They don't qualify for the IEPs, but they do need help. So, please see them and please advocate for them. Thank you for YOUR TIME. OUR NEXT SPEAKER IS ELIZABETH MEL. Good evening. My name is Elizabeth Mel and I am here tonight wearing two hats. I'm the parent of a kindergartner in our district and a pediatric speech pathologist um with 17 years of clinical experience. Thank you to the board and all of you teachers um for all of the care that you put into our children. I'm here to respectfully ask you to consider adopting a formal evidence-based screen time reduction policy for pre-K through high school. As a new parent to the district, I was excited to see all the new learning my kindergartner would enjoy. She's learning and growing. However, I was faced with some disappointment early in the academic year when she was talking about cartoons we have never watched at home.
So, now I think you are relieved of your duties. And you are assigned your duties, Madam Secretary. You get the honor. Thank you, Sheryl. You always 100% imperfection whatever you do, okay? If you mess up, don't worry about it. We got the whole team. This is fun. All right. Uh do we have any old business? I had a question. Um our young man that's going to the spelling bee Yes. >> as a board, are we supporting that financially at all? Are we helping the family with that those expenses? Um I can't I can't remember where we left it off cuz we were talking about it at the building how they were going to finance that. So, let me get back with you on that. Thank you. Yeah. Cuz it's in 30 days, right? So >> Yeah. I imagine they probably started already. >> he's representing our district.
It made me excited. Um and then I do have an other tonight, Joey. I do have an other other. You guys are bad. So Whoops, sorry. She's here. She is. So, the you want to go over the other first? I can if you guys are okay with that. It's real quick. It's just a couple of field trips that normally go under the consent agenda. You have them in your red folder. We just didn't have them in, but one is an overnight trip because it is our seniors class trip. So, I did want you guys to have the opportunity to approve that prior to them going on that one. And then the other one um last time I talked to you guys about our curriculum work that we were doing partnering with EES and having them come in and help with our ELA in the curriculum.
Waterloo a lot of stuff done at Waterloo that we don't really see but we feel on the left I put that picture in there just to just to remind folks that every year we have to put in new mulch in our playgrounds it's not cheap. We get a special playground mulch it's supposed to have less sharp edges on it. And it's a company out of Fort Wayne that does it for us they spray it in they were able to get to a lot of to this a lot of this over spring break. Uh and that's done at all the schools. And then on the right there is some really fun HVAC equipment air handlers but we had a huge project out of the 2023 bond when I first got the job it was you know I was one of my first meetings with with Mrs.
Comments about the evening or anything you want to add? No. Okay, we move on. >> Um, if it's okay, I just wanted to give a a quick update. Um, we are currently underway with the fiscal year 25 uh financial audit. Um, just a little bit of background there. So, the city uh produces an annual report. Uh, we call it the CAFER, the compre comprehensive annual financial report and in that uh the school rolls up into that. So the whole audit is an audit of the city's caffer, but we are a big portion of that. Um, we kicked that off a while ago. There are, I would say, three or four segments of that. There's the state and federal single audit, which looks at our state and federal gr uh grant funding. Um, those are tested um pretty pretty heavily. Um and then in addition the regular uh financial statements uh are broken down kind of into uh two sections.
So, this is our first opportunity to really examine the mimic. Because Azella um addresses four areas: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Um and the mimic it does not afford us the opportunity for speaking, which is going to be on the next slide, how teachers were able to address that within their classroom. Um but it did look at reading, writing, and listening as well. So, slightly different in skill base for versus DNA. So, then um as I mentioned, through discussion and that item analysis, teachers and coaches then leveraged district materials to integrate test-taking skills. Looking at what is available within the core content and resources that we have to be able to again mimic what it is that students might have struggled with on that Azella mimic. We um also teachers and coaches looked at increasing the complexity and frequency of their daily writing tasks, because that can be um an area that students lack the stamina to be able to fully perform in in area, as well as looking at some of our AI tools within Seesaw.
And we have a choice to not own a tablet and she does not watch YouTube. So, my surprise when she was independently playing, I heard her recite the phrase, "If you like this channel, please hit the like button." I see the childhood years clinically as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for learning, play, and social development. Those skills are built through face-to-face interaction, hands-on play, and engagement with a three-dimensional world. They are not built by gamified learning apps or programs. This isn't just my clinical opinion. My own professional organization, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, has been sounding this alarm ever since COVID um and even before. In a 2023 ASHA survey, SLPs, speech pathologists, pointed to young children spending more time on screens as a leading factor in rising communication challenges, with nearly 70% of us reporting an increase in referrals since 2020. ASHA's own publication, The ASHA Leader, reported research findings that every 30 minutes spent on a handheld screen time device translates to a 49% increase in the risk of expressive speech delay.
So, if we have supported someone in similar capacity, I see no reason why we cannot support in some manner. I'll find out how they how they did it. Okay, thank you. Okay. Yeah, just let the board know, too. Thank you. Good. Good question. Any other old business? Any other new business? Any new business? We have no reason for closed session. Can I have a motion to adjourn? Moved. By Bill. Second. Second by Dr. Hall. I'm not going to say all in favor. I'm going to say roll call, please, Madam Secretary. It's on you, Madam Secretary. Roll call, please, Madam Secretary. Mr. Gallegos, I got to get my Jamie voice. Miss I Summers. I. Mr. Swallows. I. Dr. Hall. I. Miss Venegas. I. Miss Woolfolk is an I, and then Mr. Brown. I. We are adjourned. Good job, Madam Secretary, and thank you, public, for joining us on this evening.
And so, it does take our teachers out of the classroom for a little bit, but we're trying to get them covered having maybe we planned them to where we had them in one day so that we could get one sub who would cover the whole day and we weren't having to have it spread out so much. So again, just trying to use our resources well, but they do need some approval for that too. So, you can do those together if you would like. Could we vote on them together? Yeah. I don't know. Don't forget to approve the trip to DC. There'd be a lot of disappointment. It would be. Parents and kids probably. It's a neat trip.
Rice and we're trying to figure out how we're going to do all this and how we're she's got to rotate classes cuz they're in and out of classes putting in all this equipment ductwork there in the ceiling we got all we got all new free ceilings out of this job because the contractors thought it would be cheaper to rip down the ceiling and replace it with new than be really careful and put the old back. So that was an added bonus there there's some more of the equipment that we have inside and out at Waterloo. There's some classrooms we got new um there's new flooring you can see the yellow wall everything was painted we got new whiteboards over there for the students and the teachers um new bookshelves there and and windowsills on the right at Waterloo. So just beautiful we also got a playground as well and Mrs.
The first part is the fieldwork I'm sorry the first part is the planning part. Uh that's when the auditors will come and ask for a lot of documentations about policies and procedures. They'll ask me to walk them through the accounts payable procedures, the payroll procedures, bank reconciliations, all all things of that nature. And then they will move on to the fieldwork. which is where they start asking for things. They'll ask for payroll registers, the union contracts, things of that nature. Um Angela has been doing a phenomenal job fulfilling um most of those requests. Um we're we're probably about halfway um through the audit. I I don't know the exact uh end date as of yet. Um they are testing he more heavily now than they ever have before. So we are relying on our partners at CLA Clifton Larson Allen to provide some additional audit support um as well as just maintaining a very close contact with the city.
That was one of those things that we leveraged to be able to create authentic speaking and listening practice for students. Our tech team had made some really great templates that mimicked very much what students would have to encounter on the task. So, for example, hitting the start and stop button. What does that look like? How how do I practice that? And then they could also listen to their students' responses through Seesaw. So, that they could get a better idea of what it was cuz that again was not something that was available within the mimic. Um and then we also redesigned our last Creighton Professional Learning Session to be able to address detailed writing, specifically around some of that um to create more rigorous writing. So, noun phrases, complex sentence structures, and then also higher-level questionings or high-level higher-level questions from the teacher for the students to elicit those more rigorous responses.
Research studies published in the JAMA Pediatrics have also found an association between early screen time use, developmental delays, sustained attention challenges, and poor problem-solving skills. In teens, there is now a clear evidence for how screen time dose impacts their executive functions I'm not here to demonize technology. I know all screen time is not created equal, and there is potential for it to be used thoughtfully to accentuate or support a teacher's lessons. I'm asking the district to put guardrails in writing, daily screen time limits in the classroom, phone-free classrooms, and a clear instructional rationale whenever a device is used, and also a regular review of whether the outcomes match the promise. Our Batavia students deserve classrooms built around their development, and I'd welcome the chance to be a part of that conversation. Thank you. Next, we have Meredith Davis. Good evening. I am the parent of a first grader at Hoover Wood and I'm here tonight to speak specifically about student access to YouTube on school-issued Chromebooks.
Any questions regarding the class trip for the No. The other one? Okay. I don't see questions. So, we entertain a motion for for the field trips. So moved. I'll second that. All favor say aye. Aye. Who's the chaperones this year? Tim and Nancy Harrison, Carrie Boyd, Chase Wagner. Guess we should have checked that out first. Yeah. And Aaron Ashley will be on the trip as well. Guess we should have checked out who the chaperones were first before we heard Sounds like a good trip. Yep. It will be. Mark and I were talking about that today. I said, "Who do you think I could get to walk with Thank you for going to see the creek." No. Now we go. I could not walk that far. They and they start them out like at 6:00 in the morning, too. It's great. Keep them moving. I make them good and tired.
Rice was able to work with community members and we did the similar thing at Waterloo as we did with Country Meadow for a new playground over there and they also have the poured-in-place that nice soft material that stuff is not cheap. It's really nice so it's very safe excellent for the kids. I really like this kind of thing but you've heard I I the reason you're like why are you putting lawn mowers in a presentation especially when it's supposed to be a short meeting. Uh >> [laughter] >> Mr. Rome had talked many times about the bat wing and driving that wing up all the way up to Country Meadow to cut the large fields. Uh Watson we had to take it over to Watson. The the picture on the right is our new bat wing it's a 96 uh a 96-in cutting um diameter and we can load that up on a trailer it's much safer for our guys it's faster it cuts better and we've already had that in use quite a bit this spring.
Um that being said, we have a standing meeting every week with the audit team uh who is at RSM and that is uh the city joins us on that and we go through the open items list uh and they'll assign priorities um and and kind of clarify just in case we have any questions. some of the stuff is um kind of confusing.
And then the next piece that the language acquisition coaches have been looking at is the our long-term action plan and inputs. First being looking at integrated structured English immersion support. So, students have, depending on the model and the campus and and even the grade level within a campus, there could be the pull-out model, the 2-hour model, or our two campuses with DLI. But, integrated is when students are receiving core content as the focus, so math for example, with language acquisition supports to be able to access that content. So, what our language acquisition coaches did was they went into classrooms just purely to get a gauge of what are the strengths within those integrated classroom settings and what are some areas that we can start to develop for next year in terms of professional development for teachers because our students do spend a lot of time in integrated instruction as well.
My daughter has had multiple incidents this year involving YouTube both during the school day and in before school care. I received emails from her teacher about her watching YouTube during class. In Kids Club, she has access to the devices in the mornings and has told me she uses it to play games and watch videos. A few months ago, she shared that she had been watching YouTube videos with an older child. When I looked up the video she described, I was shocked. They were clearly inappropriate for a 6-year-old. I reported this to the principal and the Kids Club staff. What I was told is that YouTube is difficult to monitor and that responsibility falls to the park district during Kids Club hours. But this happened on school property on a school-issued device given to a first grader. I want to be very clear. A first a 6-year-old cannot be expected to safely navigate YouTube.
It's a very tiring trip, but it's a very rewarding trip. Well, we're going. That is all I have. Any comments We're good. It's good seeing you guys. >> Nice to see you again. We miss you, too. I'm loving retirement very much. I'm stepping in every now and then. But I told them not too many times in a week. That's great. Okay. No other Nothing else to talk about or address, we'll I'll turn it back to the meeting. The next meeting is May the 19th at 1:00 p.m. Mhm. That's a Tuesday. I guess I will add we do have two current openings. We have a CTE position still looking to replace behind Mr. Bullock. And then today we announced a math position, which again it's kind of a shuffle and stuff is actually to fill in behind Anita's position. We have a staff member who's moving over, so.