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discussing some items around our safety and help update at this time dick can you hear me okay yeah okay so we have four members live and we have one in our virtual setting we are still under the governor's uh approval i guess somewhat so we can all vote on this issue topic today at this time dr harshbarger we will hear from you on our safety and health update mr president members of the board dr smith i bring to you a special safety and health report today i want to start just by saying that the numbers that you see on there represent the high peak moment of so far dr harshbarger would you uh pick up your microphone and yep even be closer thank you okay so let me start again very quickly those numbers that at the top are what we would consider the peak for uh positivity reporting at 31.4 for the state and 32 as high as marion county got as 35 percent at one time as of this morning um our rate has already dropped again and we are looking at a state rate of about 9.7 percent and the county rate has dropped 3 percent down to 7.7 so we continue to see these numbers falling just as a quick representation a few a few graphs that are really representative of not just lawrence township but marion county in general and at a state level you can see that to the far right there we have seen a considerable drop a very quick uptake and a very very quick fall and so we are nearing now about five percent positivity so that is worth noting again the next slide will show you just the age groups they're all starting to tighten up and head again down for that around 5 or below we haven't seen that really we haven't seen that since last summer so this last time we saw numbers like that and that was going into june july lawrence township just looking at us i know we've seen this one before but you can continue to see that we mirror again the county and the state and we had a quick uptake and now we are falling rapidly down to that five percent area this table um talk a little bit more about it in the narrative in a second but it can show it does show you where we were in august when we went to a mass mandate we went from having very few cases of quarantines we ended up with 80 positive cases that week of 8 13 resulted in 545 kids being quarantined in one week you can see that we peaked the week of 107 and 114 in january where we saw 346 cases 323 cases the week of the 14th and then you can see just as quickly it falling to the president where we are at 27 cases for the week of the 11th and nine cases and that's a little bit misrepresented because we had several days i think three days with zero so when you spread that out across the schools you can see that seven to about ten percent of a school saw positive cases given the size of lawrence township and some of our schools certainly that is a that is a good number to be at if there is such a thing just real quick narrative to um the the graph that i showed you you can you can see that i highlighted those numbers already really it's for that week ending in february that we had only 27 positive cases resulting in 18 students i mean just that numbers we have that on a normal basis in two or three schools in a day so definitely worth noting that fall and then lastly what does it all mean when we get to the idh updates that came out on february 17th these came out very quickly just a summary of them would be shifting from a universal contact tracing to an outbreak model with the outbreak model just simply being if you get a cluster in a school like if we saw 10 or 12 or 14 cases at a high school middle school then we're going to look at that school closer and and then you may be looking at some limited contact tracing helping identify um any kind of positivity rate that that would show itself and then and the second um responsibility of notifying for close contacting is really falling on the individual that is infected so that's a change in that model no longer recommend contact tracing or quarantining schools that are made aware of a positive case sharing the potential exposure of students it's not mandatory we've been doing this through parent square it's been successful when we have an individual that has a positive case reported now we are moving into a time where people are asymptomatic they don't even know and so if there is an infection time period it's likely to be very quick in the first two days schools do not need to report covet dashboard will be discontinued at the state level we will continue to report at the county level with marion county public health can continue to isolate positive individuals for that five days it is now recommended to wear a mask on day six through ten and then school should continue the exposure notification goes back to what i said before they the state has said up to 10 in a building then that's something that we should be working with them on and we already do that and then finally a negative test for um or a doctor's note no longer required to return to school so again another change summarizing the whole page to be honest it's really being pushed to more of a flu like model so if you have the flu you don't feel well you stay home you may see your doctor you may get tested and generally you come back when you feel better and you've been 24 hours at least fever-free without medication so just looking forward real quick we continue our vaccination clinics we have one coming up this week um again another one in march we continue hosting the test site and um current layover or layered protocols we continue to watch those in our buildings and districts we continue to report marion county public health communicating the covert protocols in our website and on our protocol link and then we continue to monitor because things change and we found out last week they can change quickly and then lastly moving to a mask optional mandate if that is so recommended and i can take any questions thank you dr harshmark ford dick can you hear us pretty good any questions from any of the board members i i guess just a clarification um it would seem that with the marion county health department and the state health department we are moving toward treating covid as we would treat the flu or the common cold or anything that could become a problem in one of our schools exactly it's moving from that pandemic to epidemic which we've dealt with for years so and treatments are better um there are therapies that we didn't have a year or two ago so i just wanted to reiterate um that if things were to shift as different variants come out and so forth that um we are still monitoring numbers within our school township or within our district so something were to shift we we are also able to shift and adjust towards yes doing what's um and we'll still receive our risk report from the county so that'll continue to guide us as well these recommendations also apply to our faculty staff adults as well correct tim correct just a reminder when is spring break i know a lot of people have concerns when spring break documents like three weeks isn't it first last week of march first last week of march so we'll have about three weeks right tim i think we also just for the sake of roger smith and operations our recommendation to the board will be mass optional but the federal guidelines require that youngsters still wear masks on school buses because those school buses are governed by the federal government is that correct it is correct and that goes the same for co-curriculars any kind of um traveling that we have to do on our own buses that's still federal mandate that we have to follow okay thank you yeah let's let's repeat that that's good information i'm glad you brought it up let's take that again now tim so the the federal mandate to wear a mask on any public transportation still remains in play so anytime you'll be on our buses you have to be massed up and so we we continue to supply each bus with mask we get it but nevertheless that that is a federal mandate that has not changed and to be cleared uh mr smith our buses they have mass in case students by the end of the day they might not have the massive they all have a massive way for the students to get on the bus that correct okay and for sporting events as well the the mass will be optional yes okay i just want to throw it in event itself if you're on the bus to and from it's mandatory where okay dick any questions no questions here amy any questions no all questions answered all questions answers yes okay if there are no further questions we'll move on to our action item dr harshberger mr president dr smith members of the board i recommend the board move to a optional mandate for mask wearing throughout all buildings and facilities in the township so moved second move is wendy mustang second miss amy norman board any questions because we do have our virtual board member i will call vote by individuals this amy yes it's wendy yes yes and mr friji yeah a in our vote yes approval unanimous approval of the update follow safety and health protocol as submitted motion carries thank you dr harsh parker thank you board members any other comments dr smith or board i'll start with you miss amy no comment thank you mr freezey no comments no comment it's puppet we said that we're going to follow marion county health and we have done that from the beginning so of course there's concerns but i would trust our leadership so no yeah that's it and dr smith mr president board i i think we just go on the record to thank as ms puckett just alluded to the marion county health department and the state health department i did speak directly with dr kane last thursday as i shared with mr president and very appreciative of her time and and it's always a two-way conversation with her she very much listens and works very closely with us and so our our division student services which handles all of our health and safety ms bush and miss perdue will take over and we'll we'll be in good hands from this point on well thank you just to uh for our community community what we are saying that our masks are optional so that we will see parents we'll see students we're masking our schools that's perfectly fine parents and then we'll see those who will only wear masks as they travel on our buses that is also perfectly fine and to be clear just to reiterate from his pocket as a board we have taken on the process of following recommendations from our experts at the state level and the county level and i think that is the proper way to do business in this type of situation so if there's no other questions uh just a quick reminder we will have a board meeting on the 28th a full board meeting will begin at 7 00 pm if there are no other questions or comments i'll take a motion to adjourn so moved

and i feel like we always kind of talk about what can we do to to draw people back what what makes people want to bring their kids either back or to you know our schools and the teachers the values the environment that's what makes them want to bring them here and if we lose the teachers that we have that can mentor younger ones on the values that are important that create the culture that we have here that's just i feel like the teacher for the good of it i agree i can i can buy every piece of technology in the world but if i don't have a good teacher in front of the class it doesn't matter give me a good teacher over 100 000 worth of technology any day it's a lot harder to build those relationships when you're doing distance teaching when you're face to face building rapport with them too my principles you want to add anything to this discussion you're the ones in the trenches i feel like our legislature's going to knock away a lot of teachers if some of the bills pass that pass the new one that i just saw was they are looking at they have a one going out that people test every grade level kindergarten through 12 or 11 and if they don't pass that test they don't go to the next grade that's currently on the table as well as the one pertaining to us posting all our lesson plans and all the resources and materials on our website i just think i heard one floating around too about putting cameras in everywhere yeah that one too so i just think that you don't get an acting level they're gonna be pushing away a lot of good educators i follow some educators on twitter and on facebook and it's just sad to listen to the everything you know mr clark made a comment about the 30 year olds that are getting out of depression just getting out of the profession not going to a different school for more money they're getting out of the profession and you see that more and more and more you know like tamara said we've got good kids good programs good things good families good things to offer our students but if we can't have we can't get teachers here to do the job you know what what number are we looking at if we go to distance teaching and you know we don't have a teacher in the classroom are we going to leave students to they bring this district then that has a teacher that has achieved their full-time change i don't know what's what's keeping people here is the people and you know what brings people back are are the the strengths of each community the strengths of the school and those things are going to bring people back but if we're having to bring people in from i don't know as dac or whomever to teach our our classes are we going to keep those people in our communities or are they going to go somewhere where they have a teacher it's it's really i i have been uh pushing hard on legislators and english leaders and i need to get ahold of stephen johnson uh because they really need to relax for a while that rule on working after retirement the capers where if you're 50 whatever or you know under was under 60 you have to wait how many 180 days before you go back into the classroom or a job and then let us try to build back up the educational programs at these universities it's just it's sad how many kids don't see education as like a viable job opportunity out there right now i have colleagues who their kids wanted to be teachers like their younger elementary junior high high school kids they're now having that discussion with them about you should go into the profession of education and they're teachers and they're having that conversation with those kids that want to be teachers they're telling them don't go into it because of the the bills legislatures the the more and more like demands that are put on teachers and stuff i mean they're just they're telling their kids it's not worth it you should go and you know get up an office job or you know whatever which is sad because those kids that's the ones you want you see mommy and daddy doing that and that's what they want to do i mean because that's what they know some of them have grown up in school going to basketball games and debating forensics tournaments and things like that with their mom and dad and that's all they know all right have we to the boards and my administrators have we covered staffing well enough or do we need to add anything there's always tomorrow okay building needs we're working on you've this can be when we discuss put sid weens up there who's working we've got our train information w-i-d-x n-s yes w-i-e-n-s uh we're also i'm also spending some time working with some additional security for our buildings so might put like security needs i do think that our communities need to come to the understanding that eventually uh our buildings are gonna need some serious work uh you know roofing heating and air uh refresh handicap accessible bathrooms you name it that's kind of what sid's gonna be looking at bringing to us uh let's divert to the air conditioning heating air conditioning needs at wilson we have you were given several options on what what we could do that you know the minimal of thirty thousand dollars to change out two compressors to four compressors for 58 000 you also have a lot of pages of documents there uh replace one rtu for anywhere from 350 to 450 you have replace existing rtu and new train controls uh 550 to 650 uh replace existing rtu with two rtus and train control 1.2 million to 1.35 million and i'm just going to put claflin on the back burner for a little bit because we're yeah we're working option 4 1 million uh to 1.2 million which is uh new rtu replaces the one that's there new v8 vav boxes um train controls and then you get all the way up to you know 1.5 million to 3.4 to 3.750 million and i'm not putting that one out there because i don't know how we'd ever afford that so discussions so the elephant in the room um is i don't think we're gonna get any kind of bond issue passed until we take concrete steps more towards our future and a long term fixed right that's very fair point uh i had uh people in in my coffee at wilson uh you know said i'm all for a bond but i'm scared to do a bond on my building that might not be here uh i don't want to push it all over again where we put that mine and we take it right back off yeah that's a very good idea like i said forgot a concrete point i agree that we got to do something whether it's the 35 000.

i have a motion motion thank you mr powell a second second thank you mr zuko any discussion all right can we do a roll call please mr bail yes mrs casino yes mr januzzi yes mr musa mr usmano yes item number 6.1 approval of district and high school personnel resolutions resolve that the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions is outlined in personnel resolutions under district and high school this is 6.2 through 6 11.

uh i mean i would hate to have something go down on it and we got kids in it nowhere so we've had that i know i know he talked about and josh maybe you you know a lot more about this than i do he talked about more like the residential units and splitting it down but i had mentioned something about mini splits and what he was talking about wasn't mini splits was it i mean because you don't have to put gas to make splits do you unless well i guess there are different kinds yeah what i hear again you know and i i understand where he's coming from you know splitting it so if one unit would go down you're not losing the whole building but like i said i agree that we got to do something that they're not down without any heating and air period uh i wouldn't want to be in a building that has nowhere at all the the thing is is how far do we go before we have to go to a bond situation uh i will i will answer that this way uh i think whenever you are getting over the one i mean the only way we could afford a one million dollar thing would be to do a lease purchase which what we're doing right now then if you passed a bond you could roll that lease purchase over into the bond right uh we did 800 000 on the original lease purchase was that right diane we pay a hundred thousand a year for eight years pins it's a ten year thank you so um like great ben is doing now they increase their sales tax to help pay for retirement or like the cops firefighters and stuff someone mentioned something about if the cities would agree and write an agreement with the school that if we could get each city to raise their sales tax that might be an option for us to because we're maxed out i mean 20 mils but she's tough i know city tax yeah 33 meals i'm just saying i know but that's how we gain money i i yes and i don't know this to be factual but the police and firefighters are city workers yeah they're capers employees the way i am canada's place of fire is different than people that's what greetman's trying to do kpnf is kansas police fire it's another section and then there's cables which is school employees it's two different things for kansas police and fire kp f that sales tax that you're talking about that pays the employer share to go to the to the emts and their retirement plan the school district's capers employer share comes from the state of kansas right we don't have to pay that yeah so but to use a sales tax to help first and how they're building the new police station so like if we can so that would i don't know if you could do a sales tax for school expenditures or mod i'm not sure i'm not sure on that either but that would be something i'll i'll ask and i'll send you something up here and with the question mark because that would be a vote because that's how the great hand passes and the voters actually voted for a sales tax to help support i i guess that we would do it each city would do it and then agree to like donate that portion to school sounds like a wonderful thing i my know i mean i don't know how much you would raise well i mean the downside of millers is don't they base sales tax on where you take possession of the item so if they deliver it out of county i think that it's that county sales tax it would also be five counts because we not just bart yeah right you know so every county yeah and it'd just be the city because townships don't have sales tax right i don't know it was just something that was yeah brought up to me i know you have to have what like four businesses or something in this city to have i don't know i that that's not i will talk to somebody at the state tomorrow i also talked to dustin avey who works with piper sandler about that i that very well could be something you could do i've not heard of it but that doesn't mean it's not possible you're running on four of the eight compressors up there we have eight compressors and i have four when i actually got hired there were three out of eight working they replaced one so i now have four with one that's brand new i think the other four don't work because we place the four to get us a back up to eight to d everything uh fifty eight thousand dollars four and the problem with that is we have to be strategic of when we get them and get them done like they didn't come and replace my compressor or the new professor until almost like the week before enrollment and they have to like shut down the whole entire unit and bleed it so that they can pull the one compressor off and put the next one so we were down without air conditioning in the hottest week of like school and i had teachers in my building getting ready for school and stuff so it's gotta be if you go that route it's gotta be at a time where you really don't have a lot of people in in the building if possible um if we can't and obviously we were at the mercy and when they could bring a crane in and put it on the rooftop so i think option 1-8 yeah only option that is viable which one one is see how you do any of the other what was one engine the 30 to 58 000 the 30 to 58.

i have a motion thank you mr zepco was that a second i heard mr son yes there you go open for a discussion okay hearing none can we have a role call please item number 7.1 approval of middle and elementary personnel resolutions resolve that the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions is outlined in personnel resolutions under middle and elementary schools this is 7.2 through seven point eight i have a motion motion thank you mr powell a second second thank you mr savannah discussion hey any other questions um i just have to upstand from 7.5 so noted may we have a roll call please sure okay uh mr bail yes miss casino yes mr jinoozi yes miss musand yes ms rasamano and mr zipko yes up to item 8.1 resolve that the bamboo board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in education resolutions under district and high school this is eight point two through eight point four i have a motion ms musino very quiet [Applause] yes item number 9.1 resolve that the brownbrook board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in education resolutions under middle and elementary schools this is 9.2 through six matter of motion thank you mr powell a second thank you miss moussan discussion okay can we have a roll call please mr bale yes mrs casino yes mr januzzi yes mr mr simano mr zipko yes okay wilson thank you sir item number ten point one resolve that the boundary board of education approves the resolutions is outlined in policy resolutions under district and high schools this is 10.2 i have a motion listen thank you miss russell a second discussion okay hearing none let's have a roll call mr bail yes miss casino yes mr januzzi yes miss moussan yes miss russell yes mr zipko yes motion guys thank you item number 11.1 resolve that the boundary board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in financial resolutions this is 11.2 through 11.8 i have a motion motion thank you mr powell a second okay thank you miss moussan discussion um any other comments or questions hearing none can we have a role call please mr bail yes mrs casino yes mr januzzi yes miss musa yes mr assamana yeshua thank you we are up to item number 13 i believe new business yes well actually i think we have item number 12 other items to come before the board and i believe mr zuckerberg or something oh i apologize no no no that's fine i just i have a concern that several constituents over the last month have come up to me about school watches the presentation the taste and allegedly uh on one there was a mold within the sandwich allegedly but the number of students that have come up to me or adults that i've spoken to always having some shopping they say uh you know wow this is what we're getting you know take a look at it and uh so i just i would encourage parents because you know the board's job is not to run the day-to-day um faculty of the school system it's the gallagher the superintendent so i would encourage parents to reach out to dr gallagher and make any complaints in relation to anything with his school lunches but i'm just i'm just concerned with the amount of money that we're paying for that people that these concerns would be coming up so i just want to throw that out there i'm sure it's an isolated incident but um you know to the student that had you know either sour milk or a sandwich that didn't taste good or presentation you know the thing you have to understand in our district is that that lunch may be the only meal that the kid's going to get for the day i mean yes we have breakfast also but i think within our economic socioeconomic situation that we have in town here i i i think that that's that means we need to take a look at that and i just you know i mentioned it to dr gallagher well what i'm going to say is that's going to be addressed immediately because as you know being on the board prior how much money i've opened to our our cafeterias and how i've stressed that we've changed the content and the quality of food for our kids um that has been one of my main stays here in this district so i am deeply troubled by what you said here tonight and that will be addressed by me um with pomponi tomorrow morning okay so now we are up to the business yes okay is there anything that we're prepared to say or we want to say regarding uh our evaluation of uh masks in school well we do need we need to talk about that um and at this point in time you know um i've spoken to dr frank his his opinion has been and has not changed over the last few weeks is that it should be optimal at this point in time he does not believe that requiring kids to wear masks in school is more intended at this point in time considering where we are in a pandemic sense also with the further research that he's read regarding uh the effectiveness of masks so um his professional opinion is that um we go with what the governor has put forth which is making masks optional in school at this point in time i've spoken to christine larson who has reached out to the district nurses um again the different nurses their their concerns more are revolving around you know contact trades and without masks and those type of items and again at this point in time talking to a number of people and trending the way we are i i would recommend to the board that we suspend contact tracing um at this point you know come mark 7th when we take the mass off um until such such a time where we enter the orange again um if we hit the orange again and the numbers are going up then i think we need to immediately uh re-initiate the contact tracing involves mess at that point in time but that's my opinion um again i don't know if that would be something that would be coming from the governor's office or from the health department this is just me you know giving you the feedback that i've got and kind of interjecting my opinions here and there um but for the most part the general consensus would be from the medical professionals would be to make maps let the maps fall to optional after march 7th suspend contact tracing um obviously we will continue to do our testing for those who want to be tested and the staff obviously that are not vaccinated would have to continue to be tested so that would stay in place and then you know like i said you know we re-evaluate um where we are in the in this health crisis issue as we move forward right now the numbers are going down i would i would suspect that we're going to have some counties or some regions in the green very shortly um but again that somehow turns around the trends go back up we have the full capacity to re-evaluate that big determination later to go you know back to something more restrictive do we think that this is a good opportunity to offer a comment vaccine uh be happy ready okay yeah just tying it into the masks coming off if there was an opportunity a few days ahead to say okay it's coming now is a great time to get your shot or get a booster if you need it the county's been great with that um you know obviously the category step up we did one in january i think the second shot is actually the next couple days here um so we've offered it to our school population in our community that can get vaccinated right here on site with us okay um and the second shot is upcoming this month okay if this already happened it's gonna happen this week um as for the boosters um i have not heard anything out of the county about doing boosters in schools yet i'm sure they're still you know widening down some of their clinics and things that they they've had going um you know that's always something we can reach out to the county and ask if they're going to continue or offer more i'm just thinking it would be top of mind you know you know you're taking your mask off at school now would be the time if you're going to get a shot or a booster uh we could offer it well i i can also tell you that dr frank is absolutely open to coming in and doing any any of those things that the county is not willing to do it if we feel that it's warranted um he would be more than happy to try and schedule something for us in particular here in bangkok for vaccines in the vaccine that was our last one attempt so it's worthwhile and 88's a good you know i think the county was kind of hoping for you know 250 or better but 88 is what we got i mean you have to remember our student population is 2 000 you know so i think just percentage-wise they're looking at from a percentage i i just think uh at this point in the game a lot large percentage has already been vaccinated so we're not dealing with or had it right right so you're not dealing with really 2 000 it's probably much less [Music] different parts of the student population are the faculty populations um faculty off the top of my head i know we're in the mid 70s close to 80. for the students i did have mrs larson gather that for me so i do have it here unless christine you know them off the top of your head but i know i know i know it's pretty pretty low i think um memory searching correctly about eight percent for the students vaccinated eight percent of students are vaccinated yes [Music] a lot of pre-k kids are not eligible for it so i would just go kindergarten through yeah well and that was actually going to be one of my questions which is is there any guidance that's looking at the youngest populations that can't be vaccinated right now i i know there's been talk about but i've seen nothing that says there's anything coming for for the younger kids at this point and we're still waiting for guidelines from the department of health they've given us nothing so um you know it's always hard to it's hard to say when something's coming out i mean we only do today's the 21st so we you know our next meeting is march 7th yeah two weeks from now so i have to stop paying attention because it changes rapidly um so masks on the regardless of vaccination status correct okay what about quarantine all right again i think we're going to have a hard time doing mandating and important teams we haven't gotten any further updated guidelines but i mean again um i'm not sure it does i think i think it goes away we've asked those questions we've not gotten clear guidance on them we've asked those uh questions because the master quarantine and everything fell underneath that executive order when that he's letting that executive order expire on seven so that brings us to the eighth on the eighth we have a whole set of questions that we haven't gotten answered and if you recall at our last court meeting you know i specifically said we really could get some more guidance out of the health department i was hoping we'd have somebody or at least some indications i still think yes so that hasn't happened so again you know follow the board directive i went to dr frank and asked the questions and reporting back with the best that i'm getting questions from parents and and not being able to give them any information because you know it's not a mean decision it's kind of more report decision on this that you know it puts all of us not only me but all my administrators my principals and everybody else in a difficult position because you know they're seeing they're seeing parents on a daily basis they're asking questions and the answer we don't know it kind of makes us look a little like you know we're not on top of our game per se because you know people are asking questions we don't have any inkling what our general direction is going to be at this point in time so so from again what i would advise the board is is to go along with what dr frank said he is our chief medical inspector um go along with what he has to say let's monitor the numbers and continue to monitor everything after march 7th and again we can always take action later okay i think the other thing probably that we should stress in general is that we want everyone to be comfortable to still be in the setting to the greatest extent that we possibly can and that i think the masks optional approach to this has something to do with that right so if people aren't comfortable being in a masculine environment they still have the opportunity to do that which is not imposing on people who do feel comfortable and you know just for the everybody's awareness following the last meeting i did reach out to mr paxton just to get a temperature from the teachers um as you might imagine there wasn't a universal answer in one direction or the other there does seem to be a high level of comfort within uh some group of the population you know somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of the respondents to his survey uh were comfortable in a masculine environment but recognize that that still leaves a pretty big percentage of teachers that may not be um so i think we just have to be mindful of kind of everybody's feelings and anxiety as they go back into this we've been in masks for so long it's important that we bring everybody on the journey together so we get to the end goal together which is everybody back in school in a really great learning environment for social emotional and you know general health right so our decision is to just keep it keep it if you want to wear it if you don't want to wear it i think the recommendation that we're getting from our local public health advisor is masks optional at this point so are we are we saying that that is our official uh decree tonight that this is something that works well i think our official decree really is that we're just going to stay back with what the governor has done so again the governor is going to let this lapse he said make a mask optional and we're kind of just going to allow that to happen like if we monitor the numbers and if the numbers go in any specific direction [Music] i think that goes back to rogers point which is for the board members that are assembled here tonight do you have enough information and you feel comfortable enough with the direction that we're taking or do we want to come up with some other option here that allows a little bit more time to elapse but not a lot because we have anxiety in the general community of what's what's the situation gonna be like on the seventh so do we have a comfort level to make a decision tonight if we don't do we wanna set an intermediate target between now and the next meeting where we're gonna reevaluate and make a decision or do does anybody else have well if you're gonna re-evaluate you're gonna have you know are we saying tonight yes we're letting it lapse that's fine or are we saying something else because i'm confused so and again to get back to clarity the order is that was the governor's choice right we have two choices we can take action which would mean that we're going to impose something at the local level that's in addition to what the governor is saying or we can do nothing and if we do nothing which is actually a recommendation from our local health advisor here then the mask mandate disappears right so we're not doing anything so yeah as of now we've chosen to do nothing follow the governors or like i would if and this is going to sound redundant but i think that if we're saying we're not doing anything i think we should say it we should say it that's i'm afraid and i think that's what doctor said he'll get something else i think what roger's saying is he wants us to to vote it oh right let's let's agree on exactly what we're doing and then dr gallagher has crystal clear direction i'd just like to say again as i've said about this topic many times nobody sitting here on the stage has a medical degree and the only person we have advising us with medical degree has has given us pretty clear direction so that's where i stand do we feel that there's any benefit to um we commit to going back to it looking at it looking what the culture is like with with the decision and then if we need to to change and modify it and then let people know that we're not just going to say it and it's done like we're going to keep read about it trisha what do you think um i think we should just go with the guidance that we've given we can reevaluate later obviously if the numbers go back up i think you want to be able to re-evaluate of course you always have the ability to read that okay okay so i'm hearing yes we're going with masks optional we're not going to institute any requirements beyond what the governor uh is repealing what else goes away on the seventh distancing pretty much but you have to you have to realize we're at three feet now that doesn't change for us because we're always down three feet we're never under three feet in any of our classrooms to begin with and what we've been doing in the lunchrooms we've been it'll be the same tomorrow or as it's going to be on eight okay by the way it's okay to say that you're right for the record [Music] where we're at as a board in general so i just because it's it's it's very easy for things to get lost you know we get lost in the minutia and to join us like all right the masks mandate on the seven but then there was question about distancing and and some other things you know so i i just i'm just putting that out there i just want to be clear yeah and i would say to be clear if and it sounds like you're going to go with you know letting the executive order go away not doing anything so the three things that happen is number one that's become optional on tuesday march 8th second thing is we're not enforcing quarantining unless we unless we have to or there's some other piece of information that comes out that says that you know we need to continue and we stop the contact tracing for now now again at any moment in time we can go back we don't have to wait i just want to just to be abundantly clear you're comfortable with this direction correct i'm comfortable with it i just want it to be clear yep i mean because i think at this point we're as clear as we can be without additional good people guidance good piece right now is i have a few days to get a letter together um i will share it with all of you this way if you guys have any concerns or anything you want to add or take out feel free and let's get something out by friday [Music] okay any other new business from the committee members [Music] here you know we are up to item number 14 open to the public for discussion dr santa sermon hello everyone hello just kind of hoping to have a few more people just a couple quick items from the middle school hopefully some people online dodgeball coming up at the middle school march 24th we still need teams so did you get our team uh i don't think uh miss diaz got the board team in yet but also if you know some outsiders i have an outside team coming in anybody be greatly appreciated just to make sure we get the event outside well hang on a second we want to win ringers i'm recruiting my competition what are you doing can i just mention that i thought i had seen something on the website that mentioned that i was postponed is that incorrect information on the side the dodgeball no no the only thing that was postponed was our school dance the night of the ice storm and that's going to be the 18th the week before okay um based on did you see dj availability i believe it's the 24th it's a thursday thursday night yeah the other thing i just want to offer uh congratulations to the bamboo community middle school wrestling team and girls basketball team on their championship seasons the wrestling team finished the year with a record of 12-2 in the team's regular season they had a dual meet championship and a league tournament championship there were 11 wrestlers who competed at the varsity level tournament and seven wrestlers competed in junior varsity level portion of the tournament in the varsity all 11 wrestlers placed including five champions two runners up two third place and two fourth place finishes in the junior varsity division valenbrook had four champions with one runner-up two third place uh and two third place finishes uh the bamboo community middle school girls basketball team finished their season 16-1 and camp and captured the central jersey athletic association first place tournament trophy with a 33-29 victory over north plainfield middle school just congratulations to those athletes and to all the student-athletes who competed this year at the community middle school [Applause] a confession very good oh we have no comments on thank you sir so we are ready to move on to item number 15.1 which is moved to go into executive session we are going to go into executive session under item one two and six i have a motion mr powell thank you a second mr samantha thank you all in favor hi hi here we go [Music] you okay [Music] square she's getting a lot of kids okay all right we are reconvening now for agenda item number 16 resolved at the boundary board of education uh proves the resolutions is outlined in approval of hiv cases under high school this is agenda items 16.2 and 16.3 i have a motion thank you roger may i have a second second thank you mr bow sorry mr rodriguez let me notice that uh roll call please mr bail yes ms casino yes um thank you item number 17.1 resolved at the boundary board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in approval of hiv cases under middle and elementary schools this is 17.2 and 17.3 i have a motion thank you mr bowell a second second thank you miss casino mr bail yes this is casino yes mr noozy yes mr musa and we have exhausted the agenda so we're up to number 18 but i have a motion to adjourn awesome thank you mr bell a second exactly all in favor all right you're in recess bang the game

it goes up 350 to 450 from there well that's how price range already yeah without doing the lease purchase or something like that yeah but if you do that you got to remember you're still playing on that one yeah i know absolutely that takes that much water right out of the get-go every year for capital outlay i know how many how many more years do we have on the one seven well it's difficult to make these decisions on hvac when we don't know you don't have the first up there you know what chad said it becoming that would be the most feasible and economical i thought you hate to spend any of your well i mean 58 000 is doable right 350 to a million i'd have a tough time doing myself even though i you got to be realistic of what's being said around the table this whole thing is caused by staffing right now not the hvac but our situation that we're talking about the tamar's brought up a couple times at least i think you know is all because three four months ago when the configuration study was done there was a per i thought there was a consensus to keep going as long as we could the way we were misunderstood but and now three four months later now we're right back to where we were due to staffing yeah and it all has new staffing we can't get the staff and either in any of the buildings then that's where our problems are because you know a lot of people might say well this is wilson they don't have that i'm telling you toby correct me from this very easily be your building too i mean that is how dire that staffing issue is it's not just the districts and mr clark's already pointed out this entire state of kansas and our problem is where if you are let's say i'll just say grapevine high school and you have four math teachers and you can't hire one you might be able to filter those kids from that teacher you can't find into those other three teachers rooms or absorb them and instead of having 18 they might have 22 or 23.

we got one one and a half in a lot of cases and that's where i mean people say well get your math department together okay we've got two teachers or three teachers you know um that is the struggle i'm going to tell you something and and i know this is not something that anybody in this district i said williams and i were talking on the phone and he's like great you know i'm driving down from wilson to the hollywood there's a beautiful ridge out there probably somewhere around near where chad lives he said i could build you a whole brand new school for what it's going to cost to redo all these you call it ridgeview and you're done but i mean i know wilson won't lose it in their town claflin doesn't want to lose it in their town hollywood doesn't want to lose it in their town and i understand that um that's the real thing and we all know it that that would be the best thing is that one school but it's not going to happen it will not happen and and excuse me i'm going to say this and send me nasty emails this district's going to hate itself into oblivion if they don't watch out well i appreciate what tamara said a second ago about thinking outside the box maybe we wanted maybe we're selling ourselves short for change we've been complaining about this since 1966 maybe we ought to rethink this and do something no other board's done before make a proposal to build a 7-12 keep your elementaries where they are and what said wayne's he could do it i mean if you're going to spend 15 or 18 or whatever the number saw the numbers for air conditioning alone at class the nicest building in the district is clobbling that holds a lot of people the nicest gym you know i and i don't disagree yeah we could build a school but why give up the best building we got that's you know i'm not i that building is how old that's 1962 so but it's the heating and air that's the only building that's still good you know does the state still give you i mean i'm asking does the state still give you like more money you've built a new building or an addition and you've rented it they've kind of done away with that we would be we there's a program that if you are a poor a poorer district and you go to pass a bond you could tell your patrons that hey this bond is say 10 million bucks your response you're only responsible for seven million the state will pay three million we don't have that option it's gone away yeah well we're too rich in the district okay there is also and i think it's going away it's or it's gone away is the new facilities waiting where they used to let you calculate what your new facility area was so if you add it onto a building you've got a little extra money for that but that i believe has gone away but there was a cap number on bond issues in the state and there was a rush because of a big district like a derby or went in and said we're going to do a bond issue they would take up all that cap space and a little district couldn't get in that doesn't affect us because we would get no state aid on a bond because we are considered a rich district well and i i hate to say this but honestly if you were going to build a new building i wouldn't i wouldn't even waste your time doing a 7 through 12.

i would just do a bond for a k-12 out in the middle of nowhere it's most efficient for you on campus you stop a lot of redundancy when you do that yeah then all the teachers are saying please get all the christopher awesome same building so driving 40 miles 30. i mean that's what sid said he said i'd build it i mean honestly on roger and i talked today and i said to roger i said whenever this whole bond that did the bustion hollyrood wilson thing if bushton and hollyrood at that time would have said we're just going to build one somewhere out here on the highway when claflin came that ended up in that building but hindsight's always 20 20. isn't it i mean i can't tell you how many things in my life i think gosh if i don't know then what i know now i would that's why you study history too what that's why you study history too so you don't make the same mistakes yes i'm not saying i'm in really in favor of it but it's either that or you're gonna it won't be just district anymore and that's i would have her to say that sooner than later can i write that on this somewhere down here where do you go yeah right whatever you want to do mr dawson i'm just asking go ahead right really lightly you know when did southeast oh they've been there for quite a while three years asleep yeah i was in high school yeah one week so that's been there's a number of those districts throughout well what what what yes yes but they also are blessed to have salina right there and a waiting list of people wanting to get in up there and what was the school i just drove by on friday down there was it south of liberal western southwestern yeah fair building fairfield's the same thing they built that high school okay is there i mean obviously other than the obvious reasons of everybody wanting to keep a building and the question of if we could even get it past but is there is there any other negative reasons that somebody can think of for doing one building it's not a negative thing but something that has to be thought but if you build a a school in the country you have to build it where water is available you have to build it where a lagoon system is possible because you're not going to be on city water you're going to have to build it where electrical supply is available so you're not having to run miles and miles of wire i mean there are several and you have to find a farmer and you have to find somebody that's willing to give up acreage because if you build a campus it's going to be 10 12 15 20 acres i mean you can't build it it can't be little you're going to have to have put sports facilities you're going to have that football field you know all the things that you're going to need for a campus and it's not just a building and what do you do with what you have you're gonna have to have a parking lot you know there's there's more than just saying i want to build a school because i've talked to mr clark about this numerous times you've got to have water you can't go put it on a quarter that doesn't have that you have to drill two and a half miles down to get water it's just not feasible and you got to have a place to put your water when you're done using them so i mean there's there's some there has to be some really forethought into just we're going to do this but i mean no matter where or what it's not cheap but neither is 1.2 million or right nine million six whatever the other one is six or seven yeah seven a little well you know the other one's 9.2 million i don't want to think that's a negative thing but those are the things that to me have to be thought of first you know where where can we get water where's with that thinking is i don't want to spend a lot of our time money energy on developing plants and paying for people to do all this leg work and then nobody wants to do it yeah i mean i don't feel like that would be something i don't think we're in a spot no we're not in that spot want to do it i was just curious if anybody had any thoughts of when we know the pluses i was just curious if everybody had thoughts well one thing it that that this district and other districts around the state are gonna going to have to eventually come to terms with is and i've said this all along is it's not that we will not always have kids because i think we'll always have kids around here it's will that high school or will that elementary school still be a usable workable option as far as the building the staff everything to house those kids how's those students that is a concern i that i've expressed and i've had other superintendents express it to me because whether it be el celine or southeast asia elsi elsaleen some of those districts and of that they you know they got they have concerns that if it doesn't happen they could possibly just and everybody goes to celina or wherever they go uh and i know you know just in speaking with people whether it be in wilson in claflin they don't want to lose there's question didn't want to lose their school then i mean nobody wants to lose their school um you know number wise from consolidation we're down 150 odd kids 1.5 million bucks in general fund money um people say kick wilson out okay that's 1.5 to 1.8 million bucks the kids that are gone i'm not sure if that first year would be kind of spooky down here would it not without them them that that cash in hand not saying we wouldn't make it but i'm not saying we would either because each of those students is weighted and you can have a student that's worth their base state eight plus low enrollment weighting and that's it you can have a student that's base state aid plus low enrollment waiting plus transportation pledge free and reduced lunch they've taken some cte classes they might be worth 12 or 13 000 so you've got a lot there's a lot there that it's um i mean i i got an unlocked budget and i went through it and just you know hacked off students here and worked you know guests the best i could and uh was 1.5 million and then dr jordan said he felt like it'd probably be closer to 1.8 million please wilson completely yeah and you know one of the things that i wilson has going for is it's all in one building uh pre-k 3 through 12 is in that building uh you know we don't have residual cooks in each building we don't have residual maintenance um custodians that type of stuff anybody got a heavy come on and we can just pull everybody together a little closer that would work all right let's are we done on building needs or have we made it is there any decision that we can't really make a decision we can't necessarily say we want to do this as far as eating air or should we i would say no absolutely no action tonight yeah because we didn't put anything you can yeah let's talk about that building needs a little bit of the overcrowding here at the elementary school mrs ozia presented some plans there um does the board have any concerns issues with anything you see that she presented i just know you brought up a walk-in cooler we don't have one here we have a walk-in uh refrigerator what did you need to get rid of it to get rid of some of these freezers i don't but that would affect us yeah that should be disgusting because right now we're going to try and start bringing back getting all the kids back in here for lunch next week the breakfast i have over 80 it's already there i can definitely look into getting them i'm going to say or 100.

i don't know i tell you what i will get some prices on those and get with you we are trying to not spend as much money it might be something that happens after the new physical year starts in july but we could also that would be an eligible service expense so it wouldn't even have to come out of capital cover that at all with money in any space in your tables yeah excellent more space right like sneak peeks we can be creative yes are money yeah but that is a food service expenditure as well there's capital la that you can take out of good service for expense there and it wouldn't have capital yeah and one of the things i mean we have these coolers because people have donated meat and that is one thing in this district that is awesome we have parents and patrons on both ends of the district that donate cows and i can't tell you how much money that saves us by people doing that your dad had donated one i know that um it's uh it's been a great thing so i don't i can't remember everybody that's donated the hips feelings thank you you remember better than i did i just remember but uh i can't believe we put in a tent outside that stems back to having a construction class there you go back to a construction class selfishly i want my office in this building because i like it we have enough property here you can build it i know but for what's best for kids my spaces need um our space i should say in the office but if so what other options do you have out there for office space do you explore um i talked to your wife at the basketball game about that area behind the bank uh i don't there's been discussion of moving to wilson uh honestly mr dawson and i talk we don't know the only place that we could potentially put the district office at wilson is in the old learning center and if you were to go out there right now we're using it as a storage facility it's really small like mr clark's office would be maybe this corner where it's like boxed off not even big enough to put a dust per say in there the three ladies would have to be out open there wouldn't be a lot of room for all the filing cabinets and stuff um the other people have said well you can move it inside the building i have to now look at moving some rooms around for mrs bourbon and some things like that and i'm starting to wonder exactly where and how i'm gonna move and where i'm gonna be able to keep things and make things functional still um i have some of that some ideas but i don't really know where i would put these four wonderful people in my building first day i taught i'd thrown out plum creek yeah plum creek i've looked at plum creek um that medical building was one that had been brought to my attention a year or ago uh i don't know that that's still i think up in the air that's still up in the air and i know the city had some money i thought your brother or somebody was telling me you had money for a remodel of that building potentially yeah is it empty no the clinic is still operating okay yeah that's why it's up in the air okay is there a place big enough and i'm just asking that if we moved the district office that you could potentially move pre-k three and pre-k for that same area and house them like the district office and pre-k three pre-k4 in that and free up worm here potentially i don't know i'm asking uh i don't knock nothing near plum creek um haven't you talked about also a day cara wilson yes we had a lady that was taking his face yeah the city of wilson um when i one of the real positives that came out of my coffee up there was a lady and and her name just went right out of my mind allison ford uh city is going to have some money city wilson's going to have 400 to 150 that and there's also some other money covered money that they might be willing to help us uh look at doing a daycare in the community of wilson in our school so uh i've said that and i've talked with mike urban over in claflin uh of the possibility of maybe running one out of the old elementary school there he's willing to work with us we might have to provide some transportation for kids say from here or wherever to bushton hollywood wherever to claflin for daycare but [Music] sounds like wilson guess what the holdup could be staggering we don't know we can find somebody to run it and you can't just throw a daycare together and say here's a bunch of kids and here's two adults and we're good my wife used to run a daycare and it's a lot like running a school you got to have fire drills you got to have logs of what you serve them and one of the benefits of having that daycare near your school or in your school the food's right there but again if i'm okay i'm looking at teaching in central plains or ellsworth wilson or ellsworth and i've got two kids and i can send them to a daycare at no cost or low cost i might choose that i like the idea of a daycare at the school because of just recruiting younger teachers and i'm i'm all for having high school kids come down and spend an hour with them every once in a while i have some stuff that the daycare would be amazing because they are having to find outside babysitters and stuff and then having to leave early i really feel i'm going to meet with allison next week allison the other allison about that um try to get some firm firm up some plans um on that back to moving your office what about the old grade school but right there different county and then we have changed all the tags on all the vehicles uh our home county is ellsworth home county is ellsworth so we would have to do quite a bit of the paperwork but it can be done but there's a lot of work to do to switch to home county we have to work out of course we could do a portable classroom too portable office partner for affordable office those portable classes we could make that the office i mean chase has a modular for their district office that could be i don't know what the cost of being mr clarkson excited about that but i mentioned that as well well they're never temporary they're always there for somebody you know you'll go to a district and they'll have one sitting out there and we put that in in 1972 just to hold that class and it's still sitting there and it's kind of getting dilapidated and not looking great i'll look into that i won't hurt you i'll that's why i'm going to get a prize and if you'll get a friday notes this week and instead of a monday notes and i'll everything that was for a classroom that was rent a rental i think i don't know what you could buy one for i'd have to uh i'll do some checking uh i've got i've got some getting some numbers on vape detectors um and they're not cheap i wonder i could run that under yes or money think outside the box yes think outside the box the one thing about a portable uncle is a portable uh space from the district office is you really would have to have a little bit of plumbing maybe we could come in to go to the bathroom but it'd be nice to have the sink in the water and go back up to so you don't have a little electric expense there probably electrical i'll do a little work on that okay anything else on building needs did anybody have any concerns or comments on mrs ozier's plan i i'm proud of mrs oak i know that to you brad uh i sent out an email that had some plans and i made some of the plans maybe less tolerable than other principals would like spurred them to come up with some good ideas so congratulations good job i'm proud of you guys jay's going to throw a rock at me uh if she had one if she had one so um let's i'll be honest with you the conversation we've had here has led me to rethink what i have up there now um future let's do this under future just just start late naming uh things like one through and we're gonna list one uh let's do put preschool or daycare wilson two district office location three i know i'm sorry no he's still writing i know if you think you're welcome district office district office location staffing capital needs help anybody want to add anything to that i'm going to stop i'm just you know really on the future put it like a what's what's put a zero up on top anywhere and put after that future uh for the students you know the plan for students of this district that should be our number one all that other stuff will happen but if we don't have a plan or for our future for our students we're not all the others don't mean anything and what i'm thinking of as i look at that you know things we can cross off if we got a daycare we'll maybe we'll get a daycare central plane get the district office moved that's good but what if staffing is not good then we need to go back to the staffing piece does that make sense i'm trying to develop i'm going to say like a flow chart or something here that the board and district administration building administration can agree that if we get to here and this isn't working we go to this and make this happen does that make sense and that kind of rotates over to the plane toby jane anything to add on that list john sherman how do we figure out more of what our communities want how do we get word to them about the facilities and what needs to be done and or what are they willing i mean what do they understand where we are right let's go back to sit in the fact that the committee that he'll create yeah sid i feel like we're just in a stalemate and if it's going to be a stalemate between the north and the south nothing is ever going to get done and so where do we go i mean i think people need to hear that we can't just keep going the way we're going and expect some of these buildings to stay where they are they're just not going to continue and i guess i think we've got to get so serious with our community and somehow i don't know community meetings or we probably won't get them but anyway just how can we get and not just the people that have kids in our schools but the grandparents and the everyone else how do we know do they want to keep at school yeah do they want to school we're not going to do any improving i know we felt like heck to put an air conditioning in that old grade school years ago we still don't know them we said yeah we had so many no votes you know because we don't have air conditioning in our well they didn't have air conditioning in their tractors i mean that was the big one i understand the farmers and the oil people take the biggest hit when it comes to taxes and bonds and things like that but this is a huge huge thing that we're looking at in my opinion and needs that i feel need to be addressed yes we have a great building out there at the high school i mean but there is it is old and is there seems to be police are we and just i mean yeah you guys have seen this stuff accessibility is done and mean you look at some of those schools and they just read they just did a facelift on and they look brand new and it costs money i know that's not cheap but to get a little pain a little here and there because a long ways eventually i mean you talk to people that graduated from cleveland in 1975 and you say what's what do you think of the school looks exactly the same as it did when i walked out in 1975.

and it's true and i'm seeing schools knock down buildings that are younger and not as old as this one out here and putting up new and i know our scenario is so different just the configuration of our district and i wish that didn't hold us back from doing what's best for kids and i think we are being held back is five community buy-in for our future like if that's if that's how we're gonna get there and whether that buy-in is we're gonna fork over the money to fix what we have we're gonna pay to put an all new one in somewhere in between or we're gonna say this isn't working what's our next if if we can't learn to get along we're only hurting the students ultimately and jane and i have been here a long time and we've heard this from so many people what's your 10-year plan well my 10-year plan is to i want to educate kids the best of their ability in buildings that are safe and long up-to-date and do the thing you know are electrical are good everything operable everything's good that's my 10-year play i mean i didn't say anything about i need a new building i want you know how how did it was our 10-year plan yeah i mean you know what's what's the community's 10-year plan because they're the ones that have to pay for it what's the communities here what do they want 20 years or do they you know is that well the sad thing is the community's gonna have to pay for it no matter what happens right if this district closes they're gonna pay for it somewhere else in another district yes because they'll get absorbed in 20 disc and if this district closes other districts grow which they have to expand they gotta have that facelift they have to have that expansion on that other bill yes so districts are going to pay for it no matter what and that's the part that irritates me is you know everybody well i don't want to pay for that you're going to pay for it no matter where you're at you know and i will tell you this i got a lot of kids um young and old i like my small school i've went to bigger schools and i've went to smaller schools and i'd like to see this district state whether we come to one or we stay how we are that's the reason why i moved back to kansas city very well said john it wasn't because of the money trust me and you think i mean we do have people coming back yeah and i think it is just what you said they want their kids in a community that cares for their kids in a school that's the size of our schools they don't want 75 kids in kindergarten or that they can send their kids to the swimming pool or the splash pad and not worry about what's going to happen so are they willing to like you say they're the ones that are going to pay for it right we can come up with all the plans and all the bells and whistles and everything else ultimately what does the community community is because it's more violent no community because our district is right a community thank you we are a school district not a district of schools i've said that since the first day i stepped foot in here we are a school district and that encompasses buildings in communities without schools and that's one thing that you'll see me get i get a little worked up over is i don't know i don't care where that kid comes from i want to give him the best education possible i wish people would listen to our discussions i wish the communities would know how it is i wish they would talk to people that were on that configuration committee because they would see people i mean people come up and they say well why don't you just do this it's like it was that easy it would have been done correct yes so like roger said when the configuration committee was founded and they did their their study and did all the things our world's changed a little bit since then the that's the thing that you can have 10-year plans it's going to this this this you know your air conditioner's going to die and then coca's going to hit and then you're going to have a tornado come through and tear up buses you know all kinds of stuff that happens and you just have to change course there is not a straight path in education there's not a straight line it's kind of it goes back to and i maybe i don't know if i said this is the border the coffee i've talked too much at times a lot of times people want to make educating kids like building a car you just do this you do this you do this and then the car rolls out and it's roadworthy but not every piece do we get is perfect and we have to but we've got to make it perfect and we've got teachers that do a great job with that uh they need to you know it's that goes back to the legislature and all the nutty things they're doing right now but i'm i what's that get busy living or get busy dying you know that's what we got to do and it isn't simple i think roger when he was talking to me today my was sitting there thinking why in the world did i ever sign up what are you thinking that roger oh i knew what i was doing and you did it i actually i say that facetiously i never know i i i've said this 15 times the whole darn thing comes back every though what we're all we're talking about is you can't disagree with anything that's been said but if we don't have the staff to do it under plan right now staffing drives our decision making four classes up at wilson do we have teachers for four classes or do we foresee the possibility of having teachers for the main four classes or english or math or science uh sitting here right now i don't believe we unless you know we hire somebody we will have all what i would consider social studies science math english in our junior senior high school failed unless we hire so do we need to focus on that and what are we going to do to cover that core box for those four classes or will you guys figure that out let if we cannot find a staff we will have to figure it out if we have a plan b in place before the last minute i think our plan b would be since this i think she said c c yeah we need to have a plan c is that what you're saying here well yeah like do we need to have a concrete plan or if we can't get this happening and instead of waiting until the last minute does that make sense and i think if you look up there what do we do if we're unable to get staff distance learning do you need to set a timeline like if we don't have applications and teachers what is the timeline for that that we need to i would hire if i needed a staffing school and i would hire them the day before school i don't know i think she means at what point do we invest our money effort training our teachers into facilitating the distance teaching is that what you're saying at what point do we say we've waited long enough just so that we have a plan like do we need to start talking to another school about a co-op if we can't fight like so that we don't wait until august first first to get there like oh you're making this decision so is your first distance teaching utilizing our own teachers within the district and then you roll to if we don't have that position at either high school you then go out of district like what does that map look like and at what point you do i say you utilize our own teachers and then if we don't if that can't work then you look to utilize teachers in other districts or from service centers says dexter having their own yeah some boy i tell you it hamstrings you though because you know they're doing what they're doing when they're doing it utilize teachers from uh service centers well it's nice if you also have someone that's using the same curriculum that you're used to like if we're using envision math at wilson i know central plains is using envision map i i mean there we go we gotta you know if you go to something you're not 100 sure what they're gonna curriculum and then if if we get to that point there's gonna need to be a little give and take between both buildings on schedules so they are fairly lockstep toby did you hear me on that okay i just said if it came to the distance learning you're going to have to have a fairly lockstep sketch and that's going to be not everybody's getting what they want but they all get what's best for kids if you if we present to our staff look if we can't fill our staff would you rather teach distance or close students and i would hope they would take the distance everything i would hope so too well that's something too can we initiate like we talked about working with great bid for our distance learning companies that's something we could potentially enact sooner than later potentially i'd prefer to do it in our own district for the core classes uh nothing against great bend or anything but that way we don't have to give up any of the fte i agree i'll give up fte for science because i can't hire a science teacher but if i've got a math teacher i would just use that one it's not sure technology face to face and here's the thing what's gonna but what's a little interesting about this is if we have patrons or whoever comment of i'm not doing that i'm gonna take my kids to xyz district xyz districts probably not any better off than we are in finding math teachers english teachers whatever teacher we might need to find mr clark don't you have area meetings or yeah i have one this coming friday i would suggest maybe you bring it up to your fellow suits about staffing and uh it's already on the agenda funny you should but maybe sharing sharing though like i said we talked about sharing that family advocate with chase uh believe it or not that is something that this district probably does really need to look into getting is somebody that can help some of these parents maneuver i think education parenthood um getting their kid to school type activities you know when you get a call and the parent says i can't get my kid out of bed but my dad's a great guy lover on clark to death that didn't happen in my house probably didn't happen in years either so uh but we have we do have issues like that going back to this schedule like this so i throw my two cents in i i have girl reservations with the block scheduling um i would personally like to see it stay as is just because i feel like if the kid misses things so much because they can't hold back their teaching and then you don't have them again and i know you've said like having kids have to change their focus and shift their focus they need to learn how to do that i have to do that every day in my job i have 45 minutes with one patient see the total net knee total hip go see a wound because i mean it's you know at least eight different patients having to shift my focus and we talked about if if there was a possibility of front loading some stuff you know in the morning and then some classes construction over block schedule type deal uh i would get i mean there toby if you guys had a discussion you have you guys had your meeting yet we haven't had our meeting about scheduling yet we're sort of waiting to we're guys right here okay trust us it's on our counter to be at some time well i think the board wants us to try to staff we can't staff any distance if that doesn't work and we totally fall apart and that we have to look at other options because without people just like you go to a fast food restaurant now and they might not have dining inside because they don't have enough people so when we look at distance learning we're just doing teaching do we look at shared schedule separate schedules or open the box to whatever and anything that we can come up with right now i think you have the task of trying to get four classes that bill can go back and forth but you better build some flexibility in that in case there has to be another one added or two added or whatever and because because as much as this could flip one way it could flip back the other way next year you know if a social studies teacher or whatever retires on either end of the district and we're unable to find one math is actually one if you look at that chart i gave you there's a ton of math people but i pulled up on kansas teaching jobs today math positions and there's probably 250 of them and when we got 69 i think maybe who's that my niece emma okay is she interested in teaching she nope not down here she's already got a job she was out that's a lot of joe if you call i mean i've been calling and a lot of them what you call the college of education at the different universities they'll say a lot of minority have jobs or offered jobs when they student taught some schools say i still have applicants i think when i called hayes hayes told me that he had 85 elementary positions potentially um and they try to send them close to where their home is ideally that's they usually want to go back to that when i've called out secondary things out of curiosity a lot of them say they've already had a job when they student taught the district paid them up front gave them a signing bonus to come do their student teaching here and then you know so so again when we go back to talking about schedules and the possibility of distance teaching and everything it kind of all comes back to we need to make sure and communicate with the teachers and try to listen and work with them and not and make them feel valued and make them feel like their opinion is valued because we want to maintain a positive environment so one of the questions i've been asked with this discussion of well okay if we can't find the staffing then we're gonna ask the science teacher the math teacher whoever to pick up an extra class or to maybe not even just one class but to distance teach how do we it adds a whole other layer of complexity to their teaching day it is different to teach that hybrid lesson and it's um well they've done some of that during covid that was like nationwide crisis this is a little bit different and so is there something we can do differently for those teachers who are being asked to do extra and to go above and beyond part of negotiations is we are going to negotiate a stipend for those teachers that teach a class in another building via distance learning and for every class that they do that's whatever that stipend might be but we're going to negotiate that i guess above and beyond that too even because we've talked about how you know for a lot of our teachers they're here because they want to be here and not just because of money so just making sure we do whatever he's i tell you what and correct me if i'm wrong and mr dawson and i went over the budget thing a week or two ago i did a zoom with a whole district and you said i sent you the powerpoint i did i guess i forgot it did that i think it went over pretty well i mean we kind of got an idea oh okay this is how we get our money type of thing no [Music] to another building district so that first word is distance this is this distance distance yes sorry that's okay i inherited my father's handwriting college kids currently and some going into college to be in education are schools growing their own and if they are what does that look like you know like like some businesses they'll pay you you know to go to college if you'll come work for us for five years at some schools so any kids that might be listening or parents if your kid is going to school to be a teacher they come to this district we can get them student loan relief for teaching in low low income low you know rural setting some are even getting scholarships yeah throws instances out there i don't do we have our foot in the door with any colleges to offer student teaching hey if you'd like to place your student teacher we'd love to house them down hayes in particular but usually because i don't think there's that many up there well and usually anymore like the kids tend to seem to go back home to student teach where like when i was in emporia i just went over to levo but now a lot of kids will if they're from they're going to hayes and they lived in waukeenie they go back to waukeen he lived with mom and dad's student teach they don't my parents dr piggy back over daniel said earlier i called about a teaching position and they had kids that were still in school that were under contract already people had already cabbage them and signed them to a contract before they even graduated before they used to talk so you have to can we do that well we can you have to get your foot in the door now you're paying extra salary and just like you know we keep talking we're overstaffed we've got too many staff total but not in the right areas so you're paying somebody that doesn't know that they're paying but they open the door also would like to almost feel like a dollar sign here because like now we do unfortunately when you look at our base value to other base salaries i can throw them a starting base 1 34 588 plus 6 000 worth of insurance paid plus a 25 000 life insurance policy and add all that up but when someone looks at the actual base of another district that may be two three four five thousand dollars more when you look at base to base i'm gonna pick the one that's five or six thousand dollars more potentially than here and i had a really good applicant and i lost him because of salary and some other things and i mean and and i'll go back i'll piggyback off him why is it that our base is that's what it is and not four or five thousand dollars more why is it because we have more staff where are we overstaffed at where's the actual numbers at what do we have because we're just because of the duplicates of what we've got yeah there's our efficiency i mean when we got classes at three nine six how do you stand back for six kids we could pay more you know in the right places if we didn't have the redundant stop i guess take that 10 teachers times 30 000 or whatever all right let's do let's do one quick i mean and this will never happen uh how many second graders do you have right now mrs do you know i'm sorry 25.

i have the numbers oh you do okay how many second graders do you have right now i have so i believe 10 to 12. so let's say that's 12. 37 divided by 2 perfect two perfect size classes well i was already sitting down if you made one facility go through and just how many [Music] three libraries food service libraries administration i mean like i said said the 50-year plan would be you know plan for 50 years i wouldn't be opposed to one school the 50-year plan like right you know that's not today we're going to figure other stuff out well when sid was here he was talking about the 50 years yeah it's a generational a generation like right now you say that but in 50 years what's to say that that mentality isn't now if i want to go back to two separate i mean there's no way you can project the mentality of people that you know and stuff in 50 years and we would like to say that's great but i mean the mentality of people could never change the kids are starting to get that mentality too now it's hard to you know change that perception of what needs to happen versus what we want i think that goes back to number five up there community buy-in until we figure out how to get there our 50-year plan doesn't matter when we do something that upsets them they're just gonna someone else is gonna run and we're gonna start over from scratch right and so until we can figure out how to act as one district it's all i don't think we can get buy-in to be efficient and to maximize our impact on the students until we figure out how to get people to trust that the district really is looking out for the kids so i kind of i feel like that goes back to our configuration maybe configuration report because a big part of boards and culture is trust and part of trust is if i tell you what i think happened or needs to happen then you listen that my opinion is valued and matters well we had a committee that gave us their opinion we need to show how we're we're actually utilizing it i agree that's why you have a copy of it at your desk tonight let's show our communities that their opinions matter all right if you look straight by waiting new central office we can say after this year we'll have done that land transfer not something i necessarily want to do we'll have to be very careful with how we move the district's and how much if we rent a building or purchase a portable building or anything how much money we spent on that absolutely machines are that used to be the superintendent's office and uh the central law where debbie uses the central office and uh where i am i think was the principal's law so that i mean that's how it used to be in 1964 right i think the superintendent's office was where the coffee machine was and the principal's officers were where i am and long-term correct i'll have to call i'll call some mid-state see what talk about if you switch to counties it scares me thank you it just means a lot of people if it needs to be done it needs to be what if it's a lot cheaper than i could just drive down the street to work yeah i there you go but if it's a lot cheaper than getting another building or something and maybe it's ten thousand versus fifty thousand i don't know well and whether or not i mean maybe maybe hollywood or maybe platt the city of claflin would be willing to work with us as a district on as far as rent or as far as you know okay you guys an office in normal elementary building or if there's a building on main street you know here that they would be able to do that at a reduced cost you know to get us by do we go back to no nobody wants to but we everybody knows that two high schools is our biggest expense and it's all the supplements it's all the activities it's the business it's the teachers it's everything so you know make a lot of cuts there and we can raise the salary for the teachers that we have we can't find space for the district office how we're going to find space for everybody in class as far as adding a few kids to the rooms as opposed to actually giving up so you're talking about overlaying and combining like your freshman classes versus creating new offices like carving out space versus more efficiently using space for the same purposes so she's saying what about what if we circle back to one high school like at the root of our challenges is the duplication of staffing and brad said that we're having trouble finding space for the district office but it's a little bit different when you have to give up a big chunk of space for your office that's how many kids are in the price we have we have 42 at the height at the 9th through twelve level um we have 69 i think seven through twelve but i have a class of 22 freshmen toby has a class of 28 freshmen that's 50 freshmen okay you cannot put 50 freshmen in one classroom you can't you can put 25 it's tight in some of our rooms so then that becomes do we now have to have four freshman english classes to accommodate 50 kids do we need to have i mean or you know so then you have to look at yeah you may have one english teacher now or two english teachers but what's their course load like are you gonna still have to have three english teachers because we're gonna have to have one english teacher teach junior high english we're gonna have to have one english teacher that's gonna teach freshman sophomore one english teacher who teaches sophomore you know senior in that case if you look at that you're not potentially saving anything you have to have the statement number of staff to to do that potentially i'm saying you can't manipulate it to whittle it down but that's a potential if you want moderate class sizes with you know ample learning opportunities and whatnot am i wrong toby no because i thought we know we've talked about that before uh if every kid if every kid from central plains and wilson was in one they'll say it's all going to look like 50 fresh that's that'd be awesome yeah it would be awesome but we'd have at least three english ones we could give my way to uh seventh and eighth grade you could probably get by with two teachers their load would dramatically increase if you take so then i go back i go back to the argument of is it better to lost your contract with somebody we lost a couple families yeah that's right numbers were 28.

what was that i mean 28 kids what year did not at the building yeah but at the community that at the time we were looking at the numbers it was 20 28 kids from the community it's pretty clear nobody wants to travel in all those surveys yeah and that's where it gets to be a sticky wicket because your students and i do get that argument whether it be people at claflin who say our travels do not take us up toward wilson and people in wilson who say our travels don't take us down toward cleveland it's more of an ellsworth slide of russell hoisington great bend melonwood bushton trap we're talking about doctors and shopping yes and we get that but that's why we're here like keep coming back to it something's gonna have to give i got a hard time football teams two basketball teams all the costs associated with all that two football fields but the gyms we're paying double when it's like i said ten we could put that money elsewhere get better teachers get more teachers pay our teachers more yeah and i know it's a it's just gonna have to be figured out nobody wants to do it so if you do a contract with another district to send high school kids to their district do you also have a price you pay for them to participate in the extracurriculars that's included yeah i i just i did just get that one today and i have not had a chance to read it thoroughly but one i mean and again if we contracted with another district that wouldn't be said like the parents wouldn't have to do that let me ask you this if if whether you know i i don't know what the people just say i'm not going to go there because that's where they want me to go or i don't have a pretty good well i wouldn't be in favor of contracting because there's no advantage to it i think what you're talking about is wilson could be so i represent wilson so i wouldn't be in favor of if i would the board would decide that then i would push to succeed in the district there's no advantage for wilson and this district confirms kids will need to go to school in this district wherever you succeed to i don't know but you have to find somebody to take you you still have you'd still have an elementary though yeah because see that's one of the things again you might count them as your fte but then you give that money to the other districts you get zero so you would want to so you're losing money you're not losing money is it just zero because you're not educated yeah you're you're you're you're saying okay you're taking you're basically a flow through you're saying this kid this kid this kid this is what they you know these kids bring in this house and you give them the thousands yeah just for simple math yes yes you can show it on your books and then diane or whoever would have to check them creatively or make us right it would wouldn't save us about the only thing it'd save you is you wouldn't have extracurriculars and you wouldn't have you would never stop dollars yeah you would have staff and you'd only pay out for the students that went to that district right yeah so if a parent decided to send their kid to a different district they that other district would collect they would count them on september 11th and get their money and we wouldn't count isn't that a different scenario lewis had their own district mexico had their own district they still have each of their boards don't they i think and that may be wrong and so they're actually going to another district no they're saying that i was saying if if it was like if if humans are unwilling to come contracting ellsworth or celina oh yeah then we wouldn't have a cat well we still have cafeteria because we have the elevators so they still basically you would save your high school staff and your coaches on that site athletic director you'd still have to have a principal that administrators how you were saying not that i'm trying i talked to greg reinhardt's superintendent maxwell today i know pretty well so they can still send their kids whichever direction or to the contract school if like if they live over endurance wanted to go to russell and if what we were contract with ellsworth or sylvan or whoever if we did that would we have to transport they would transport because they would they would get the transportation do whatever they need to do and they said no i don't want to go there but i want to go to central point or i'll still be in usual i want [Music] actually i don't even know thinking about it why would you contract you are still call me old-fashioned but i still consider i mean i consider all those kids still ours and i want to try to get them if they're not going to be in our district for this i want to try to get them try to facilitate facilitate a good education for them but i understand your point and you said we would we would count them in our the way if i'm not mistaken let me i'll go back and like i said i haven't had a chance to read that in depth we had a calendar meeting after school is they count them and then whatever they bring in that goes to the other district yeah so like i know this is going to aggravate people and if i had a better analogy i would or a better way of explaining it so like when kasha does like the class of class ranking rate whatever breakdown and they do head count would a contracted student count for the head count central planes or in school that they went to i think it would count it was just like for fun it changes yeah it changes their classification for that sport in that aspect in like wrestling in like uh gulf and tennis and things like that you can co-op so it would be and then they would pull apart so if that was the case you could do that here but that wouldn't be the case so yeah it would bump them up you would take their numbers they would bump them up with classification potentially or two yeah yeah yeah oh yeah that's i was just right i don't know but keisha would take the school's numbers from that day and sometimes you get into the thing where they don't want to take the kids because it bumps them up a class or whatever and they don't want to play 4a we want to play three we don't want to play 2a we want to play three we want to play 2a and that's where having a contract would come in to where they'd have to they would have to accept those students so you wouldn't have a student stranded that didn't have a district right yeah so that's where the contract helps facilitate a smoothie and i guess that's that and in actuality you know if you look at it in a sense and this is it could be seen in it for a bigger district if you took in 50 kids it's kind of just uh it's a little bit of a moneymaker in a sense because they probably aren't going to have to add any um i still go back to if i wish you know if we could figure out if anybody was for one thing in the middle but that we asked that were you not were you a part of that one with gary seacrest that time and tony had brought that up to the group that was a pretty resounding note yeah but i think that it goes back to until we overcome some of the lack of trust that we have that's going to continue to be a no so do we need to challenge board members to go out and go door to door and talk to people or because i mean city meetings is basically like our school board meetings and who knows i have a question and toby and jane and daniel you asked what why is there a lack of trust why what i have been told it is always in their perception we get the shaft it always goes to the south and we don't get to favor upon you you heard that tuesday you know we it's always we want to get rid of wilson so therefore people in our community feel like if they work in ellsworth they don't want to leave their kids in the world and they want to get it it's also because all this is a stable building wilson can't see a building right now but tomorrow the board might decide so foreign my building that's the perception that i have from some of my staff members and even from some of my families whether it's wrong right and different whatever it is that's how they feel um and if their community wants that build that community will bend over backwards you know for that building and will help do whatever it needs to be done i had a lady very concerned when you gave your example of a brand new rope and she was like she called me and said please tell me if you have insurance for like a roof and stuff if you need it yes yes i mean so they're very concerned about that building in their school this is the god's honest truth that's one of the reasons that i and i would encourage people on the south end i don't get great turnout for my coffees down here i do i usually always do at wilson uh this last one was a big turnout between facebook live and people in in in person is with grown-ups and it stems back all the way before that one came into the picture and i'll be honest i'll get angry probably with this but we've lost a hell of a lot on this end and i was a part of it all the way through and that's where i get frustrated that they say at wilson that they get shifted i mean my voice felt like if we need something on this then great if we can get it great if they need something on there and get it i'm all for i enjoy working with the staff at wilson always have they've got great kids why shouldn't they try well who doesn't want to keep their buildings but to say we've lost a great school a district office a middle school we lost our identities we lost a lot and went through a lot and all the moves we made and starting over and so that's where i get frustrated i'm here for kids period and if we can't get our communities to be here for kids then so be it our buildings won't be here forever and this district won't be here forever until people get off their high horses and just figure out what's best for kids and it's really exciting because i've invested a lot of my years here because i love it here love it never would want to go anywhere else but it's so frustrating when we just do nothing it's like banging your head against a brick wall you can only do that so long i i appreciate working with these other two administrators mr hart i'm brand new i call them alive they don't get frustrated with me they say here's what we do we work well as a team and we all love ourselves we want our kids to be successful oh i don't care if it's a place kid if it's a central education it's a wilson i want the kids to be successful i've asked for things and i've gotten them because they're successful they help kids be successful they help my teachers be successful period i don't care who where money gets spent as long as kids are getting educated and kids become model citizens for their city state nation whatever i mean i think that's always the this board is pretty well educated on all the issues that the community is on and yeah so i kind of look at it as you need to do your job in educating involves as well as the students i know you can't put them all together but if you if you start telling people what all the issues are the passion that you people have with education and you want to keep your communities here and you educate them as to what they can do i think you go a long way in advancing your position if people are guessing they're not certain what's going on rumors stick over but i think the way you get bond issues fast things forward is you have the ideas come from here the community's got to be educated in some kind of group fashion otherwise you're like you are hitting your head against the law yeah that's that's just my perspective from an outsider you've got a lot of good things going on um i think your your communities would be very disappointed if they learned your staff or something like trade jobs to keep your school industry that's that's just disappointing to me and i'm not in the district that's very well said that disappoints me and it disappoints me that that tamara doesn't want to give in to maybe i don't know what we're worried about but to change the schedule we've got to do what we need to do we keep coming back the same we're going to educate the kids well let's do what we need to do then teachers will adjust they have done for ever since education has been around we can't just we have to do what's best for kids we keep everybody in here says this repeatedly then let's do it don't make excuses let's just do something here in a positive way that's going to help do what we continue to say educate kids it was to build one building let's get together get out in the community sell it or if it's some other you know whatever we're doing now let's sell it and make it the best we can but we can't continue to come up with reasons not to do stuff we need to do stuff going back to the kids now all everybody has said something very positive and correct in all those things we can't just continue to talk about it what we've been doing for 60 years and do something and dalton came you know we're doubling up on everything gyms teams all those things and i i've evolved recently and maybe one building out ridge view is maybe that's the way to go even though we'd have building settings paying for an acs you know all that stuff i know that but maybe that's a way to you know buy some ground out there from somebody we know exorbitant prices now i'm kidding but you know maybe what well do something that hasn't been done hey that's fine don't have to go far do you feel like there would be more buy-in to that long-term plan if we could show stepping stones to get there and is the first step on that path to have one high school where we try to gauge what is the buy-in from all of the communities and if we state this is our this is our end game is one building here's where we'd like to put it this is what it's going to cost us how many kids are we going to have when we get there so if we have that one high school and we ride that for two three five years i don't know what that timeline is would we have a better gauge of what the scale of that building needs to be so that we really know what the price tag is going to be on that because if when when we rip that band-aid off and we lose half of our students from everywhere if nobody buys in we just paid a premium for small classes it's a good possibility to put it between halfway through here in wilson i think you're just gonna lose a ton of kids i don't just plot other options there might be but i'm not disagreeing with you i mean there might be but like you said what if we put a brand new school on the kids leave a nice building you know nobody in it well i think you make it so they want to be there good enough that you have the opportunity for a kid of endless stuff as learning think you'll get more than what you think you really would and i think allison's right i think that would that would be a good way to gauge because i have the same fear and i think you would have more buy-in and i think it would be a good way to get the kids on board and it you would feel easier about moving that transition and it wouldn't be just ripping the band-aid off and does it give us an opportunity to build a community in the school even closer in it yeah before we're all in that building together maybe in in that full-on one building i don't know it's it's just a thought of it's it's a lot to me to jump from where we are now to let's pass a huge bond because that is substantial so if we close questions if say for instance that what you're saying i think you're saying is to have one high school for until that new maybe a new building is built or something like that well that one high school is down here those people i don't think from wilson are going to travel because we all need you around the committee it's not going to happen it may i may be wrong are they going to travel to the one building i think yeah because it's halfway everybody is traveling i don't know that it works and that's what i mean that was my point as well is that okay so if we say we close up one building and we said can we close claflin and all the high schools in wilson or we closed wilson and it's all in in claflin i mean we don't have trust now how we're going to tell people like people in claflin just come up to wilson for a little bit and we'll get that the other one filled but they're not going to believe that you say it the other way around wilson's not but we can't get them to to believe that we want to continue the district let alone you know do something like that tonight so i don't think i think in theory and in concept yes that that would help a lot and tell us okay yeah if we did it and we kept 90 of the kids from whichever way it went then yeah okay that makes sense but yeah and practice if we do it and i mean i wouldn't believe it i would think it would be fair oh set a clear plan honestly that's what everybody keeps asking what's your plan what's your plan what's your plan well i feel like that sets a clear long term and so that would get more buy-in does that does anybody know how because i don't some of those districts uh i'm thinking of the one out north and east of emporia northern is northern heights you know that's out in the middle of nowhere around you yeah uh you look at the one i was telling you i drove by um how did they i mean southwestern yeah maybe they didn't have other options like people do around here that are within how many of those districts have done that in the last 40 years it is northern heights is going through a lot of the same pains that we are my brother-in-law used to be the superintendent there and they were trying to close another building so it's not i don't know how many any uh districts that are built new buildings out in the middle of nowhere in the last 30 or 40 years there might be i think there's been some in western kansas that have built some county stalls they have counties there are several counties but how long has that been that they were there but if you go out like what we're talking about like southwestern heights or northern heights or southeast slain all right who's who has done that in greece history southeast of saline built their elementary or excuse me el celine southeast and i get those two mixed up sorry yeah they they built their elementary school close to saline else el yeah but i don't know how long that building's been there yeah they're they're right up there on i-70 just a mile or two yeah because they get they're different yeah they're they're elementary sits up there on this one heavy corner that's i think the challenge is roger kind of goes back to yes we all want to do what's best for kids we just have different opinions for what's best for kids obviously do we put on the next board agenda discussion of this to give people a i think we chance to i mean you've got some information that you're following i'm going to get i'm going to get i uh but i think it gives you a chance to talk to i'm sure after this meeting your constituents will probably get a hold of you i would hope yeah it's on youtube uh and say hey this is and again we are a school district you cannot just i mean as board members yeah you represent wilson you represent outside clapham inside clapham bushton you're still responsible for every kid in this district i truly feel that that as a district if we want to exist we have to find a way in the next five ten years whatever that is is to to keep trying to find those solutions that we can better use the resources that we have without isolating that community again because i don't think and i'm almost sure that as a district we cannot afford to lose any kids from any part of the booster if we go in and we close platform and we lose 50 of those kids the rest of us won't survive if we go and we close wilson and you lose 50 of those kids we're not going to survive we can't afford we just can't there's no numbers that have ever been put in front of me we're losing that many kids no matter which direction we go that this district can't survive longer than two years so we need to find a solution that helps that and i i believe that the distance learning and those opportunities and using those resources helps that and i 100 believe that it is a step in the direction of providing the education in doing the things that the configuration study group would like us to look at it may not be word for word what is in the report of the suggestion but i think that it's taking that information and creating something that we as a board who are in the numbers all the time and in the information in the administration who is obviously in it every day in merging those two things together will it can i say it'll work no idea but i did it but it's an opportunity that could work and it has great potential i also think that it would go this direction with the distance learning is that we're not the only district that's in this situation i think that it gives us the opportunity that we could use those resources to help other districts which in return would help us if they have we have a calculus class that we're teaching remote distance and there's a student in brewster that wants to be able to take that class they could take that class with our district and we could get paid i think there's a lot of opportunity there that if we take these steps that we could use and it's not it's not a well i'm going to screw claflin i'm going to screw screw wilson because you know 60 years ago my second cousin did something that i didn't like it's finding that opportunity growing with it now i don't want us to see you have to do the core classes i don't because that's a different situation but if we don't have a teacher then we have those resources to do it but that's we won't have any of those resources if we don't have a district and is it different sure so working remotely was different in january of 2020 and now a very large percentage of the country works remotely and it works we just have to try it which is the four classes that mr clark has talked about and see what works what doesn't work and learn from it and adjust from it and try to use that knowledge to better use the resources that we have and keep this district open and i will step down for myself we're not reinventing we're not inventing anything it already goes on all over the nation and it's just a resource it's just an option if we can't supply our own staff and there have been times where we have had since i've been on the board where we have had a concern where we couldn't find a teacher and we did or we didn't for half a you know half a year or a year we didn't have that teacher and we found ways to do it and this would be one of those ways to be able to help that and so i don't i don't want this district's in general prejudice against groups to affect that i think that we can still continue to try to figure out how the heck we're going to pay for these buildings and it not affect this if we don't do anything and we say okay you know we're we're done with this because we you know have to spend 58 000 to fix a air conditioning unit then we're just screwing ourselves across the board and i and i and i want to continue these conversations and we need to we need to figure out something on the capital side we need to figure out what we're going to do and i and i like the the talks of trying to figure out is that one building is that whatever but i don't want that to get in the way of trying to figure out how we use what we've got so that's i have a question or a thought on that what would board members think about having a community meeting in your represented community like a board member led yeah what like a legislative type copy concept you would have roger dustin and uh tamara would kind of be together you're gonna be by yourself maybe chad could jump in chad you might jump in at hollywood or could go to any of the others and say you know here's some of the things we're discussing let's give us some feedback it's kind of cameras door-to-door idea but everybody comes to one door instead of you going to everybody's door yeah that's my only fear is that it would greatly appear differently okay but it all but you know what and it might also be good if roger came to one in hollywood when josh went to one in wilson or something you know all i mean josh has got a unique perspective he lives in the community where a school was closed uh you know i think his insight and knowledge into that could be effective it sucks you don't want to do it something just putting out there yeah i think i mean i think that'd be good but it's a good point that you know have an organized effort of what information is brought up and discussed questions what questions asked maybe have somebody there taking notes while you're having that conversation so i think we'll just continue the conversation in the next board meeting we had a really good discussions and so i think we need to continue this because you've got some numbers to get and that kind of thing and like i said it gives us time to have discussions with our teachers and our parents and voters and all that so that worked for work so if there's nothing else entertaining motion rogers there's a second second by the camera i'll save your hand thanks

meeting of the board of education on february 22nd 2022 and we have someone with a really great t-shirt and unfortunately she's not in the front row at seven o'clock p.m um kathy would you please call the roll here present here present here all right mr gilbert would you please leave us 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 right are there any items to be added to or removed from our agenda tonight dr hitchens there are not all right then the first item on our agenda is our public comment so welcome to the meeting of the board of education if anyone wishes to address the board this evening please see our recording secretary to submit a form for addressing the board we ask that you put your full name and address on the form as we're required by a detailed set of the minutes of our meeting in general we do not answer questions or engage in dialogue during our public comments it doesn't mean that we don't take your concerns or comments seriously and if you have specific questions for or would like to further engage with the district you can submit your questions using the link on the website and an appropriate staff member will communicate with you our bps101 communications manager holly diesman will now explain the procedures for public comment and she will call up the speakers thank you welcome to our board meeting this evening speakers will be called up in order of form submission the first form received is the first person invited to speak when your name is called please come to the podium so that you can be heard your comments will be limited to three minutes we did have somebody that notified us in advance that we they would be speaking on behalf of a group and that group will be given five minutes a timer will start and it will be shown up on the screen once you are settled at the podium at any time during this meeting written comments from anyone else may be submitted to our recording secretary kathy scafidi right there at my right we ask that everyone conduct themselves with civil civility and respect towards others our first speaker is sarah barrett and kim anderson i can do that too okay good evening my name is sarah barrett and i'm kim anderson and we are your fourth grade team from grace mcqueen school beyond that we are also parents of bps students my daughters kayla graduated in 2007 and 2013 respectively my son theo is currently a freshman at batavia public high school we come to you tonight to express our support and appreciation for the district's dei initiative and the work that is currently being done we also want to take the time to stress the importance of continued focus on dei in its role in our education system while we acknowledge that the district has initiated some very important conversations in relation to diversity equity and inclusion we would like to ensure that the conversation does not end and grows into meaningful work my daughters akila and kayla both attended batavia schools beginning in kindergarten all the way through graduation during their combined time in batavia they only had two teachers and one counselor of color throughout their time as students they dealt with microaggressions as well as overt situations relating to their race for those of you who believe that this issue is new i assure you that it is not for those of you who feel that this issue is an old one i can assure you that it is not i am the mother of a korean adoptee matters of dei have always played a part in my family from the very moment my husband and i brought our son home at the age of 10 months when you are a family brought together by conspicuous adoption which means you adopt a child outside your race or ethnicity education and celebration of differences is imperative to the family experience within the school setting theo is one of very few asian students and while that has not had a direct effect on his success or happiness it is a topic of discussion frequently at our dinner table i would love nothing more than to note as a topic of conversation around the teacher lounge table as well i have been an educator in batavia for over 30 years during my time in batavia i was told by an administrator that i needed to change the way that i spoke because i did not sound professional enough during my career in batavia i have had a family ask that their child not be put in my room because i was black only once during my career in batavia have i been approached by my colleagues who to ask my opinion about a situation regarding a black student more minority teachers and administrators are needed in our district we need more open and honest conversations in our district regarding dei when looking at dei through the lens of educators we must start in the simplest of terms and grow as teachers to meet the needs of all learners i found a statement on the university of michigan website that defines deis diversity is where everyone is invited to the party inclusion means that everyone gets to contribute to the playlist equity means that everyone has the opportunity to dance while this statement addresses dei with a dash of humor its meaning is very real teachers need to develop an understanding of dei and the district needs to embrace dei at a systemic level we do not need another item on our checklist what we do need is meaningful sustainable and effective dei leadership thank you for your time and consideration regarding this important topic we look forward to working with you [Applause] our next speaker is richard all right my name is richard darlene live on the east side over there moved here in mid and uh one reason we moved here according to reeler was a school district i've sent multiple forms in district contact forms reached out multiple times zero responses so this is just a reminder that you guys work for us and we need some response you know i want to be quick to note that the remote learning done in the spring of 2020 and all of last year that was day on day off was garbage at least the best it was terrible it was awful i don't mind spending time with my child i love it i love doing math english with her but you know sometimes she was done by 10 a.m and i hope to never ever go back to that i'm pleased by the option for my child not to wear a mask to school but i do believe personally that this should have been an option from day one a choice made between parents and students not a tyrannical school board that held so diligently to the governor's tyrannical illegal mandate by the way these mass minimize emotional expression impedes communication and inhibits individuality it does these mandates must end especially in school-aged children whom facial expressions individuality and communication are paramount to their learning a couple of you guys three members are up for election 2020 2023 i know a group of parents that will never forget how you muzzled our children for almost two years sad my daughter stated teachers were constantly interrupting the class telling kids to pull up their mass we spent years teaching our kids not to even touch their face the t-zone they'd learned that batavia where was the common sense these kids don't even wear masks in pe in lunch and band they're with each other after school they play together after school they're in the same sports teams it's sad and the decision to muzzle these children during the school year into compliance was a gross decision i believe that and you guys should be held liable for the permanent damages you did to our children and let's not go back to these mass it's over it's done with let's stop don't confuse these children anymore thank you [Applause] our next speakers are speaking on behalf of a group so we'll be given five minutes that's jenna mcknight so good evening due to the uptick in racially charged incidents in our district many of us have found ourselves in the middle of a very difficult situation and there is no easy way out we know that the goal of every staff member administrator and school board member is to create a welcome and inclusive environment for all students with minimal disruptions to the learning environment that is not happening many classes have been disrupted some students are being harassed and some have been subject to racial trauma on a weekly and monthly basis this is untenable to us and cannot continue we've been patient and we know things take time earlier this month we sent questions to smt asking for some answers but as of today we have not received an official answers but we heard that a meeting went very well today so we are really looking forward to hear the information from that we want to be able to collaborate with our leaders and work together for the betterment of our students and we are excited to help do this work we just want open communication while we understand some questions are not easily answered there are others that we feel could have been communicated which leads us to our next point if there are any plans being made and it sounds like there are please tell us it would go a long way to where collaboratively and the lines of communication were opened up we want to recognize that there are those in leadership roles who are helping us move the needle forward the acknowledgment of the need for our students and the collaboration does not go unnoticed we know that now there are plans for the fall in the late spring which we are excited about and we look forward to building a relationship with ken williams and we look forward to learning and being better and doing better in the meantime we need to know what the plans are to help our students now we have students who are hurting and searching for help and guidance so how will we help them now what are we the district leaders and staff oh sorry who what are we the district leaders and staff getting in place now to help those students students are still continuing to go to teachers and share how they're being treated and hurt so let's do something now one way that we feel we could really get focused feedback from our students is through using our current resource of tripod ed and issuing their dei focus survey for students this would give us a wealth of information to focus on why would we shy away from getting concrete answers from our students this is an action we can take in the spring if we are to put dei as a priority then when will we as a district put forth the resources to hire an individual to take on this work it's disheartening to hear that we may not have the money or resources to do this but then as a staff and community it seems like the money is being spent other ways if this is a true priority then please prioritize the resources we do have to hire an individual that is trained and has the knowledge to help our students and our staff by publicly hiring a dei coordinator that will show students parents and staff that we are committed to this work and that we have more plans further on down the line long term our goal for continually bringing up dei is to create an environment where every student feels accepted supported heard and loved we keep coming to you because we want to build this together in a partnership a partnership that is transparent that openly communicates and above all make sure that every student feels like they belong here [Applause] you coming up for the next one i might our next speaker is mark pepping how you doing i'm mark peping back again i'm here tonight to advocate for the board to make some final decisions and move along with the masking and testing and quarantining self-isolating or whatever you call it now that you know if i felt like we were waiting for the appeal decision to be done a lot of school districts were after the ruling was made on february 4th that has been done so it's time to make a decision now and broadcast it to the community and let them know that you know there is no authority telling you guys that you have to do these things and then kids can feel like they can freely take off their masks i'm getting surveys from kids in our schools half the kids are wearing masks half are not how come the half are not because they're mentally anguished they are scared they're they're traumatized you know i've got girls two girls they don't want to take it off their dad comes to a board meeting every month and complains about it holds up signs in the streets and they're scared to take it off that's frustrating to me but you know what that just tells me that overall we've got a lot of problems mental problems that are going to happen social problems social skills i mean my daughter is afraid to talk to other strangers you know without her mask on her face i don't understand it but you know we've got to end this thing and you guys have got to take the leadership and say we're going to stop this now you know suspending enforcement is not anything close to saying what we're doing is wrong we can't do this lawfully and you know last month i said the legal action is coming uh our district i don't think was enjoying any lawsuit yet but we've got hundreds of parents that are ready to go we don't want to do this this is a waste of time you know we have to wait for months and months for for what you know they have the same end results we already have permission now nobody in the state is forcing you to do this it's just up to you to make the decision admit that we can't enforce the rules that were imposed and move let's move on let's work on getting our kids uh more comfortable more uh you know bring them back from their their zombie state that they're in so you know if you have half of a class still masking i gotta expect that it's interrupting learning especially for the little kids now i'm what i'm hearing is that the elementary schools and some of your teachers here maybe you can comment on it even they are less masked than the high school so that says to me the high school kids are being pressured in some way if it's being bullied or if it's uh just peer pressure too many instagram views i'm not sure what but we've got to get through this and get done with it i mean there's you know how long you go for we're going to go forever what are you looking for what is the you know what's the purpose i really want you to consider let's get a decision made so we don't have to continue doing this as parents we don't have a waste our time doing this you don't want to hear us here every month doing this you've got dei you got to work on thank you [Applause] that's the end of public comment all right next item on our agenda is our bps partner so i'm going to invite our student ambassadors to the podium share with us what's going on at the high school hello everyone super packed today um we did share a presentation with you at yes okay oh it's a little cut off but um so recently our girls basketball team went to sectionals and they were regional champions which is really exciting [Applause] and then we also had multiple wrestlers go to state this weekend hayden federal who's on the far right place and i believe we also had two girls this year that qualified for state [Applause] and then the dance team season is almost over after placing second sectionals 18th at state and 10th in the nation at nationals [Applause] and then we had a little little um insight into our school right now which was touched so recently we've been emphasizing equity and fine discrimination which has been a big priority at the school so we've been collaborating with students and clubs including the equity and diversity committee to help spread the new equity statement and continue to create a welcoming environment at the high school we've done this through videos such as dr smith's video elaborating on the equality statement that was shown in classes as well as newly added art promoting black history month so of course there's still more work to be done but just um being happy that yeah being happy that and excited that there's work being done right now [Applause] next i'd like to invite todd swanson president of the bea to the podium [Applause] applause before i speak all right i'm going to try without my glasses and see how this goes i made the font a lot bigger so good evening members of the board first off i'd like to thank those of you who have reflected on my comments over the past few months and have been asking questions and seeking understanding and clarification there's no better way to gain clarity than to ask questions and i want to make sure that you all know that i am available to meet with any of you and can answer any of your questions as well so please don't ever hesitate to reach out to me should you have questions that you would like to ask of me it's always nice to meet and to talk over coffee or sushi today is a pivotal moment for our district we are going to hear a final report from a group that has been analyzing the board's strategic priorities which focus on welcoming and inclusive environment authentic learning and early learning even more anticipated are the next steps that are to be shared as we move forward as a district none have been awaiting the sharing of these next steps more than those who have been championing the causes of diversity equity and inclusion in our district you may notice that a few in the audience are wearing red tonight no other color symbolizes a wider array of feelings and emotions in the color red red adds heightened awareness and urgency to any situation in the education world we have a movement called red for ed this is when educators in a district state or even on the national level wear red to raise awareness and cause a sense of urgency to whatever topic that needs to be addressed tonight our teachers are wearing red in honor of continuing to raise awareness and add urgency to the need for systemic change in our district around the topic of dei this is not to take away from the steps that have already taken place this year and i want to acknowledge that we have certainly made strides but no one is denying that much work still lies ahead of us when we reflect on where we were as a district just one year ago at dei we certainly have moved in the right direction some may feel that we have been working at a snail's pace while others are just now coming to understand the immensity of what dei work entails that is why the results that will be shared this evening are as i said before pivotal as to how we progress as a district to get back to the color red for a moment red has an entire month dedicated to it with the celebration of valentine's day in february so it's only fitting that this color red be the focus of my time with you tonight it's truly amazing how one color can invoke such a wide array of feelings that can be at such ends of the spectrum from each other on the positive side red symbolizes energy excitement power courage and determination yet when i shift over to the negative connotations of red we find aggression anger shame embarrassment and exhaustion each one of these emotions has its roots in the color red and we have had many instances where many of these emotions have come to the surface as of late much like the red flames of a fire that start out small and spread into a larger roaring glaze the desire of many in our district to look at how we operate through a lens that continuously needs to focus on what is equitable and inclusive for all in our diverse school community creates a need that is driven by determination and a passion to make our schools a place of safety and inclusivity for all what happens however with any fire is depending on the external factors that are impacting it a blaze could turn into a devastating inferno or be smothered completely out of existence by removing any of the basic elements needed for its life i have no worry that this movement is going to be extinguished there are enough of the elements in place to keep the fire burning but what we need to be is cognizant of the exact opposite the devastating inferno together we need to ensure that everyone in our district has a common jumping off point regarding dei does everyone have a common understanding of what it even is and what its principles are are we all meaning the same things when we talk about dei can we recognize our own attributes that could hinder the progress to this movement we have had some staff do amazing work this year around this topic but now we find ourselves as a district to be somewhat all over the place we have worked with senior administration to engage our plaque committee to help everyone in the district get a common foundation for dei on which staff can build more layers of understanding as time and training continues this will happen beginning at a time set aside for an upcoming institute day this spring if there has continued to be a red flag in our district vision however it has been not having a coherent plan with a tangible timeline attached so all know the way forward together will there be a dei committee will there be a dei coach or coordinator what will professional development look like around the topic of dei in the future it is these questions and many more along with not knowing the answers to them that continues to add fuel to the fire that could further ignite the flames into the proverbial inferno that is why i mentioned that tonight's findings are going to be so important in how the dei fire burns in batavia continuing on with my homage to red another red emotion that i have not only personally felt and experienced in these last few weeks but also witnessed first hand in our district is one that for 29 years that i have taught in batavia that i thought i would never feel or experience working in this community that i love i saw my colleagues be put on the front lines in a political debate i saw students used as pawns i saw staff threatened with litigation and hateful emails for doing what we've always done teaching respect for following the rules expecting that we can disagree in respectful ways and always holding out hope that we never forget that we are all human beings i've never experienced the levels of fear disrespect and intolerance that i witnessed in these last few weeks and that leads me to a red emotion that i never thought i would associate with batavia and that is shamefulness for anyone to think that my teachers or our principals administrators and employees could be spoken to and treated the way that they have been goes beyond and directly moves to anger for me this past month my emotional bank account is even more in the red than it has been all year and i also know that this is a case for our teachers our administrators and staff as well i know full well that the actions of some do not speak for all and in that my negative red emotions temper down quite a bit and i find myself being grounded in the emotion of determination no matter what comes our way educators will persevere as we have always done what matters now more than ever is not focusing on the things that will divide us and break us apart rather we need to look at the things that unify us and bring us closer together each one of us does the job that we do because it is what we are meant to do with our lives when i'm with my kids in my classroom whatever else is going on outside my door disappears and i'm lost in the magic of learning sharing and community it recharges me and gives me the strength to come back day after day no matter what else is going on and i know that is a unifying threat i share with everyone in my school community no matter what we are here to help the children of batavia learn grow and succeed and that is unifying around the best cause of all red means uniting for a common cause red is for education thank you [Applause] good night uh plaque met this past week two weeks ago the 10th and we teamed up within our committee to discuss other districts and relevant organizations dei statements and discuss them as a team and how we wanted ours to look like we also discussed upcoming march institute day and that would what that would look like for our staff um which was also dei focused um big mets and we discussed updates of pto and booster organizations and hell of honor has extended the deadline to february 28th um for nominations so get those that's all thanks aaron rj um i got a pretty good update from fox valley career center um some highlights um mr virtual is very excited about some things that have happened in the past so far the school year so i want to share it with you all um so far this year the fox valley students have qualified to test or schedule the test for the following certifications or licenses american welding society automotive service excellence certification certified nursing assistant certification comp ta certification cosmetology license uh he mentions that several the second year students have already completed or will soon complete their coursework including 1500 hours of clinical practice for professional license environmental protection agency universal refrigerant license fire science certification and hazardous materials certification they also have several students who have qualified to test for emt basic certification when they turn 18 years old so it's a reminder for everyone this is you know high school age students that are all doing this uh the certification testing is possible and the students have completed the necessary clinical hours or past the required skills testing some other highlights beyond the students uh 32 percent of well this includes students 32 percent of them have been have already participated in work based life experience learning experience including job shadowing internships or site visits they've had over 24 guest speakers already some that he highlighted are automotive repair shop owners computer computer company owners multiple community college instructors and the king county sheriff k9 officer and a dog other students have also taken they've had they've had over 13 different field trips king county coroner the jail albanza community college cadaver lab and the tricom 911 dispatch so they've had a lot of advisory meetings met with a lot of local businesses into in industries and community colleges to ensure that the programs continue to prepare students for their chosen field so they're doing a great job they've got six more advisory meetings coming for later this spring so just wanted to highlight some of the great stuff that's going on at fox valley career center thanks rj yeah great i'm remiss to report that we did not have a meeting so um if there's anything tony wants to add but otherwise we'll catch up on the next one huh that leads me to say that the insurance committee also did not meet thank you tony you're not a slacker uh capital the projects fossil did that meet we did have our first community engagement session on february 1st to talk about the master facilities plan so i want to thank everybody in the community who attended that night we had a robust turnout we had a very lively discussion i was only observing but from my seat in the cheap seats it looked like we had some really productive conversations and i want to thank all the speakers dr hitchens brad tony the dlr group they did a nice job and especially want to thank the volunteers on the committee that are the hosts that are organizing it these are people these are your neighbors these are your friends that are doing the heavy lifting so that we can communicate with our community so i want to thank all them and then i'll do my commercial our next meeting is thursday the 24th from 6 30 to 8 30 at the high school and the topic of discussion is financing the plan so i think this will be information that will be of great interest to the community and will generate great discussion and so i would hope everyone here would attend and tell a friend because this is very important helping us decide what the future of our facilities will look like and if you want more information obviously you can go to holly's done a great job our facebook page or the district website will give you all the information chris we did have a cac meeting um during that meeting we reviewed the plan for the summer curriculum week we continued our discussion on subject area leadership teams or assault and we will discuss our short and long term goals for that at our upcoming meeting on thursday and then we also discussed equity statements uh we looked over various equity statements el they looked over i observed and came back with several ideas that they i assumed uh sent on to the other committees that are doing that work and the things that were important to them were they like the active proactive voice um they felt that definitions are needed um they wanted to emphasize collective responsibility and ongoing continuous examination of our education system so that was it sounds good next item on our agenda is our consent agenda which is an opportunity for us to approve a number of uh routine and regular business items all of which are detailed in the um board docs so mr pearson you'll take us through the consent agenda absolutely this is easily the most exciting moment of the board meeting for those of you here for the first time and i'm joking when i say that uh 4.1 is the approval of the january 24th 2022 special meeting minutes 4.2 and 4.3 is the approval of the january 25th 2022 regular and closed session meeting minutes 4.4 is the approval of february 14th 2022 special meeting minutes 4.5 is our monthly personnel report 4.6 is our monthly payrolls and bills 4.7 is the review of closed session minutes 4.8 is the destruction of closed session recordings from august 25th 2022 4.9 is the display of high school science textbook and 4.10 is the display of our high school social science textbook lastly 4.11 is the approval of this consent agenda are there any items to be removed or that need further clarification all right then i would entertain a motion to approve all items in the consent agenda as presented still moved second move my by meisler second by low all in favor hi hi any opposed all right next item on our agenda is reports i'm going to pass that over to dr hitchens sister sure the first two reports i would entertain any questions normally we don't have any because these are recurring reports that are here every month so while i'm anticipating questions i would invite the strategic plan check-in group led by ming shelby to approach the podium because you guys are the next report up for tonight are there any foia questions or treasure questions oh hi everybody all right so we're super excited to share um what we've been doing as a check-in committee and we have some great representatives to share the process that we went through as part of its strategic plan work the board of education directed the administration early learning authentic learning and a welcoming and inclusive environment these priorities have been guiding work for three years and the board determined that additional feedback was needed especially from underrepresented voices to seek feedback and engage the community around the board's priorities is existing data from available sources was compiled and a series of focus groups were conducted centered on finding and lifting up voices that may not be represented in our current collaborative systems taken by thousands of students data from the five essentials survey as well as the district administered tripod survey serve as the basis of the quantitative data that was a part of the process along with information from the annual school report card qualitative data was gathered from 29 different focus groups and over 350 individuals inclusive of staff students parents and the community a community engagement team was put together to process this data and identify strengths and weaknesses around each of the board's priority areas we opened speaking at the board meeting to our whole committee and these volunteers so generously offered their time um to be a part of this tonight so here they are good evening my name is danielle mahoney we moved to batavia six years ago and we love this town community i am a proud mom to two amazing girls my older daughter lily is living her most awesome first grade life at hc store and my spunky penny is in her last year in the ec program at ags she also has down syndrome most are not aware that the largest minority group not just in the us but in the entire world are individuals with disabilities yet when having a discussion about inclusion and acceptance they are not always top of mind and usually have limited presence often time this is because students with disabilities are not able to articulate or voice their needs opinions frustrations so i'm hoping to advocate for them and their parents and caregivers i'm martin and as a student at bhs and an lgbtq student i care deeply that all voices are heard and about tackling all forms of racism queer phobia ableism and all types of bigotry in batavia schools and to make school a safe and equitable environment for all students good evening everybody my name is jake wyatt i teach fourth grade currently at gustafson school i'm a lifelong batavian myself i was very grateful to have an opportunity to participate in the community in this discussion forum i have worked in three different schools in batavia and in a number of different roles so um great opportunity to to represent the community on this team and i'm holly dietzman i usually sit right there i'm the communications manager for batavia schools i also am a parent i have two boys one at rotolo and one at batavia high school and i'm also a member of the lgbtq family uh yeah so some words about our process uh 28 non-administrative staff participated in a five-part engagement process during these meetings the group processed the data developed statements to identify perceived strengths and weaknesses and then prioritize these to help guide further action planning team members processed through the quantitative data and made inferences about how the results reflected strengths or areas of weakness in our system over 70 statements were generated by the teams that processed the data these statements were grouped into overarching themes and then the statements were voted on as to their level of priority i'm going to speak to some of the positive things that came out of the welcome and inclusive environment community engagement team members voted from a long list of statements some of them you can see up on the screen there that were created under this category all of which can be found in our report here are the results from the committee under the priority welcoming and inclusive environment our two our top two strengths are welcoming for welcoming inclusive there are many extracurricular opportunities for students and these experiences strengthen the welcoming and inclusive environment and provide a sense of community and staff authentically connecting to students as a positive impact on the learning environment student focus groups from all levels support the notion that extracurricular activities connect students to the school environment staff focus groups also indicated that extracurriculars provide opportunities to establish meaningful and positive relationships that connect students to each other staff and their school local quantitative and qualitative data sources confirmed research findings that teachers make a difference and the experience of our students the five essentials survey from 2021 indicated that 90 percent of students believe that they share a high level of mutual trust and respect with their teachers overwhelmingly students said that their teachers make them feel safe resp and respected confirming results were seen in the tripod survey which is taken by students annually and questions related to care and school climate for weaknesses there was a tie for the top two staff members would like to see more progress in making the environment welcoming and inclusive for all students and certain populations of students feel unsafe not included or respected among their peers indicating a sense of urgency and a willingness to engage in meaningful change more than one-third of staff members would like to see more progress toward making the learning environment more welcoming and inclusive in focus groups staff acknowledged that while that we are making some progress there are still opportunities for improvement the tripod survey showed that between 21 and 22 percent of students at rms and bhs believe that their teachers are not aware that something is bothering them which demonstrates the complexity involved in making all students feel welcome and included while an increasing majority of students feel safe in the school environment and most report positive peer relationships some focus groups indicated that certain students do not feel connected to their peers further work is needed to improve student interactions during unstructured time and locations like hallways buses and restrooms especially on issues related to racial social cultural gender identity learning disabilities and special abilities okay so i'm going to share the results from the authentic learning priority i'll start with strengths we distilled down all of this information to the two overarching statements most staff 74 percent believe that authentic learning experiences are important for student learning that was from a staff survey in 2021 staff and student focus groups also indicate that collaboration such as in labs community and business connections and career explorations result in higher levels of engagement for students the second strength was that most students affirmed that engagement with their academic work is important and student focus groups from all levels connected high levels of engagement with improved learning which suggests that application and connection of theoretical concepts to real world scenarios results in improved learning experiences for our students the two areas of weakness i think were things that are areas just to continue to to improve on student focus groups at all levels revealed that learning was that was student-centered was more engaging to them strategies such as interdisciplinary units project-based learning inquiry collaborative learning quality discussion and the use of multi-age grouping such as mentoring or buddy opportunities across grade levels and special school or community projects were noted by students as contributing to their engagement in their learning there was a noted need to have shared experience as well as personalized learning opportunities at all levels and i think the the area for growth is figuring out where that balance lies in the 2021 five essentials survey most students surveyed reported academic engagement in their learning when asked about engagement student focus groups stressed the need to see the learning connected to and applicable to their lives students at all levels shared that learning activities that focused on student discussion instructional approaches such as simulations debates taking informed action and inquiry learning increased opportunities for student agency in their learning process at bps101 early learning refers to opportunities for pre-k through first grade as solid foundation for future learning i can personally speak to this priority having two young kids in this demographic and having first hand experience in both the strengths and the weaknesses focus groups data on program desirability and committee members express support for the district's early childhood model early childhood staff reflections show that a common curriculum shared experiences and a connection to kindergarten programming are hallmarks of their success we are so fortunate to live in this community with a program well admired by others and is a model of success especially in the special needs community families move to our district specifically because of the early childhood reputation unfortunately with all of its strengths there are a few weaknesses currently there is a lack of capacity sections and facilities to accommodate all the families in pre-k which has resulted in the use of the lottery system many three and four-year-olds remain on the waitlist and either do not enroll in school or have to find private opportunities this may impact the transition to kindergarten there was some discussion in the committee about potential barriers such as transportation and program awareness that may impact the use of preschool by our neediest families my older daughter was on the wait list for both years we just missed the call her first year and then we received the call mid-year of her second we were fortunate to be able to enroll her in another preschool that we loved but not all families have that option by the time she did get the call we did get the call to enroll she was already in her current school having forged friendships and thriving where she was at so how we arrived as which statements were our top levels of priority differed for each group member for myself i am coming from the perspective of young children i looked at what would have longevity and seeing improvement as my kids their peers and future children move through the school system i chose the ones for the opportunity that were the most actionable and impactful as one other committee member had stated we picked the ones that had the most bang for its book so my process was i it was there was a lot of information to uh pull together and for me i was trying to consider what i heard from students other staff members community members i had spoken to and then i thought as i was trying to compile my list of of the biggest priorities think about what would be best addressed from a holistic district-wide level rather than within a individual school or classroom level yeah i agree with that and for me was difficult to select just two priorities because there are a lot of things to discuss in terms of how i arrived at my vote for priority levels it was informed by not only my lived experience as a student seeing these issues up close and every day what needs to be done but also as a member of groups like the pride alliance and the equity and justice committee at bhs hearing from other students of diverse and often marginalized backgrounds that certainly informed my consideration and i'm a very analytical person so i took all the data we had binders full of data from all the different surveys and i went through it and tried to look at it as a parent separating myself from my job and my title within the district and see what uniquely my family how they were impacted by some of the different groups that were speaking to tonight so that's how i look through it and i tried to like find common themes so going through the data hearing what students were saying and also what the staff and teachers were saying and trying to come up with some some general thoughts and kind of move our way through the process but it was a great the process in general was very good because we would have the whole group would talk then we'd do breakout groups and then we would come back and we would kind of summarize the statements it was it was really well done and really appreciate all the effort that especially mingan had put into the the group so it was really a great process so i'm going to talk about some of the committee insights at the end of this committee process we sent out a reflection survey to all of the committee members there was an overwhelmingly positive response to being on the committee a couple of the snippets of what was shared are on the slide i can share personally that i really enjoyed hearing from a wide variety of points of view that i don't typically encounter we had just community leaders business leaders parents of all ages students and it was interesting to see how different people's lived experiences really affected what they how they felt about different topics that came up through the data that we found i thought everybody was very open very honest and very respectful of each other's points of view throughout the entire uh process i appreciated hearing the viewpoints from the teachers administration students and fellow parents and community members it definitely offered a well-rounded perspective i found it interesting that here we were given this binder with all this information and it was a lot um thankfully it was broken down um here we have all this information provided and though we come from different differing experiences at the end of the day we all have the same ideals and that was really impactful and i just wish that more of the community could hear all that was shared on these committee calls and really understand all the work that is being done behind us yeah i also appreciated hearing a variety of voices from a variety of perspectives based on the discussions that i participated in i felt that everyone cared about bps students being welcomed and included about having authentic learning opportunities and good good early learning opportunities for students and that everybody could have equal access to them i felt that all of our discussions were held in very good faith and uh finally a special thank you to the board and to everyone who took time out of their schedules to be a part of this important work thank you [Applause] do you have any questions for us at this time oh this is podium is hello i have a question yes first i want to say thank you to danielle jake martin holly and ming for that presentation it is difficult to get up in front of a crowd like this i to all the speakers that come to any of our meetings i always admire you because it does take a level of courage but i want to thank you for your service this is really valuable work that you've done and this is really going to shape the discussions that we're going to have moving forward on the subject meaning specifically for you i do have a question can you discuss in more detail a piece of information that was provided in the background documentation specifically the information from the 2021 tripod survey discussing the percentage of student respondents who feel safe in the school environment personally for me and i think my other board members i think providing greater context and what those statistics mean we'll provide clarity to the challenges we face and allow us as the board and the senior management team to make better and more impactful decisions to make improvements in that area yeah thank you for your great question and so the tripod survey has seven different areas of seas related to care um and we just broke down what aligned with the board's priorities and those are normed um and a lot of other districts participate in that as well and it's not aggregated to say like this many students felt this way or this way so we just took all the data all together and said where are we going from here where are we here and then where can we go from the next steps thanks erin thank you the only thing i was going to add is one of the advantages that we have as board members and we're asked to kind of sit in the background and i really wanted to say i just appreciate the discussion that you guys had or the commentary you had about kind of like your personal insights and would help you make decisions because one of the things that's difficult as a board member sometimes is really understanding the why decisions were made and what the thought process was putting in it and so i appreciate you guys and the administration making it capable for the boards to attend and either as individuals or mass because that just for everybody else's purpose is that little minute there or five minutes of them talking about what it meant to them literally happened for about 45 minutes in a meeting the other day where every person talked about why they made the decision they made and that was really really insightful to me to be able to kind of help understand so everything you heard from them is literally you know just one after the other people told similar stories about why they came to good decisions so i appreciate the time and the effort to everybody that was involved you four or five and all of those there so thank you what else are we ready for the next steps uh we don't normally take questions from the group this is our thank you thank you thank you thanks jeff great job good job all right the next report and if people do have questions there are um some sheets that you can leave those questions and we will get back to you and answer your questions um the the next report again uh board reports don't have any action in them they're informational but we do have a follow-up to that report we very much appreciate um all of the work that went into this point but we're a district of action so what just happened over the past several months is this group helped us identify some things that needed improvements and like i said we're a district of action and we will be um we're here to talk about the next steps what do those next steps look like and we already heard about those three priorities that the board has a comprehensive strategic plan with the dashboard of metrics on the website and they chose a few years ago to have us focus on three things in addition to that strategic plan they said these three things should be on the front burner right now which is why um we made those we call those strategic priorities and they asked us to do this check-in and they said how are we doing so that's that process that you saw play out um next steps i'm going to we're going to take them one at a time i'm going to turn it over to chief academic officer brad newkirk sure so authentic learning we'll tackle that one first and why this is an area of focus for the board is very clear we saw it in the focus groups we heard it here tonight even in rj's report about students being motivated to obtain these certifications at the career center is that it's a very simple calculus is that when we engage students authentically in learning experiences and connect them to the real world it yields higher engagement and higher engagement is highly correlated to students learning so we want to make sure that students are learning at their most so how do we do that is by engaging them authentically and making sure they're highly engaged in that i think we've all experienced learning situations that weren't as engaging or didn't seem connected to the real world or what your ish interests and passions were and we can probably tell in ourselves how that impacts our ability to learn so the board's focus on authentic learning is a simple calculus about engagement and its impacts on student learning as we looked at those strengths and weaknesses that the committee just talked about is that there are lots of things to celebrate in our district including the commitment to authentic learning both teachers students and staff recognize the importance of this work but there's also work to be done to improve it again as dr hitchen said we're a district of action and that means committing to continuous improvement one of the things that came out through the process is that there's a need for additional clarity and definitions and a scope and sequence of authentic learning skills right so we have high profile programs in our district like our incubator program which has been presented to you several times that's great it involves about 40 community members coming in teaching and learning alongside our students but authentic learning doesn't have to be 40 adults coming into the room it can be very simple ways of connecting students to the real world and taking the theoretical concepts that we ask them to learn and connecting them to what their interests passions in the real world is like so i hate using the term real world because school is real and but it's really a kind of a commonly known phrase around authentic learning is connecting that so there is need for additional clarity related to that and also to lay out opportunities along a continuum that teachers can use to embed that in their practice we have been making significant strides as of late with vocational experiences especially for special needs students and making sure that we're doing a better job with transitional planning there's a required transitional planning at 14 and a half years of age for for students special education students but we also see that there's a need for vocational training for lots of our students rj talked about the career center we've the this board has brought before you there our wabonsi community college partnership for manufacturing this board is committed to several programs and programming for vocational experiences but our work is not done in that area and there's a need for more work all right we've done significant work around our curriculum including our counselors who have worked with the pace which is connecting it's a statewide framework for connecting students to career pathways one thing that we've come to learn both through this process and through the building our future together process is that our students are not one-dimensional we are really preparing students for a multitude of different pathways moving forward some students will enter the workforce some students will take a gap year some students want work in the the private sector some students are going on to two-year colleges some students are going on to four-year colleges there's so many pathways laid out there that we're planning for we want to make sure our students have all doors open for them whatever their pathway will be we're also looking at continued partnerships we have a great partnership with the chamber just like a little anecdotal story for our vocational experiences for some of our special ed students we reached out to the community with the the chamber of commerce and we had an overwhelming response and we're able to place our students in the community working in the community alongside our business owners and that to me is like a true success story of really fostering those partnerships and having them pay off for our kids but partnerships take work and there's always more students that we can serve so those are some next steps for us our cte and exploratory electives pathways this is something that's really known at our middle school in high school but we also need to make sure that we have we have a pre-k 12 system so introducing those types of experiences to our elementary students again is something that the committee brought up is they'd like to see more authentic experiences across our system not just at the middle school in high school so there's a lot of work to be done with authentic learning but kind of the positive news is i think people are energized by this work they're connected to it and they see the impacts on our kids next is early learning again why this is a focus of the boards is that there's a pretty wide research base about the impacts positive impacts of early learning experiences on the longitudinal outcomes for students this is a value that our community has expressed to this board of education it's one that they've committed to and it's one that commits to our our district of always learning always growing and that doesn't matter if you're three years old or 22 years old uh we're still committed to that work that we've done and then work that we're going to do next is that as danielle pointed out is that we've expanded by a pretty significant amount our capacity at our early childhood center we've moved from a a special ed only program to a community-based preschool and then each year we've tried to expand those opportunities for our community this board of education has also dropped tuition from that which increases uh families access to early childhood programming and that's a huge move towards equity but we still as again danielle said we have a lot of people on that wait list and if you're four-year-old on that wait list leanne's in the crowd you're probably not getting in because that means someone has to like move out of district or or something's got to happen for you to get that four-year-old spot so there's always demand that is very high for our early childhood program and it's something that i think that we need to address we have great community preschools we don't want to undercut them but we also want to make sure that everyone has access to high quality preschools kindergarten enrichment this is our first year for kindergarten enrichment over 90 percent of our families are now enjoying at the kindergarten level a full day kindergarten experience a half day with their kindergarten teacher and a half day in our enrichment program i would say there's still some growing pains around that and making you know readjusting to having a full slate of kindergartners in our building for six and a half hours is an adjustment but our teachers in the enrichment program and our kindergarten staff have done an amazing job of working with that and we'll continue to refine programming in that area so that's a great success and work to be done and then our continued investment in lower class sizes at the early elementary this board spends a significant chunk of the taxpayer dollars to reduce class sizes to 22 students which is our guidelines at the early elementary level and that is a an investment that we believe pays off it allows our students to receive what they need when they need it and it is something that will continue to be a struggle even as enrollments shift a little bit down it becomes even more difficult if we have two sections or three section buildings it's a little easier to do at scale to balance out those class sizes without moving kids across the district or across their school boundaries so there's always challenges with that and we'll be continually work in progress but that's just a few of the pieces both to celebrate like most of life you're like yeah that's a celebration but there's always more work to be done so that's kind of the tale of both authentic learning and early learning that's a good transition more work to be done the other priority of the board was fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment for all students and the purpose of this priority is to help students develop a sense of belonging which is rooted in research when students feel like they belong it's linked to better academic psychological and health outcomes and students with a sense of belonging also demonstrate increased self-efficacy motivation attendance persistence and of course achievement that's why the board made this a focus and throughout our conversations we have also brought um equity into the discussions and people are asking how does this fit into our commitment to equity and fostering a sense of belonging is one of the equitable practices that our district does engage in and equity is not a new concept for our district um but we have found that we need to go back and clarify what our commitment actually is make sure that we're transparent and all that we do and really be clear about what the work is what we've already done but also what we still need to do because we're early on our journey although we've been doing this work for many many years some would say 20 years we need to be really specific about what it means to be a district of equity um in general i would say equity is a state where there are high expectations for every learner there are supports and resources provided so that each learner can meet those high expectations and if we were to reach a state of equity it would be achieved when outcomes so when student outcomes can't be predicted based on a student's race class linguistic background their abilities their gender their gender identity or their sexual identity we want to eliminate the those predicting factors and make sure that all students can achieve the same high outcomes so some of the keys to achieving equity one of them was our current priority which is focusing on that inclusive and welcome environment but some other things that you've heard tonight are removing barriers ensuring all voices are heard and a big part of equity is our work is making sure that everyone students staff and parents all believe that students can achieve at a high level i know that's easier said than done because we really focus on the growth mindset it's important that the students believe that they can achieve higher so there is a mindset work that goes into this to better communicate our equity work so we're going to take a tangent here away from welcoming inclusive and broaden it back to that larger equity discussion we do have a web page that i would like because you probably do have questions and you want to go back and look at some of the things that we shared tonight the the earlier checking committee report that presentation is on our district our board docs for tonight's meeting and then the presentation that we're sharing right now there's a lot of information coming and it's on this webpage in case you want to go back and look at it the first part of this webpage we're going to take turns sharing what's on here in no particular order but i do want to start with the the commitment to equity you've heard a lot about it we've got different faculty groups talking about what does it mean to be an equitable district and we really need to have that common basic foundational language where we're all saying the same thing or we all have a common understanding um and you heard different the student ambassadors talked about it and different um you know committee updates here from the board you guys talked about how we're having these conversations our work right now is to unpack the word equity describe what it means be able to have people understand what it looks like describe how all students will benefit when we align our practices through an equity lens so that work has been ongoing for two months collecting that feedback and the next step in the very near future is to take all of that feedback and make it our own our starting point for these conversations was the district or i'm sorry the illinois state board of education um commitment to equity and that's what we put out there as our placeholder and we ask people to start their discussions using that as a starting point and um holly if you can scroll up for a minute because it's probably too small to read but i'll just say this is the one that the state has adopted illinois has an urgent collective responsibility to achieve educational equity by ensuring that all policies programs and practices affirm the strengths that each and every child brings within their diverse backgrounds and life experiences and by delivering the comprehensive supports programs and educational opportunities they need to succeed so that's our jumping off point we put it here as the website as our placeholder but the board one of the next steps for them is to finalize that definition bring claritable clarity about what it looks like and also some supporting definitions or key terms it's important that we align to to is be at the state board's definition because they are also the ones who will be giving us an equity ranking um they have a equity journey continuum that every district in the state of illinois will receive a ranking and then they'll give us opportunity ideas on how we could can improve that is coming soon and we're attending um some learning sessions to try to figure out when that score will be available i believe it will be on our fall report card but they might um give us they will be giving us some context and some ideas on how we can improve in the meantime so that information will be um up on here as well as is that board presentation that i just mentioned the powerpoint that we're showing right now and as a matter of fact i can put on the other powerpoint so it's one-stop shopping the um check-in committee will be i'll put your powerpoint down here as well i'm going to turn it over to tony right now who's going to highlight a couple of the different parts on the website yeah thank you holly we're going to jump to the very last one policy and finance we saved the best for last even though i'm going to go with that first so here in this particular section you'll see current policies that the board of education has adopted and it's had for for many years and also recent actions that we've undertaken in terms of finance these particular policies you'll note that touch all aspects of our organization they touch you know our expectations for employees and how we treat each other our expectations for students what they learn how they behave and the ways that we um tackle instruction to make sure they learn what we we feel so these are just the direct references to equity and you'll find many more indirect references to equity all throughout the board's policies and i would encourage you to read them they're very exciting uh in terms of financial resources and allocations toward equity the board has undertaken a number of things that you've heard mentioned here already this evening but more recently too we've also taken a policy where we're trying to encourage students to participate in clubs and activities we don't charge for any of those things because we feel that it removes barriers to participation and make sure that students are participating and engaging with one another in the school community we've simplified our school fees and we've also taken a new approach to school supplies where we provide school supplies to all elementary students when they walk in the door and that's part of registration and then uh lastly you know the pre-kindergarten and tuition uh pre-kindergarten tuition and that program has uh also removes barriers as well so we'll take a journey on back up to the top and take a look briefly at student staff and board learning and delve into the focus as our as our understanding of equity evolves and continues to improve what our focus will be in the coming months and years for both students staff and the board of education when it comes to students equity fits into social emotional learning quite well especially when it comes to ideas like um self-awareness and perspectives and decision-making and especially how we treat others and in terms of tolerance and so we have much work to do there although it's not new work in any by any sense of the means but we can continue our improvement and focus in that area in particular with regard to staff very much the same is true especially when it comes to collaboration and using that equity lens and what that means for instruction in particular our understanding is improving and evolving and we've got work to there to do there as well and that's already start it's underway and we're very much looking forward to the april 15th institute day where we'll we'll delve into that on an organization-wide basis and lastly for the board of education we've got work to do in terms of the commitment to equity and finalizing that statement that'll become before the end of the school year and also they've committed to undertake equity training themselves so we're looking forward to that as well steve will take the next portion of the website particular workforce yeah if you can click on that holly so we want everyone to know that we're committed um to getting better at this right um there's a wealth of research and evidence that is very clear about the fact that you know if i'm a student of color and i come to school and there's staff members that are also like me that my experience might be a little bit better or will be a little bit better or will be a lot better and we should be making decisions based on research and coupled with evidence and so that is all out there it's been shared in this room before and we have to get better there and so we are committed uh if we can scroll down to teacher prep programs i mean the uh the state of illinois um the isbe has has you know understood that there is there's a very limited number of diverse educators and there's just not many getting into teacher prep programs and there has been some progress made which is cited up here on the website lately and the isbe does have some plans to make that pipeline better and and so then taking it to us if we can go down a little further um oh sorry going back up um we we actually have some opportunities um you know building our own local pipeline we had a great event uh earlier this year over batavia high school the education career pathways where dwayne reed who's a cps teacher came he actually brought students it was absolutely fantastic we had students our own students we had students bust in from all sorts of different school districts and it was fantastic and that's that's one action and one action isn't enough it needs to be followed up um and and so we actually have set up um some specific uh courses at batavia high school uh that can grow our own uh as an attempt to grow our own pipeline and you know as um somebody when i came here to batavia uh nine years ago i was amazed how many staff members we have that either grew up here in batavia or currently live in batavia and so that's similar in a lot of school districts i think it's something that makes batavia though really really special just by the sheer volume and so we need to continue to get better of having our students uh our diverse students get them interested into uh education and then bring them into um our our workforce and i think that will make a huge difference and then lastly um recruitment we're still getting after it with our recruitment um people probably don't know this but i attend job fairs i've been going to um diversity job fairs in the city and in other areas in illinois for several years and you know making those attempts and we will still continue to do that it's a huge challenge this this whole diverse workforce is a massive challenge i was on a call with the other kane county hr staff members directors last week and it just so happened in this call i was there was only it was about half of us and uh everybody there um besides me was uh uh from another culture and they're str and they're in school districts that have uh are much more diverse than us and we talked about this very issue and they're struggling with it too one of them actually shared that they went out of state for a full week to try to recruit teachers about two months excuse me about two weeks ago and they literally found zero candidates so this is a massive massive challenge there's no easy solutions at all but we are committed to this and i think one of the huge things that we all have to remember is that however diverse we're able to make our workforce we all as staff members whether we're board members we have a lot of our teaching staff here support staff administrators we all have to get better to be champions of equity in our current roles i think that's hugely important and then lastly um if you know me you know i'm a big believer in the power of the team and we have a lot of people on our team in this room um and i think that we all got to work on this problem together and if we have connections with other people if we have relationships acquaintances friendships um you know we all i think are committed i don't think there's anybody in this room that does not want to have a more diverse workforce and you know if you know of people or if you run into people or make connections with people send them our way we'd love to hire them we we had um mid-year this year we we were actually able to hire a couple of diverse teachers um and they're now working in our buildings and we just want to continue that so if we can all work together on this i think we can get better but certainly there's a lot of work and it's a very very challenging solution because everybody is struggling with this but i believe that we can do this if we dig in and work on this together and i think we turn it over to brad just so you kind of aware that the board priorities and the strengths and weaknesses are all listed there it's kind of that middle row and i won't go over that because our our community committee really did a nice job of talking about those but we wanted to show how that fits into this larger work i'm going to talk a little bit about staff voice and student voice so if we can go to those two sections that would be great under student voice this community engagement around our strengths and weaknesses related to the board's priority was just another way that really showed us how important student voice is in this process student voice is a means to getting at equity and it's something that our district has done and will do and is committed to doing in the future our students have a lot to teach us listening to them working with them learning from them and collaborating with them is an important part of the business that we're in and that's serving students so who better to ask than our students and they have a lot to say it's something that we need to double down on it's an effective strategy and one that will continue to lead to good results for our district our staff also have a lot to share and contribute to this process we've long relied in our district on a system that is very collaborative we have a system of collaboration whether that's the school leadership team at the the building level or our district level system of collaboration where we collaborate with staffs around the curriculum professional learning insurance resources and doing those things but our staff are interested in this work that's clear and looking for ways to involve them in that process and to to work on that is something that we are committed to well again as steve said everyone's work is the work of equity we may need to find as a board we'll talk to you about this is we may need to find additional opportunities to engage staff and have collaborative systems at the district level around this work again it's about listening hearing and making sure dr hitchens yeah there's um quite a bit of information to digest there but i would like to go back to the presentation to summarize um what you've already heard about in the past few years our commitment has focused on removing barriers and increasing opportunities for students and this slide highlights those things that you've already heard about tonight the next slide also highlights a lot of things that you heard about but not everything when we heard about the student ambassadors they brought some other you know there's other things that are happening in the district but district-wide these are some of the things that we captured this is our first year fully in person since the 2018-19 school year so in addition to reacclimating students to full-time in-person learning we were able to achieve some of these things maybe made some strides and elevating voices we we heard from the committee that we engaged it was a good process there's no reason we couldn't do this again with other topics to make sure that we're listening um and we did all learn how to use google meets and that does seem to be a way to engage more people in the evening because a lot of this work needs to happen in the evening so um we've seen some success with that with portrait of a graduate and this recent check-in committee and in addition all the focus groups we we did about 29 focus groups about um the board's priorities and so those all that all happened this year and we found that those are things that we can replicate um with other topics and then the next slide does show these are the next steps with a timeline so you've heard about them but i wanted to make sure they were summarized in one place so the first thing that you would see is the board finalizing that equity statement and that will be on the website again it's what what is our commitment what does it mean when we say we are striving to be an equitable district and then what are some of those terms that we need to be all on the same page with and what what does it look like we need to explain to people what it looks like and the board will also receive their training in march all the licensed staff will you've heard about that training the equity training that will be happening it's the the professional learning committee is planning it as we speak and um there will be some flexibility and when all the staff can do that training so it will be it should say april but i wanted to give you guys a little wiggle room those of those of you who are doing the planning and then um like brad just said we do have advisory groups about everything but we do have these groups throughout the district that are taking like taking the lead on this equity work and we like to collaborate and we want to help you to have that place where we can have the a group that determines what work needs to be done and monitors progress so we do know that we need to have those conversations and i do believe it needs to be a team but we'll turn this over to the board in a second but that would be a new committee that would need to be created and then that committee in our opinion would be the ones to write that action plan based on mostly what we heard from the checking committee but also there are some other things that can be addressed um into an or placed into an action plan and we would like to see that by may and i would now turn it over to the board i have some questions on there for you guys to contemplate in your discussion but really we're wanting to hear from you now well i want to say uh oh please jump in here nope great um i let me go back to that last slide we had up one more i'm sorry oh yeah i did skip slide that's why holly wasn't there was one that was not only the short-term work but future work you want to go and talk about that that's fine it's there for one so i'm excited to see dates where we're going to take action so we've done a ton of work i think everybody in the room has seen what's been done putting together all that information on the website is took considerable effort from a lot of people but as a board i feel now we've got considerable amount of information that we can start moving forward with some of these steps and so i know there has been in some parts of the community frustration by a perceived lack of action which in my opinion is not the case because there's all this information gathering and my position has been i was waiting for this report tonight and now i feel excited because now we can take that along with everything else we've gathered and start moving forward so for me that's very exciting lisa can you clarify the second bullet point there that that's for the board right yeah the the illinois school board association is providing i just want to make sure that that's right that was the one that chris attended and he said it was really good it's march 8th we get into training we're not giving [Laughter] i agree with aaron's comment about the timelines um i also am very excited about all of the training that's um listed up there both um within our district i know many if not most of us are so thirsty and hungry for that kind of training and we're bringing it and as a board i know it's very important for us as well so that to me is a huge celebration you go to the questions helen so i guess part of what my take away from this is just you know i've been struggling a little bit because the one thing i really like to see up there is like there's dates in my profession if i don't have a deadline i'll probably never finish so you know because you can do kind of paralysis by analysis and you can just kind of get stuck in things and you can get stuck in a feedback loop and so i appreciate the fact that at some point it may not be perfect but it's actionable and so that's what i think we're getting to i but i do also think that it's important to note that there's a lot of work that's done by a lot of people and while some people may say it's slow other people will call it diligent i tend to lean more on the diligent side because that's important this is a very sensitive um but important topic and we it can get derailed pretty easily if people don't understand the terms if they'd understand the goals um and so i feel that you know from my perspective i feel like we've got a kind of a commonality about a direction we're going i think there's a lot of work to do so i want to kind of applaud the admin and the staff and all the people that put in there to help show us the things that are our successes but also the challenges and i won't say weaknesses but opportunities for us to kind of improve upon as we move forward i don't know the ex my expectations for the next steps but i appreciate that you know i am going to learn a lot at that board equity training and so i will kind of reserve some of my statements to them because i want to make sure that i understand what things mean and how to move forward and what is important because i will recognize that i don't know what i don't know and so i need to figure that out and craig that's just it you don't know what you don't know and steve was talking a lot about some of our hr challenges in terms of her opportunities excuse me in terms of recruiting folks of diversity and we you know if it's not there it's it's not there and someone went for a week to um to try to recruit more folks and there they weren't there so to me that was a huge takeaway of tonight's presentation probably not what i necessarily hoped to hear or wanted to hear but i appreciate the candor about that challenge because it that in particular has been very much on my radar how can we um source more candidates of um color and um that that's that's disappointing but it is hopeful that there is a slight increase and we'll keep at it but i i appreciated that that takeaway i've got some thoughts um i think as a board member i truly appreciate how much work we've done and how much progress we've made um being a large institution we move extremely slowly that's the way we're designed so to actually see progress with dates is very inspiring and i feel like we're on the right track just kind of a point of clarification when we are responsible for creating an equity statement are we also going to be providing definitions with that okay so i think that the those are two very important things that we need as a foundation is to have an equity statement and a list of definitions defining what that means so that everybody knows what their expectations are additionally i you know i think we've done a lot of work but i think we need to make sure that the people we're trying to support understand the process and feel supported during that process it's good that we have short and long-term goals but we have seniors who have been suffering their entire career and are graduating in a couple months and it would be nice if they we could do something to support them we have teachers who are dealing with heightened incidents and if there's something that we can do now to provide them with more super support i think that that's good i think that it is wonderful that we have all these collaborative structures but we need to understand that those collaborative structures in the system is what created this problem in the first place and that the decisions that we the decisions that we have made have been intentional and the voices that we haven't been listening to have been intentional so we need to make sure that when we're making decisions we're looking around the room and determining who's not there and who's being impacted by those decisions that we make so while i think we're making progress we need to check in on the folks that we're trying to help to make sure they're okay with the progress that we're making and that we're supporting them in ways that they will appreciate also um so i i've got a lot of other details that we can go into but this is not necessarily the time or the place but overarching um for example we keep mentioning that we need to do things for underrepresented groups but we are hesitant to name what those underrepresented groups are we know based on the data there are very specific groups of black and brown students who are being harmed and we have years of data that proves that and we are unwilling to say that um we say welcoming and inclusive why aren't we using diversity equity inclusion why aren't we using anti-racist or anti-bigoted um they all say the same things but they include people in different ways i think these are important discussions that we need to have um but i'm very hopeful i think that we're making progress and i think we're on the right path but we need to make sure that we're supporting people in the interim so that we can minimize the suffering holly can you go back one slide yeah to chris um we have been talking about we do have a strategic plan dashboard but one of the things that we have been talking about is updating that to include some long-term student outcomes related to equity some of those things that chris just talked about so that is one of the future steps this is the slide that i skipped once that committee is set we have an action plan and we know that that's a next step as well is to figure out the the data that needs to go on the dashboard that already exists but we do know that there's that other data of students who are um not that they're the gaps we need to include that information and student behavior information things like that that are missing from the dashboard and i think that that is going to be a key component to our success is identifying um specific data that we can track so that we know whether or not we are being successful or not exactly that will go into our long-term strategic plan because i think one of the problems that we've been experiencing is we've been trying to do this work for a long time but as far as demonstrable progress it's been elusive yep it's something that every district is fighting desperately hard for i mean i work in a different school district and same conversations are happening and same agony and pain over not being able to make the strides that anybody wants to because there are no uh there's just not enough research best practice to how to solve some of these problems and so that's what i love about our um about our collaborative processes because everyone is constantly sought out and invited in and so i keep encouraging people step up when you when there's that opportunity students are joining i love it that's amazing because if we don't have people who are willing to step up and help us do the work we're not going to get it done and we have an audience full of people who's related exactly and so we just thank you for stepping up and we just gotta again we gotta keep doing it together and i love seeing a group of people here that are so passionate about our students i've got one other thing too um i think it's really commendable what you guys have done keeping on track with everything in a year of uh hundreds of emails of four mask or anti-mask in the school and i'll i'll definitely i'll admit it it's demoralizing to get some of the emails with the the tones and i know todd said that the words or actions of some don't represent many but it could be hard to do your job if you're being told you're awful at it all the time so you guys it's really commendable that you stayed on path i definitely see a lot of commitment and care and all this so thank you very much for this any other questions comments board members all right we have one item on our agenda for action tonight i'm going to invite dave to the podium hello so i'm here to talk about upgrading our wireless uh network that just seems like quite a segue i just showed up right i just realized that this week literally is the start of my ninth year here so we've seen a lot that same year we started uh one to one with all our chromebooks that same year we put 500 plus access points in our classrooms it's been pretty wild so it's come time to basically replace all of the wireless access points to keep up with the craziness in the classrooms these days and back then our original proposal process we i think we quoted three devices per student that's well above that now with nintendo switches and phones and every other type of device you can think of so we're hitting some record highs this year now that everyone's finally back in the classrooms um bandwidth is soaring so i'm here to talk about just proposing to purchase juniper mist that's a great solution that we've basically held an entire process to go through evaluating each system we had seven proposals come in um based on price technical fitness capacity compatibility and overall that's what we decided fits our district's needs the most and should last us quite a long time so the proposal is for a five-year agreement the current number is at 550 000 ish um once we go through the e-rate process that number drops to about 315.

here here right here garmin [Music] um can we do approval of the agenda so i know second sorry come on breakfast second a feet yes fall yes and pill yes nolan yes than our yes rave yes could we please rise and say the pledge of allegiance to the fight of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice okay um next is recognition of visitors dr stern thank you for coming out tonight i guess it's a little icy out there hopefully the roads aren't too bad i haven't been out since this morning but thanks for taking the time and joining us tonight and we have director polloway and athletic director diversity that'll be providing us some information reports tonight thank you um welcome next we have public content comments i'll call them in the order they were given to us first is todd andrew thank you for giving me this opportunity so in last wednesday's email sent by todd stern he stated that the district will continue to require masks on our school buses and in driver's ed vehicles as this is a federal mandate and not impacted by the j car ruling well this is false and it's written quite clearly i'm not sure who's advising you that our children school buses fall under federal regulations for the purposes of masking policy but they do not public transportation is defined according to 49 u.s code title 5302 section 15 b which expressly calls out and excludes school buses thus our school buses are not subject to federal legislation [Music] now this is from house.gov it states that the term public transportation is as follows means regular continuing shared ride surface transportation services that are open to the general public or open to a segment of the general public defined by age disability or low income and b does not i repeat does not include inter-city passenger rail transportation provided by the entity described in chapter 243 or a successor to such entity intercity bus service charter bus service does not include school bus service sightseeing service courtesy shuttle service for patrons of one or more specific establishments or intra-terminal or intra-facility shuttle services to be clear presidential executive order 8 i'm sorry 13998 as well as cdc order under section 361 of the public health service act and 42 code of federal regulations regarding masks regarding masking humans on public transportation all dictate the definition of public transportation is to be drawn from the above mentioned code which does not include school buses within the definition of public transportation in regards to the cdc order under section 361 of the public health service act 42 usc 264 and 42 code of federal regulations 70.2 71.31 71.32 don't worry there won't be a quiz later requirements for persons to wear masks while on conveyances and at transportation hubs it clearly states the surgeon general with the approval of the secretary is authorized to make and enforce such regulations as in his judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction transmission or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the states or possessions or from one state or possession into another state or possession seeing as how school buses do not cross international boundaries nor state lines our children's daily transportation should be excluded from the masking policies you are basing upon federal regulation of public transportation which is in error the masking power we have a three-minute time limit and we've exceeded that can you just wrap it up can you give me 15 seconds sure thank you the masking policy aboard school buses is unlawful and i urge you to please revoke this mitigation policy immediately choosing to administer and promote these unlawful policies only encourages further litigation thank you thank you thank you next john barrow [Applause] thanks for having us here tonight we appreciate it uh i'll be brief uh with every storm you must appreciate the rain the rain gives the seed the drink it needs to sprout out of the darkness into the welcoming light even though that light may be bright harsh and packed with unvarnished truths covid did just that to parents across our great land or some of you call us mama bears papa bears or as our tyrannical overreaching government including the national school board association calls us domestic terrorists whatever you call us whatever you label us try and pigeonhole us into a box that fits a narrative it doesn't matter the storm supplied the rain that sprouted the seed that is now a deep and vast reaching movement that is called we the parents we the parents are wide awake we're not woke we're wide awake we the parents are more involved than ever before we the parents have made a new ally a new friend that's ally initials are f o i a and we will intend to completely use that in any possible way that we see fit we the parents will no longer allow our children to be used as political pawns to line the pockets of corrupt elected officials teachers unions and their cronies we the parents will no longer sit on the sidelines as policies that affect our children are made behind closed doors and then dropped from the ivory towers of the hypocritical elite rules for thee but not for me no more we're done with them we the parents will also not allow the indoctrination of our children be it through critical race theory or pornography disguised as sex education inside of our state school curriculum we the parents will run for school boards not only in 301 but around the state of illinois and across america we the parents will also run for township seats county seats along with local and national offices we the parents will never ever allow the elites the politicians the elected the school boards to put our children our family our friends our teachers our local business owners and our communities as a whole through the money grab lockdown put on a mask bs that we've gone through the past two years it stops today and stops we the parents are united and will not be silenced thank you for your time blessings to you all blessings to these parents and their kids and the teachers and god bless america thank you for your comments um leanne larson you could please thank you all for serving on our school board i currently have two sons at the high school and i have two that graduated several years ago i know there are some unpleasant videos showing angry parents and angry board members in meetings at other districts although i don't know all their stories the frustration is crystal clear parents know what is best for their kids and we don't want harmful or secretive policies being put into practice it's as simple as that i hope as board members you have and will continue to keep the parents of this district in mind as you serve we don't have many opportunities to voice our thoughts so this forum will have to do for now as a parent i don't want to see boys in our girls locker rooms or bathrooms as a parent i don't want to see boys competing in girls sports as a parent i don't want teachers and librarians promoting explicit books in our school libraries [Applause] as a parent i don't want teachers sharing the intimate details of their lives with my kids as a parent i don't want our district using financial incentives that compromise the wishes of our community i am not accusing anyone of anything specific here but it's crucial that you know the central community is full of parents like me thank you again for serving on our board [Applause] thank you for your comments okay um next we'll go into action reports uh kevin motion and discuss and approve the consent agenda second dana um your revenue and expenditure summary reports are in the board packet revenues are currently at 39.22 compared to 47.01 a year ago expenditures are currently at 44.57 percent compared to 45.77 a year ago um this month we received thirty six thousand five hundred twenty six dollars and fifty three cents in impact fees for five home starts and then transition fees we received nine thousand three hundred and five dollars and the reports for all of the bills payable are typical for this month any questions bulk yes and pill yes nolan yes yes rave yes yes um next is a kindergarten grade 5 english language arts and reading textbook adoption can uh have a motion in a second to discuss and approve the kindergarten through fifth grade um intro to readings into reading series this was highlighted and recommended by the ela tech team and administration for adoption we have director burke meyer with us tonight into reading as a comprehensive ela curriculum resource that will be utilized across our k5 setting it is focused on foundational skill development and inclusive of reading and writing and collaboration across all settings you have the information in your packet any questions you have for me okay no changes from the initial discussion right okay yes correct all right thank you thank and you yes darling yes federer yes a thief yes bulk yes rape yes next we'll need a motion in second needed to discuss and approve the overnight trip for state 12 for nathan kim and alternate austin lee to compete in the ihsa wrestling meet in champaign second [Laughter] director diversio talked about that in his information reports for our state tournament motion second discussion ready yep sorry nolan yes yes yes bulk yes manphil yes right yes and next we need a motion and second to approve the overnight trip of the central dance team to compete in the ihsa 2a state competition in bloomington second oh stop it no discussion he's going to talk he's going to talk about yes a thief yes bulk yes stanfield yes nolan yes rape yes and then finally we need a motion and second to approve the overnight trip to this of the central cheer team to compete in the ihsa cheer competition in bloomington second any questions nope a thief yes brock yes anfield yes nolan yes yes rape yes okay next we'll go on to information items um first up is an enrollment update so the enrollment update is included in your packet and so we're taking a three year look so pre-coveted um in february anyway um and then uh today taken from february 15th so last year we did have a slight dip well we actually increased enrollment overall district-wide but some schools took some hits in their attendance but this year compared to where we were were up 325 students as a district so that's significant and it shows the breakdown by school and by grade level any surprises in the past month no um we had a good meeting with elgin development group they're going to be putting together information for us related to existing lots that are still available in the district um there's no current well there are some current subdivisions in planning but nothing that's ready to launch just the time being but we continue to monitor that thank you next athletic director diversity will provide an update on our exciting athletic programs a little busy just a little bit so i'm going to touch on some fine arts things that have gone on because uh they've done some great things as well and then i'll finish up with the sports uh for those of you that are ready for a musical that's up and coming i know they're building the set that's going to be march 10th through the 13th it's going to be the adams family so it should be fun i know tickets are already out there for sale they're working late hours to build the set and it's kind of nice to get back to you know that format whereas last year was virtual and it wasn't the same feeling so i know the kids are excited our directors are excited as well abandoned course finished up last week there are three nights of concerts you know three nights of packed houses which we haven't had that for a few years so i know the kids were excited about playing in front of you know family friends and you know getting uh getting those jitters of being in front of the big stage out of the way again uh always great performances as always so what's next for them they're gonna switch gears they got vocal velocity tryouts this week and that's another big event for them and then they're getting ready for their spring performances and i know those get amped up you know eight like april may time so that's that's where the fine arts are at uh doing some great things there our academic teams our scholastic bowl is getting ready for the postseason math team has had some hiccups along the way but they they have their regional coming up and then wise is late march april so we'll have that coming fourth in future months but as far as uh spring season boys and track boys and girls track is underway they're starting to get ready for their indoor competitions we hosted a frozen pole vault meet two weeks ago we have a triangular going on right now with boys and everything else kicks off this weekend with big invites everywhere else and ours are still coming in the early stages of march baseball softball soccer start monday so it's going to be welcome back to chaos at the high school with everything going on but it's going to be fun as far as our winter sports uh we we've always said for the last i don't know how many years our winter season has probably been our most exciting most dynamic and it yields probably some of our best success working backwards we'll start with dance because they were our first team to qualify for state they they've had an interesting road numbers have increased over the years from our success and popularity and along with our growth as dr stern mentioned we moved up a class from 1a to 2a which is a big deal in dance because there's only three so now we're competing against you know geneva some of those other size schools who are perennials in that realm uh we ended up taking second at sectionals to geneva which is which is huge and then we go downstate and you know the first day there was there was a small little mishap i couldn't tell a lot of people couldn't tell but if you know dance they could tell and they were nervous well we made it to day two that's all that matters when you get down state is you go perform friday and the object is to get to saturday because it's a clean slate well saturday they did a great job once they got a turn sequence a hair off and they finished in fifth place in 2-8 which is phenomenal but what's what's hard to digest in meeting with the coach and all that it was like one and a half points away from getting a trophy so it's like if that one turn sequence wasn't that hair off they could have gotten a trophy which hey you know what we keep working hard we get back there next year and it's going to be our time so you know that that was kind of fun it's you know an interesting sport because there's it's not like basketball it's not like baseball where you have concrete data it's numbers it's this it's you have a panel of judges it's a rubric and it's very subjective so you don't know from time to time but everybody was happy they did a great job um as far as cheer once again another great season for them i believe this is the first time in school history that they won a sectional so that was awesome i know in our coach's tenure as a coach either here at rolling meadows this is only her second so you and she's been coaching for 15 years now so you know this is not an easy feat we get down state and day one they look great at sexuals perfect and you hope you get downstate and you hit they they had a real high degree of difficulty and they didn't execute one of the stunts so we were nervous not to even get to day two because of that because sometimes you can't have a drop and move on while because our degree of difficulty they finished in in the top ten and we're able to go to day two so we're like all right we got a chance same small little hiccup with a different stunt group but they so it in the grand scheme of things they still finish seventh but it's one of those where it's like they had the highest degree of difficulty out of all the teams and if they hit because they beat crystal lake central you know all year long and they took first so it's like if we would have stayed perfect once again it's like you know the trophies for those two programs are like right there and and i love it because the returning kids and the coaches are so motivated and they're like this okay getting here is not enough anymore now it's time to come home with something um so moving along uh wrestling it's kind of a great season it's the inaugural year for girls wrestling we've always had girls a part of the boys wrestling but now they have their own postseason so it's it's kind of interesting and vince and i have talked about this you know they're getting ready to have their first sectional well some of those records are 27-0 and some are like 0-0 so it's like what what are their true records you don't really know but you know for fortunately we we have two girls that uh let's try to read this here uh two two girls saroya soraya sorry wala conus at 120 and victoria macias at 110 are our first two female going down state to represent us and i think they you know coach feels the same way they have a good shot you know we could have a placer which hey i like history and you know the great thing is bloomington's a lot easier to get to so i think it's going to be a greater greater event but not taking anything away from the boys side nathan went down our 170 pounder uh lost his first match to did he finish second or first no he finished he lost his he won his first match lost to the number one guy so the number one guy that's right and uh and so then in wrestlebacks he won his first one there ended up losing to a guy that pinned him in 30 seconds earlier in the year and he went to distance and lost by points so finished in the top eight so which which is phenomenal um so our wrestling program our numbers are up this year things things are moving in the right direction and wrestling is very similar to a lot of our other sports where you need numbers to breed competition and to increase levels of everything so we're on the right track there uh boys basketball uh there's not too much more to say about them they're ranked number seven in the ap poll in the state uh they're starting their postseason tomorrow out at sycamore they're playing kerry grove and then if they win that one then they play friday against the winner of the next game but you know talking to coach porto we're not saying this is our year but maybe this is the year that we get to the sexual and get over that hump and it's just you know like we said the magic number at this point is five five game gets them down state so it's just focus one at a time uh girls basketball they're in their sectional game tonight at 7 30 at canelon so as soon as this is done i'm heading to katelyn but you know they had a battle of a regional uh we were out out there friday at boylan and they had their hands full with you know with boylan and then you know the referees it was very much the decks were stacked against us but our girls found a way to hey we're a three-point team well they started driving the basket and doing the things that they had to do to pull away and the score doesn't really dictate what it truly was by the fourth quarter so if our girls can beat montini tonight then they would face uh the winner which could potentially be sycamore on thursday which when they beat them if they win yes sorry so then they would face sycamore on thursday which that's going to be a big feat because they're they're loaded but you know what hey every game in the postseason is a bonus so that's kind of where we're at in the winter and we'll see what the spring brings but i can tell you right now our athletes are training hard and the excitement everything that they're doing is great so questions subjective you know i've been trying to figure that out from the coach and i have no idea and i know some i know some judges that are on those panels and i think they keep it that way because like when you look at dance there's lyrical there's hip hop there's so many different genres so they have to keep it very abstract to keep the level playing field so that was the best answer i was able to get it doesn't help somebody like me understand cheers a little more concrete and that's where our coach upped the degree of difficulty so then that way hey if we don't hit we're still way up here point wise and it helps us show us some lyrical moves [Laughter] is that a fall sport or a spring sport actually until next year next year okay i was under the impression it was this is it kicking up next year then we approved it pre-covered but yeah lacrosse there's still some things we have to work out yes but we're in the planning stages of that but that's a spring sport for boys and girls gotcha so it's not this spring next yeah if everything gets in order it would be next spring and a lot of that was because there's a lot of facility things that we have to plan and with kovid we weren't sure about numbers because we took a huge dip in numbers last year and now like we've exceeded those and kind of looking at what's coming in there there's a lot of things that we have to plan because i know just looking like football we finished with 103 and with what's coming in and what what's left we could be over 120.

welcome to our tuesday february 27 22nd board meeting if you'd please join us in the pledge of allegiance all right we'll call this meeting to order and we'll start with dr veraco the agenda approval deletions editions thank you uh there are no adjustments to the agenda that you received last week seek approval motion to approve we have a motion by ms kelly second second by mr howard marshall any discussion all in favor aye motion passes thank you miss kelly is there any correspondence nothing in particular that i'm going to share just uh we do continue to receive and read all of your emails keep them coming we appreciate you sharing your cares and concerns with us thank you we'll move on to our liaison committee updates mr marshall thank you under personnel interview committee we do have interviews for the grimmer principal or at least for a new principal at grimmer starting tomorrow and wednesday it will take a process very similar to what we have for babbage and in regards to bibich and the interviewing process i'll defer that to mrs mucha uh later on when she talks about new hires thank you that's it thank you miss kelly um i have nothing new to report from either one of those since our last meeting thank you dr medlin nothing to report thank you the only thing i have to report is for dollar scholars the deadline for any senior wanting to submit an application for a scholarship it expires february 28th there will be no exceptions so with that we'll move on to our official school board business topics consent agenda dr veraco thank you again mrs seuss you do have uh in your packets minutes from the special meeting on the 7th of february and the regular board meeting we also seek approval of the claims payroll and extracurricular expenditures that you received thank you move to approve a motion by mr marshall second second by miss kelly any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye aye motion passes thank you is there any public comments regarding action items there are none so we'll move on to our official school board business topics regular agenda dr morocco i think you would like to kick off the agenda by inviting ed sedano he is with the new lc blitz booster club for football and he wants to talk about a donation and some of their activities thus far this year and to update the board in the community on what the lc blitz is all about so ed thank you dr rocco my name is ed sedano part of the lc blitz football booster club today we come bare and give school board sorry we didn't bring enough for everybody uh but what what we wanted to do was show appreciation for helping us guiding us through these last two years i know it's been a bit of a roller coaster so hopefully this small treat that we're handing you will thank you sir bring a smile to your face um so far we've been able to donate 7 500 7 500 bags of popcorn to the tri-town community we've done both the tri-town fire department police department community hospital in munster franciscan hospital in dyer we did the st john public works lake central high school and now all of you so uh we've been working with our fundraising partner and they gave us 7 500 bags to deliver at first it didn't seem like it was going to be enough but when we filled uh one of our our parent booster garage we were like wow that's a lot i don't know how we're going to get rid of it but anyway we just want to thank you all for for what you do for the community hopefully the street will bring your family a smile to their face when you come home so anyway as far as our booster club uh last time i was here was august of of last year you approved us and since then we've gone on to do a bunch of new things right we bought tailgating back to lc which which was fun a lot of work but it was fun and uh we've been able to do some community of projects with the sheraville and st john we've done we partnered with the volleyball program and we collected pajamas we donated to the salvation army in two weeks we got a handful of football players who are going to participate in the polar plunge in chicago that money that we're raising for them is going to go to special olympics hopefully it won't be too cold uh but anyway what we're trying to do is is make sure that we bring in the right funding for our football program right as a public school we don't always have what we need so our parents are really motivated and have done a really good job of raising money even though we're a young club and uh we're just looking forward to working with obviously you uh the athletic department our football coach football team and bringing excitement back to friday night so that's that's our big goal so anyway thank you very much for your time so was the tailgating successful are you bringing that back yes it was successful uh obviously the last game that we had was cold and windy uh so we didn't have people but throughout the year we we had some good turnouts and we had some good food vendors that that supplied food for people who were interested obviously we don't have enough time uh to do a real tailgate right so with the hour and a half we brought food vendors in so so we were very happy about how that turned out so we're looking for other opportunities as well to bring like i said friday night experience and make it a big thing in the community one of the big things that we did was reach out to the community right it's a school built for the community by the community and what we're trying to do is bring them more into our friday nights right so we went out to them and sure we went like this and they were happy to do it because they said you know what we really haven't had that thank you for coming out and trying to expose us to lake central football so we were happy about that great good job all right thank you thank you very much congratulations [Laughter] thank you now we'll move on to our director of human resources personnel mrs mucha thank you i am asking for approval for the personnel packet move to approve the personnel package second we have a motion by dr medlin in a second by mr marshall any discussion hearing none all in favor aye motion passes thank you we have a very special guest here tonight though we we do have besides a great representation of the beach faculty and principal we have our new principal with us tonight allison would you like to stand up and introduce your family to us [Applause] could you come down to the mic so the people at home can hear you thank you hi i'm alison petrulia thank you so much i'm so excited um i am coming from maryville but before i went to maryville i was part of the lake central family so i'm so excited for this opportunity um i brought with me my family my husband nick petraelia who is a graduate of lake central and um dominic is seven and annabelle is five so they are they're with me well welcome back and again thank you to the staff and to dd for coming tonight that means a lot thank you my second item is to bring up some people who were instrumental in training our staff and stopped the bleed it was going to be led by jerry but he had a family emergency so we have our new birthday person um brian kissinger to come up and introduce the people who helped us with our stop the bleed program brian did you say birthday yes happy birthday yesterday so um thank you for having me up here um so i'm kind of turn a little bit um so the stop the bleed program has been implemented oh geez private now since the beginning of the school year and it's a program that is near and dear to all of us up here so it requires the instructors of firemen police officers medical technicians to go through an eight-hour training course to become instructors and once we got once we we became instructors then we decided that let's get together and work collaboratively through the tri-town and getting our fire departments together and the police department and the sros to bring this program to lake central and so right now i still have more of a speech so but i want to uh just make sure that i i get the guys up here too so as i call your name come on up here so chief joe martin so in appreciation we want to give you a certificate chief kevin leduc he's from the st john fire department fireman jeremy golick from the sharerville dyer fire department he's on both uh captain scott hamrick is the dire fire department but he's not here tonight he also works in hammond and then i need officer burton he's one of our school resource officers this is the sheriff police department corporal jerry patrick who's not here today and then of course myself is one of the instructors as instructors we teach individuals to save lives from severe trauma and from unfortunate events that may cause severe bleeding and the training consists of packing wound gauze tourniquets and with that we have 20 kits at the high school installed already we have 10 in all the middle schools and then we have five at every elementary school so with that being said you know with with the kids already on our walls we need to train and train our staff and um so far today we've taken what two months i think it is two months and we have trained over 131 staff members throughout the corporation so that's huge and that's just phase one and usually the high school you know obviously will need more but right now they have 20 staff members trained uh middle schools 10 to 13 so it just depends on the class size and then 9 to 12 for each elementary school so for the total of 131 and the future of this program is to continue and train everybody because if you are trained and stop the bleed you're 95 more likely to use in in case of a trauma and so we'll additionally add staff members transportation and central office for phase two and then we'll go from there as it kind of goes on so but i'm proud of our school corporation for being ahead of the curve when it comes to stop the bleed program a lot of school districts are you know just starting off and we're way ahead and this type of training will help save lives by having 131 staff members now certified which places us in a great position to make an impact on students teachers and our corporation so i'd like to thank these guys they've done a great job in the stop the lead program so [Applause] and again i think it's a wonderful example of how good our police and fire stations are to us that they come to help us with that i did forget to mention that we have many of our elementary principals here also to welcome their new colleagues thank you and before we go on we want to thank the bevich staff and our new principal for coming out but you don't have to stay for the remainder of the meeting if you have other things you need to get to you're certainly welcome to stay but you don't you know this is a good time for you to depart if you want to but thanks for coming out [Laughter] well thank you for coming out [Applause] in the room exit b instead of b all right now we'll move on to our director of primary education dr bracey good evening i don't have any field trip request tonight but i do come before you seeking your approval for the professional leave request you have received in your packets motion to approve i have a motion by ms kelly second by mr marshall any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you thank you all right move on to our director of secondary education mrs castaneda thank you for my first item this evening i am seeking your approval for the professional leave request that you received moved it move to approve the professional leave request we have a motion by dr medlin and a segment by mr marshall any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye motion passes thank you and for my second item i am seeking your approval for the field trip request as presented so moved we have a motion by mr marshall and i will second that any discussion hearing none all in favor aye motion passes thank you and then for my final item i'm actually going to bring up our wonderful high school principal erin novak and she is going to give you an update there is a slight typo this should be an update on advanced placement so tonight what we're looking at as our advanced placement program as well as our results in comparison to previous years as well as to the state there should be a copy at your seat but if you want to come down to view the screen that's fine too all right thank you sarah president lake central school board dr veraco district administrators thank you for allowing me to speak tonight and talk to you about ap exam testing and our analysis and basically an opportunity to brag about our our students our teachers and great things happening at our school i also thought it was great that the blitz club passed out popcorn for my presentation so please feel free to indulge um so i just wanted to start with some of the basic information about ap testing if it's new to some people uh at our high school right now we have 20 ap courses offered they're all on this screen a student doesn't necessarily have to be enrolled in a course to take an ap exam if they feel that they are prepared to take that ap exam so for example if they're a native speaker of a language we've had native speakers in spanish and chinese take the ap exams and do quite well on those so these are the courses that we offer at the school we have quite a selection one of the things that people always say they're concerned about the size of lake central and i always say it's one of our benefits and this is the reason why is because we are able to offer such an uh a deep selection of advanced placement courses along with many other courses as well so ap exams are scored on a scale of one to five there's many questions on the test it's a regular standardized test similar to istep psat sat it is a college board exam so they take the [Music] the number of questions that that student has gotten correct and formulate that into a score of one through five anything three or above in the state of indiana is awarded as credit automatically at any of our state's public institutions so iu purdue ball state indiana state any public institution private institutions will award credit but they also can come up with their own stipulations as well um and this isn't just an indiana thing it's a nationwide the scores can be awarded nationwide as well so i know there's a lot of information on this screen which is why i made you some hard copy so it might be easier to look at your hard copy when we're talking about this screen i wanted to put it all in one location so these are all the exams from 2021 and this is our score summary so up at the top in the blue row you see scored one two three four and five and in the left hand you can see the the name of the exam and you can see how many students earned a one how many students earned a two a three a four and a five so if you remember on the previous screen i said the goal is that they want to score a three or above because that way they're going to be earning the college credit so you can look focus your attention on the columns three four and five and you can see that we have quite a few students that are earning college credit by taking these courses taking the exams and scoring quite well on them if they score one and two they do have the option they could take the exam again but many of our students do quite well right from the get-go so all in comparison to what so this is the indiana state average for ap exams if you can focus your attention on the lighter blue columns you can see that is the breakdown of how many exams scored a three four or five so this is the state of indiana this isn't just lake central this is the state of indiana so you can see a lot of them are 35 38 39 40 41 that's the performance for the entire state and now this is where we really have a proud moment when we look at just like central numbers and this is a five-year analysis so you can go back to 2017 up to 2022.

you ready aaron uh yeah go ahead all right so i'd like to call the special meeting of the brookfield board of like to call the special meeting of the brookfield board of education for um for wednesday what's today the 23rd 23rd um to order we have five members of our uh board of education present um uh i'm expecting uh mr murphy to be joining in progress and i know um mrs brooks had a had a conflict that she could make it tonight we have one one item on our agenda and i'll just jump right to it um and amy i'm not sure if you have it in front of you if you want to read the motion okay i will move that the board amend the effective date of the action taken at the board's february 14th meeting from march 1st 2022 to february 28 2022.

well good evening everyone and welcome to this study session uh meeting of the azusa unified school district board of education on february 22nd 2022 we'll go ahead and call this meeting to order at 5 30 p.m and we will begin with our flag salute we'll move on to our roll call for this evening board member rodriguez pena president board member beau here board member cruz gonzalez here and i board member grier i'm here board member arianes will be joining us uh very shortly moving on to item 2.1 approval of the agenda is there a motion on the floor quick motion to approve 2.1 a second moved by board member rodriguez pena second by board member beau any discussion hearing none we will move to a vote and the motion passes four yes to one absent which brings us to item 3.1 public comment on agenda or non-agenda items this is an opportunity for the public to address the board of education on agenda or non-agenda items individual speakers may be allowed up to three minutes to address the board of education on any agenda or non-agenda item when the public wishes to address the board of education on an agenda item or non-agenda item they may fill out a blue card stand at the podium or raise their hand while in zoom attendant the board will take the blue card request first followed in order by speakers at the podium and then those in zoom attendant i again do want to remind any speakers that we have giving public comment in person or on zoom that there is that three minute limit and so please keep an eye on the clock because if you go beyond the three minute threshold i will have to cut you off um and so that we can move on to the next speaker do we have any speakers in person in blue cards and and in person or online lika anyone with their hand raised no hands all right then we will move on to item 4.0 study session presentation of the 2021-2022 local control and account accountability plan uh january update dr mitchell good evening board president greer members of the board of education superintendent ortega and cabinet tonight we will be sharing the progress that the azusa unified school district has been making on our local control and accountability plan also known as the lcap the presentation is intended to communicate our district goals and provide examples of how we are progressing toward meeting the goals and how much lcap funding has been spent so far this presentation is an overview of our progress a deep dive into the details and disaggregated data is possible by reading the 2122 lcap january update report that is available on our district website one of the best ways to learn about the impact of our educational program is to hear directly from those who are closest to the work the students the parents and the staff and one of the things that brings me the greatest joy in doing this work is seeing the work in action so tonight you will get an opportunity to do just that after some examples of each goal you will experience the lcap in action and hear from our students and staff who are doing some outstanding work azusa unified's first lcap goal seeks to provide students outstanding learning environments for all of our students how we provide instruction and how we are supporting our teachers and administrators in developing outstanding learning opportunities for all students our progress toward goal one is measured by several things the first being how the district is providing some basic services which include instructional materials and our facilities inspection ratings we are meeting all inspect expectations for instructional materials and we will be working to improve our facilities rating so the average for all schools is 96 or higher which is our target after the end of three years other goal one metrics include data from our annual survey in this slide you'll see some examples of last year's district annual youth truth survey the survey is administered each year and in fact right now we are collecting responses from students parents and families and staff for the 21-22 school year and the results will be finalized in march questions include uh perceptions on safety and student sense of being challenged by their coursework and this data helps our district understand the rigorous learning environments that are part of goal one a new measurement for ausd is our progress in implementing teacher professional learning communities and we often call them plcs we have a new process this year for collecting plc data and reflection on implementation so we can continually improve our progress this chart shows progress of schools and implementing our monthly plc meeting these numbers are from december and they continually change because they're updated every month one of the powerful parts of the professional learning community is using data in the process and as teachers grow in their skills using the plc process we want to see that the outcomes of each meeting are decisions around instructional impact and this is a great uh start with baseline data who are collecting data around our plcs so some actions and services the progress to date include professional learning for teachers around our three success drivers which are collaborative practices cognitive rigor and academic discourse we have five teachers on special assignment who are implementing our ela eld mathematics history social science instructional support uh they provide lesson demonstration uh plc and student data analysis support and individual coaching they also continue to implement what we call our test kitchen and those are collaboratives where they partner with classroom teachers to test and implement innovative instructional strategies and a cycle of we're super proud of their work and their expertise as they are working on job embedded coaching and support for all content areas a couple other quick examples uh randall good is our tk through 12 science teacher on special assignment and he's leading elementary science learning around our elementary ngss align curriculum and he's also been doing some after school professional learning with our robotics and we have 30 teachers that have committed to spending 45 hours beyond the school day to learn how to implement the robotics we also have um another project kimberly dahm who is our secondary ela and eld tosa who's leading a secondary literacy professional learning um program and we've got 20 secondary teachers who have recently completed the first module of that tonight you'll also hear from heidi johnson and she's going to tell you a little bit about the work that she's been doing with literacy with one of our principals and some other teachers as well we continue to offer spanish and art at the middle schools and latinx studies at our high school we've purchased supplemental materials and supplies such as literacy materials and science lab equipment we've also added behavior behavior specialists and psychologists to support our students social emotional well-being this slide reflects our progress uh spending for this first goal um for detailed examination of the expenditures broken down by each action and service those are included in our lcap january written report which is found on our district website while this presentation and accompanying hellcab january update report provide you the progress on paper there's nothing like seeing the lcap in action so now we will hear from some of our our teachers and students and staff who are living out the lcap um and after each goal they'll take a few minutes to be able to provide you with some examples um and you'll have an opportunity to ask questions and interact with them as well so first up i'd like to introduce mr david hartman from paramount elementary and david we uh yes yes yes thank you and turn on your mic good evening thank you for having durham out here uh for president greer good to see you again superintendent ortega board dr mitchell i want to offer again our thanks for supporting our program i briefly want to tell you how we started last year during the distance learning we had an idea to start our our stem after being at boston for 31 years and eliminating sixth grade with paramount we wanted to continue the stem program there we started online provided presented a lot of difficulties but we were able to work through that and uh in fact one student was on my business learning last year in the stem and then this year we were able to bring it on campus and it's three days a week and these kids are coming after school voluntarily they don't want to leave each day and the wonderful thing about is this phenomenon based learning is project-based learning where they're presented with a problem and they have to solve it so we've just had a great time we all have wonderful t-shirts provided for them and we've had over 110 t-shirts and about 45 hoodies and it's that all that cost and so i want to have them come up and talk to you we are now opening a third yeah what a 2-3 stem program and of course five we're expanding at our school because it's so big that we give them real life problems they have no pollution so if my four wonderful students could come forward please and uh come on up here you're gonna come to the bike come on up the rescue right over here you want to talk about what you have again oh it's like a robot though dr mitchell provided kids and justified legal minds for the index this part of the uk and uh you guys built and they stripped theirs down today but you want to tell me what something what well the challenge was that um we needed to code these to run a track but we didn't have anything we have any books tell us what to do so we need to figure out by ourselves so we did it by ourselves we could build your you could copy one from the program for the website or you can make your own and do anything you want with it mr hartman knows how to click did i tell you how to do it no no no that's the way that textile learning is how do we do this and uh honestly i'll explain like downloaded the joystick and they have to learn the parameters of the turns and how to make this he's gonna demonstrate a little bit what they uh he's gonna drive kind of go up and do they have a maze on the floor and they have to be able to turn one of the problems was that when they would turn it left they would keep turning left and then they had to bring in another spider turn add to put it back to zero so it would go straight and they could reverse the maid and this is all basic drag and pull coding but one of the other things is that this is python language and they can learn the dragon pool can be converted to python so they see how to uh to do a program so that's fantastic thank you alex you want to tell us thank you alexis hello good afternoon in stem we face a lot of challenges and we do have a little bit of difficulties as well but as richie said that mr hartman doesn't help us he does give hints along the way and when we get it wrong or we messed up like when we did the airplanes he didn't tell us what to do we just did it and then after a little while he started teaching us um how to make an airplane different ways to make an airplane and if it failed we wouldn't give up for anything we just eliminated a way that didn't work and i think stem will affect your future in you know college taking out your major and deciding what you want to be in life and also you can put um engineering and programming on there if like programming how to do a joist like a joystick or how to program it to make sound i know mine didn't work with the sound but savannahs did in the beginning and we were able to make big noises and sticking noises as well and um it will affect your life because you can have a way to um go through your life and learn things especially with like building a house or you know um computers anything involves programming and engineering and i think that will affect your future in any more hi everyone so there are some difficulties in them and we could also solve some ways and stem for some things that we do have but we know that in stem we could work with other people even if they are another group we know that um we know that that we could also like how alexa said we can't eliminate ways we can do more with that we also don't make mistakes instead so like let's say we make we could also fix that mistake by helping others or we could get help from others thank you so the collaborative teamwork that has been has been shown by these guys is fabulous they uh they'll get their own solved but then they are all willing to go and help the others to a certain extent as long as it's not a competitive advantage they'll help one another this is savannah kindred um good evening my name is savannah kendrick and i would like to tell you about a near impossible project called the tower building is where anyways it's we were giving a piece of paper and we were supposed to make support to hold up a whiteboard four inches off the ground while putting books on top of it it seemed impossible at first but um nothing is impossible and mr harmon told us someone actually stacked 75 book which was impressive and i think that just lifted our spirits and just proves that even if something seems impossible or something seems like it can't be done you just have to at least try my hypothesis was 16 book and i got 45 books very impressive like 75 pounds away on this paper support yeah and i always like to talk about it because you know it always just gives me motivation just to think that even even if the most impossible things you can just do it it wouldn't hurt to try so in conclusion we we are so honored to be here and these guys are so fantastic when we started this stem program at boston about 10 years ago maybe i had two girls now i have 16 and that just thrills me to death we took all comers we had i wanted to take about 20 students but we took all comers 20 i everybody signed up with 26 students and we have a waiting list and uh we're just so grateful that the zoo stands behind us even though it's an after school program these kids are coming regularly they're learning and they're they're just using the academic language they're solving real real world problems and i could not be prouder of them well thank you very much for having us here thank you so much mr hartman do you have any any questions for the for the students i i just wanted to say um you young ladies are doing a fantastic job but one thing i really like about is your positive attitude you know i mean if you can reach one way you go another one you know you figure it out and you eliminate the things that are doing wrong so i think your kids are going to go a long way in life with if you keep that attitude that's really good and it's a great job and i love your t-shirt i'm going to give you one i just want to congratulate you guys for stepping outside your comfort zone um right now what you just said making a mistake is what did he say it was a quote we eliminated that is such a powerful powerful quote because if you can apply that to stem right you apply it to life everything will work out right so i'm super proud of you guys and get others pumped because stem you know we them is amazing and well you guys are on like the brinks of something exciting and you please come back and share some more love to hear about it and post it on your social media so we could see it too so congratulations and good luck thank you so much mr hartman and paramount stem team it's really uh so so proud of all the work that you're doing and uh you are definitely leading the way with robotics and this was just another example of the professional learning that we're providing to all teachers so we can spread this to all of our schools as well so we're super excited so thank you again i bet it's very hard for mr hartman not to say anything when he knows the answer but he's not saying anything right yeah different way of teaching good i i forgot to say one thing i would i would like to thank the teachers um without you this program wouldn't be where it's at so thank you for your dedication all these years and i've worked with some of you guys and i know what great quality of teaching you guys give to our students so thank you guys for going that extra mile thank you all right we are going to move on to goal two and a zeus unified's second goal seeks to increase and improve the district's partnership with our parents and students there are many studies that found that parental involvement in all forms is positively correlated to student achievement we value and desire to increase engagement with our parents and our families and our community and students so we can collaboratively create outstanding opportunities for all of our students and for our parents and our students who have leadership roles as well so here are some samples of uh we have many metrics in our goals and this is some samples of our metrics in goal two that measure our progress so these parent engagement factors help measure our progress last year we had 2091 parents respond to the district annual youth survey so that was last year and this year's our second year of doing that and we're looking to increase that number this year our surveys do give us very powerful information and helped us to improve our services to our students and our families uh survey results from last year's show that the majority of parents feel they have input in decision-making at the schools and in the district over two-thirds of parents in the district would recommend aoc schools the youth truth survey asks students also to respond to a wide range of questions on their experiences as well students sense of connectedness and belonging are an area of focus for zeus unified when asked whether they felt their voices were heard 47 percent of students felt that they were and as we continue to implement our actions and services in goal 2 we expect to see these numbers increase and we have lots of actions and services that support leadership and engagement of our parents some that include our parents azusa parent learning network that has offered projects to inspire to parents across the district and that comes to us from the california association for bilingual education um that program provides high quality education resources and leadership development to all of our parents and our community liaisons are a big part of that we also have communication enhancement we have staff to oversee monitor and implement all forms of communication between our district families students and community and we use technology to improve our communication as well we've purchased additional materials supplies transportation and resources for our foster students we've also improved filtration that create paper classroom our parents participate in a statewide leading and learning network that's focused on our family and community engagement we also have our input through our with our community liaisons as well this slide reflects our progress with spending as of december along with the remaining balance and so far we are on track now for our second lcap in action uh i'd like to introduce mrs luz fernandez i have her come on up to the podium um as one of our amazing azusa unified parents give her a round of applause [Music] mrs fernandez has been involved in leadership for uh in our district for several years she's currently one of the parent members of our community engagement initiative professional leading and learning network team um and so uh and she's been involved in all kinds of uh of groups tech plus and everything so um so she's gonna tell us a little bit about some of her involvement today so mrs fernandez tell us what schools your children attend and what grades i um i've been here for 10 years my parents have started the elementary i've i started off uh i started off in uh doing esl uh grassroots um i don't know it was just something that it was not even planned i was sitting at a bench and you know anybody knows sandra he's very convincing and um he came up to me and said do you want to do um are you interested in the esl program no and she's like are you sure i think you would really like it well okay you know i really this was the first time i was in the district so i really didn't want to do much i was kind of watching and then once i was in the esl program i said you know what they have a lot of things i mean i just it wasn't just the is that was the um apparent meetings that they had uh also being student in the student site council you know just learning a lot of things i said you know if i'm not involved how am i gonna know what's going on you know and being in the esl i heard a lot of voices from parents you know because you know they don't speak english but you're helping them and in the process you know you understand and you see the things that they're struggling with it's the same thing i was struggling with but i mean i could use my voice more because i can you know obviously i understood and um i have to say that being in this district has been really good obviously there's nothing that's perfect right everything is a learning process um you know my kids have been in elementary canal azusa high school it's like you kind of just the transition alone is a process of learning so i think that learning from elementary to middle to high school staying involved paying focus knowing who to reach out to knowing who i can you know call and ask questions was all part of me being involved if i wasn't involved i wouldn't know especially with all this the reorganization teams and everything you know i know a lot of people are upset i think one of the main things is that they don't come to the meeting they don't go and get involved they don't ask the right questions i mean we don't really know which ones to ask because hannah we're out there and we're listening but we think oh they're not going to hear us they're not going to hear our voice but the thing is is gotta show up more you gotta make sure you ask questions you know who better to be an advocate for our children right not just i mean me i have a special need so i'm my daughter's voice i'm her advocate so i say why can't i be with my other children i have to be involved i've been a part of all these um you know committees and everything and i've loved it i love just learning thinking like i don't know i i had another district before before we came here and it wasn't as interesting uh i don't know if it was just the people i meet along the way you know it was nice the engagement alone kind of you know threw me in a little bit you know it was it was nice and now i'm part of the pln uh pllm team which is great also i'm learning a lot of things that part of other districts how they're learning to kind of carrying engagement you know teachers talking to you know students or finding out what everybody really wants how we can communicate and i think that's great a learning process so it's only the beginning and um this is just my first year so so far i'm loving it it's brand new to me i love how they're offering and implementing different programs like when it comes to homelessness um mental you know illness everything you know everything is in there you just like i said being a part of this team kind of makes me see that hear it and understand it and if you're not a part of it you don't understand what comes with but um yeah it's been great i can't really complain much i think that some of my even the you know the things that i've gone through it's i always along the road somebody has told me we'll talk to this person um make sure you reach out to them email them um call them and that's me you know i'll be that parent i'm like hey did you get my message like yeah i'm gonna get back to you okay the next day uh did you get my email yeah i did i'll be waiting i'm very patient i'm not that parent that's like um please what are you doing you know this is not right it's not in me to do it that way because i'm like you know what it was a learning process with my kids so i have to be this way with filth because we all kind of do things differently and we learn differently i've learned that with myself too um yeah can i say the people thank you for that um pac plus you're on the pack plus committee can you talk a little bit about um what you've uh the the involvement that you've had with pec plus um it's just actually is i i thought it was really good um when i just first find it i really didn't understand it i was like how are we going to make these decisions how do they know what how do they know um you know you know what's going to work for every school because there were so many programs in so many schools and it was hard to say you know what okay this one doesn't need it we need to cut this because we need to do that or whatever but i think um being involved in it kind of made me realize all the things that were really in those programs and a lot of people weren't utilizing them and that's kind of why they kind of just fell like a lot of people weren't um getting involved in maybe some of the extracurricular programs that were actually good like stem for example right nobody would have even known what stem was because everybody was like all about avid right until have it was done and then stem actually my daughter was doing stem so i thought that was great too that i think that was interesting i was like wow i my daughter did independent studies for the first um semester so she wasn't able to be in school but i know to her this year she wasn't able to be in it because she came in after i was like i wish there was a way that i could have pushed it more you know given the circumstances um just like i was saying that i get distracted um the pack plus is just interesting alone a lot of the the way they organize everything the way they figure out the budget those are things that if you don't attend those meetings you don't know what's going on you don't know how they make those budget cuts you don't know why that's why there's so many parents that are upset but then you tell those parents like hey it was the reason why they had those meetings you would have just gone maybe you wouldn't have understood it maybe maybe you wouldn't have but you could have seen like somebody could have explained to you well thank you so much mrs fernandez for your involvement um and telling us about your parent involvement journey and sharing with us today we wholeheartedly appreciate um everything that you're doing to support all the students and attending the different committees and and your engagement in azusa unified it means so much to us thank you so much thank you for having me [Music] all right we are on to goal three before we go into goal three i i just want to thank uh miss louise fernandez miss louise fernandez i i just want to thank you for for your time and dedication i've i've known you for quite a while now and i see what a hustler you are and you are a team player and i truly appreciate that and one thing that you just said right now that we all do things differently you know i think and and you you know sharing right now with other parents like getting involved being current going to all the meetings listening to what what is happening i think is key and i think you're one of our greatest advocate here in our district and i see how involved you are so thank you thank you thank you for all the time that you give to all the schools where you volunteer i want to personally thank you our third lcap goal focuses on preparing all of our students for college and careers after high school we want to provide a wide range of opportunities for our students to explore and prepare for their transition many of the metrics for goal three relate to graduation outcomes we have both the state seal of biliteracy and the completion of career technical education or cte pathways we also have our graduation rate we have uh the graduation rates from uh our senior class of 2021.

so quite a bit of difference but uh going through this process we've learned a lot of what's out there what's new and it's the way to go so got any questions from anybody here no all right thanks all right then i would entertain a motion to approve the purchase of wireless network equipment and support from juniper juniper mist totaling 550 875 dollars a second move my micellar second buy meadows all in favor aye any opposed all right motion uh carries we do have uh an item for closed session but there is no action to follow um so i just wanted to point that out tonight before we went to comments uh we'd start with lisa i have said enough i feel like i'm good all right board uh chris we'll start with you actually can you start at the other end i have a lengthy comment and it probably would be easier to be last sure okay um i i said quite a bit earlier but i would be remiss if i did not acknowledge the student services um presentation a couple weeks ago regarding [Music] children's mental health social emotional learning and general information regarding resources in our community along the lines of um social emotional wellness and it was just really it was really well done really well attended by our community and i'm very thankful that we have a district that is so supportive of initiatives like that so thank you for um carrie and natalie for putting that on um i i was thinking a lot about the mask and anti-mask and or mask optional i don't want to say it like that uh discussions have been happening and i know that everyone has it has their different opinions and i totally validate that um but it was weird because everybody has everybody says that the main goal is to do what we think is right and safe for the students so i'm going in a different direction here not mask related just asking people to remember that all your actions impact each other and i'm talking specifically about drop off and pick up lanes schools i get copied on almost almost all the different school updates from the principals and almost every time they're saying please follow the rules please stay in the right lanes please respect people that are biking especially people who decide to ride their bikes in the middle of winter um i think they deserve a little a lot of respect for doing that but um i mean even today when i was picking up my daughter i saw three people pass a school bus that they're not supposed to pass and it's just maybe to get out of the circle 30 seconds earlier so i really would i'm just challenging the community if we really do want what's safe for our students to start you know living by it with our actions that's all thanks rj craig uh i've probably said enough but i'm going to keep going um i just want to kind of echo what aaron said earlier there's a lot of kind of community involvement and you know there's you know as everybody knows there's such a thing as like meeting fatigue but i really appreciate everybody stepping up and being a part of it coming to these board members giving themselves a voice letting us hear their voice there's you know in any given year one of these things would be enough for a school district and a board and the teachers and everybody else to deal with when you look at eei building our future together masks mask optional whatever else there's plenty to go on on any one of those topics and everybody's doing the best they can to kind of balance all of those and so i just for one appreciate everybody um kind of trying to maintain a civil discourse where possible and to treating with each other with civility and respect um because this is a complex and complicated process um and so i just wanted to say appreciate it you know the only other thing i'm going to end on is the reason i wasn't here at the last meeting was because i was at one of my the first kind of concerts that the jazz band was able to do and if anybody had an opportunity to hear of it see it catch a glimpse on facebook because i shh posted a little bit of it to some friends um it was a fantastic concert it was one of the it's really really nice they had they were right when all of this stuff kind of covered started we had a concert they just got canceled like two days before and so it was the first jazz concert in about two years that they've been able to do at a real venue and it was exciting to see the kids ate it up and really getting to see them interact with professional jazz musicians was a lot of fun and good for them so thank you for the opportunities for everybody that helps make that work thanks craig so i want to thank as i always do by thanking everybody in attendance tonight those who spoke those who sent emails we do read them all we have been receiving a lot of emails and they do shape our discussion so i want to thank you for that um i want to improvise and say to my friend in the back kim who i did not know who is going to be here tonight i want to say congratulations you know what i'm talking about and i'll talk to you afterwards about that so that's great news um and i don't want to steal chris's thunder and i don't think your lengthy statement is about a basketball game but uh go ahead i do want to congratulate and uh wish good luck to all of our students who are performing in state level competitions athletics dancing music you know i follow a lot of them on twitter and it's always fun to see the kids achieving i think actually sometimes i get even more of a kick out of the kids that maybe struggled to make the team and made a contribution so i applaud all them especially the lady bulldogs who are currently competing in a sectional semi-final and chris is missing so i anxiously look forward to hearing the score of that when we're done tonight and then finally on a little more serious note you know being on the school board right now and being in a position of leadership is a challenge and i'm sure that's no surprise to anyone depending on where you fall on the spectrum of the decisions we've been making um and i want to be clear that i'm speaking about myself right now but in my private life i do quite a bit of traveling throughout the midwest and um right now i don't know if it's the time of year or the fact that we've been in a pandemic for two years but there is a palpable sense of tension uh you can feel it everywhere you go and and so um i'm speaking for myself and i'm not a philosopher i'm a poor farmer son but at 50 years i'm just beginning to understand myself and how i operate and i want to share three passages other people's words that i've read recently that have resonated with me uh the first is from the roman floss for seneca on anger three one there's more no more stupefying thing than anger nothing more bent on its own strength if successful none more arrogant if foiled none more insane since it is not driven by weariness even in defeat when the fortune removes its adversary it turns his teeth on itself the next quote is from a contemporary author ryan holiday anger and passion is powerful fuel but it can be short-sighted it ignores the wear and tear on the engine it ignores what happens when the initial anger wears out and how more and more fuel must be generated to keep the machine running until the only source remaining is anger at oneself and so the reason why i shared that is because i feel like i actually have quite a bit of passion and i know that it has driven me to achieve a certain level of success in certain areas of my life i also know that at times and actually quite a bit over the last two years it's been corrosive on my mental and physical health and it's negatively impacted how i interact and view others who might disagree with me on certain subjects or appear apathetic to my causes and and so um that leads me to my last phrase and this again is from seneca who was advising nero when he said other people can afford to be angry and can afford to be led by their passions but not you too much is at stake and so there is a great deal at stake right now on a variety of subjects and so speaking for myself i know it might appear to the public when you come to these meetings that we are emotionless um dispassionate could not be farther from the truth but as a leader we're not allowed we can't afford to be led by our passion so i'm committed to uh leading by listening to learning to connecting make the best decisions possible moving forward thank you thanks erin chris okay um i've written this and rewritten it and rewritten it numerous times and i debated the whole meeting whether or not i was going to read it but i'm going to do it let me say up front i'm not at all comfortable with what i'm about to say i've been trained my entire life to keep these thoughts to myself however i've learned a lot and grown grown over the past few years i understand that if i'm committed to anti-racism and anti-bigotry i have to be vulnerable myself we must share our truths so others can see the pain we've been hiding with that in mind i want to share a few stories of what it's like to be a black man in a predominantly white community lost my spot as many of you know i've always been active in the community my children have been in clubs activities band and sports we visit local parks businesses and events during the 20-plus years i've been in batavia we've grown close to many families we've spent hundreds of hours together on sidelines carpooling camping vacationing bowling volunteering spending holidays together doing all the things that make this community so close-knit there are many kids i treat as my own and i hope other families feel the same about my children however creating these relationships as a black man comes with risks in the past few months i have learned of incidents where families i have been closest to have committed racist acts in one example a child used the n-word maliciously towards a black student with the intent to harm in another case a child thought it was acceptable to post a picture on social media that was the equivalent of blackface and was done to demean black history month on one hand these are isolated incidents it may not be indicative of most batavians on the other hand on the other hand these are incidents involving those i truly believed understood me and were my friends and the thing is i don't know if folks genuinely didn't believe such acts would harm me or if our entire friendship was fabricated all i know is how it impacts me and my emotional well-being sadly this was not a new experience for me such betrayals have littered my entire existence for example i used to work in a small office where a gentleman was blatantly racist he would leave job listings on my desk hoping i'd leave i couldn't do anything about it because he was friends with and went to college with the owner i've always been told to ignore it or not make a big deal of such incidents i've been told they did they didn't meet it it was a joke they may say some bad things but they're really a nice person it was always my responsibility to swallow my pride and preserve preserve those friendships my feelings weren't important now i realize this is how systemic racism is allowed to continue when we allow this behavior to continue unchecked we give our approval for it to happen to the next generation so i must speak up if i believe change is possible i know i never know when i'm in a safe place even when i believe i'm among friends i never know if i'm genuinely part of the group or a token so folks can claim they have a black friend well that is probably not an issue for most of you i imagine i wake up every day wondering if i will discover again in no uncertain terms a friendship i thought was solid was not real for for you can't be a little racist and have black friends you can't continue to support and befriend racist and have black friends you may know black people but they're not your friend if you don't defend them as you would any other friend yet living in our small town often my circle of friends are so intertwined with such folks that i cannot avoid them i'm at the same events parties stores etc in all likelihood they will never know how their actions have impacted my life and will likely live with the blissful ignorance of not knowing that my smile is fake and my heart is broken i'm not sharing this to garner sympathy in fact i'd prefer the spotlight not to be on me i'm sharing this because often we don't realize how far-reaching incidents may be i'm sharing my story to let others know i see them i hear them and i can empathize with your pain i am also sharing this because i don't think our children deserve similar experiences when they get older finally i'm sharing this because i believe we can make a difference we have the opportunity to intervene when we see someone being bullied we can let others know we are not a safe place for racism and bigotry we can help create an environment for change so others can feel safe in the community they live in thanks thanks chris all right as i mentioned we do have closed sessions tonight so i would entertain a motion to adjourn to closed session to discuss the appointments employment compensation discipline performance or dismissal of specific employees of the public body or legal counsel for the public body including hearing testimony on a complaint lodged against an employee of the public body or against excuse so much wording or against legal counsel for the public body to determine its validity second option is litigation when an action against affecting or on behalf of the particular public body has been filed and is pending before court or administrative tribunal or when the public body finds that an action is probable or imminent in which case the basis for the finding shall be recorded and entered into the minutes of the closed session second second move by mike slater second by mathis on favor hi right ready to break you

in my 10 years here we've never been over 110. so this is uncharted territories in a lot of sports so which this is a great problem to have yeah absolutely okay so it's not starting this year and we purchased all the equipment we haven't gotten anything out of anything yet then we approve it it was a two year plan it was two years out though so they wouldn't purchase and then we kind of held everything understood i think we approved it november before okay so it's all our fault gotcha thank you steve all right thank you guys nicely [Applause] next uh director of buildings and grounds polloway will provide an update on capitol projects [Laughter] so um getting to be that time kind of gearing up for summer projects we got the country trails and prairie knolls cafeteria expansion that's going to be the big summer project for this year with any luck we'll start that around spring break we'll be working on all the outside concrete and all the outside stuff and then making the breakthrough once the kids are gone mobiles are all country trails hpt and lilly lake are all completed we're going to be doing a final punch list on those with the vendor over spring break for some minor interior things skirting things like that but those are all completed prairie view will be a spring summer um we'll just kind of see how weather goes and how things go to wrap that one up um the next bid that you'll be seeing will be for uh the transportation and buildings and grounds building we're gonna build um over on the central campus so that'll be a spring bid we're working out the details and of all that right now and intertwined with that bid will be the expansion of the prairie view parking lot so the mobile took up a good chunk of parking there and parking's always been challenging so we're going to expand that lot and tie that paving into the project we're doing on central campus um lilly lake we're working on a bid package for a generator there we got a dana worked on a grant that we got to do a generator there and then we're looking at expanding generators to all the elementaries and then central middle school and the transportation hub after that um that's kind of what i got for now any questions [Laughter] next we'll review the freedom of information act the fourier requests that have come in actually sir we actually had 10 flyer requests since our last meeting on various subjects so the first request came from the eleanor retired teachers association requesting the contact information for our staff that's retired at the end of the school year we don't share their their personal contact but we do share their school contact information and then we received a foia from the iowa council for fair contracting and really what they wanted to do is review the bid tabulations for the cafeteria expansion at ct pkms were able to reply to that next foil was smart procure which is a recurring file looking for purchase orders dana in the business office has created a spreadsheet uh which to respond to those next we received a foia request from a parent i requested information regarding employees covered by surety bonds we believe this might be coming from something called bonds for the win um in talking with both legal counsel and gallagher bassett our insurance company different states have different laws and the only person required to be bonded uh with a financial responsibility bond is the treasure because of the dollars that are used board members administrators they fall underneath liability insurance so there are no like special surety bonds for individual board members or individual administrators in the state of illinois um next one was from larry traynor um highway department requesting video and audio from an accident where a plot truck backed into one of our buses we were not able to provide the video nor could we provide any audio that contains student information however we're able to provide audio of the bus hiking the driver is saying what are you doing so um we're able to reply to that uh we also received a request from ron micas from smarts265 requesting information related to construction innovation and maintenance work and we were able to share the bid tabulations for the cafeteria expansions next was a fire request requesting surety bonds among other documents in this case the from apparent the district was able to share they had a list of things were able to share the oath of office and we were able to share their treasures bond person followed up with another foia request requesting the liability insurance information we were able to share that another parent requested employee bond documents again requested surety bonds among other documents and were able to reply based on the foil requests with the oath of office treasurer's bonds and the liability policies lastly we had a parent requesting documents related to to her student and the district was able to share responsive documents with the parent any questions hey um have a motion and second to leave open session and go to closed session so moon second a thief yes bulk yes and pill yes nolan yes yes rape yes thank you everyone drive safe in case the roads are

the tests take place in may so they have not taken the test yet in 2022 but if you look at our percentage of students with a three or above we're knocking it out of the park in comparison to the state so if you look we have at least a 10 percent difference a 10 increase in comparison to the state all the way up to about a 30 percent difference so our lake central students are scoring very well on these ap exams so i gave you a lot of data just in general um you know with 20 ap courses being offered we have an analysis of all of those exams so i wanted to pick two of them to highlight for you this evening so the first one that i broke down was ap human geography and the reason why i selected this one is first of all it's the it's the biggest exam that we offer and it's also taken by freshmen other grades can take it as well but it's it's a predominantly freshman course so if you look at the data here down at the bottom scores one two three four and five um if going back to 2017 you can see that we had quite a large column of students scoring a one and what you want to see is that trend decrease across the years so i think they did a pretty good job going from 2017 to 2018 those students scoring a one definitely decreased it did go up a little bit again in 2019 but if you also look at the data showing scores three four and five you also see that those grow those grew pretty significantly as well and that's what we want to see is that the scores of the ones and twos those are going to happen some students are not going to be great test takers it does happen but you can also see that those threes fours and fives were growing throughout the years as well you can see a little bit of a a dip in regards to covid and the pandemic and that's not just a lake central statistic in the state of indiana they reported about a seven percent decrease in the amount of exams taken and they did see a dip in the performance as well so it's not just a lake central thing i think you're going to see that in a lot of school statistics over the next probably i would say three to five years you're going to see the pandemic kind of weighing out in many school statistics but if you focus on 2021 you can see that those numbers have risen again so that's that's a great trend that's a great great statistic right there so the next um test that i broke apart was ap calculus a b and the reason why i picked this one is because it's predominantly um taken by seniors we do have a good handful of juniors that take this test as well and i also wanted to compare the the social studies test the human geography with the math kind of different side brain i guess so you can see in this data kind of the same thing you want to see those scores of ones and two shrinking as the years go on and those scores of three four and five becoming more elevated and again you do see kind of a dip in 2020 but 2021 we are rebounding and our kids are doing great so again great news when you look at their performance on these tests so the ap college board also classifies their top scores as ap scholars so there's three different levels of distinction the first one is just an ap scholar and i shouldn't say just it's it's an incredible distinction for these students an ap scholar is defined it's granted to students who receive scores of three or higher on three or more ap exams and this isn't just in one sitting in one school year this is cumulative throughout their four years of high school the next level of distinction is an ap scholar with honor and that's granted to students who receive an average score of at least 3.25 on all of their exams taken and scores of three or higher on four or more of these exams so with each level of distinction the stakes are a little higher and the final one is an ap scholar with distinction that's granted to students who receive an average score of at least 3.5 on all of their exams taken throughout their four years and scores of three or higher on five or more of these exams so what does that mean for lake central again another moment to shine our students are doing phenomenal um we have 80 students just in 2021 we had 80 students earn that distinction of being an ap scholar we had 41 students earn this distinction of being an uh ap scholar with honor and then 48 students with the ap scholar with distinction so that in the right hand column that all took place in 2021 and then that's our analysis of 2021 remember they can earn these distinctions throughout their four years so that's what that pie chart illustrates is um the breakdown of those students with those distinctions so again our students are doing an incredible job they are knocking it out of the park with their ap tests one thing that i did want to share with everybody is ap potential this is kind of a cool trick i shouldn't call it a trick but more of a tool that allows schools the ability to see which students have the potential of earning a three or higher on an ap exam and this is all based on their psat scores so in our corporation they're taking the psat in grade 8 grade 9 and grade 10.