say one more thing sorry it does say we'd like to start this on december 1st if we can actually start this next monday which today is the eighth so we can get it started earlier maybe build more jobs earlier we could start this on november 15th that would be helpful so the motion should be this would apply immediately then well actually it just follow the existing one except on the to begin november 15th that'll give us this week to work things out with esi so that they're prepared starting next monday peter it sounds like you're preparing it whatever gave that away well it's a win-win what can we say no for the cost i mean john's explaining it these are critical positions and uh to me it sounds entirely reasonable so i i will make a motion that if i may uh to approve and see how it just increases the substitute teacher daily rates uh yeah 220 the short term without the highest 130 for short term with the class 150 for long term assignments to begin on november the 15th fantastic second all in favor all right thank you so much thank you all right moving on to item nine stations are district calendars it's never too early to begin thinking about 2022 2023 that's where we're at so this is the district calendar for 2022-2023 very similar to this current um calendar with one it's not a major um change but i'll say significant um christmas or winter break is moved one week later um because the legal holiday for the first now is on monday the second instead of the day before the 31st we have to go we have to be off that week of the second of january 2nd so our last day of school is december 22nd i think this year it's the 16th so we'll move it a week later and everything else we start the first wednesday in august we are out the tuesday before memorial day graduation is the wednesday before memorial day we have similar number of in-service days and you know holidays and breaks and everything else this does match with humboldt's calendar i have heard rumblings that prescott may start their winter break wednesday the 21st and come back wednesday the fourth which means it's two days shorter than they only have a 14 day break instead of a 16 day break because they're not utilizing the weekends and they're concerned about about going see they have to go until friday if normally right and so they would go until the 23rd of december where we can get away with going over to the 27th advantage of a four-day week bingo [Laughter] that's the only significant change to the whole calendar and we could we could this is the only really option that i see unless we do something similar to what press could we do and our fall break in spring break aligns with everyone else correct and our spring break is also aligned with the yavapai college okay once again this is an action item uh i would appreciate a motion to approve the 22-23 district calendar you're sure [Laughter] that we uh accept the 2021 2022 calendar is presented to us this evening valley usd number 51 proposition 301 plan it's actually the plan formerly known as property i actually heard that but i was then that part was raised when the legislature took it over but so what we did was we were able to pare down because of some of the changes in the way it was approached from the legislative level we were able to pare down some of the things that we have collected documentation for over the last several years i would tell you in visiting with the principals they still do the activities some of them still collect some of the documentation like for example contact logs they want to see that teachers are contacted at what frequency things like that but we're not requiring the principles to collect those things and sign off on them so it's reduced the paperwork burden significantly while still meeting the full intent of the law so it still has the same things in it but it gives a little bit more latitude at the building level with what they choose to collect or not collect also reduces the paperwork burden for staff so one of the so every year you guys are supposed to approve the plan by december 31st the law requires that everybody has to vote and that 70 of the staff are eligible to receive the funds that it has to be approved by at least that margin so we've never had we've ever had approval less than 97 this year we have a 98 affirmative we had 120 staff who are eligible to receive the money vote and 121 voted yes two voted no so and what we've learned over the years is the two we usually have two um the two who vote no vote on principal in the they don't think they should have to do this to get paid so it's just like that it's not just like the concept do they still get this money yeah they do okay so and whether they vote yes or no they still get money um this year um it will be not less than 9 gross per eligible person unless they are less than full time and then it's prorated to match their fte their full-time equivalent as an employee so you have in front of you the pared down plan that we submitted to staff provoked teachers were presented the plan by their administrators and had an opportunity to ask and answer questions we've gathered input for the plan and what you see before you is a request to approve the classroom site so my question has actually nothing to do with the plan itself okay so it says 123 staff members eligible so are there some that are not correct what type of stuff would that be administrators custodians people who don't have teaching direct teaching responsibilities also we do have teachers that are on assignment like our academic coaches coordinator she teaches half a day and is coordinator half a day so she's like our part-time eligible and their their teacher on assignment salaries are adjusted to compensate for that they're not getting the classroom site done they're still getting it just they're just getting through mno in their regular like there are districts who um help people be eligible for it but then they put teaching responsibilities on them and we just went ahead and built it in rather than trying to have them have to do a lesson here there right here's like contrived stuff it's like we want to make it easy for people to get the money our goal has always been what comes in goes back out to the people who are eligible that's great and there's two other changes that i want to mention that are based on the state law that kind of are are represented in the plan one is that it used to be where 20 of the total funds had to be performance paid and we've decreased that to five percent and then we used to give out the money there was actually three funds three pots that the money went into and we paid it out over six different pays and now there's only one pot and so that one pot of money gets is getting paid out over four pace instead of six we've aligned those special pays so it's not run with regular payroll to help them with taxes it's run on special payrolls and we've tried to align it those payrolls to be prior to a time when you might need it like fall break you know who's just writing that kind of stuff so that's good are perez ever eligible we have all we've never included peras it's always been our our certificated staff that we've gotten so for example just because if we if you include more people we don't get more money it's based on the numbers to the obvious water down yeah um and then i think to you know noteworthy is that um this district is unique in that it goes to teacher pay some of our neighboring districts hold it back to offset cost of health insurance which is allowable under the law to hire additional teachers class size reduction is allowable under we have never used since i've been here that was one of the first things i was tasked with when i was hired 14 years ago and this governing board has always made it a priority to find money for those kinds of things from other sources so we could maximize what the teachers got in their pocket so i think that's a big kudo to the board for having that value cindy could you remind me what the base salary is of first year bachelor's teacher certified teacher we're sitting what 33 right now yeah so this pumps 9k on top of that right which makes us competitive so districts that aren't giving the full amount might have a little bit higher face but then they're not getting it seen it this way so it's good any other questions i think that that's wonderful i'm glad that we're able to give some give some more um action item so if i could have a motion to approve school district number 51 classroom site fund plan second perfect all in favor all right hi thank you thank you item 11a is our second reading of revised policies g b g b r g h g i m b j l c b j l c b r and i do want to mention this is an action item so we this is um the second reading so this will be approved today if you choose to that these were the changes that were made initially are we actually reversing the changes that were made a while back when the the court decided that um the law rolling putting policy items into the budget bills um was wasn't allowed and the supreme court came out recently and affirmed that that's not not allowed so um that's all this is is reversing the state law because the state law was reversed in essence doesn't mean we're going to do it all it means is that we are no longer prohibited from doing these things any other questions or comments on his wonderful policy revisions uh okay well with that then i would accept a motion to approve uh madam president i will make your promotion to approve all of the second reading of the revised policies as in our agenda second second all in favor all right thank you and with that can i have a motion good night

okay i'm going to briefly look at 2223 it won't take very long at all we uh because this is this will be the again this will be what the administration directors we spend some time you'll notice that there's a number down there at the bottom right now of 856 000 and there's a few other a few things right now that we have on this list but there we this this list will grow this list will grow because our administration directors are going to give me some feedback on some things that need to be done but my first six years here guys we've done an awful lot he was a board of education the public has been very supportive especially with the one mill for five years we were able to do a lot i i think and i'm hopeful that like i say our buildings are now getting a lot closer to where they need to be from six years ago and you know this list will grow because again i haven't had a chance to be with our administration directors to look at their immediate needs so knowing that 22 23 23 24 and 24 25 the number right now is not real um large right now and there are some items that we're gonna we have to have some discussions on for example do we look at some turf fields or not do we look at some additional parking or not do we look at a variety of different things you know as we move forward and again these will be discussion items for another day but things that you guys can you know kind of keep you know in the back of your mind and we'll bring those discussions to you as the board to get direction for where you think we need to go but that's why those numbers in 22 23 23 24 and 24 25 are not quite as large as the numbers that we had to pass number one we've done a lot of work and our buildings look great for it and number two we haven't had a chance to be with our administrators yet to go through those those needs that they have have any questions anything we'll bring this back to you in the spring sometime maybe like march or april after probably march i'm going to guest to have the discussion and share with you some of the things that the administration directors added so anyway sounds good all right any questions comments i mean we know this is a working document right now thanks very much tomorrow but i mean it gives us good guidance on keeping the direction of where we're going and financial responsibility about not getting out of our skis on things so i like that it's there and we can check and adjust and go from there we'll move on to blc staff evaluations there's a document there for just kind of how those go on we need to adjust or approve how those are going to be done we just felt like we need to come up with the tool a little different than what teachers would have this is more specific towards early learning center staff so if you have any questions on this i'll be happy to answer or you can approve how many current staff do we have there we are cats i gotta think now eight nine eight or nine i can't wrap that remember specifically but i think it's nine i'm going to approve early learning center staff evaluations as presented second move to the elc exclusion policy and this just deals more again with health illnesses and issues regarding students we felt like this need to be very similar to our elementary school but there's a little bit of an adjustment from kansas department of health and environment that helps us as well as the coffee county health department making some slight adjustments with our birth to five-year-old program so this is what uh was proposed by haley and to share it with uh with our patrons that are involved in the early learning center do you have any questions on on this document see on our computers promotion passes 7-0 this agenda item is to an amendment or a change to the burlington high school handbook of the graduation policy just kind of gives us guidelines on maybe stuff that's been how it's happened in the past or just it really kind of gives direction to the high school for what's to be expected of graduation from the board i guess and we did have a chance to discuss this at our retreat i think it was our second night so i don't know if you have any questions this is what was discussed and talked about make a motion to approve the edition of the graduation policy for the 2021-22 vhs handbook and everyone can vote on our computers motion passes six one and we've got a next agenda items for personnel for uh law school i'm moving to recess in the executive session for 10 minutes to discuss superintendent's evaluation pursuant to the non-elected personnel exception under coma and through open session in this room [Applause] thank you guys safe travels we competed a lot of the bcs and where our kids were from the first time yeah yeah i was pleased [Music] we will get a picture of him and get out on social media any other questions i just really like this thing you might be a guest appearance [Music] good good okay well during the meeting

of the ann arbor designs hey dick dick this is jeff it looks like you sort of uh we stopped hearing you i'm gonna ask that everybody mute themselves unless they're speaking and let's see if that let's see if that helps us okay dick are you still with us looks like he left a reboot that's fine we can wait a few minutes do we have any candidates for corey's position we we have had someone submit up a uh letter uh requesting appointment uh we we um at this point are waiting for the mayor's office to have a look at that and then make the recommendation formally to city council for for their approval are you able to tell us who it is jeff i i don't think that'd be appropriate at this time but it is a a planner filling in for the planner position okay should we get going if you you can hear me all right yeah dick we're gonna go ahead and get going i asked everyone to um mute themselves uh which might help you so why don't you um go ahead and get us started and we'll see how this goes okay all right um and if if something is wrong with my audio maybe jeff could take this over or kristen could read the script that i'm about to read uh welcome to the wednesday november 11 2021 electronic meeting of the ann arbor design review board this meeting is held electronically to protect public health and safety due to the covet 19 virus and to comply with orders issued by the governor the michigan department of health and human services and or the washington county health department we intend to conduct this meeting similar to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call [Music] 877-852-5247 or 888-788-0099 and enter the meeting id number 974-6174-9412 this information is also available on the published agenda in the public notice section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 htt channel 99 and online at www.a2gov.org watch ctn the design review board is the volunteer resident board appointed by the mayor and confirmed by city council the purpose of the design review board is to foster excellence in the design of ann arbor's built environment and to advise applicants on how a project can meet the spirit and the intent of the downtown design guidelines once we get started the afghan will have 10 minutes to present their proposed project to the design review board and the time review board will follow that with the discussion on the design of the project um can we take a roll call please jeff uh yes thank thank you um thank you dick um board member burns here board member cooper president board member singleton president board member kinley president board member mitchell here member perkins here and member katarsky here you have a quorum okay thank you john good thank you very much um next on the agenda is the approval of the agenda uh would anyone like to change anything and if not would someone make a motion that the agenda be accepted as written remove the agenda be accepted as written okay and is there a second second thanks lauren all in favor please say aye or raise your hand okay um next item is approval of the october 13th twenty hi got it okay thank you um and now is the opportunity for public comment on any item that is not on our agenda and again to speak please call four 877-852-5247 or eight eight eight seven eight eight zero zero nine nine and enter the meeting id number nine seven four six one seven four nine four one two we'll give that a minute and if you've already called in and wish to speak you can press star 9 on your phone to raise your hand no callers have indicated okay thank you kristin okay on to regular business uh we're here today to review dr21 located at 330 detroit street the petitioner proposes to construct a five-story 14 unit multiple family building of 33 square feet with ground floor retail where detroit street bisects north fifth avenue in the farmers market area the project meets lead gold standards and proposes an overall density of 340 percent as 350 percent is allowed with lead gold 23 parking spaces are proposed the site is zone d2 downtown interface and is in the kerrytown character district um so is someone here to represent the petitioner hello can you hear us hello yes yes hey mark we can hear you uh yeah we can't hear you since mine is locked up over your system somehow so or i'm not allowed on yeah so we'll be we'll be together here come on are we starting the position are we starting the program now yes yes mark you you and jim can um share your screen if if you'd like you can share your screen and then you could uh take us through a description of your uh proposed project okay let's go back to the to the guideline to the sure we're trying to set up our sharing here's is it sure so that's can you see our screen yes yep we can we can see it mark okay let's go let's not go to that let's go clear up the front um i need a mouse now upside down or something you need something [Music] okay i don't know how long this presentation should be but uh jeff do you have any idea what you're we ask that you keep it to 10 minutes if that's just kind of so we're looking right now at a google 3d aerial view of the farmers market here and um and one of the striking things about this is the site right here i'm outlining the cursor of course everybody knows that and this is detroit street here and it's one of the few commercial streets in ann arbor that goes on a diagonal and it creates a lot of opportunities for unique buildings from these truncated buildings here along near fourth avenue all the way up here to zingerman's which has an unusual front and here we've created a flat iron building and farther down detroit street there's another flatiron building we did so we have this unique site that's set up to create a unique building and that is essentially a flat iron building now the other thing that's striking about this is there's a definite street wall right here along detroit and a definite street wall along here by the people's food co-op in no time so what we're going to do here is to create another street wall along this site which reinforces this diagonal street with this building this building and uh these buildings down here so that's one of the one of the advantages this site we can create a unique um a unique building just because of the site now i'm going to this is an important building here that i'm going to refer to later that's the marketplace building that was designed by and added on to the the old white swan building or the agricultural building it's called by frederick hermann back in the late 80s so what freddie herman did here was essentially create a strong base here with this concrete plinth that the building sits on another three-story brick wall with punched windows and then also created this lighter airier curtain wall screen system to reduce the impact of the top so these are going to be the design elements that influenced us in creating the building next door we were also looking at some of the materials the agricultural building here the brick here the brick from the marketplace here and concrete that will show up later now and this is just another shot of the flatiron building across the street here at 4 detroit street and there's another photo right here that shows the entrance to kerrytown market and shops and what's interesting here is this glass facade and this steel stairway painted a bright orange and we're going to pick up on that visibility with our building here that's going to display a glass entryway and also reveal a another steel stairway painted similar to this as we get into the architectural renderings we can we can show you that and of course this is the what's used to be known as jessica's building and uh this is the uh shop the mav owned building here that will be torn down and the detroit street filling station of course community high across the street and the what's commonly known as the brower building here the this shows a kind of palette of materials on the site this site this place is the kerrytown market building this is the agricultural hall building or white swan as it's known this is a marketplace and of course these are the the bricks in the city streets so we've selected the palette of materials that is somewhat complementary to these this is a brick sample from from a sample board that we had made up which is similar to the color of some of these samples up here and to get a solid base we've opted to go with a dark endicott iron spot brick to to highlight the um the dark base down here and of course the concrete we're going to use an exposed concrete here for uh for our base and then metal panels in a kind of a bone white ivory color so that's sort of that um moving on then to the site plan essentially the building is um the the ramp down starts at the edge here and of course this is all open in this area here with a screen so you'll be able to see through to the filling station here through the screen wall through this entry you can see any murals that were painted on the side of this filling station building and it provides light and air this is a setback here of 42 inches on this side and another set back here of approximately 30 inches back from jessica's apothecary which would allow for the existing eve to be maintained on that building even though it goes across the property line we've cut out this part of the building here so you'll be able to see and see some of the strike details of the original jessica's apothecary building there and due to provisions in the zoning code we need to screen the parking in here so this becomes just an open area and this becomes a storage or fire suppression room that's uh actual use has been changing a little bit as we go along and of course we have 11 parking spaces here and two stair towers this is a stair tower here which is a steel stairway on the bottom that's exposed the entry here and the entry is capped with a large uh six feet high by 30 foot long decorative artistic canopy and the other feature here is the setback here and we'll get to the architectural rendering so you can see the effect that has on the thinness of the nose here on the building so we opted to set this back to increase the dramatic thinness of the nose here and also to respond to pedestrian activity in this area and if this becomes a retail space or like a coffee shop or other kind of retail space it provides a shelter here for tables and chairs it also um creates a kind of a deep shadow effect along the side of this building in the basement there are additional space for karking parking in the ramp down here and of course on this top floor the flight lavender color is the main floor back on the main floor again is the lavender color shows a little bit more clearly the parking sprinklers and trash storage area here and the stair tower here and these the detroit filling station apothecary and everything in blue then light blue will be the circulation spaces everything in in the light tan color here is the vertical circulation elevator shafts and those are not a part of the far calculations so above that essentially we have um residential area and the floors are not appreciably different except the configuration of these units in the back look may look unusual to any architect or to anybody for that matter but i think um that the developer and marketing people have found these spaces to have unique abilities to create very interesting spaces inside and they're not um deemed sort of difficult to sell in fact there are quite a lot of room for interesting things to happen the building has been set back here on the south side and these are large balconies in part for the fire separation between adjacent properties and also the for reasons of our site lot coverage so the green areas essentially are balconies and uh contribute to [Music] our lot or subtract from our lot coverage essentially next floor up um what well now this this um slide does two things it shows the the fourth floor and it also introduces the idea of how we calculated our street wall setbacks and these dark areas here are calculated street wall setback areas and as you'll find out later there's quite a lot of controversy about how these things are interpreted the ordinance is extremely complex few people can interpret it and they're differing opinions about how to interpret this space but for your submission here we have added all these together which meets what we think are the are the square foot requirements for the street wall setbacks this is another shot of that and it also shows the top floor so i'm going to go to these elevations right now and one of the comments from planning has been that it looks like the straight wall setback is at the fourth floor and out at the third floor the fourth floor being here and we did simulations of this and showed them to planning in which everything above this level here had a change of materials and was white and it made it look like the street wall is actually at that level but for aesthetic reasons we think that the proportions would be extremely poor if we were to divide our building right here in the middle and create all of this as upper building and all this lower building so this was sort of what led to the street well setbacks these guidelines that the um were passed by the city and of course this is the um the detroit essen building designed by carl lukenbaum and it has a handsome two-story base very strong base and has multiple stories here of brick and it has a very elegant interesting copper top so if you would imagine this building cut half in two with everything kind of white above this and a little bit of brick you can see the proportions would be dramatically um i'm only seeing your presentation are you showing us a picture oh i'm sorry what's that well the cursor is not showing we're not sharing the right thing sorry i have to go to another are you supposed to move down one slide no is that sure do you see that cursor now let's see the other thing you see the do you see the um guidelines you see the guidelines with the edison building yes okay you see my cursor yes okay so so the very strong base here that was created on this building uh in the mid part which is quite a large expansive piece is is nice and elegant it's very similar to what the concept we did in our buildings and then the elegant top so the proportions here are a sort of a almost a one-third two-third well one-quarter and two-thirds i can't get all these calculations craig but at least there's a sizable piece of the middle that is the mid part of the building and then the top so let's go back to the screenshot here oops so this has been one of the problems with with the street well setback guidelines on buildings under say six stories because attempts to create a sort of base that is halfway up the building so we've attempted to try to change that so we can create this as a cornice line here with a sizable mid part a strong base and then a much smaller top that wraps around so that's why this building looks the way it does in elevation and there's been a lot of discussions planning about whether this meets the ordinance guidelines right now the so our our street wall essentially um we looked at those calculations earlier is right here and we've included balconies and we included this area here and on the other side this is the street wall set back and parts of the balconies here and this is very similar to the two buildings that we did earlier at kingsley and on ashley streets in which we were allowed to do at that time at least a different calculation of different interpretations so these original drawings come from those earlier experiences and we're hoping to continue this interpretation forward so i'm going to wrap up here pretty soon i just wanted to show you these perspectives and you can see the street wall set back here and here and it's very subtle but we think it meets the intent of the ordinance and it's up here and back here too in these balconies when they all are added up they do meet the intent of these the street wall setback i think that's the cross sections are shown here and that's probably about all so i think that's about all um i want to present to you right now so if there are questions jim didn't need to add anything so we're open to questions from any of you um dick is having audio issues and he asked if jeff if you would kind of coordinate questions uh that that'd be just just fine tamara um let's let's start off and and see if any board members uh would like to start the conversation i'll start with the obvious question uh mark if if the city doesn't agree with your interpretation does that mean you'll have to go through the zba for approval for that street wall height issue well i don't think we want to go to the zba for something like that but i think we would work our intent is to work with planning to come up with some kind of interpretation that would allow us to carry the bulk of our ideas forward i can't say it would end up looking like it is here exactly there may be other setbacks that we'd have to introduce but the overall intent i think we would try to maintain this and try to work with planning on their interpretation i would just say in general when if if developers have come back with a different design and they significantly different we've asked him to come back through for another round at our gauntlet but uh if it were fairly minor it probably wouldn't be necessary but that's my opinion i think it could be fairly minor i think maybe instead of having a five foot setback someplace we may have a three foot setback they would offset and introduce a two-foot setback someplace it's just too complex right now to understand where we're going to make those cuts since we only learned about this yesterday thanks um i have a really minor question i was just looking at the plan there's supposed to be a door in that stair tower is that correct on detroit street to the outside yes it's buried under the floor covering there okay that's fine i assume that but um i can jump in uh i think you've done quite a great job here with this very uh sort of challenging site um you've definitely you know one of the things we always want is you take stock of the area around and definitely done that picked up on a lot of things that are happening in the area um emphasizing that urban pattern that we talk about in the first site area of the guidelines um [Music] and a lot of variation in the massing um which again when you have a tight sight it's makes it more difficult i i would stand behind you in terms of your um uh approach to the more sort of a vertical um setbacks and um and not just creating a sort of a horizontal band i think that makes a lot of sense um uh you know smaller buildings do react differently to those guidelines uh you have the so that base is a dark brick is that correct it's it's proposed as a dark iron spot uh paver which is pretty dark charcoal and we would propose to use a darker mortar color too than the concrete was that you're talking about the concrete or the city we have a concrete arcade and then we have a dark iron spot infill on the okay in the panels um so i also love you know the the the space you've made on the street and that's a very congested street a lot of pedestrians and the fact that you've been able to pull back some of that um it's good i are the planters that you've shown in your renderings part of the design are they remaining uh the planners up front there so though uh we we're proposing along the building oh on the building we just had some containers that we put along the street facade um as you know furnishings um we probably would consider putting some planters in there or something some containers we think the containers should probably be uh movable and not permanently installed there yeah um yeah there's a couple um items i guess it wanted to bring up is one is that north fifth um street front has got a lot of blank not very interesting to the pedestrian walls do you have plans to do any art or anything on there um that's a that's a very you know a lot of pedestrians walking there and that's a lot of blank space sterile space we could certainly do art there and um there may be a an opportunity to introduce plant materials at that location too depending on how our fire suppression room works out and how that space that's that's shielding the um automobiles is actually handled so i'm thinking that we could do art there with maybe some plant materials at that at that point too maybe in containers along there too that we haven't shown so we could certainly do some art like was done at the zergon building i think or maybe that mike hall did on the uh on the washington street parking structure which is pretty pretty interesting either ceramic or the terracotta tiles there okay my um last comment um was really on the windows um and i you referenced rick herman's building which i think is i use that building all the time as a really good example of how you do good additions to uh stark buildings and um and what i love about it is the uh you know he used the same materials the brick and glass and but in a very modern way and so you know a lot of times we talk about window getting shadow lines and windows and punched windows because they're there's places where they're just not done well they're too flat you know here they don't need to have a shadow line really they're because they're a modern window and it's it's the the materials are used appropriately but yet there's a lot of interest in that brick work that he did and and in that facade it's not just a sort of a big blank or flat brick wall with with um a flush windows in it um he's made his own um it's got its own character and that's very different than the building it it is attached to and i would i know you're you know a lot of times people come in they're not you know they're different points in the building or sorry in the design process but as you're developing your brick facade um it right now it looks pretty vanilla uh you know i don't know if there's any detail on the brick um there's sort of a somewhat traditional cornish shown but then kind of the rest of it's very i don't know very uh doesn't have a lot of character in it i guess um so i just as you as you um i don't know if you've thought about that or got to that point but um as you're detailing the windows and that that brick facade just encourage you to you know make it its own piece it's um not you know kind of neither here nor there like um you know this this a lot of the places on the on the side you've got your brick um you know again with that sort of a cornice on it but then and and then you've got it where it's just flat like this picture right here uh there's a couple places where it doesn't return and um just sort of stops and it it to me that's a little jarring that you feel like you're you have somewhat of a going for a little bit of a traditional brick with a cornice on the top and then yet it's a very flat uh material use which isn't traditional so i don't know just i think that if that something maybe could be looked at and as you as you work out those details um and i think just that you know overall i think i think it's a really nice job um you know just uh i think it's wonderful you're using geothermal um i very much applaud that and uh so i think it's mostly just some of the materials and how you detail those windows and brick oh and a different note i just want to point out that in the staff report the green roof was not raised and solar panels were proposed on that but we're using a green roof on this building for water storage to eliminate some of the storm water so solar panels and green roofs are not a good combination so just want to point that out but i will take tamara's comments seriously and develop as as we develop our detailing for those for example we do have the brick we the windows are not flush with the facade and we will be sitting setting them back because the walls are two by six and the windows would be set in two by four bucks so that the brick would return three inches approximately three inches to the window so there would be a shadow line relief there and the windows i think the sash will be looked at for a possible division of those with maybe a hopper window or awning window at the bottom and a solid window at the top so we developed a more intricate window pattern than would show here because the windows that we're showing now are four foot six by well they're an oversized uh they're an oversized awning window right now and those should be custom in quite a large piece of glass and sort of looking at dividing those into a smaller still getting natural ventilation but a fixed panel above it and they um articulate a panel at the bottom like an awning so so i agree with i agree with that and i do like to see windows that have more detail in them so thank you for that comment [Music] gary has his hand up [Music] i think that was by mistake but i i've got a couple questions um i think i agree with everything tamara said um and i think that was a lot of that is just part of your design evolution as you go along and adding some detail to the brick the brickwork and the fenestration of windows and things like that will come along i hope um i think that you know on the marketplace building that the concrete foundation of that i it's my opinion that as a design element it is like the structure of the building being exposed and then the brick veneer is out in front of that and so in that context i i think it makes some sense in this particular case where the arcade seems to be out at the same plane as the brick or further out than the brick i i don't see it as being that important and i think i wouldn't be totally wedded to the idea that you have an exposed concrete foundation or arcade wall unless maybe it's got some more color or it's got more earth tone look to it or it could be brick as well i also i see this canopy on uh detroit street side and um i don't quite understand it it looks like scaffolding with green uh canvas on it um maybe it's because it's behind the trees but i think since it's it it is intended as a artistic piece that has not been defined yet it does have a definite function does function as a canopy to shelter the space below but it's going to have a decorative screen and that is yet to be designed by artist architect combination or whatever okay i have a just a sort of a technical question since uh i assume you're going to be holding the storm water below the slab the lowest level and you're also going to be doing geothermal and not a lot to pack in there just curious how you're going to do the whole thing let's go ahead uh the storm water is going to be all retained on the roof so nothing we're going to have a a catch basin out at the point and that's going to tie into the uh street drain and that will have the catch basin will uh take the drainage from the roof and uh release it with um at a slower rate but most of the water for the site will be retained on the roof that's rough and then dropped in and just dropped into the storm water so it won't interfere with anything um in the building itself well i assume that geothermal is going to be all punched into the below grade so just as an aside i could see it people trying to do a lot of uh humorous retakes and remakes of the titanic on the prowl of the ship here on the uh well the geothermal is actually in place right now oh it's been there and it's being used for the marketplace building across the street so excavating down of course this is a brownfield site and it's being investigated now and how deep we have to go depends upon those borings and that investigation and that will also set how deep we have to go to cut off the geothermal cabinet and do a lot of things to maintain it there thanks i have a couple comments um i would agree with those before me as well and um sometimes the rendering of the building and the character of the materials doesn't doesn't do it the justice that real life does but um the white material i think this came up in the city's comments too um is very contrasting with the brick and i i feel like the building is relatively complex as it is i appreciate kind of the ins and outs and the depth and the variation but that high contrast almost makes it start to feel busy because you're kind of jumping between red and white and then back to white again and then and i just wonder if a more subtle um value change between those like a charcoal or something might have an effect where there's kind of a richness of depth but not quite so much um start contrast between the two materials just something to think about um i also feel like there are several different styles happening in subtle ways on the building and the upper portion has this kind of industrial warehouse sort of aesthetic the prowl feels very miami to me um just the way the balcony even cuts down and becomes a plane projecting you know there isn't anything like that on the building elsewhere that's kind of the simple like ribbon of of material um and then there's the cornice material again and the brick and then there's the kind of almost parking structure-esque gray structure at the corner there's a lot of different languages happening and i recognize your reference to the building across the street but it just feels like a lot of variety and not a lot of um kind of unifying elements and i just wonder if there isn't a way to actually pare down the variety and then make those pieces richer that you are using so right i am hesitant to say do something additive like make the brick more decorative in addition to all those other things being the way they are but i don't think if you could simplify the palette of all of those other moves and then make the brick uh stronger that that would be a good kind of combination um i was also wondering if but for and this is just probably a personal preference but that prowl feels so pointy and aggressive to me it doesn't it doesn't feel good um i would say it's kind of interesting but it doesn't it again doesn't jive with the rest of the building and i wonder a little bit if you treated it more like the other balconies and had it pushed out further to the same extents as the other balconies and then wrap around a little bit start to tie all those pieces together you'd get more balcony but you'd also um have it feel more like it's part of the architecture and not kind of an appendage think that's all and i welcome any um responses you have for that any other comments from um board members touched on um i really find the light colored uh siding to be really jarring against that against the darker elements so i personally i would like to see something a little less contrasty i think the dark brick and some of the other dark elements are fine so if it's going to be less contrasty then i think it's probably something other than white siding um and then i too had an sort of an issue with the sort of the flat iron end of the building i mean these buildings typically they obviously take this shape because of the shape of the property but in many instances the building comes out to a point and in this case the building doesn't really come to a point it just sort of sort of melts off into a bunch of balconies that you know have uh different kinds of railings and uh the building is so strong right until you get to that point and when i say strong i mean i think it's good architecture but when you get to the balconies the building just sort of melts away and um it i'm not sure what's being expressed there and i realized that bringing interior space to a point is a challenge from you know how do you use that space so i think using it as a balcony is probably the right thing to do but maybe it's the railing design that that troubles me um so those are really my my only two comments and what one other thing that i wanted to mention was one of the things that i've always liked about the marketplace building is the way there is open-air connection between um i guess it's detroit street i think it's detroit and then over to fourth there's an open-air um corridor that sort of runs through there and now we've got a corridor in this building that runs from fifth to detroit but it's enclosed is there any opportunity there to maybe create some pedestrian connection mid-block um so that was a thought that that i noticed um otherwise i i think it's a pretty strong building and i think it's a good use of the site um i'm not troubled by the uh the fact that the the uh the street wall is a full four stories instead of three that that part doesn't bother me it's one of those situations where you know an ordinance gets written because you know there are some good things to it in bed but if you try and apply it to every single situation it just doesn't work so i'm okay with the straight walls being articulated the way they are and being the height that they are one other comment i just studying the the view at the bottom here of the three um just past the the prowl that first brick element doesn't look like it has much relief from the white there right in here right this right here it looks almost right pasted on is that right there is not much relief there now there could be more there is relief there but it's not um as visually apparent as it could be that was the comment i was making bill about oh okay i didn't understand that thinness of everywhere else the brick almost everywhere else the brick returns but in two spots there and on the other side it doesn't thanks okay i just wanted to reiterate builds the initial comment that you've been trying to resolve your issue with the street wall and and the zoning regulations you make significant changes we hope you come back and show us what is has changed in a second meeting if possible [Music] john did you have your hand up did you want i did it i did yes thank you jeff uh i love your building mark and jim uh i'm a liaison with the public art commission and uh it's very sculptural um i consider it uh exceptional artwork uh that uh [Music] the prow is very attractive uh to me but i i love uh lori's idea of wrapping the balcony around and uh it may solve uh the the challenges that you've heard about defining the difference between that that white and that brick um it's um uh it's it's definitely something that would enhance a pedestrian experience and uh and i'm delighted to to hear that the canopy that you're planning is to include some sort of decorative screen i know the art commission will will will love to hear that i hope you include uh some local artists uh involved in that design as well as the i believe it's uh the north fifth street uh uh facade uh you're you're thinking of kind of a mosaic mural sort of along the fourth and washington uh parking garage uh that and the terracotta release i i think those are both just exceptional ideas um uh and um i think that tamara's idea in terms of adding character to the brick uh it's it's an excellent opportunity um but i think lori makes a good point if you just mix too much up you you you lose any uh cohesive design of the building so you know wrap the balconies of those brow i think that's a great idea uh mosaic murals and and terracotta reliefs awesome um and the um the canopy screen exceptional so i love the building any other commissioner comments i just have one little one um which is that maybe on that balcony and that we're just you're just discussing john if it was possible on that upper floor not to have the roof projection i think that would kind of be stronger the roof is or that top floor is being kind of this real simple bar um that is separate from the lower portion of the building i think it would be stronger if it didn't have that little triangular roof piece sticking out and if you do you know move forward with expanding those balconies around the edges maybe that changes that dynamic but in my mind when i when you lose that top part i feel like it makes those balconies a lot underneath it feel a lot stronger and more grounded into the design uh any other um member comments um i'll go ahead and share or just maybe briefly summarize with my comments where i think most of them have been hit upon one was the street wall issue that that was flagged and planning planning staff will certainly be happy to continue the discussion with the petitioners with regard to the ground floor transparency on the fifth street side i think that issue was brought up i think mark indicated public art might be a a good spot for the east side with regard to the colors i think it'd be great to see you know what a charcoal looks like for the for what is now white or maybe a greenish gray or you know something uh else just as a as comparison be interesting to see that and then lastly um um with regard to the uh to the vegetated roof um that's certainly an option planning commission has at least a number of planning commission members have expressed a preference if not a strong preference for solar in terms of being a bigger uh bang for your buck so to speak uh in terms of carbon neutrality and so that's that's the end of my comments uh let's see if um if uh any member of the petitioner's team uh wants to provide any final comments i want to thank the the group for all their comments and we will seriously go back and look at them the some of the comments have a lot of implications such as balconies bigger and so on some don't some are minor but uh i've taken notes from everybody here and jeff i don't know will you be putting out a report in the description of what the position what what the board said um we're going to be uh putting together um a meeting summary that's something that uh christian does and then we'll be presenting that to the um uh to the uh board at their next meeting is that something that you would like to have a look at well i took some pretty good notes here i think i have the uh but i just thought i might have missed something i just wanted to ask that so yeah uh yeah we can certainly um see where we are with those minutes so feel free to contact me mark off offline and we'll see what we can do all right so jeff this is greg kopp with mabd i just wanna i probably should introduce to the beginning and just said that you know we're co-developing this with thompson simmons who i know a lot of you know as well and we're really excited about the project we appreciate all the great feedback today um it is going to be a lead gold building to get the density bonuses so we're still evaluating how we're going to get there we don't think we're going to have any problems getting there and so incorporating the existing geothermal that we've had out there for better than 10 years feeding energy to the marketplace building is something that we're trying to evaluate and see if it's feasible there's a lot of challenges in modifying that and incorporating it in the basement of a new building so we're working through that but it will be a lethal building regardless thanks thanks greg uh and and greg and uh jim and mark and your whole team thank you uh for submitting uh this petition package um and um at this point um um someone could um uh call [Music] and end the meeting i'll move we adjourn let's see if kristen can um bring up the agenda yeah i've got it here uh unfinished business is next on the agenda is there anything that we uh need to address from previous time meetings i don't think so all right and then under communications uh any communications for for our consideration we we have not had any one included in the packet just in support of the project submitted by a community member okay and then there's a last section here for public comment uh kristen if you want to read this feel since i don't have it in front of me you're muted kristen okay um pull it up here do you speak during public comment please call 877-852-5247 or 888-788-0099 and enter meeting id 974-6174 nine four one two and after you've called in you can press star nine on your phone to raise your hand if you would like to speak and that information is also on the screen for viewers now we have no callers hey thank you for that um so now we're at the adjournment fee uh stage so thanks everybody for coming and happy thanksgiving and maybe we'll see you next month take care you

i'm calling this meeting to order um good evening everyone my name is john mursky i'm chair of the ann arbor energy commission um i am participating from my home here in ann arbor welcome to the november 9th electronic meeting of the energy commission this virtual meeting is to affect social distancing and to mitigate the spread of the covet 19 virus we will conduct this meeting similar to in-person meetings commissioners during your roll call please indicate your current location during the meeting please remain on camera as you would be visible during an in-person meeting also mute your microphone when not speaking public comments will be via telephone only to speak during any of the two public comment opportunities please call one of the following two toll-free numbers 877-853-5247 or 888-788-0 and enter the meeting id number 937-67516819 and these numbers will remain the same during the entire year for energy commission meetings this information is also available on the public published agenda in the public notices section of the city website and on the broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 at t channel 99 and online at www.a2gov backslash watch ctn um missy would you um read the land acknowledgement and then uh move from there to taking roll huge i acknowledge that this the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including the ottawa ojibway and buddhawatomi as well as winedat peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the united states on lands obtained generally in unconscionable ways from indigenous peoples the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807.

we'll call this meeting and order and we'll start with the pledge of allegiance led by chuck waldo i pledge allegiance to the flag thank you chuck um just for those since we're not sitting at the rostrum we're going to introduce who we are my name is dave merrill this is chuck waldo and this is jennifer brimhall diana butler is ill tonight she's not with us and we hope she gets well soon margaret gabby another school board member is welcoming twins into the world not herself i mean her her daughter-in-law is having a set of twins soon and she's there helping out so and this is dr michael wright and mary ford and we'd like to excuse brenda our finance director today because she's also ill we will begin with the recognition of uh the vr star award dr wright we'll do let you do that mr webb has the the plaque i don't see alicia here but uh mr webb if you want to give a little bit of background on the role alicia plays thank you so alicia de cruz is our front office receptionist and she fills in for all the other ladies when they're out too so she's new with us this year and she's doing a fantastic job helping out whatever we need her to do she jumps in and helps out with substitutes getting them lined out when sandy's gone she helps out with attendance just really a bright face for the public parents students when they come into the office so we're grateful for the work that she does out there for us thank you mr webb we'll make sure she gets her plaque and a picture so we can show that around next item is a consent agenda consent agenda consists of minutes from previous meetings vouchers and reports personnel items just business items that really are necessary but they don't require a lot of discussion any member of the board have any item that you would like to pull out on the consent agenda and vote on independently can you pick up your are any of our new personnel or any of the new personnel here we've got um no henry john penrod okay so can we have a motion to vote on the consent agenda have a motion from chuck a second from jennifer all in favor okay the consent agenda has been accepted item 3.4 this is uh three proposition 301 performance pay we received a handout on that earlier reviewed that dr wright do you want to review that for us again yeah this is a requirement in order to provide incentive pay for uh teachers classroom teachers and so this year's plan is closely resembles what we've done in the past there's a baseline test that is administered to figure out where the kids are and then they measure the progress of those students they keep the students in the group that demonstrate high attendance too so we're not holding them accountable for kids that have excessive absenteeism on this plan but if they have 90 attendance or better they take a baseline test and they take a post test and that they show the growth of the of the amount percent i think it's 10 then they qualify for that portion of the pay and that is based on that 10 performance for the teachers themselves that's correct do you know how many people how many of our teachers tend to qualify is it virtually all of them we've had we have maybe a couple a year that don't but i'd say a vast majority do any other questions chuck yeah um on that i noticed that the teachers have a couple of other teachers come in and observe them and then make comments i think that's a great idea i i'm assuming that they're teachers that teach in a similar environment is that correct i think it's at the same grade levels the principals are here that actually created the plan if you'd like specific on any grade level i could turn the mic over to any of these three people i was confused just a little bit about the high school i understood the elementary and the junior high completely but the heist cluster confused with that one so the high school teachers they act we did this last year and those teachers that go to another classroom that may not be within their discipline they've actually appreciated seeing different techniques that they could actually take back into their own classrooms so it's been beneficial staying within their department and also going to other departments a cte teacher going into an english teacher's classroom or you know different even a regular classroom teacher going into a cte classroom there's different techniques that they use within those categories that are beneficial across the board well also i think teachers learn a lot about other things that are going on in the school that they might be oblivious to yeah that is for sure the case they get to see that the kids in action especially if they're going into one of the hands-on classes they get to see the kids in a different light like oh wow this kid is really engaged in cabinet making when maybe they don't like to write an essay or they don't like doing their their math homework but they get to see them in a hands-on environment and they see the kid in a different light too very good there are no further discussion you can have a motion to vote on item 3.1 have a motion segment by chuck all in favor motion is passed item 3.2 discussion of the occupational safety and health osha and federal mandate regarding the covet 19 vaccinations and testing dr wright so the the state is questioning the the feds and they're legally challenging the mandate to have every organization private or otherwise 100 employees are more vaccinated so our legal counsel said hold off we don't believe that they do have the authority to do that and we think that's the way it's going to fall out if you recall we took a a survey some two or three months ago probably even four months ago when we found out that approximately 10 to 15 of our teachers said no i'm not going to get it i'll resign before i get it so that's a problem for other health care facilities schools and other things and in arizona it runs a little differently and so our direction has been just to sit tight they think the mandate will be overruled and in the end public schools won't be forced to do it that's where it says but i wanted the board to be informed about the the legal challenge that's going on and to make you aware of the the federal mandate that had been issued and subsequently challenged we have a policy right now in the school district what is that policy the policy is we strongly encourage the vaccine but we don't mandate it and the same is with mask if you want to wear a mask that's fine you may but we don't require it for the teacher or the students with kids now from five to 11 being able to be vaccinated do you think it will have an effect on them or will that our continued policy remain the same with the children as it is right now i don't think we would adjust the policy at any age group what we would do though is make our facility available with the indian health services to come in and provide vaccination for those that are interested in booster shots the last event we had i think 100 100 booster shots and 20 or so new shots and so it's we're getting a fair turnout when we do that so we'll continue to support it in that respect yeah i came and got a booster and i thought well i'd be able to walk in walk out a couple of minutes it took me about 30 minutes paperwork to do i hate paperwork all right so any other questions concerns comments you'd like to make on the board okay we'll move on to the next item and that would just be our superintendent's report in in in your report i'd like you to comment on how many cases how many absentee students we have during the week on any day and how many teachers are affected right now we as far as absenteeism that's a big push we're seeing an inordinate number of students absent for good reason another uh there's been a bit of a lingering effect with you know hey for a year there was a lot of flexibility and rightly so because we were online only for half of that year and parents and kids got accustomed to kind of coming and going and so when you start keeping score and you tell them you're going to keep score it's it's a change it's been a little over a year and so essentially what we're doing is making sure that we're announcing to the families and letting them know if you don't make satisfactory progress you're gonna have to repeat the grade or the class or the course and so we're uh we have i would say right now a third of our kids at the elementary are probably in the high absenteeism and i would say that would be consistent with a high school in the in the junior high last week we had 48 kids out in one day so there there is illness going around in addition to covet there's a common cold and there's a respiratory thing going around and some other things but we're really trying to help the parents see that it's important that they work with us on this issue and that they may have to have attend summer school in order to stay on pace we're going to start in the second semester and certainly in the summer school we'll have sessions for remediation and that's going to probably continue we may have to move that up into having you know after school remediation some of those things to try to and we're getting kids moving in too by the way and and some of these i know we've had a couple of recently second graders that came to move that moved in didn't know their letters and so they're not only non-readers they can't even identify identify letters and so if they haven't been in our school system for a long time we're trying to get those kids caught up as well and that's in addition to the efforts that we're putting in on the social emotional side if you recall we're really worried about the stability of the home and some of these kids and the residents in which they reside and we're worried about frankly teenage suicide we're worried about self-harm worried about kids doing harm to others and all of those things are valid concerns and coming out of the second year of a pandemic and so of our roughly 1850 students we have about 178 identified as suffering trauma right now in in the process of or recently we've had a couple of our students have had multiple deaths in their family from the disease and and other reasons so it is uh to answer your question on the numbers uh for the disease itself we were averaging one or two a day last week we were up to probably i don't know on an average ryan do you have any five to six at your school a day and maybe an equal number between the high school and and the junior high the highest number we had in one day was about 25.

oh good meeting everyone thank you for coming to order united please of america and to the republic for which it stands thank you she said she's coming down which i don't know she's down now mr actually yeah mr ollery yeah mr mcgiving yes here thank you okay we have approval of the agenda if i would remind everyone on the agenda that now is the time if you want something cold and the only time to pull something out of consent so with that i'll understand a motion on the independent motion second discussion i would like to pull um the vitamin b the approval vouchers from uh replace uh vouchers as d is that correct yeah thank you guys we're at the approval of the agenda and we have a removal of vouchers to item 12p at new business any further changes to the agenda october 14.

board members uh and hello to those of you who are watching on live stream uh right now we are minus folks here in the boardroom today is tuesday november 9th 2021 it is a works day session and a brief board meeting agenda we do have a need for executive sessions there are two back-to-back item 1.01 is a call for executive session pursuant to ars 38431.03 a and 1 for discussion consideration of superintendent's performance standards and item 1.02 is the governing board may vote to discuss this matter in executive session pursuant to ars 38 431.03 a and 3 and 7 to receive legal advice from its attorney to discuss and consult with representatives in order to consider its position and instruct the attorney and representatives regarding negotiations for the sale or lease of real property those are the two executive sessions that are in order we can take each and have two motions or we can take them both in one motion what's your pleasure we are open for emotion i'm i move that we move to executive session for 1.01 and 1.02 thank you mr jetty is there a second i second thank you mr parker it's been moved and seconded that we move to executive de session to discuss item 1.01 1.02 on the agenda any discussion seeing none then we will vote all those in favor of moving to executive session please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero we will recess to executive session [Music] so throughout like all of my schooling junior high and my first two years of high school i haven't really had like i was always kind of in the back of the class and i was able to do that because there were so many so i didn't necessarily form relationships or sturdy ones colleges they know that we are in the ib program and that's very unique so that helps us i'm really drawn to helping people i'm focusing more on psychology right now like a psychiatrist and that's going to be a lot of work i'm kind of just beginning to learn how to study and everything like so throughout like all of my schooling junior high and my first two years of high school i haven't really had to study i kind of just improvised like i was always kind of in the back of the class and i was able to do that because there were so many [Music] so throughout like all of my schooling junior high and my first two years of high school i haven't really had to study i kind of just improvised [Music] i'm an ib student i'm an ib student i'm an ib student i am an ib student i am good evening and welcome to our work study session this is november 9th 2021 we will convene a work study and then move into a brief board business meeting so we are at item 2 calling this session segment to order and we will move to item 3.01 update on communications and marketing and dr mccord i defer to you thank you dr santa cruz um governing board members tonight we want to just give you an update on what our communications and marketing department have been up to and will continue to move forward with i have their director of the department don antestenis and terry bradford bradford from our department as well and so i put together a presentation for you and before they start i just want to compliment them on the job that they have been doing for a long time and continue to do it they keep reinventing themselves and i think they'll highlight some of those things tonight so there you go thank you superintendent mccord president santa cruz governing board members thank you for inviting us here today to give you an update on marketing and communications for the district um as dr mccord mentioned terry bradford our digital media strategy and brand manager is here with me today to help present to you and we also have two other incredible team members who aren't here tonight but it's very important to mention them and give them a shout out both of them are new to our team and are already making a tremendous impact kaylee latham is our communications specialist and jonathan paulie who is actually a graduate of highland high is our videographer photographer so the four of us together are working together as a really great team we put up there a couple of logos which represent the fact that we have won quite a few awards locally with our arizona public school public relations association over the last three years and for the last two years we've won a number of national awards from the national school pr association um which we're really proud of so um this presentation today just a really kind of quick overview just to give you i know we've presented before but so some of it might be repeated and but the second part of the presentation we're going to show you some examples of work that we're doing this year and for enrollment for the 2022-23 year our stakeholders we work in everything that is communications and marketing considering who our stakeholders are is such a key part of the process through on considering what messages we're communicating with them to how we're communicating that when we're talking about both communications and marketing we always like to consider where the people are and take the information to them so they have as much accessibility to it as possible so we have our students we also have our employees our parents potential gps students and families in increasing enrollment is a big part of what we do the community at large and also partners and i think it's important to include in the stakeholders the 39 schools that we work with every day and also our 10 departments building relationships with all of these stakeholders is really important not only so we can understand what their communication needs are but also so that we can work collaboratively particularly with our schools and district departments to make a real impact obviously with four people it's limited so we're always thinking about how do we amplify what we're doing and work with all of the stakeholders um data is really important to us we're always measuring what we're doing to ensure that we're using resources effectively and efficiently and that what we're doing is actually making a positive impact um when we're thinking about what success looks like this is kind of the broad overview so increasing enrollment is a huge part of that and that's obviously something that we can measure and prior to the pandemic we were really excited to actively have supported various initiatives and the district as a whole to increase enrollment and that's something that we're actively working towards again now student retention of course is really important and both communications and marketing really feed into that because we're trying to work on things like building trust and making sure there's transparency and connecting with people our students and our parents to remind them what's so special about gps and being a part of this family similarly staff retention is really important and communication can really support that and last but not least trusted brand branding is something we're going to reference a few times during this presentation and terry is going to give you some examples of how we really leverage the branding that's been established for the district as a whole and how we're continuing to build upon that and maximize its impact so that whenever anyone sees the gilbert public schools logo they're connecting with it and it represents trust and it represents a gps family academic excellence and everything that's delivered by the district um so as a kind of overview with everything every single piece of work that we do whether it be a full-blown marketing campaign a communication a letter a email a newsletter or a piece of content that we post on facebook we're always very very intentional so we're considering okay does this build trust does it support the gps brand that we're building does it represent gps values is it going to actively connect with stakeholders in a meaningful way and last but absolutely not least does it support the strategic operating plan any decent piece of communication or marketing should always constantly and always and everything that's coming across be linked to the business plan or in this case the strategic operating plan for the district so as a team we're really familiar um with that plan what the goals are and we're always questioning in our team meetings okay we're going to write a story about this how does that link into the strategic operating plan what goal of the district are we serving with that piece of content so again being really intentional and really strategic and that really filters into our process i've got strategic at the top there and again it's it makes it worthwhile um and it makes it impactful consistency is really key and is probably one of our biggest challenges within a district where we have 39 schools with very individual personalities we don't want to change that and at the same time there's certain elements that we especially those that represent the district as a whole we want to really get this consistency of content and there's various initiatives that we've done i think one is a good example where we have a shared drive on google where we provide all of the schools with graphics related to key things like veterans day for example or the covet testing site so that they can use the same images and the same content in their school newsletters so then parents are seeing the information coming from district they're seeing the information coming from their school it all looks consistent and it's reassuring it's trusted that's something that's really important and that we've worked on um accuracy of course is important and sustainability um i'll talk about the tools that we use in a minute and anything that we're introducing as a district and to the schools we want to make sure these are long term solutions so that when we're training people on how to use them this is going to serve the purpose for a length of time we're not going to keep switching things out on them impactful i've mentioned that previously and i think because we have a small team it makes it more important to us like we don't want to waste our time we want to make sure that what we're doing actually makes a difference for the district branded student-centred and collaborative we've seen our greatest success with the campaigns that we've done when we work directly with departments when we work directly with um the schools and we work together that's a key piece of our process so the fifth member of our team would be the technology and the platforms that we use to achieve what we do and we really couldn't achieve as much as we do without these and we're really appreciative when terry and i joined the district four years ago at roughly the same time we completely overhauled the websites um and probably the majority of these tools weren't actually being used and i think what we've just been through with the pandemic if we hadn't had these tools in place we would have experienced very different challenges with regard to communicating the website and the mass communication system for emailing enabled us to create the families hub on the website which became this go-to place for every communication that we sent out we were directing our parents there they knew that if they needed up-to-date information with regard to what was happening with our schools they just went straight there the mass communication tool for email also is now used for alerts if schools go into lockdown it's also we work with the safety and security team using it for tip line really leveraging as actually a small number of tools that are all integrated some more newsletters i'll talk a little bit about them in a moment but some more newsletters are integrated with our blackboard email system and we purchased a district license so the schools don't have to worry about that so all of our schools now can use some more newsletters to keep in contact with their parents and their staff social media we have peach jar for digital flyers synced google calendars and branded media assets and guidelines don can i ask a question so when it comes to social media posting items on social media is there certain times of the day that are more effective than others yes social media is something that we are really going to be focusing on this year going into the second half of this year um we were just talking about this recently that as um as new parents come into the district we're seeing a lot more of the parents are on instagram than were previously and then we have a section of our parents are on facebook um and then also twitter so really there are different times where we get and we we're kind of constantly testing so what we've both been doing these last few weeks with the introduction of gilbert gold which we'll talk about in a moment is we've been testing how we share that content and how much content how much verbage we add how many images and then also times of the days because it's all related to algorithms and and so that we get the most engagement which is the aim and we're always looking for organic engagement that's not paid for but we do use social media for paid ads it's really effective and particularly with targeted campaigns so for example if we're trying to target a geographical area like eastmark perhaps and we're promoting um say the canyon rim kindergarten prep traditional program or something like that we can really target in on a geographical area so that we know that we're not wasting that spend and we can also get a lot of data to see how many people viewed it how many people clicked through so it's great for that too okay so we couldn't do a presentation without mentioning enrollment it's uh integral well it's really goes across everything that we do so every communication every piece of marketing every story that's told every press release every flyer it all can contribute to enrollment because it all contributes to building the brand and telling the story of gilbert public schools which helps retain students and families and also helps attract new students and families um i put three words up there that i think are really important targeted again kind of gone are the days of just doing blanket promotion to drive enrollment uh because we have these new tools so we have the digital tools with social media where we can really target um specific areas and also what we've seen is most effective for enrollment is telling the story of our individual school schools not just district so that means that if we're sharing content about ashland ranch we want to make sure it's on their website that they have that content to share on their social media to put in their newsletter and that when we share on district social media we target their geographical area and working across all of the schools and it's also strategic so part of that is considering programs at different schools and also different schools that we know have potential for growth whether that be new communities being built or a new program being introduced so we're always considering okay how can we have the greatest impact what can we leverage that's happening in these different schools to drive enrollment and last but not least enrollment is everyone's business this is something we talk about a lot with the schools it needs to be considered as all of our responsibilities and an opportunity for all of us to support enrollment so when we're working in partnership with the schools we realize that we're asking a lot of them sometimes so if we were saying to them look um you'll see on here one of the things that we know that works is scheduled tours on campuses and we know that that is a big ass because it takes the time of the people on that campus to respond to the phone call or respond to the email request we ask them to respond within 24 hours we ask them then to schedule the tour have someone deliver their tour maybe involve students because we know that when students are involved that helps significantly so we want to make sure that they're supported in doing that we check in with them like what can we do to help how can we make that possible because we know that when i first joined the district i spoke to all of the schools and they all basically said if you get people on our campuses we'll get the enrollment as soon as the families are in the school and they're experiencing the atmosphere and they're seeing the kids and they can really connect with it so so over the last four years we do know a lot what works the websites the districts and the schools websites communicating frequently and keeping our community updated tours community promotions some of the things i've already talked about programs and uh also there's certain things i think dr mccord mentioned about evolving when our team for communications and marketing well for many areas in school districts what we've experienced over the last 18 months kind of changed things and shifted areas of focus shall we say and that was very true for communications we became very focused on frequent communications keeping our community as up-to-date as possible and we maybe moved away not just gilbert public schools but i think all school districts moved away a little bit from celebrating from sharing the good news from focusing on the achievements of our students and staff and our community as a whole so at the beginning of the school year our team got together and we talked about okay well what do we want to keep from what we've learned over the last 18 months and our experience what do we want to build upon and how are we consciously going into the 22-23 school year and there's just three things up there and you'll see a bit more when we go through the examples jumping around a little bit gilbert gold we'll talk about in a minute and that's a really that's an effort to really move towards good news of which we have a great deal um new targeted campaigns again we'll share a little bit about that and the other one that i think is really important to highlight is online reputation management which maybe doesn't sound as interesting as it is but um terry's going to talk a little bit about the search engine optimization but how we're represented online as a district and as individual schools is so important in a time when people spend a great deal of their decision making time googling and looking at reviews before they set foot on a campus right so that is kind of the first the first time that a lot of potential families come across our district and our schools will be online so we want to make sure and work with the schools that when people read those great schools when they visit greatschools.org or niche and or just google itself that the star ratings actually represent how good our schools are so we'll be doing a lot of work on that do you want to update a little on the search engine optimization so uh starting here um there was a lot of work to be done on the websites so that went along with seo as well and so cleaning that up has been pretty much a full-time job the last four years and basically with seo it just means that how are people finding us when they're searching and how well is our content doing um on the search and so um we've had some really good success with all of the search procedures that i've gone through which is keywords and optimization with our content but really we're trying to drive everyone to our website first and foremost to make sure that we strategically create ownership of our own content so that with that content we can actually have other searches and build upon that perfect thank you so really what we want people to be searching for as you know schools in gilbert arizona and gilbert public schools comes up first they go straight to the website they're really impressed they don't look elsewhere they schedule the tour they enroll you know that's the ideal that we're going for so considering all these different points where people can discover us and how can we put our best foot forward and represent gilbert public schools in the best way so now the slightly more interesting stuff which is some examples of what we're working on for 22-23 so as i mentioned one of the when we met as a team and talked about what we wanted to do and focus on for this year and storytelling came up as a really key theme and celebrating and sharing all of the incredible things that happen in gilbert public schools and our job is actually really easy because there is so much great content there are so many great things happening it's easy to market something that is actually successful and good quality um so for us it's just about telling the stories so we worked together and we stole dr mccord's connect create care and added celebrate um as the fourth c and we brainstormed together like what is this going to look like and what can we call it terry's going to talk a little bit more about the process but really gilbert gold is about good news it's about representing the gps experience as a student employee and member of our gps family so if you look at any kind of private sector research about marketing what actually makes people make decisions what drives them to just to decision making is experiences and feelings and emotions so by us telling the story we're supporting people to really fully understand what it feels like to be a student in gilbert public schools what it feels like to be an employee and what it feels like to be the terms we use a member of our gps family it's also about that retention piece so it's about reminding our employees reminding people who are already part of our community why gps is so special it's written content video and photography we post it on district website and school websites we shared on social media and we have a gilbert gold section in the family and the employee newsletters and i would love it if terry would just walk through a little bit how we created it and why it's working sure so i'm really excited about gilbert gold i think it's something that we've been missing um and it really encompasses everything that's good about the district um in a really cohesive way that's exciting just to read and disseminate so basically with gilbert gold intentional thoughtful and engaging brand provides a holistic approach to building trust further promoting the goal of excellence in our district and programs so for me i designed gilbert gold with a visual cohesive approach in mind really to strengthen the positive gps recognition with a storytelling focus my strategic approach to the naming of the new campaign and design custom graphics and elements that are translated from the district branding that i created years ago completes a fully branded marketing campaign that translates into a focused positive promotion to a variety of district initiatives so the success relies on our team collaboration really it's so many of us and the additions of our two new talented team members kaylee and jonathan they've really been instrumental with hours of research interviews writing photography videography editing so that we're able to share the stories uh through our newly branded gold section of our website newsletter and social media so really the success of our efforts has shown in a positive increase really from launch which would be really just about a month ago and it's been about 600 percent community engagement and increase um within our social platforms like instagram so we're really proud of the new initiative and campaign and believe that the long-term impact of owning and building our gps narrative so that's gilbert gold we're excited thank you that is really exciting and it it really wouldn't be possible without um the addition of well it wouldn't be possible without all of our team members and that's what i particularly enjoy about our team is everyone gets to play to their strengths kaylee came to us from abc 15 and has a phenomenal ability to tell stories to interview she's out in our schools and jonathan's out in our schools every day three schools a day talking and interacting and really gathering this great content and as terry mentioned the container is the branding so you'll see the branding really emphasizes some layers on top of the gilbert public schools branding so now when people see gilbert gold again it elicits this feeling of positivity um and that's what we're going for and so just i think what's nice about that is that those folks haven't been in public schools they haven't had the experience and so when i've been with them out at campuses or at events their eyes just light up and they're like god this is really cool and and it's nice to see that because that excitement gets poured into something like gilbert gold and so they really are they've bought into what we have going on and they're they're part of the team they're part of the family so they want to promote it really well absolutely absolutely that's really that's exactly what's happening there they're really excited you know so they've been writing articles for tomorrow's newsletter about the gilbert days parade um and the mesquite hat and that enthusiasm and a passion for the district even though they've only been here a month when is gilbert dave's parade that's on saturday november 20th are all of our schools represented in that indeed all 39 of our schools will be represented just needed to say that and everyone's invited to attend um so yeah their enthusiasm is really infectious and i think is being poured into the content and hopefully is being experienced on the other end that's what our goal is newsletters i thought it was really important to highlight newsletters because that they really came into their own during the last 18 months some of our principals did an absolutely phenomenal job they were adding video content in there they were really leveraging the tool to keep connected with their communities and you know we introduced connect create care as a weekly family newsletter that went out to all our parents and that still has an average of 35 000 views per addition which we're really proud of and now we've gone to bi-monthly with that and we're really focusing on celebrations and key updates and gilbert gold is a key part of it now gps together we introduced that as a newsletter for our employees this school year and we have an average of 5000 views per edition of that celebrations thank yous again key information and updates and really it is what it says it is it's about creating more of that feeling of togetherness and the schools i try to gather data on how many uh newsletters we send out a week and it's it's just too many it's amazing they're all of our schools our departments are using this tool most schools will send out a newsletter at least once a month to their parents weekly to their staff using s'more um and part of part of an unanticipated benefit as being for our departments and in purchasing the district license that has enabled us to and support all the schools and also the departments to share their newsletters with updates and also support so a lot of our departments are using it to to communicate to celebrate and to update and in considering this as a tool there's no way we could remove that now it's being used across every single area of our district it's fully integrated and our goal with consistency is that a parent who has students at three different schools they're seeing a very similar looking formatted newsletter with different branded colors for the school different information but it's a similar user experience they're not for some schools clicking on a pdf and then expanding it on their phone and not being able to read it so we're really proud of the impact of the newsletters so our next example is uh credit where credit is due dr mccord came up with the name for this and yes level up with gilbert public schools this is a really good example of collaboration and strategy um marcy taylor has been working with our junior highs to create level up days where our sixth grade students are um taken to their pipeline junior high for the day um and they have this experience that supports them as they move up to junior high so we consider it as a team okay how can we support that how can we support our junior highs so they're not left just thinking well what do we do how does this work so that there's some district support with branding and also how can we think about this strategically so uh when we look at data the area that we see our existing families doing the most shopping to consider which school to choose is from sixth grade to junior high so we know that the pipeline days the level up days they're getting taken to their the junior high that they would go to with regard to boundaries um and they're having that experience so for that they're gonna we're gonna have level up branding and also work with the schools to have their own stuff their kids are gonna get water bottle stickers level up with gilbert public schools but we also know that we want to support families with educational choice so long as it's within gilbert public schools so um with we're creating a hub on the website so gilbertsschools.net forward slash level up where the families will be able to go they'll be able to see all of the information for the pipeline days and how does this work and they're going to have you know explain that they'll have lunch in the cafeteria etc then we're also going to have you know schedule a tour if you want to find out more about other junior highs within the district we'll have the videos the virtual tours and links for them to schedule a tour inviting them to discover more and then we're also going to look strategically at out of district students so we already have a list compiled of all of the out of district students who are currently in sixth grade and will be asking the junior highs that they would be going to to call those families and say you know we appreciate you being a part of gilbert public schools we'd like to let you know that level up day is coming and the family nights are so just looking at every opportunity to make sure that we retain all of those sixth graders whether they go to the pipeline school or pick a different gps school and then also use it as a way to let other um students and families out there who are not part of gps know this is what we do for our students we're supporting them with that transition um so with the branding and ensuring that so i'll pass over to terry to add a bit more about the branding piece so with level up the visual branding was strategically designed from the award-winning thrive college and career branding that i created a couple years ago to visually create a cohesive student success pathway for elementary to level up to junior high then thrive into high school so that was really something that i was super passionate about and saw the opportunity to actually have that as a pathway um and then visually connect the two so it made sense to use the same color structure with the green and arrow to indicate indicate upward growth in instances and it lends itself to be easily recognizable for a student initiative is level up like thrive and it's clear and recognizable continuation of existing brand like i said before creating a sustainable foundation to build upon in the future so this just started um but we've got a couple things going and forward slash level up is where you can find information if you're watching tonight and are interested so i i have a question because you have thrive on is a button on the website the level up also be a button on the website so you can just go there and click it and get to this information for that's okay interested yeah we could definitely do that and we can look and thrive a couple times i think it's really really good just make it easy yes i agree there's lots of valuable real estate up there so we really look at the time of year sometimes and other things depending on what we want to do with the initiatives but definitely that's something to look into so this idea of sixth graders going to the junior high is not new i mean it's something we've done in the past in gilbert public schools kind of went by the wayside and we we thought that it's time to bring it back just because we need to continue we're in competition with a lot of schools school districts and we want to make sure our kids have the best experience and are pumped up and ready to go to the junior high so they're already having those conversations talking about it this is where i want to be this is where i'm going to end up and then of course like you said the pipeline where's my next high school and we want it to be in gilbert public schools so absolutely and this will be sustainable this is being designed to be sustainable so each of the junior highs will receive like banners with level up with public schools that they can use every year they'll be outdoor uh banners for you know we some of our junior highs are in phenomenal curb areas so greenfield junior being an example so having something like this a banner on their fence serves the purpose of getting the sixth graders excited but also is great advertising and people are curious what's level up with gilbert public schools um also the i'll be going out and meeting with all the junior high principals over the next couple of weeks like what letting them know this is what we're doing so what are you what are you going to be doing to make that experience um special for the kids when they come on campus and i know they're already coming up with great ideas which is really exciting well i have to say i'm compliments i think that this is a real transition that parents are thinking about when we're moving from elementary to junior high because you know that is usually your pathway to high school um so i think really thinking about this and being intentional i really appreciate that absolutely and i should have mentioned that the level updates that marcie taylor's been organizing are in january so i from a from a kind of time scale marketing perspective it's perfect because like you say they're starting to have those conversations in january and then they have the family preview night and you know it's we just lose not that we lose a lot of students but we're always trying to look for ways to retain and also support the students and the families so part of what we're considering doing with the website page is actually adding resources that are going to support the students with that transition kind of like thrive like a miniature version of that there's a lot of potential to support that okay oh so yeah basically what we just said so special selection of events and resources design support sixth graders and their families and learning more about the junior high experience um this is the last example that we have for you tonight programs is obviously a really big one programs are really great for marketing opportunities because they can support enrollment in that program itself which in turn supports the school with their enrollment and retention we have a wide range of programs that you're aware of across the district um and we put up here kind of our five step process when we're working what we've found has worked well through through a bit of trial and error to be honest sometimes there's so many programs that it becomes hard to actually explain what our skills do and it can become overwhelming and there's a lack of clarity and parents and students become confused and that's what we want to avoid so at the beginning of any process we're going to use the international baccalaureate program at gilbert high as an example and we're going to work collaboratively with the program leaders we need to fully understand okay what is the program what kind of students are you trying to attract who do you think would benefit from this program and you know what are the key areas that we should focus on because we want to deliver clarity we want to take that information and then distill it in such a way that we can then share it with our family so they're really clear on what's being offered and what options are available for their student and and then we're going to consider how are we going to promote this is it going to be face-to-face events is it going to be social media video etc and then we review the campaigns and number five which is really important is looping back around and celebrating the students and the program success and sharing those stories because that's actually the best marketing so with the international baccalaureate i'll show you in a moment we worked with our team and focused on a number of areas that we all thought would support driving enrollment for that program and one of the key parts was to help students understand that if they were interested in a program like that that could be a program for them that it's not just for the highest achievers the highest and the students with the highest academic success so that all of the all of the students felt that they could attend the information night and find out more information we also talked to them about student ambassadors so from their point of view they're selecting the student ambassadors they're involving them in the information night that's happening right now at gilbert high to share the story of how the ib program has impacted them and then from our point of view we created video content that they're going to use at the information which hopefully they're using right now um so i wanted to share some video content with you because it's just such a powerful tool probably hear this all the time and you probably see this all the time video is actually one of the mediums that is most impactful short video it makes a difference on social media it makes a difference and in newsletters often you send a newsletter the only thing that people do is watch the videos so um to finish our presentation before questions um i'm going to get some help from the back to show these two videos [Music] so throughout like all of my schooling junior high and my first two years of high school i haven't really had to study i kind of just improvised like i was always kind of in the back of the class and i was able to do that because there were so many so i didn't necessarily form relationships or sturdy ones colleges they know that we are in the ib program and that's very unique so that helps us i'm really drawn to helping people i'm focusing more on psychology right now like a psychiatrist and that's going to be a lot of work i'm kind of just beginning to learn how to study and everything like that now that i'm practicing studying i have insight on myself more and what helps me and my memory has actually improved a lot more i'm able to manage my time for working out nhs community service all of those things i feel like i have way more time even though i'm doing way more and then with the teachers i'm closer to teachers than i have ever been they help with motivation time management focusing all the resources you need the coursework isn't that bad because of all the support you get i'm a lot more social than i used to be being able to put myself in other shoes even better closer to my parents my siblings now i have so many friendships and close connections with people it has helped so much in maintaining motivation and being focused and i don't regret choosing to take it at all ib helps in well it's helped me anyways in like every aspect of life [Music] i'm an ib student i'm an ib student i'm an ib student i am an ib student i am an ib student i'm an iv student i'm an ib student i am an ib student i'm an ib student i'm an ib student i am an ib student i'm an ib student [Music] so that concludes our presentation i just wanted to double back a little bit that young man said he wanted to be a psychiatrist or psychologist that also reminds me that it's national school psychology week how do you like me working those things in throughout the presentation thank you to all of our school psychs for everything that you do and hopefully the one day this young man will be part of the gps team don and terry just a comment i'm reminded because this is just a phenomenal experience for me to watch what it is that has evolved over my time on the board when i first ran one of the things that was asked of me is how are you going to help make gilbert public schools locked into an individual psyche and i said i don't know there's a pr campaign that needs to happen and i really didn't know what i was talking about in large measure and you have both of you and your team have just solidified that one of the comments i remember making was somehow some way we have to find a method to keep gilbert public schools in the forefront of the minds of every person in this community so that they have no choice but to choose us and you are on the road to getting us there even further than i imagined so from a personal point of view i appreciate that from a professional point of view i applaud you and all that you have done thank you so much thank you all right go ahead i concur uh absolutely um a couple comments and some questions uh so thank you for everything both of you are doing that's phenomenal uh in my opinion sometimes the depressed uh is very quick to uh focus on some negative activities that that may occur with students or uh faculty but uh sometimes uh the positive stuff doesn't come out and so what you're doing is uh will help i think i i would love to see uh stuff coming out about our students our schools every day i mean our competition is doing a pretty good job with that and honestly i think you guys are in in a uh a sales position uh for for many years public schools could sit back and you know put a put a web page up and you can read about us if you want we've got to be aggressive now and that's what you're up to i think and and sell a product in our products education and it's darn good it's a darn good product uh but people don't always understand that so what you're doing is great uh let me look here uh tours i saw on there who are what are some of the groups that that were giving tours to you know um so mostly it's parents and families who are interested in coming to absolutely mostly it's parents and families with their students interested in joining our schools and we have like a whole system where people can complete a form or they can call and then they get that booked in within 24 hours take them around to school and then our enrollments online so they then support them to um enroll it now if they don't they can go in and check so if they don't enroll we then ask them to call them um a few days later just to check in if they have any follow-up questions or we can help them with that process any outreach to for example realtors so we do we do work with um builders predominantly um so eastmark's a good example where we're um working with the many builders who work there so that we're front of mind for them and that they have materials to share with people coming somebody's gonna buy a house here that normally have children that might be exactly positive chamber of commerce maybe some and and what you're doing is great um can you think of any groups that we maybe have a challenge reaching in in the community and i think our biggest challenge is competition and and we're i think you're really hit the nail on the head when you're talking about being a bit more aggressive so for example we do i didn't mention but we do do and we have like a flyer that goes out to all of like district wide to every household in our boundaries and this year we're going to do two so we'll do one in november um november 20th and then um in january which is more traditionally when people are thinking about registering but we are always conscious of the fact competition is 100 our biggest challenge you know sometimes we have stakeholders out there that that we depend on they may not have children but they vote and so i think it's important that that we make the that part of the community aware of all the great things we do too and and the great uh students that we have absolutely that's basically it for me thank you thank you i appreciate you for everything both of you thank you board members miss eugenie i just want to say thank you and i wish you'd been around when i was a principal thank you yes thank you i was just thinking in the information age it's important that we have correct information and content available to people and in this competitive nature of education we have to be the best choice but not only that we have to then let our let people know why we're the best choice and so it's really critical to our schools that you guys are giving that information and i really love that it's you're authentically sharing um what's really going on at our schools and making sure that communication is clear and that people can access that information and the correct information on the website and that's a really important part of families and how families operate right now and parents and students is to be connected through that so i think that's been really important and i'm i'm glad that we're celebrating accomplishments and achievements i i loved that gilbert gold i sat in the newsletter and just it was it's a lift it's great and there's lots of great things that are happening we're not perfect but there's many many good people and good things that are happening at our schools and finally i just i appreciate that you are efficient and deliberate in using resources and that you're data driven and that you come back and measure to see and make sure that you're efficiently using the resources that you have to to make sure that they're meeting the goals um so appreciate it thanks thank you thank you ms humphries um yes i i i wanted to make a comment and i have a couple questions i really really appreciate the work that you put in and i i just want to emphasize to the community that communication is key we parents can't make good choices if they don't know what's available to their students and so it's we care about enrollment because we want you go to the best district in the state um and get the best education and you know i'm a little biased there but i do think we we do a wonderful job for all of our students um so one question i have is we talked about the transition from junior high to high school some of the things we're doing there what about the transition from sorry from elementary to junior high what about the transition from junior high to high school what are we doing i know we have nights preview nights for freshmen what other things are we doing to help students understand what's available at our high schools we would like to do something more formal like level up for that transition as well um anecdotally though a lot of stuff does happen and when i'm talking with the principals at the high schools we're often talking about the pipeline so we're talking about okay get a t-shirt in a kindergarten's hand that says future tiger um and you're halfway there um so and i know there's a lot of other initiatives that go across the district that other teams are working on where we're considering that pipeline and how when someone when a family picks their elementary school they're already considered where they're going to junior high in high school that's the ideal and i think it would be great to look at how level up works for this transition and what impact that has and then create something similar uh for the junior high to to high school absolutely the high schools do with their open houses etc they and they have a lot of programs to share and that there's a tradition of that and we would love to support that that's good because i i know there's it's it's a lot to consider when parents are looking at the different choices that they have i mean it's it's when i did college tours a few years ago i was like okay this is this is kind of where we're going with our public schools um you know and even if you stay in the boundary that you are going to the school where your boundary that's a choice to go to your local neighborhood school and i i have to say i i prefer that i've done open enrollment a couple times but um you know that it what works best for your child and not every child is the same so the other question i had was sometimes because we're gilbert public schools people don't realize that one-third of our district is in mesa so what are we doing to communicate and help people to understand that even though they're in mesa they're still a part of gilbert public schools yeah so a big part of what we do is we make sure that we're being equitable with the content that we're sharing about schools so we're every gold story every social media post is all on spreadsheets and we're making sure that we're covering all of our schools equally and including them so that is that's really important to us and it's important to the schools obviously um so we make sure and we do do a lot we actually do a lot of targeted campaigns in mesa because that's where a lot of the growth is yes so yeah we work a lot there too well i appreciate that because i have had people say to me well what on earth is gilbert public schools doing in mason i'm like well there's one third of our district before there was even a town there we were gilbert public schools so you know those boundaries were set years and years ago so i do appreciate the hard work i feel like we've come a long way in the last four years i can't believe it's only been four years but i know that you know the website is much more accessible user friendly all of the issues that we've dealt with and i really i really appreciate the hard work that you both put in because i think we're in a really good place now and i appreciate that so thank you thank you thank you thank you ms humphries and and to ms humphrey's point i'm looking at dr newman and mr martin and some of those transitions were initiated this summer with some of the bridging that occurred in the academic and recovery areas and so cap will capitalize on that and put out information again about that but there is a ton going on within our schools within our district and you are at the center of the storm and you are broadcasting that in a very unique and very efficient way and again appreciation and kudos and thank you dr mccord thank you nope thank you guys appreciate it thank you very nicely done board members we are at item four which is adjournment of this work study session that was an absolutely enlightening piece for us to end on for this work study if there are no other comments questions concerns i will adjourn this portion of the meeting so we are duly adjourned in work study we'll now move to item five to our brief board business meeting and i will ask mrs wilson to please call the roll dr charles santa cruz here miss laurie wood here michelle eugetti here mr bill parker here ms jill humphreys here mr president all board members are present you have a cora thank you mrs wilson we will go to item 5.03 which is approval of the agenda for this brief board business meeting is there a motion summit thank you miss humphries is there a second second thank you mr parker any discussion seeing that there's no discussion we will vote on approving this evening's agenda all those in favor please signify by saying aye those oppose the same motion carries five zero before we move to item 5.04 which is a call for the public meeting i would like to exercise a point of personal privilege with board members and since this is a day or two before veterans day i would like for us to take this opportunity to thank those who have served those who are serving in all branches of our military and those who have served in all conflicts in which this country has been involved and i would like to impose upon you for us to take a moment of silence in homage to those men and women in uniform in all branches of our military current and past could we take that moment of silence and then i would like to ask us to stand and offer the pledge of allegiance on their behalf so join me in a moment of silence please thank you please join me in the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all board members thank you i appreciate your indulgence i just felt that it was opportune even though we don't have a regularly scheduled formal board business meeting being so close to the 11th day of the 11th month and the 11th hour that we pay tribute to those brave souls so we move to item 5.04 which is a call for the second public hearing pursuant with hr special education preschool instructional model and we moved item six and we will entertain a motion to open a public hearing so moved thank you miss eugenie is there a second a second thank you mrs wood any discussion seeing no discussion then we will vote on opening a public hearing for item 6.01 gps instructional time model special education preschool all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries item 6.01 dr mccord i will defer to you thank you dr santa cruz governing board members uh this is the second public hearing uh dr newman at our last board meeting gave a presentation related to the reasons why uh there was a change the instructional time model once again i think i we had mentioned it when we originally approved this that this is a work in progress and there may be some changes moving forward and this will be one of them dr newman's here to talk more about it if need be thank you dr newman welcome thank you good evening dr santa cruz governing board members and dr mccord this is our second public hearing and really the purpose of tonight is just for us again to revise the gilbert public schools alternative instructional time model tonight as i mentioned last week or last board meeting tonight we really are going to talk specifically about our inclusion of the special education preschool at settlers point elementary when we talk about special education preschool remote learning i wanted to just clarify and give you again some of the key components and what that might look like for our young students our students are instructed through our webex there is a certified teacher and a paraprofessional that is present at all time during these sessions and those sessions include whole group small group as well as one-on-one instruction where teachers are also providing not only the learning support for students but also we have our special service providers that are providing some of those services and related services that our students might need and then lastly they're focusing on that targeted instruction for the students related services and utilizing the curriculum from an instructional side same curriculum that we'd be using in our brick and mortar preschools that's what they're using here in our special education preschool remote there is a business side to all of this our students will be enrolled and are enrolled at the elementary school in this case it is at settlers point elementary and the teacher takes attendance through that webex and that that attendance similar to what a teacher would do at a brick and mortar is reported to um the state in that way i mentioned last time about what does it look like to be the ideal student or a student who might benefit from a remote learning and from a preschool um setting and really that requires us to look at a student individually and see are we able to provide both instruction and services to that student away that that student can receive a free appropriate public education to which we call fape and that is the result of an iep team which consists of the parents teachers administrator to determine if that really is the best placement for a student in addition to that we need to be sure that students are able to demonstrate progress towards our iep goals quarterly teachers report on what that progress is and it's important that students continue to move in that learning and also if our students are able to engage in virtual instruction right that might look different for a preschooler so with that we also know it's extremely important for our students to be able to regulate and have some regulation skills that if there is a hiccup along the way um along with that assigned adult who's sitting there with them at home or where they're receiving the instruction they're able to help them so that they can deal with the situation and then move slowly through that and then get right back to the learning so the presence of that facilitator is extremely important and that's why as i had mentioned before we're looking at a very small population of students but a population of students all the same that really can truly benefit from this model and then next steps tonight's agenda there is an action item to revise the instructional improvement i'm sorry special education remote preschool into that instructional time model and that was will be what we're asking for further on the agenda as an action item for you pending your approval then we will submit directly to the state department and we will let them know that we are revising the model in a way that we're including special education preschool and then that concludes my very short presentation thank you dr newman board members you have had a presentation prior to this and have had an opportunity to review the documentation via your board packet and then this presentation this evening are there any questions before we see if there is anyone from the public who wishes to speak i just want to say thank you for the hard work i mean this is unique we wouldn't have thought of doing preschool online maybe a few years ago during the pandemic we learned that it can be done and for some students they excel being online so i think it's an opportunity for those that that it will work for thank you ms humphries board members any other questions seeing none miss wilson i i see that there are no requests to speak item 6.02 that is correct there is no request for members of the public to speak dr mccord anything to add no sir if not we'll move to item 6.03 which is adjourning this second public hearing with no request to speak two presentations and two public hearings we will adjourn this portion of the public hearing we'll move to item seven reconvene this brief board business meeting 7.01 we will entertain a motion to reconvene so thank you mr parker is there a second second thank you miss humphries any discussion seeing that there is no discussion we will vote to reconvene all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero with item eight which is consent agenda items item eight point zero one is approval of the consent agenda is there a motion so moved thank you miss humphries is there a second second thank you mr eugenie it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion seeing that there is no discussion you have had an opportunity again to review all of the items contained within the consent agenda through your board packet those in favor of approving the consent agenda as presented please signify by saying aye aye those oppose the same motion carries 5-0 consent agenda is approved item nine are action items nine point zero one uh dr mccourt any anything for nine point zero one by way of rationale no sir this is just the approval as mentioned by dr newman in her presentation thank you sir so we're at 9.01 is there a motion i move that we approve the instructional time model for special education preschool remote learning thank you humphreys second by mr parker is there any discussion if not we will vote then on item 9.01 instructional time model for special education preschool remote learning all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five 5-0 item 9.02 is superintendent's evaluation instrument performance pay measures and weights and that would be the instrument uh is there a motion so moved thank you ms eugetti is there a second second thank you mr parker it's moved and seconded is there any discussion no discussion we will vote on item 9.02 all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those pose the same motion carries five zero nine point zero three of instruction given an executive session to the governing board uh an executive session the governing board may vote to authorize its attorney to and its representative to act as instructed in the executive session convened pursuant to agenda item 1.02 and we are voting on approving that we have given our attorney direction am i correct that is correct thank you dr mccord is there a motion so moved thank you ms humphreys is there a second second okay thank you mr parker you've been moved and seconded that we approve item 9.03 all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries 5-0 where item 10 is adjourning this brief board business meeting out of 10.01 is there a motion to adjourn submit thank you miss humphries is there a second second thank you mr eugenie moved and seconded into discussion thank you for your attendance this evening those of you in the boardroom and those of you who watched on live stream all those in favor of adjournment please signify by saying aye aye those opposed the same motion carries five zero we are adjourned

hereby call this meeting to order. Uh, roll call, please. Dr. Hall, Mrs. Galbert here, Brown is here, Mr. Wallish here. Mrs. Walters here. Vice President Rup here. President Albert here. Please join me for the pledge.

i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for i'd like all welcome everybody tonight and those are watching on facebook live uh future board meetings november 23rd december 14th of this year january 11th 2022 all 6 p.m at this building we have no revisions of the agenda except for we've added a couple things under recognition and in business i guess that's technically a revision of the gender so we'll move on to public direct ignition we have a recommendation to approve a thousand dollar donation from kerry and nancy pamel for southwood high school wrestling i'm just gonna do all this together recommendation to approve the 300 donation from msb of wabash county for southwest high school wrestling recommendation to approve the 200 donation from early learning indiana quality program study for metro north little north program a recommendation to approve a high 1500 donation to be used for uh 500 for little 93-year programs 500 for the old norse 3-year old program 250 scholarship for southwood high school outstanding band senior and 250 scholarship for outstanding norfolk high school band senior and i would like to mention one thing this is a little unusual that we haven't done before but on number two the three hundred dollar donation from msd wall bridge county they actually did some work to raise some funds and so they took care of some trees and some landscaping and different things like that that we would have either done ourselves or probably some of we paid someone else so instead of paying someone else we played on the south of wrestlers because they did that so there might be some more things like that that they'll do so [Music] coach hamill came up with that idea and we proved it and i think it's a good thing to be able to give back on the work that they do for the corporation into their program not as usual we appreciate the donations thank you todd so i moved here too so question second to approve the donations all the members of course senior school recognition students and staff mr mcdivot well can i go ahead and do mine first and then i'll um i'll do these and we'll go with mr mcdivot and then we'll go with our spotlight so first of all from southwood um junior senior high from mr mcdaniel he writes the southwest community we'd like to recognize the gridiron knights as the end of their season gets out of central the knights suffered a number of injuries this year yet continued to play with courage and journal determination also south florida would like to recognize miss knee in both southward and norfolk students who presented the fall play clue over the weekend students did a great job so they did do that on saturday with the matinee at 1 and then 7 that evening suffolk elementary mr boone writes that our robotics team organized a food drive to benefit the blessings the backpack program last week at last year's state robotics competition our circuit nights were awarded the jack klein memorial award jack is a former indianapolis public school student and robotics enthusiast who died after battle of lithuania a few years ago winners of this award are asked to find ways to pay it forward in communities throughout the year robotics team members helped to collect account school donations last week and all 1599 items were were collected for blessings in the backpack our sixth grade team members and coaches used these food items to create a food sculpture as part of the contest held at november's first friday event in the wabash to get very organizations involved in the drive to donate two blessings in a backpack southern elementary i'm super proud of our robotics teams for spearheading this school-wide collection and to all of our southwest elementary school families for the tremendous response and helping our community and i do want to say that they did do um prime minister did they do that sculpture did i read that they did that sculpture and i saw that it was huge and it was really good did they actually have winners um did they place and they placed they didn't win but they placed i think they should have won because i saw the rest of them it was very very good anyway but i was not a judge i thought for sure they would have won but anyway um and also salvador mentioned congratulations to the six students who were in winners in the school portion of the elks hoop shoot competition one boy one girl from each age group eight nine nine ten eleven 12 13 will now represent southwood elementary at the area competition to be held at shark creek elementary on saturday december 4th good luck to our free throwers at the next level competition so that's all i have so we now turn it over to mr mcdevitt thanks mr keith a couple years ago when i first came to white's one of the things that i wanted to try to work on adding to what we do for our students is to add some art opportunities or things in the arts so a year ago because we already had a teacher on staff that was a retired music teacher mr whitaker we started a girls choir section a year ago that grows our leads two times a year sorry two times a week but the other thing i knew we were missing was a legitimate art opportunity now because so many of our kids kids are behind on credits our primary objective really is credit recovery we need to give kids an opportunity to get caught up on credits and that is still our primary focus however i also know that you know sometimes those art type classes are exactly what kids need to kind of just give their mind a different way to work and then when they get back to algebra hopefully they can you know be better algebra students so anyhow last spring i reached out to a couple people that i had connections with at indiana wesleyan just say hey here's a vision i have for our school if you ever have any art therapy majors or or art education majors that are looking for opportunity community service let me know send them my way long story short uh we connected with a student in indiana wesleyan this year her name is mackenzie addison she's been coming this semester uh one day a week on thursdays and doing an art class for us we started with just girls and just recently we have the voice section we don't do co-ed but we separate them and i want to sort of read you a couple comments that students sent me unsolicited about this art class just a couple weeks ago so one student wrote me and said i wanted to thank you for making our class possible for us i really look forward to art every week it is really nice to be able to have time to enjoy art which is one of my favorite coping skills and she just says thank you and then another student says i really like art class it's calming and fun and just something to do i love painting and learning to draw things and i just love it in general thank you for letting us have an art class the intern that's miss uh uh miss allison uh that comes i think her name's michaela that's pretty close it's mckenzie she's very nice and she's fun and helps us out a lot so uh and again the young lady's name is mackenzie she's doing a great job on her her first day in the building and i'd already met her and i talked to her of course and the first thing in the building i actually missed her because she is she's younger so i don't know mrs arnold had that experience but honestly the young lady is doing a really nice job and so our kids are benefiting from it as their comments clearly show and like i said we just added the voice section last week so just one does sound like that it's really cool yeah we thank mr mcdevitt for for that vision because we know like you said the primary goal and objective for the students but yet they have to have some other kind of releases and i think that's really good even with the choir and what they've done and they've had some performances right in the chapel yeah i was there at the chapel they did a great job the director who was a teacher who's a retired band choir director he pretty much stood in the back got him started and they did really well so it's neat to have those other opportunities in a situation where you don't necessarily have a lot of time with the kids because they're not there for a long period of time so thank you for that about how many kids is it i don't remember for the art yeah i think for the girls we have seven and of course it's always fluctuating and last week when we started the boys we started small let's see how it goes i think we have four boys all right for the spotlight i'd like to have shelley and valerie um come over here dr will get that camera put right on you so again we suspended our spotlight program uh last year because of covenant we brought it back this year and so basically um the principle that comes um to the to the meeting which we have one per meeting sometimes more than that depends on what reason then someone that has been nominated from that school will be selected and shelley nominated valerie and so i'm going to turn it over to shelly to read what you had to say about her tyler is a good friend and she's a great co-worker um and this is this is just what i had um said in my nomination i chose to nominate valerie trail because she is an advocate for students to become better readers which helped them become better students brower works to ensure each student finds material that meets their interest and their reading abilities our kids come in they can have a second grade reading level and they're a 16 year old so valerie works very hard to find those books and those interests that will help them just become a grammar near and build confidence in their abilities which then spills over into their other academic classes as well um i guess i kind of covered that part there um valerie is quiet conscientious dedicated and committed valerie is someone you can count on to go the extra mile she can often be found staying late coming in early even days that are not contact based all right thank you after they take a picture if you want to mention anything too i would love to so uh because of covet there's been numerous times throughout the last 18 months where you've had cottages on quarantine sometimes the whole all colleges have been a quarantine and mrs trail always makes my library work in whatever way that she can make that work since kids can't come to the building she'll take requests via basically i assume we could be an email if you would have mentioned and she will she will get those books and have them delivered to the colleges can collect old books so even when we're on quarantine the library is over because of mrs trail's extra going the extra mile one thing i want to mention too the first time that bank and trust is really our sponsor and like i said before the meeting you'll be getting something um what it is yet um but you'll be getting something and thank you very much for your service so thank you for coming here all right and you're welcome to stay with me or you're welcome to leave tips i miss a lot of excitement if you leave but uh that's okay okay we don't want it we don't want to get too excited okay moving on to public comment for agenda items online for the facebook viewers we're at 10 they're nine now lost one there that's fine tuned in for the spotlight [Music] all right so moving on to consent agenda items uh first item is the approval of our minutes from the october 12 view i'd like to approve a second motion and second to approve the minutes from our last meeting all in favor say aye all right claims i have some questions so we have two payrolls um because we only had the one board meeting in october payroll number seven represents the october 15th pay which is what our payroll normally is and then i was giving you a heads up at the last board meaning that the payroll number eight which would have been the last one in october would reflect all the retro pays from the teacher contracts uh and so that's why it's higher than what it typically is uh on a monthly basis so that does reflect all of the retro pays and some of the eca pays that has started from the end of the fall season that number will drop back then a little bit it'll drop down yeah you're catching way up all the way back sure and it'll probably be anywhere between 20 to 25 000 more than what our payroll typically was just because of the new increases to the teacher salaries and also have some coaches that will still be paid out the next pay as well uh from the end of the fall season only to prove it's payroll seven and eight yeah both of those together sorry i want you a second to approve payroll seven and eight all in favor say right all right financial summary uh just enter the month cash balance report just kind of shows you the in statements for the month of october and where our fund balances ended at the end of the month and so nothing really stands out um you know the big thing that we did there was we made that transfer out of operations in the rainy day fund was really the only big adjustment that would probably be noticeable on there but other than that everything is still moving in the correct direction here i'd like to protect that ring from this as we add to it to go to the point then we'll do the cash flow stuff the next part i'll have a better idea of what our reconciliation will be with our adn account numbers for november december those will be paid to us from the department and reconciled from our adm account from what we estimated to what we actually had so since we estimated lower our estimation was 2 000 students and our adm ended up to be almost 20 25 it would reflect that increase of 25 students okay we'll move on to personnel under personnel under resignation we have heather hayden track coach southwood high school employment face outerweight car professional at metro north elementary under retirement we have judy decker bus driver for the south that's effective at the end of this calendar of the year uh under leave we have number 129 leave to extend at the end of the first semester additional coaches for the winter season for northfield danielle tolson junior high girls basketball brian hoffman junior high girls basketball volunteer scott halpert junior high girls basketball volunteer chris kuhn fifth and sixth girls basketball volunteer college walt junior high boys basketball volunteer brian du bois junior high boys basketball volunteering elena reed junior high assistant cheer volunteer tiffany stiff six boys basketball jared hubbard third boys basketball todd mccullough fourth grade boys basketball jason dawes fifth grade boys basketball chris moore sixth grade boys basketball and harney kennedy eighth grade girls basketball additional coaches for winter season for southwood travis east holmes seventh grade boys basketball colt wyatt sixth grade boys basketball brian massett fifth boys basketball nate plyler sixth grade boys basketball volunteer ryan wilcox junior high boys basketball volunteer ryan chambers junior high boys basketball volunteer ryan pershing elementary boys basketball volunteer tanner wilcox elementary boys basketball volunteer and jackson taylor wrestling volunteer danielle shannon field junior high cheer shawn klein fifth grade girls basketball randy pershing sixth grade girls basketball adam weiner seventh grade girls basketball and chris whitaker 8th grade year old basketball and yes i did on purpose fly through those i like to talk about each one [Laughter] because todd's reading those names i just you know because i've experienced a little bit of this i appreciate the people that are willing to commit this i represent names with the word volunteer of course congratulations i have a daughter in there so i guess i volunteered i will just take a second that also speaks to the retirement judy decker i know she's done this job for many many many years before wow was going to echo that too so thank you for doing that hopefully i think she's done not 40 years [Music] so if anybody is interested in becoming a bus driver um see melissa ball here 260 563 850 option number seven yeah okay okay i'll move okay we can get past the heartland career center report since that's not here superintendents before i don't have anything tonight okay curriculum and instruction nothing you report tonight all right you guys do anything can i get you guys a feeling um under new business we have a recommendation to approve a metro north restroom renovation beds yes so that's in your packet um when we took the bond out this past summer the two main focuses were the roofs at northfield and southwood and then the restrooms at metro north elementary and so we put this as a winter project uh to hopefully draw more interest in the more interest you draw before we get more bids we got a pretty good turnout we had five bids turned in uh you can see the range of those bids was from a total anywhere between three hundred and two thousand dollars up to 536 thousand dollars so that was a big range when i had budgeted this i had budgeted this around 300 000 my hope was not to spend more than that and so we broke up the bids a little bit interestingly just so we could uh be careful on what we got and maybe still be able to do something with our restrooms so at metro north there are four sets of restrooms that we're going to be fixing up uh three of them are student restrooms and then one of them is the set of restrooms across from the nurse's office which students also use but they're more used for the public for the most part because i believe they're just single stalled anyway and so the base bid that went out was to fix up the restroom across the nurse's office and then two of the student pairs of restrooms and then the alternate two was to cover the third student set of restrooms so the base bid and alternate two would cover all of the restrooms then we put in two other alternates because those restrooms still have the old floor floor urinals that go from there all the way down to the floor that really they don't put into restrooms anymore because they don't necessarily meet i think it was a health code but anyway the alternates were to take those urinals out and then replace them with the standard type of urinals obviously that involves a little bit more of demolition and construction a component so the fear was that it may cost a little bit more plus we wanted to stay out of an issue where we had to become fully ada compliant in those restrooms because then that would really increase the cost of that we are going to make the restrooms across from the nurse's office ada compliant so at least we have one set of restrooms in there that are wheelchair accessible so anyway with all that being said uh the lowest bid was shawnee construction at 302 000 which actually covers all of the project all the base bid and all of the alternatives uh and it really stays around that budget number that we were shooting for uh otherwise you know if the prices came in a lot higher then we would have to look at maybe just doing the base bid or maybe just doing the base bid and alternate number two and not really able to do the floor urinals at that point in time so we felt very good about the bid that we got from shawnee we also got high recommendations from people that have worked with them and so the plan is with your approval of shawnee that they would start the ordering process to get the materials in so that they can start this winter with a time frame to end before the school started next fall uh hopefully they'll get in and get out as quickly as possible anyway because they'll want to get to do stuff in the summer and get out of our buildings and not waste that time there anyway so so what are all are they fixing in these bathrooms so they will replace everything so stalls urinals stools um they will replace all the sinks and the hand washing stations they'll replace the ceilings and the lights uh and then they'll fix up the floor uh in areas that means it fits up as i recall i don't know if they made it into this but there was a concern that the sink on the other side of the wall where teachers could not view that sink is that going to get moved to the opposite side of that wall now with this remember they were talking about the teachers wanted to be able to see the sink where the kids were selling the hand washing the hand washing so the hand washing sink will not be open just the hand washing sink will be in the same spot it'll be replaced to do that would have been a much bigger project because then you had to tear down walls to combine the two yeah i remembered that that was on the wish list but i did that i didn't know if it actually made it happen to no not to keep prices where they need to be this will give them what they need okay um so that's the plan they would just block off one set of restrooms work on that set and then once that's finished they'll walk off another and that leaves still two sets of student restrooms open plus the one across from the nurse's office so train included yeah yeah we're not hired showing you before they've been they've been before i've never worked with them in my time maybe in the past sean has done some things for us but the contingency never comes back to us does it that's just in there it's in there if we don't use it then it just doesn't get charged to us i move to approve second question to approve the renovation bids for metro norfolk to approve the extended daily field trip for sharp creek elementary fifth grade to go to chicago motion second to approve the field trip to chicago all right recommendation to approve the reappointment of holly kendall to serve on the iran public library board of trustees from january 26 2022 to january 26 2026.

first director to be joining the central office team in january presentations from each school on last spring's impasse results uh updates from several subcommittees of the school play including the election subcommittee the policy subcommittee and the superintendent evaluation i want to thank sebastian for uh volunteering to live streams tonight thank you so much for being here and spending your night with us i don't think you have any members of the public is that right all right so just a reminder to speak up speak clearly since we're all masked it's just a little harder to hear so just shoot your voice across the room okay so let's start with the pleasure [Music] liberty and justice face up with me so we'll go to the consent agenda um this consent agenda has seven sets of meeting minutes and that shows how busy everybody's been two school committee meetings two new member training meetings two subcommittee meetings and one executive session may i have a motion to approve the consent agenda so lori had a second yes uh when i signed him in the office the other day i came across some animals um headed to the williamson police department it was mark's school committee mass enforcement enforcing the mass mandates i'm sorry i can't hear you sorry we needed a police officer to do that yes we did that evening that seems like a waste of budget particularly special about that because there may have been problems with mass clearance that we needed to address is that related to what we discussed at the last meeting calling parents domestic terrorists who don't agree with certain policies or is that just something else where i don't know why i'm throwing that in like i'm just curious why would wasted money paying for 30 minutes well there's no special judgment that was wasted money was not mine in this chair so i would like to receive this meeting mike i'm sorry i said that's your judgment it's not my judgment as a chair okay so i'd like to proceed with the meeting so we've made two adults from mass police okay here we go um we have a second for the consent agenda all in favor say aye opposed say no no uh discussion oh wait we didn't have discussion because there's not usually a discussion on consent agenda so uh i guess that passes we have the majority um communications we have two communications in the shared drive a joint letter from the berlin select board and berlin finance committee to the school committee and a public statement from the massachusetts association of school superintendents and the mass school administrators association uh plus as a verbal or update lori and i spoke with the boys and selectmen last night we have a nice exchange with them updating them on the school community's community engagement goal and the regional school committee's election and uh to solicit their suggestions on engaging posts and requests and residence and the election process and then finally i think some members of this committee attended the virtual sessions at the massachusetts school committee and massachusetts school superintendents joint conference last week personally i found some of the sessions very useful one in particular contract negotiations another on proactive communication to convey your district's message that is very needy uh and i just wanted to check to see if anybody else who attended sessions found any of those particularly useful comments have you found yourself able to remove those names because i was in um you know i'm not sure i know you can access their handouts but um i don't know if you can access the video anybody else want to comment on the sessions they went to was it useful some of it some of it yeah not even yeah so yeah so myself it was redundant i felt like i was like okay the first time i went to um i thought was interesting um yeah there was like literally like six in a two-day span yeah i'll get i'll get back to you if you have um handouts or um any notes from ones that are pertinent to the work we're doing on the committee you can um forward them on to me and i'll get them up into the communications folder to share or send them to some committees that are working on things uh i went to the bus when i listened to the bus one no bus the transportation issues yeah yeah that wasn't redundant it was just like okay we have a problem yeah i don't know they were probably they were trying to tell school committees to not allow schools to make any alterations to the bus routes at all so it just happened um so does anybody else have any other communications to report to the school committee i heard from some parents in regards to that weekend the conference they wanted to know what the deal was with the social media pictures of the attendees and learning masks including commissioner o'reilly has been following around on social media if you've paid attention to any of that so you guys notice any of that you're watching this session if yeah some people did yeah i was going to tell them so i mean this is communication they did have several parents come up to me the other day and they were asking about that why did their kids still have to wear them if the commissioner doesn't even wear that that as a compass no no because i just didn't i think they just they just took it out of iran if you if you double vaccinated then you didn't have to that was a that was a hotel room they weren't in a school building either so they were not separate facilities building determines the risk factor no before is that mandate applies so the first thing the most important thing here is i wanted to introduce you know patrick our selection for pupil personnel director she uh i won't go through her whole bio but as you know she's been with us for 12 years she's currently the middle middle high school special education coordinator and um we had 11 people applying for the job we interviewed five and we then we had two finalists i want to thank bob i asked bob if he would kind of have this whole thing and put it together and did a great job of going through the interview process and collecting the data we needed so so we selected janelle and janelle has been working with karen's been working with janelle as her mentor for a number of years now once janelle expressed interest in being becoming a special education director personnel director um the other thing i'm happy with is one of the things that we try to do since i've been here at least to build capacity in the district and um and select people who are qualified and who were already in the different or small districts so that's not always difficult it's not always it's not always possible to do that so um just a couple things because you're gonna have to vote on a contract and a salary we do benchmark the salaries and you know the salary we agreed to move the janelle is considerably below what karen's was it was still is she's still with us [Music] but we felt that you even though she's done all of the veteran work she's done a lot of the um special ed direct and people personnel and the task that karen has given her she's still new to the job and um so we sell them off with the atmosphere the contract is a standard contract it's the one karen has the one most of us in the central office has she's had to give up some things and gained a few things but um that's so that's basically where we are with janelle again i won't be able to tell but you want to say anything um you know i'm really honored for the recommendation i have been here for this is my 12th year in berlin boylston i've worked with students at every grade level in the district following preschool all the way through high school and some of those that stay with us beyond i've you know received a lot of direct mentoring from karen mulder and even the previous vps director judy valenport and you know i'm really looking forward to continuing on here for you know the foreseeable future does anybody have anything on the committee have any questions about the process what we did you mentioned whether they were both internal and external candidates we had one general candidate thank you so much all right so when we vote on this in the business portion of the meeting we're going to hire janelle accept her contract and salary and stimulate his contract just something else here this is really related to a couple things one is um you're going to take a vote on a policy that's related to the vocational school but also just as a way of giving some information on how things are done and how that's the process for selecting students they have the the vocational school has a lot of the system you have to do two things one you january 15th student recommendation that's also january 15th and also a required interview which is february last year around that time resident students accepted people and non-resident students they've been doing a lot of equity work and so one of the things they're going to do this year is they're going to hold for the lottery the lot of these on on april 8th and they're going to accept 300 students and the way the students are picked is based on the three-year average of the history of the acceptance of the community so let's say our three-year average has been 10 kids in in berlin they get 10 seats so when they pick the lottery everybody will get a seat so if what happens is and then the rest of those kids who from the resident district will go on a waiting list there'll be an additional waiting list for non-resident students so the kids from boston for example and so what would happen let's say you have let's say you have you had 50 seats and you know in your district and only 40 kids applied you get 10 extra seats they go into the general they'll go into a general lottery now and they'll go into a general lottery of resident districts of residence to school after the waiting list because he might have another district that has 10 seats and 12 advocates so 10 get in two go on the waiting list but in resident schools so they sit in this pool down here once they pick all 300 whatever's left over or to get close to that number once all those seats are filled for the residents they go they do a general they do a general lottery and all of those kids from all those resident districts that didn't get in they get picked out of that pool once that's done if that gets that gets exhausted they then go to the out of the out of district so and the reason they did that is because they wanted to make sure that each um each member district got the um got an equitable amount of seats and that all those kids got in so um so that's the process for acceptance and to have passive the other reason i bring it up is because you're going to vote tonight on policy that basically says from the standpoint of this committee that if you are a boylston resident then you must first apply to asp before you deploy anything else the chances now of a broader student actually getting in become pretty low considering that they're actually in the third lottery selection process at this point so but that shouldn't change that should have changed what you do at least we have a starting point for western students and if they don't get in then they can always apply someplace else but um that will be the system going forward and most of these uh policies that the asset committee has voted on um yeah they said they're doing their equity work too so they wanted to make it as fair as possible the result is that if you're in a non-member town your chances of getting in uh [Music] to get in i'm just concerned that they're done they're going to find i mean they can apply somewhere else first but if they get an acceptance those when they get accepted those are conditional acceptances so for example there's another they have another policy another they have a up to a 10 days suspension of expulsion that they they'll take that conditional acceptance and they'll be voting and so that's not usually an issue with us but there are some districts that uh they really have an issue with this and they've expressed that they've expressed that to the assad because they have kids who who had some issues and they don't think it's fair that they should get their their acceptance revoked so so potentially could a boylston student fly like if they're going to set on a location they want to go if they have applied to a whisper vocational school and after that if they don't get yeah right but but i would assume that because they're again not a member you know right they're example then the same thing that would happen all the other vocational schools are doing the same thing so it's going to be if you have a member district you will get in and that's what they want to make sure that you've got if you have 15 seats you have 12 kids they're all getting there um but what is that the non-mental issue put them in a little more scary situation so and as diane is saying that all the other safe equity work this policy is an asset policy so i'm not familiar with the other schools um but i'm sure they're doing very similar work i haven't heard anything anything no i think it really stems from just the the equity piece yeah um you know due to the vocational schools receiving you know public funding and um you know no longer being able to to pick and choose who they who they select as long as you're a member town everybody has equal you know access and rights yeah and so i mean and again i don't think it should influence how you vote i mean policy is in place but if you get accepted here that's where you it's a good school there's no reason not to go there unless you're interested in you know an agriculture program or some animal science something that they don't have but any of the standard programs they do a great job and there's no reason that they should be still there first so so i just want to give you guys an information piece just so you know how it's done what's going to be done going forward at least right now unless something changes and just so you can put that bolt into into some contrast thank you okay so just one additional point on that before the talent voice that we remember is not a member is responsible for transportation to any schools these students attend so if they go to more than one school it kind of works for bands or buses to all these other schools [Music] we're focusing on that now preparation for presenting in mid-december um budget templates have been sent out they do have um you know we did some early modeling i know you saw the email the memo from the town of berlin i've done some early modeling um and anticipate that it was going to be a significant challenge to get two and a half percent um we don't want to go into too much detail here we'll get to budget things change so but we do have some other district costs that were new this year that will be paying for the next year that are not from this year's budget we're seeing some significant increases in student needs whether in district or out of district so that's going to be a factor that we look at so i just wanted to mention that now see i'm surprised we will certainly work on this you know what you do in the prior years of the summers to start when we'll work on it throughout do our best to get for living to be um thank you any questions for bob all right are you going to carol daryl before we begin the presentation this evening i wanted to just bring tonight's presentation for the school committee give you a little bit of background on the mds today so you have to understand what the principles begin to present so it's reasonable to say that in past 18 months has been like no other we've ever experienced in the fields of education one of the fallouts in terms of annual data collection was the cancellation of the spring 2020 mcats the 2021 mcas tests are the first uh statewide assessment results we've had since the onset of the pandemic well it tends to provide us with information about how those challenges and disruptions affecting student learning and progress they can't do that in terms of comparing to the 2019 mcats because it was two cohorts ago and it was pre-pandemic the 2021 assessments were showed an administration of shorter tests to students in grades three through eight which creates a variety of varying individual student performance levels compared to previous years also there was some missing results that we don't have in some of the content areas which affected how we look at data and no principles we'll speak about that shortly jessie's intention in giving this mcas test this past year was really to use it as a diagnostic tool for this year only the staff in each of the schools are looking at this data however in ways that specifically meet the needs of their students our students and the instructional practices we have in each of the schools tonight's principles report will focus on three parts the assessment results by participating in grade levels and content areas our district results against the state and then our strengths and in particular next steps not necessarily through the same lenses we looked at mcas from the previous years but in how we're going to address deficits as they relate to the loss of direct instruction and the interruptions to learning created as a result of obtaining them so in a letter to the parents from the mass commissioner of education in october he said in our state like every other state in the country many of our of your children our children have not progressed as much as we can normally expect so that kind of frames what we'll be hearing about tonight what we do in terms of what we're doing in terms of the state is a big picture the state of federal pandemic relief money is going toward meeting students academic social emotional and mental health needs which is really critical and then there's a bit of release of tools and resources to support educators in the universities which we're utilizing to support what we need to do in each of the schools our students so tonight's presentation we're kind of going out of order from what you see in your your agendas i'm going to have ace thompson from both wells to present first followed by john campbell in berlin and then diane dusari and sally stupid um i'd like to piggyback a little bit on what was i'm speaking too about making really global generalizations about these stories and i think the other piece that we have to remember is that in our district in my school particularly transitioning through different offices throughout the year you have kids that were hydrating most of the year leading up to this you had kids that were four days a week leading up to this you have you guys that will pull in your mouth any adventures that migrated between all of those moms so you know i recommend everybody take a look extreme caution here and make generalizations the other piece to it i feel like i need to say is the state announced this was a test that was held it was coming at the same time that we were reintroducing all the students so whereas in the past years i focused our impact administration with providing the optimal opportunity for the adjusted at that time i was focusing on reintroducing kids to the normal daily routines and so we did not have everyone test first thing in the morning we did not move special schedules we did not do anything we tried to leave everything in place because it is worth just getting used to paying back now i say all that and you're like oh my gosh how about it it's not it's not bad so i started off with this one because you get a general overview you look at the blue that's the bes scores and the stage is in red what we're looking at is the percentage of students that met or exceeded the standard and so what you can do is you can compare bes against the state and you see that we continue to outperform the state as as we traditionally have it's not to say everything is all sunshine and rainbows but if i say globally we're doing okay um we'll talk a little bit about math because across the state math was really was a was a casualty of the pandemic when i looked specifically just at ela it's a hopefully a little clearer a little bit easier to see again we're breaking it down by grade level and we're we're out performing the state one of the things that mcas has always done is they break down these tests into three categories you see the same thing on the berlin report so you're talking about reading language and writing i wish third grade didn't come first because this is the only highlighted one um but when you look at this you can see reading is the area that you can earn the most points and we out based the state we outpaced the state and language where we really struggled in third grade is writing and when we talked with those third grade teachers we realized they spent so much time focusing on those other areas and in the hybrid model they didn't have as much opportunity to provide not just reading not just writing opportunities but some of the explicit feedback that they've traditionally done i want to go back for one second because i want to point out they still did really well overall it's because the writing portion is such a small component that being said this is a problem for us and it's a problem for the current fourth grade teachers so what they've done is they've added a great expression block into our rotational social studies and science so these kids are getting extra opportunities to practice writing receive explicit feedback from the classroom teacher about it and so that's where that's how we're addressing this area indeed moving through the rest of the areas where i wish i led was pretty much uh above well not pretty much startle above where we're expected today um we will talk a little bit and when i talk about next steps about how we're going to improve um in writing especially i think um i'm hopefully not stealing it down there i'm going to give you too many times [Music] you'll you'll find that we work really hard to work and you descend in you know one district already um mathematics you can see it was a really it was a tough year across the state um and it was a tough year for our students as well again we're still doing better but you look at that fourth grade and it's not as much better as we would like again everyone just want to say this is the percentage of students that meet or exceed the standards on the on the mcats they break it down into five categories you're looking at operations and algebraic thinking base ten fractions and one positive fractions because fractions have been something that we've spent a lot of time over the last couple of years talking about is traditionally an area of weakness for us so kudos to the teachers i think they found a lot of creative ways to do asynchronous fraction work at home and i think that might be be part of what we're what we're seeing there um measurement and data and then um into geometry i'm gonna kind of fast forward through the area that stuck out to us in and this was geometry and geometry is also an area that we've we've often struggled and tried to focus on what we find is that in the in the scope and sequence it traditionally comes towards the end of the year and in fifth grade especially because of the demands that they were finding in there it came after m so i don't want you to look at this and say oh man they didn't learn any geometry they they did um but just not before it was assessed and so it's something that the the math coach and the teachers are talking about right now i'll talk a little bit about the math coach towards the end so it's a it's an area of attention and growth for us uh and then science and technology fifth grade is the only grade that takes the science and technology again we outpace the state we don't get those nice little categories about um about where we where we outdid them but who's a solid science here this is what i feel like is actually the most important information we can take from these outcasts uh in the next three slides what you find is the standards that our students struggled on compared to this day you know there's a lot of standards at each trade level um so you'll you'll find that this the standards we did well on we did really well on these are the standards that we struggle on and this is the information that next year's this current year's teachers need so when they're teaching these students and they come across this this thread they can say hold on these kids struggled with identifying characters feelings we're going to spend a little bit more time and so you'll see um fourth grade especially they had a liars and focus um and i think that just speaks to in some ways the depth that they were able to cover on the one side as well but they've got some work to do in fifth grade um and then up at the hunter this is what they're what they're looking at i think overall given the set of set of circumstances and the environment in which the test was presented and taken um i think we have some positive ways from this but we also definitely have some some areas of growth am i mumbling or talking too quietly this mask is killing me okay so next step when we look at english and language x we've started incorporating hmh um in the in the upper grades it's a new pilot program for she has a written language component that we're looking really closely at and where we're incorporating into our daily work um and as i alluded to before in fourth grade they've created that extra blob for writing instructions and to catch the kids up i hate saying that job to focus some additional instruction um in math i finally did it i've been trying to buy joey florinoy away from berlin for years um and so i'm fortunate to have a little bit of florida magic in my building halftime now not only does he have a nice focus on mathematics but he also has um i had the perfect word before i stood up here a nice personality and a nice way to engage staff and teach and teachers on mathematics discussions um and so i'm really i'm really looking forward to the year working with him he's already jumped in with a couple of different grants we've been spending a lot of professional development time with those those guys looking at mcas results talking about math instruction in ways that we can tie our assessments into that instructions um and the other the other the other movement we've had is um we were able to extend jeff smith our title one math interventionist to full time this year so we're going to be able to to spend some extra time with those struggling mathematicians whereas her time is bit 0.6 is pretty tight in the past so i feel like i just ran through a marathon but you know i'm here if you have any questions or comments yes my question is specific okay that they were given this spring that the same test essentially they took in 2019 or was the test different the tests were different but they were shortened the questions were probably similar but they hardly chose which questions they were going usually it would be more of the same types of questions so they could have a fair kind of sense of whether the students truly mastered a particular standard and in so in your opinion is it unfair to try to compare the 2021 to 2019.

foreign you helpful good evening everyone this is getting started the greater lawrence technical school district committee november 9th at 6 00 p.m so can you have vocal miss fitzgerald here miss disler present miss could we please rise for the pledge of allegiance and remain standing for moment of silence 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 first item on the agenda is the exceptional regis lordes luna ceva ceballos john so this evening we're going to honor one of our students from the medical assistant program lourdes luna survives who is the daughter of carlos luna and sonia ceballos of lawrence has been a student at great lawrence regional technical high school since september of 2018 she is studying in the medical assistant program and is looking to further her education in the psychiatry field with hope of someday becoming a psychiatrist as a student at greater lawrence she is in the process of becoming a certified medical assistant she is also certified in cpr first aid in osha lourdes will will be having field experience as a medical assistant at a local medical office this fall lourdes has been successful in her academic coursework at greater lawrence with a 4.05 gpa and is currently ranked 15th out of 395 students in the class of 2022.

[Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] no [Music] hello [Music] so [Music] no no no no [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] my [Music] good morning everyone my name is sebastian mata and i'm the student ambassador here at anaheim high school before we officially begin please stand for the pledge of allegiance place your right hand over your heart ready begin 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 you may be seated thank you at this time it is my honor to introduce dr jared freed the assistant superintendent of education for the anaheim union high school district [Applause] thank you sebastian good morning anaheim high school students faculty staff and community welcome to anaheim high school's town hall meeting which will showcase the robust civic engagement education all of our students were able to experience the past couple of weeks i would like to start by thanking all of you for your efforts and hard work throughout this process as well as thanking our board of trustees for their support as we embarked on the civic inquiry journey but i like to acknowledge trustee al-jabbar who is here with us this morning thank you for being here i would also like to especially thank and acknowledge the great work of the anaheim high school teachers who have masterfully led our students through this process with integrity i would also like to specifically thank miss michelle majewski for her leadership in supporting and coordinating these efforts with our teachers here at anaheim so thank you [Music] as many of you know we have received many community inquiries asking for the removal or keeping of the colonist's name and mascot as a school district we felt this was a great opportunity for students to partake in a civic engagement project that is relevant to them and unleashes their student voice here at the anaheim union high school district student voice and civic engagement are important key drivers that allow us to prepare our students to become life ready this project is a testament to those drivers and beliefs we cannot be more proud of our students and faculty as they navigated through this process which we will outline shortly what i along with our superintendent mr michael matsuda are most proud of is how our students have demonstrated tremendous civility towards one another while engaging within our civic and democratic process students at anaheim please know that you are a model for our country and how to actively engage in civil discourse my hope is that our students leave this experience empowered as both students and citizens to build a better world through unlimited you now to review this process please give a warm welcome to brandy hoxworth anaheim high school asb president thank you dr fred for all the support throughout this process welcome everyone i would like to start off by introducing myself my name is brandi hawksworth and i am anime high school's asb president throughout the past week all the students at anaheim high school went through a five-day lesson focused on the essential question should anaheim high school keep rebrand or replace its mascot with this essential question as a guide students embarked on a civic learning process that engaged and unleashed our student voice the five-day lessons focus on a variety of key elements on day one students went through a lesson introduction and awareness as to why we are going through this process day two focus on the analysis of primary documents as we read we were asked to annotate and discuss these primary documents on day three we were asked to conduct an image analysis of our mascot throughout the years and conduct our own research on this topic day four focused on the civic dialogue allowing students to discuss their positions with each other in a structured and civil manner last but not least on day five students were asked to write a letter or record a public service announcement to the board of trustees explaining their position on the essential question should anaheim high school keep rebrand or replace its mascot on november 9th students at anaheim high school shared their response to the essential questions by casting a vote to keep rebrand or to replace its mascot this day comes with great significance during our lesson we learned that the students of anaheim high school also voted to determine the name of their mascot exactly 100 years ago on november 9 1921.