I I that's a really uh uh more efficient way of of applying this. So, I actually also um agree with looking at it later. Um and cuz there's no way we can look at it when the new admin team comes in, right? Cuz you want to vote it has to be voted on next week. It is in board policy to be approved at the April meeting. Um there may be the ability to change later. I'm not sure. I'd have to just look into that a little bit. I wonder if there is. I'd be curious if there is cuz I I love you all, but you're all leaving. Like and we are I'd like to hear from the new people, too. Like every day is horrible for me. I go from 5:30 a.m. till 8:00 9:00 p.m. with kids sports and full days of work and stuff.
Any questions or clarification on any of those? Okay. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. Yep, comments, public comments. We do have anybody? No. Nobody for non-agenda items? Guess not. And any random comments from anyone? I
>> I I think I think um if you're asking me, I I would say this. I I would say I would say allowing people to have more input is never a bad thing. That's never That's never a bad thing. Now, what I would say is I if I was to do that again now, we had that format before. I would not use that same format again. I would literally do 3 minutes and and give people a chance to talk and talk for 25, 30, whatever our time limit is and and move on. And that's And that's what I would say. Now, in terms of in terms of the the meeting, the only reason I'm suggesting the only reason I'm suggesting um two meetings is additional public input. If you if if we feel like you have all the information you want, I don't know that that that that's you know >> Can we do it on the same night?
But, this is a building lease agreement. So, the the the long story is that the cooperative has been trying to find a home for years. I don't know how far the the Marsh building conversations go back, but years. And so, this year we've been in the old Casper I don't know if it's shouldn't call it the old building. The building that says Casper Hall on it. Also says IT Tech on it downtown catty-corner from the courthouse. Um and so, um IT Tech is leaving that. The city-county owns the building in in a joint ownership. They have asked us to if we were interested we well, we asked them if we could lease it and they wanted us to just take it over. We didn't want to take it over because the liability of it, just obviously owning another building with with everybody facing budget cuts with SEA 1.
Or of language learning process. So. So, I can't talk about this next part enough because this was probably the most powerful part of the process at least for me. We ran student focus groups and we really got to engage at every level with our amazing ML students. We asked a set of questions about their experiences and what works for them and what do they need more of? How can we best support them? So, this was the highlight of really this process. So, some of the strengths and the things that our kiddos voiced and I was lucky enough to actually join the high school crew and talk with our high school ML students. It was the highlight of my month, really. So, this is what our kiddos said. They said when they have frequent opportunities for peer-to-peer discussions and small group collaboration, that's key. That helps them understand the content.
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so um that we can improve the experience for our rising kindergarteners as they transition um especially next year for a full day. So we've learned a lot all of us and one of the things that was um pretty evident very early on for us in in this journey is that while we have a great resource to support early reading development that's phonics foundational skills all of that we we realized pretty quickly that we needed something else uh that was better aligned to support language comprehension which is a critical component of of reading development. And so with that, I want to turn it over to Dr. Julie Fogerty, who can talk you through our process and how we started to look at some of our resources. Dr. >> Good evening, board of education, and Dr. Amade, thank you for the time tonight. So our process of um selecting resources involved uh instructional services starting by looking and identifying what are the components of a program that are aligned to best practice and evidence-based research that we want to find in a resource.
>> So moved. >> Second. >> Ken moves. Katie seconds. >> Thank you. >> Ken Dawson. >> I >> Katie Courtney. >> I. >> Chris Espinosa. >> I. >> April Fein. >> Hi. >> Michael Riskey. >> Hi. >> Cara Castton. >> Hi. >> And Don Rener. >> I. Motion carries. Item six. Julie, do we have any visitors? >> No slips. Okay. Item seven. Turn it over to you, Frank Hank. >> All right. I'm going to turn this over to Travis and Jury for this part. >> Good evening. It's uh it's been a busy um trying to think of the first time that we presented on this this opportunity, but it's we've done a lot of work up to this up to this point. So, want to want to fill you in. This uh infographic kind of lays out all of the different pieces that we're talking.
So, every day is terrible. At least on weekends I can get to the agenda at a 9-hour dance competition where Tuesday, Wednesday I'm I'm not home. Um So, I like Mondays, but I also like think that with so many new people coming in, I'm curious where they stand, too, you know? Um cuz you guys sadly only have a little bit of time left. So, I'd like to wait. I'm not I'm not ready to change it just yet. I can jump in and look at policy. The board it seems to look like that we could change Oh, I guess you can change an agenda 48 hours before. So far all I found is that our meetings need to be published at the beginning of each fiscal year. I'm backing out. I'll come back if I can back in and find a changing policy. I'm also in favor of waiting.
>> Uh I assume they could be on the same night. I think you'd have to close one and open the other one. You'd still have to advertise it that way. >> Correct. We would have to do split times with a gap in between. >> [snorts] >> You can do like a 5:00 5:40 public work session and then like a 6:00 to 6:30 public meeting and the the work session could could include should probably include your conversations amongst each other and questions of of us about the the facility. Kind like what you're doing now. >> I would say let's do another public work session on the 27th. >> And if that's okay >> the 29th, let's do it. >> [snorts] >> I'm good with that. I'm good with that. Do it on the same night. >> Close one. Yep. Give it to us. >> I don't know.
And so we we did apply for the ready grant which is through the state. We were tentatively approved for that if there's a matching donation. So the ready grant is 1.2 million dollars. The matching donation is the city county is willing to donate the building. So they are going to donate that. None of the four districts, we didn't want to take the building into our ownership and so CEAF, the Clinton County Education Associ- Clinton County Economic Economic Advancement Economic Advancement. Something. I can't remember what it is. Yeah, you guys have it. So but they have agreed to be the third kind of that third party for us all. So the city county is going to donate the building to CEAF which then there is the that's the the match if you will. And then where the four districts will take that over as our co-op with each of us paying a proportional share.
It helps them to access their learning. When they have interactive environments to help them clarify their thinking, this was super helpful to them. When it's a safe space to practice English even if they make mistakes or if they don't say it fluently or they say it with a thick accent, if it's a safe space, that that really works for them and it helped them build confidence. They noted this idea of relationships and trusted adults and spaces that they belong and this champion teachers who proactively offer help even if they're not the teacher that they had class with. Somebody that catches them first thing in the morning, checks in with them about their day. They gave me a plethora of examples. That that really worked. They felt like they belonged. They felt like they had somebody that they could turn to and environments that helped to promote and create emotional safety.
Go ahead. Get in there. >> This way just in case. >> Okay. >> Just the four and you stay. >> Awesome. Thank you. Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Congratulations, Kylie. >> Okay. And then next we have Danielle Hoffman and Dr. Fiser and uh Miss Suire are going to share Danielle's story. >> Would you like to accept? >> Oh, sure. Danielle, would you like to come up now or would you like to say? >> I'll just say. >> Okay. Um, good evening. I would like to start by sharing how I first met Danielle. Um, as part of my role, I make an effort to connect with each of my incoming freshmen throughout the year who I'm aligned with as a counseling provider. I met Danielle during her freshman year. In this work, you meet many students who are kind, polite, and easy to connect with. Danielle was all of those things.
and then reviewing resources and looking to see how well they um kind of elevate and implement and integrate those components into their resource. And so then what we did is we narrowed down um all of the resources out there and selected a couple to bring back um to our teachers. So for kindergarten and fifth grade um we decided to pilot amplify um CKLA um and then also which stands for content knowledge and language arts. I forget about our acronyms all over the place. And then we also um were um piloting arts and letters. And then in middle school we looked at um HMH's into literature. Um and HMH is the name of the company. It's not a um education acronym and then amplify English language arts. >> So then we invited our teachers to pilot these resources and we were very lucky that we got quite a few people who were willing to support us in this process and um we had representation from every grade level first through 8th.
So, I want to orient you a little bit from the last time that we uh talked when we uh agreed to do the investment grade audit. Uh we we have had a lot of building visits, a lot of uh looking at plans, a lot of meetings. Uh we're having a weekly check-in meeting on progress and how things are going and and coordinating a lot of different moving pieces. Um, and as a result of that, um, there are a couple new things on this screen. Uh, you'll notice this is broken down by handled by Honeywell and then handled by District 99. So, if you remember when we initially talked about this, we talked about doing um a taxexempt lease. Uh, jury has done some additional work in investigating and we've decided to not go that route and to go with the debt certificate. She's going to talk a little bit about that and the and the why with that.
Um for myself, I can say like I I'm already out through to November. Like my planning dates are out. So, most days of like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday for sure are not an option. Um So, um I'm also in favor of seeing happens um, and getting input from the new admin team. Um, I'm torn on this. Um, I also like Julie, I'm on um, another board plus I do usually have a work commitment like once a quarter on Tuesdays. Um, so I would have missed one or the other. Um, if if they happen to fall and it's usually a sort of second, third, fourth Tuesday of um, the month. So, I'm so sort of torn um, as well. So, I would like I like the idea of another year, but I also understand, you know, Mondays are difficult. I just uh, want to be respectful of everybody's um, you know, what what they sort of thought about and planned ahead, you know, for for this upcoming year.
20 minutes of discussion >> I would think that's probably fair enough. Yeah. >> And and you you don't have to if if we post for public discussion and we say we're going to allow 30 minutes and you get 15 you you'd be done. Or 14. You just can't go beyond that. Okay, so what I'm hearing is the 27th public work session first break uh single item single agenda item just consolidation at that point. Or you want to do it that way? >> deadline for the referendum that we have to have that decision made? >> Uh it is getting >> Yeah, you have to put your petition in by August 1st, but you have There's other moves you have to be doing before that. >> And from our first public work session the support among the community was not There's not great support. >> I I would agree with that.
And so now we can have a have a home for our CT co-op. So. Final draft is very impressive. Clinton County Economic Advancement Foundation. Some reason I was wanting to throw education in there for some reason. I move that we approve the building lease. Second. Moved by Katie, seconded by Amy to approve the building lease for the Wildcat Creek Career Cooperative. Later we'll have a Who can say five times fast competition. Any other discussion? All those in favor, say I. I. I. I. Opposed? Motion passes 6-0. Item E, consideration and approval for paving improvements on campus. Yep. So, on last Friday, we had uh quotes due for paving improvements. Um we had three vendors turn in quotes. E&B Paving, Crenshaw Paving, and Grady Brothers Incorporated. Um you guys have the summaries in front of you. So, the base quotes are I'm sorry, the base uh yeah.
Are those Is this activities that occur among all students or just ML students? This is ML students focus groups. So, we talked to about 10 to 12 kids at every grade level band and asked them a set of questions. So, this is from all of the ML students that we interviewed. Okay, so I didn't ask the question clearly. Here's an example number one, frequent opportunity for peer-to-peer discussions, small group collaboration. So, what I'm hearing you say is the focus group said that >> practicing >> about what? About their inter- their classroom environments and their learning. So, the question was, how do you learn best? Yeah, no. So, it's So, it's among all students. >> Among all students that we conducted the student focus group with. >> Aside from bullet point number three, are the other four points different from any other kids? >> They're Well, not necessarily, right?
She was warm, open, and engaging from the start. But I remember leaving that meeting thinking this felt different. As a school psychologist in my 17th year, I have had the opportunity to work with many students who demonstrate those qualities. And yet, this meeting stood out. Danielle brought something else with her. In life, you occasionally encounter people who carry something special and unique with them. It is not always something you can easily define, and it does not necessarily come from how long you have known them. It is something you feel in their presence. That is what I experienced the first time I met Danielle. >> Over the past four years, we've had the opportunity to work with Danielle as she navigated challenges related to both her mental and physical health on top of the daily stressors that we all know high schoolers tend to face. What stands out is not just that Danielle faced her challenges, but how she faced them with resilience, determination, and an incredible sense of self-awareness.