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he was a center grove community school board member from 1975 to 1979 his son jim workman a center grove graduate of 1979 said that his dad always believed in the value of a good education and he tried his best to help cg provide that he believes that many of the changes that occurred during his term of 1975 through 79 set center grove up for the successes it has today gene served in the u.s army during world war ii he was a faithful servant to his church serving in many offices and capacities and to his community including his time on the school board at center grove community school corporation his children said if everyone had a dad like ours the world would be a different and much better place so if we could have a few moments silence for a past school board member thank you very much next thing on the agenda is to adopt the agenda mr president i move we adopt the agenda as presented second motion been made and seconded any questions okay all in favor say hi hi anyone opposed motion passes next on the agenda is the presentation for the johnson county public library thank you mr hubbard this evening uh we have a representative from the johnson county public library and she'll be providing us with some information on the goings-on at the library so thank you very much for being here tonight thank you for having me my name is kelly staton and i am the program manager for the johnson county public library all the board members should have some packets that were passed out to you those have our latest library program guide the new one actually comes out tomorrow so but it's for may so you'll be pretty current and then we have our 2021 year in review a lot of attention this past year was focused on the construction of the new clark pleasant building it is open and we were lucky there were no delays like a lot of other places had with construction so if you haven't been over to whiteland to check that out make sure that you get over there it's a pretty fantastic building a good resource for our community we also have a lot of other things to be proud of we continue to check out more than one million items every year and all over johnson county our staff have made a difference by connecting residents with resources and learning opportunities we held coven 19 and flu vaccination clinics at all of our locations we supported leadership johnson county with leadership book discussions we assisted aspire community matters by creating an online resource for students and parents to learn about skilled trades and high demand jobs in johnson county we have a seed library available we started that last year and now that it's moving towards gardening season we'll be bringing that out again and through that we were able to partner with johnson county soil and water so residents could visit a little native seed library at our trafalgar branch we also partnered with the johnson county parks department and all the city and town municipal parks for the great parks quest which encouraged everybody that lived in johnson county to visit all the parks so we hope that as we move towards summer that you and your students can join us in participating in our explore summer learning program we would really like for every student at center grove to participate and explore summer and by participating with the schools on our program we can help stop the summer slide and keep kids learning and reading all summer long so i'll tell you a little bit about the program it starts may 16th and it runs through july 31st students can register to participate it is completely free we have lots of programs and learning challenges all summer long and they can earn fun prizes just by reading and doing those in 2021 we had almost 4 000 people participate and as the years go on we are hoping to increase that and hit a goal of 3 million minutes read this summer the prizes are just a small part of the program like i mentioned we're doing lots of programming we're going to be getting a bookmobile hopefully soon like everything else those are hard to come by and not available but we're hoping that our outreach stops will grow with our bookmobile and we can actually go out to some of the people in your communities if they can't get to us we'll be partnering with aspire again doing something called the great arts quest so everybody will be encouraged to go out and see all of our public art including murals sculptures things on nature trails hedgehog hannah is coming to bring 12 different animals for interactive programs at each branch our author series is returning in person which i'm very excited about we have three new york times best-selling authors coming this summer and then teens can visit random fandom it's a fun cosplay geek fandom program and we'll have lots of prizes for them there the children's book character the green crayon is also coming and then sub-zero ice cream will conclude our explore summer parties with a steam presentation and then everyone gets a free ice cream so i just want to thank you for letting me come kind of give a little year in review and talk about our program and if you can encourage your students to sign up starting may 16th that would really help us get towards our reading goal three million minutes so thank you thank you kelly [Applause] will we send something out on parent square we'll send it out pete shark okay i didn't know the bookmobile was still a thing i think that's awesome yeah yeah excuse me that started when i was in elementary because we didn't have libraries here so the bookmobile came in it was the great day have no public comments tonight no public comments consent agenda items mr president i mean we accept the consent agenda as presented most of them made the segment any questions or comments all in favor say aye aye aye anyone opposed motion passes thank you this evening you just passed in the personnel report in the consent agenda item our newest principal for center grove elementary mr craig buckler craig would you please stand up please he also has with him today his daughter charlotte and craig would you like to say anything this evening just thank you so much for the opportunity it's been 22 so years well we're super excited to have you and i have to say that craig went through a grueling process that we do about three different interview steps and he he did a fabulous job and comes highly recommended and i feel really blessed that we've got you here so um thank you so much for for coming and interested in center grove i don't know how you walked into a room full of 30 women male 1 i would have turned around well jason was there too oh yeah there was two males yeah i worked in an elementary building [Music] same here you get used to it how old is your daughter she will be four in august i would like to thank mrs counsel mr hubbard for sitting in on those interviews i've done that in the past and i know that's a that's a time commitment that falls outside of our normal normal board duties but thank you it was a great evening and i know that the other three candidates were just i mean they were wonderful and i know that uh rich's team jason and all them and i don't know was there put a lot of effort into it and uh i'm sure it was a hard decision but once again greg congratulations and uh we're looking forward to having you and you definitely have some big shoes to fill yes you do she's sitting right she's sitting right next do we have a commitment that we have a future trojan here now um i heard you were from franklin [Laughter] we will encourage you to do what's best for her that's right we have our opinion but it's your buddies yourselves matters welcome yes welcome welcome and of course you don't have to stay for the whole meeting go get a treat looks like she's having fun go get a treat i think it's a celebration for sure congratulations once again welcome to the family action item next on the agenda is action items 7.1 let's see okay thank you very much this evening i'm recommending that the board approve the 2022 and 2023 school calendar and this evening i believe is it bill will you be given that so bill will be giving additional information in mr taylor's absence thank you tonight we're recommending one one change to the 2022-23 school calendar we'd like to begin the school year with a a performance qualified waiver day that would change the first day to wednesday august 3rd we anticipate adding an additional waiver day in the spring semester but we're still discussing the appropriate date for that waiver day when we make that determination we'll bring that recommendation back to the board for consideration so uh and also if you'll notice there's a new format tonight uh for the first time in like 116 years uh mrs conrad has worked on trying to find a more readable format and we think this one might be the the winner i i kind of liked the format when i reviewed it so yeah it does yeah and and to whomever the team was we've managed to hit the benchmarks i've always said that's mr taylor starting in august and being out before memorial day so if only we can come up with something like this the little league does where you put it out into a calendar where people could just save the calendar to their calendar on their phone oh that'd be nice so now we just need a tutorial and i would like to also add the new calendar also aligns with c9 and their breaks as well oh it does 2023 school calendar as presented one second must have been made in a second all in favor say aye aye anyone opposed motion passes 7.2 thank you um 7.2 this evening i'm recommending that the board reject bids from miscellaneous school improvement projects and dr long will provide you with that additional information i i know this looks very odd because 7.3 says we're going to ask you to approve bids for miscellaneous improvement projects but we put out for bid work on saddle club road down by the maintenance for an additional drive there to widen pennington road and improve that and to build a soccer parking lot we opened those bids on we only had one bed on march 29th and that bid was significantly over our budget so we after consulting with our attorney we re-advertise the bid and and then we have more so that's what 7.3 is but by law the board is required to reject any bids especially when they come in over budget so tonight we're asking the board to reject the bids for the miscellaneous school improvement project i want to make sure i understood because that's not how i read it okay um so seven two and seven three are related yes seven two or you're asking us to reject right and then we re-advertise and and did we break them up into different projects in seven threes that way or did you just lump them all together how did we get better bids i think timing was just a little bit of it we had several people pull the plans and then didn't get numbers from their subcontractors and so they just decided not to bid and then we made a conscious effort between hunt and crossroads engineers of calling a lot of people and to make sure that we got some interest in this and so we we got more bids including a bid from the the first person and because if i'm doing the math right the one you're asking us to rejects about two million and the ones you're asking us to agree to are about 1.35 um yeah because they didn't bid on everything so this is a little bit different so it's not apples to apples right that's correct i was gonna say if that's that created a savings wonderful job yeah thanks for the explanation i appreciate it dr warm any other questions i'll move that we reject the bids for the miscellaneous school improvement project one second motion has been made and seconded all in favor say aye aye anyone opposed motion passes thank you 7.3 thank you next on the agendas i'm recommending that you accept all bids for the miscellaneous school improvement projects at center grove i'm sorry these are actually two different projects dr arkanov i i kind of made that a little confusing yeah you did again so um wow yeah so that for middle school north and uh the release of steel and roof i'll present them with all three okay dr long will obviously provide you with the digital thank you so um of the said the miscellaneous school improvement projects we re-bid those and opened those bids on april 19th after a thorough analysis by crossroad engineers and a com hunt and and darrell thompson they found monroe llc to be the lowest bidder for the parking lot uh the soccer parking lot the pennington road roundabout and then it says the honey grove reconfiguration project that's where the apparent drop-off goes back by the um by where honeygrove is so we need to reconfigure that as part of the the pennington road improvements we found that the bid submitted to be within the typical construction cost and recommend uh that the center grove corporation the board approved those contracts as submitted and then as part of that we had a different a separate vendor bid for the transportation center uh cut in there at saddle club road uh the low bid was asphalt solutions for three hundred and eighty four thousand eight hundred sixty three dollars and we they were the low bid and they were submitted within the typical construction costs we expected so 73a and 73b are the miscellaneous school improvement projects that we the same project that you rejected the bids for now now i'm asking you to approve these bids we re-advertised this is really confusing i'm really sorry we re-advertised for the exact same projects receive multiple bids these are the low bids and we're asking the board to accept those low bids so it's monroe llc and um and asphalt solutions are the two low bids for the miscellaneous school improvement projects so 738 and 73b are the replacement for seven two seven point yes yes sir exactly right and then 7.3 c is in addition to it's a separate project i should have listed it separately right so don't don't throw anything at me i don't know this question just okay enter um honey grove and we're redoing part of that as part of this bid just the building could be there long enough it's just the access to that parking lot that the you know the the parking lot that's by the parent drop off but by the football field the gated access and so it's just to reconfigure the entrance and exit there that's okay that's why it's misleading by calling it the honey grove drop off it's got it it's really for that parking lot that's up above the student activity center yes sir sorry no it's a great question i'm still confused all right um are we still dealing with uh bids going to be a little higher just because they're they're busy you know what these um these bids were pretty good they came in under our estimates uh so i think they were right where we needed to and that's why we were real adamant about rejecting those first bids instead of taking them and trying to find the money this way by law don't worry right and then then you'll here with the middle school north uh early release for steel and roof those both came in under our estimates as well too so it's a little bit about timing it's a little bit about aecom hunt and and the the the architects kind of calling people and drumming up business too is the early release due to we expect materials to take a while it's a long time uh for for steel um we're we're finding some of the things that were we need now now have a 50-week lead time um so we're trying to get anything that we can get out early uh as early as possible wow so i'm assuming then those that are bidding on this are responsible for storing this stuff we're not going to have to find a home well the structural steel won't come in for a long time so it'll come in about when we think we're going to need it at middle school north okay so they're they're guaranteeing this price for us yeah you're saying just so that we don't have a fluctuation right this gets us our place in line and and gets us in the manufacturing part of this so we'll get it when when they can make it so do you want me to cover 73c just while we're at this then yeah i thought you just did i thought you just okay i didn't know if there are any questions i we're recommending that geiger and peter's uh bid for 555 000 for the structural steel and uh steve's roofing and sheet metal for 203 400 for the early release roofing bid we're recommending accepting both of those any questions i'm out okay thank you dr long you need a motion mr president i move that we accept the bids from monroe llc for 949 five hundred seventy eight dollars asphalt solutions for three hundred and eighty four thousand eight hundred and sixty three dollars structural steel from that geiger and peters yes sir for 555 000 and roofing from steve's roofing and sheet metal for two hundred and three thousand four hundred dollars yes thank you i'll second motion has been made and seconded all in favor say aye aye aye anyone opposed motion passes thank you thank you sorry for the confusion all good no really makes sense next on the uh on the agenda's announcements may 17th we are going to have a board community tour this is the scheduled third one uh the last two we've kind of had a low attendance uh unfortunately um the board thought it would be something we could interact with the community about um it was pretty low attendance so uh to keep from wasting everyone's time we'd like for people to that are interested in that sign up early and if well i think we're trying to shoot for maybe 20 people out of 9 000 students i think with you know 18 000 parents 20 people isn't asking a lot so if we can get 20 people we'll have it if not we'll we'll probably just postpone that and then just uh default to dr arkanov's going back to coffee chats and things like that just uh just so we don't waste the board members times and their evenings from their family to go to this to have one or two people there that we could probably handle with phone calls so yeah anyway and then uh two days after that on may 19th we're gonna have a regular board meeting at 7 pm right here in this room so we have a work session today is that correct begins at 2 pm that is correct on the 19th yes sorry that yeah that's correct any board members comments getting back on the wagon here from recovering and we'll begin attending there to see meetings again i'm sure they didn't want me in attendance at those well i'm glad everybody's here and healthy and i'm glad we're all sitting up here again that's a nice thing to see so jennifer i'll need your help the alumni and friends hall of fame if you see what's the last date possible to get in a application april 30th and you can find those applications on the foundation website and we also have the gala oh that's right yeah we have tickets available right so we everybody needs to go out buy gala tickets if you have not i'll be there rob will be there i'll be here i will not be there i will be there more importantly elise will be there so please join us yes anything else like dark enough i think that's it okay we need

so there's another 160 000 that is coming in stop loss reimbursements and if you factored that in it would take our reserve balance up to about 1.36 million even if this trend continues for the next three months of the year we still will have a reserve balance available um hopefully we don't continue to see these claims at a million dollars but you know they are what they are and there's really not that much control we have over what the actual claims will be you know the only unfortunate thing is with um stop-loss claims you know the more we receive and stop-loss reimbursement the more it affects next year's renewal right now for in the budget we've anticipated a 15 increase in our stop loss premium for next year hopefully that holds i think we will be in that general vicinity based on the board meeting we had this morning but i won't know for sure for another month and that wraps up the financial and the medical benefits report so if there are any questions i will be glad to address them thank you vincent so just for folks that are watching we'll be watching the recording so march we had uh 1.29 million dollars in claims you know up from 745 a month prior and our after all that and the um partial stopover same person got back and there's another couple of thousand dollars coming it's 1.2 million i was left in our trust in our reserve account so you know another month like march is going to wait about the account so in the end you know i cannot jinx us but um between now and end of june um if we that happens there's been any discussions with the town side if we need to shore up the reserve in case that does get depleted next few months we the council isn't aware of this latest month's update um but they they will be you know sean and i uh spoke with uh our usi consultant actually earlier this week so i'm sure that sean will report this and you know again i don't think we would wipe out the reserve but our balance will get pretty low you know over the next three months so we will you know continue to report and if if we hit may and and we still and we see that this claims rate continues we can certainly approach the council we can also look at what we have remaining in our balances before we close out the june 30th financials and if we have to undo some of the planned summer projects that is another way to contribute into the reserve fund we've done that to some extent in the past when we had availability so we'll keep watching and reporting and by the time the uh in the fiscal year june meeting happens we'll be able to review those that's situ if it materialize that situation we're going to figure out where to go right and we'll have claims through may by the time we have the final board meeting okay thank you welcome thanks vin i'm not sure if you mentioned this so you've got a variety of accounts that you tend to spend more at the end of the year like materials and supplies you usually have a number that you're targeting throughout the year percentage last time i heard you say you were at 60 that you'd open it up where are you right now we're at 80 now are you gonna keep it there until we get through you know into well into june i'm thinking at this point we are so the remaining 20 that we won't allocate you know we are yeah you know earmarking any purchase requisitions and purchase orders that go in you know we have an internal designation for summer projects so we know that we do not release those purchase orders until okay we understand exactly where we are okay all right thank you you're welcome um so when you met with the prime folks um are there other school systems experiencing the same uptick as we are are we unique for ins for some reason or no in fact um you know there's i think i've told aboard this before whenever i i meet with the ct prime board i there's a dr jekyll mr hyde and when we have high stop-loss reimbursements and i report at this meeting i feel good about it but then when i go to the ct prime board meeting i don't feel good about it because you know we're part of you know the losses you know for the year this year which is very unusual um all of our participating municipal members and some are like glastonbury we have uh like cheshire both town and board of ad other municipalities we have just the town or just the board of ed side this year all the communities are hitting stop loss limits and um right now we're running what we analyze is how much in premiums have we collected and how much in reimbursements have been paid out at this time last year we were about 40 percent of premiums collected were paid out as of um february 28th we're at 95 percent so and cheshire actually is one of the better communities this year so last year we weren't last year we were at one of the worst communities in terms of that performance so yeah the uptick is is pretty striking last year to this year and so i i think we were the anomaly the last couple of years this year we're not looking quite as bad as the other communities so that's a great question i appreciate you asking me because i can get it off my chest well now that you said that does prime have concerns about solvency no no because prime does not take on the we're not taking on the insurance risk anymore we haven't been for the last um this is the third year but we are shopping um you know for the renewal you know as we speak so you know we're looking at somewhere between a 15 to 20 renewal increase if we stay with the same provider last year the provider if you look at the difference between the premiums that they collected from all the ct prime members and what they paid out they were net revenue positive by three million dollars this year it looks like they'll be net at in a lost position of about you know 1.2 million dollars so over the two years they're still in the in the black so to speak and we hope that'll help us as we talk to them through our renewal but there will be an increase oh all right so you're like sitting right next to me tim's already had a question yeah i'll just i'll just i'm more than happy to cut him off all right go ahead uh a few months ago i don't know what the i didn't forget what his title is our broker tom kowalczyk yes so he was here a few months ago so i'm just thinking about the long term in addressing this he had mentioned that he felt there was the potential for doing um i don't know what the terminology is preventive prevent it taking preventive steps getting people to get out and walk wellness stuff like that wellness yeah just a general wellness program he thought that there might be some he thought there were some opportunities where we could uh put a little bit more into our wellness program to get some long-term benefits so i just want to put that back just remind you about it to make sure you follow up with him to see what he meant by that and what you could do what the schools could do with our staff about that yeah and and just to add and i guess explain a little bit so we do some wellness activities right now we have a step challenge going across not only the board but the town we also have a weight loss challenge that's running at the same time um there are um there's an active program called lavongo that's the company that has been rolled out to all board of ed employees these are for employees that have active diabetes to help improve the management and the care and the only other thing because there are more i don't want to bore you with all the details but we are negotiating with one of the bargaining units now you know the instructional assistants so you know we did put a proposal out and we've not completed negotiations but the board's proposal was that any employee that completes three specific measures you know one would be to complete a health questionnaire on cigna um the second would be to get you know their annual physical and and there's a third tier that's related to you know their health as well if they complete those three measures we would reduce the employees co-share in the following plan year and that is a program that you know was discussed and recommended by tom so we're negotiating through those details so there there are steps that we have been taking and we're trying to incorporate some additional measures into the bargaining unit contracts as we go forward thank you i was just going to ask what we currently do now and also um going back to the um esser funding with the governor's announcement for eight million dollars does that impact our current allocation for summer programming and so forth or how much did we we received last time i don't recall in terms of federal funding in total we've received about 1.8 million i think been and we didn't allocate any of that for summer well we did actually last year we did but this year we haven't really allocated that for some of the same summer programs we did last year last year we used it to bring students into the building we partnered with social services and just kind of it was more of a reacclimation program but we do have a robust summer program i don't know marlene if you want to add anything about what we're doing this summer i just wanted to add that we have some money left over from the transition summer programs that we did last year so i have a meeting actually next week to talk about a transition program for some high school students so we have that in the works funding from what they just disclosed the funding that they just disclosed i don't know that our numbers meet the criteria that they're looking for thank you seeing no additional questions this uh concludes the oh i'm i'm sorry mr gripper i just wanted to end one quick finance point that uh we've scheduled a finance committee meeting for may 3rd it's six o'clock to fulfill a couple of different objectives one you had made a good proposal back during the budget season that we have at least quarterly meetings to kind of examine you know future trends and what we'd be looking to to align our planning better fiscally for the operating budget in the future years one of the items that we're going to discuss is something that we internally had explored last year but never really brought to the board it's the department of justice has a what's called the stop grant it's students teachers and officers preventing school violence grant program and it can assist us with a lot of the different school security things we do i know that our policy committee heard a presentation from tom vivia who's a retired fbi uh behavior analyst now consultant who lives in town and we've worked with them for many years we've worked with him for many years about intervention um and you know we're firm believers in intervention to head off any potential violence and so this grant will help us toward that end so again that's may 3rd at six o'clock thank you for that reminder true seeing no additional questions now not quite as bad as last month right we now officially on the finance report thank you wow very efficient thank you so up next is planning uh andrew montel andrew martelly our planned committee chair could not be here this evening and you know before we turn over to sam uh tim and vincent just a quick update we we had a joint uh board of ed town council meeting this last past tuesday night especially talk about the next generation modernization plan a lot of great information was shared a lot of great dialogue it was actually nice we'll sit together with our peer repairs on the town council so for anyone that wasn't able to watch it please watch it is on on the town's youtube and i guess there's some um feedback from that which i've been seeing walk us through but one of the goals tonight coming our planning is to prove the education specs so that being said i'm going to turn over to sam tim and vincent and the approval of the education specs okay i think we're just going to turn it over to vin unless you want to add to it tim well no i'm just do we want to put a motion the motion is written on here but vin's going to lead us through this yeah but i don't think vin can read the motions so so um this is the question i had there's two potential emotions i i assume we're going to approve the revisions to the ed specs so traditionally i would put the motion up front discuss it so if you are comfortable making one or the other motion please feel free to present it probably the second one the second one yeah if you want geothermal it's going to be the same we want geothermal so the motion is that the cheshire board of education improves the elementary educational specification for the new north and elementary school and the elementary educational specifications for the new norton elementary school as proved by the planning committee of the board on april 7 2022 and amended by the board of educate education on april 21st 2022 discussion okay i will give just um a brief background the educational there are two educational specifications one for the new north end elementary school and one for the new norton school those are the educational specifications that were reviewed at a meeting of the of the planning committee of the hull so the board members outside of the planning committee were in attendance as well the educational specs were reviewed approved the change is going to be in both specifications under the section for environment systems and equipment and specifically on the building system so both educational specifications have the same exact wording for building systems i will read just that section and then i'll explain the change that we would like to make the building systems incorporated into the new construction will be designed in accordance with connecticut high performance building standards equivalent in performance to a lead led silver rating in addition utilizing renewable energy sources including solar and geothermal as well as net zero emissions will be considered in the building design in the context of a 50-year estimated useful life that's the way it reads now and the way it's recommended to be reworded has to do with that second sentence in addition utilizing renewable energy sources including solar and geothermal as well as net zero is the change net zero energy and or emissions will be considered in the building design in the context of a 50-year estimated useful life what that change essentially allows us to do is it gives us much more options and it reduces our limitations right now the way this is worded would essentially limit us to having buildings that are net zero emissions and with the change we can have a building that's net zero energy meaning that the energy that is produced at the site let's say using solar or geothermal um will be fully used at the site or you would never have less energy produced than you use if you have extra it can be sold off in in the matter that's allowed if we say just net zero emissions that means our essentially our carbon footprint would be zero i'm not sure we could achieve that but by this language change we have the options of potentially doing both or one or the other and you know this is something that you know we did discuss actually with collier's colliers at a meeting earlier this week did have a professional that does this is in fact is doing a lot of this work at um i believe is mansfield right in mansfield connecticut so that's the genesis of the recommendation the rest of the educational specifications as approved by the planning committee would be unchanged so that's the update and i will turn it back over for other discussion possibly mr white may have something to say about it just quickly then so that was the change that we had discussed at the meeting though correct we just didn't define the language so what i read is language we included and this is one more substantive change that occurred after okay and i think this was a clarification that was surfaced a couple two days ago yeah last night actually three o'clock we we met with is uh been said colliers in the executive steering committee and had a specialist review this language and we were concerned about the language that we had drafted is it was relatively limiting with respect to the scope of enhancements that we could you know examine we didn't want to just look at net zero emissions which means you can't use any uh fossil fuels at all in your program and to say and or net zero energy allows us a little bit more flexibility to take progressive steps with respect to our our energy consumption um just a point of clarification these those these are always some some of my favorite conversations so the motion on the floor right now is specs as amended but the specs aren't amended yet right because the copy you just read was not amended so do we have to make a motion to amend the specs before we adopt the specs i would amend that yeah i would amend the the specs to read the second you know right so we can make a change to the amendment so a motion to amend the amendment so can i can i make a motion to amend the motion on the floor to include include this language yes okay ask or ask for a motion to demand ask for a second i would like to make a motion to amend um that the ed specs for new norton school and uh new um or what are we calling it the end element then school um to include the modified language that or that the language be changed to um from net zero emissions to net zero energy and or emissions is there a second all those in favor to amend the motion if any yes tim thank you uh thank you for bringing thank you for the motion uh in passing it and thank you to jeff and vin for making that happen if i recall correctly it was two weeks ago we were at dodd and the the intent i'm not sure of my specific words but the intent i tried to convey was very much this have the experts weigh in on the precise wording here the idea i have is to make this flexible it is not to make this mandatory by any means i would love to see sustainable construction happen and i firmly believe that the economics i think the economics will make it happen or not and i do think the economics will be to our benefit um it's not just a matter of the environment anymore it's it's the technology the technology is improving the economics the costs ignore covet and the inflation that we see right now in the past year or so year or two generally the costs have been falling um and so i very much appreciate it i definitely think this is a great thing for the town of cheshire to be at least seriously considering it which is really all that i've wanted from the beginning a serious consideration of it um and this i do think this will make it happen because it is to a certain extent it's it's breaking a legacy system which is based on the initial cost of construction without looking at the ongoing operations and maintenance of buildings uh that's a huge cost i know that i've seen stories before where i think it's commercial buildings up to 80 of some commercial buildings the cost is in the in the operations of it over its lifetime so it's a significant cost and only looking at the initial construction cost it doesn't make sense when we're talking about particularly about new construction and having a 50-year life so i think this is great um and i do appreciate the wording here saying including solar and geothermal i don't know that those are the technologies that would be best to use i'm open to anything i just think moving this direction is the important thing so thank you for this awesome unless there's a discussion on the amended motion was but you're good at that it's okay well let's see did i amend the original emotion uh so the uh the amendment is adding the verbiage to change net zero energy and or emissions right to the motion right that is the amendment uh all those in favor asian animus the amended motion passes we're back to the main motion with the language net zero energy and or emissions sorry we're we have to follow robert's rules of order and et cetera so do you have a question sam do you want to uh talk about that so samantha and other board members this this came up at our border planning committee hall about two weeks ago samantha in particular said said you know obviously wants to move forward but has to see something envision something and particularly our taxpayers kind of want to envision what they're gonna be voting on so uh there's some discussion on that the challenge is until referendum has passed and there's a budget we can't hire a design architecture firm there's a a way to possibly without getting into some issues if money was available today certainly we can hire an architect to render something um i know colliers is walking us through tuesday some implications on that but the challenge there is if you render something and we actually get to the design phase it turns out something else then the voters are going to feel like they voted on something that didn't exist so long story short there's been talks uh there's reasons tuesday night about finding a way to show what could be other projects around the state of connecticut that are similar to ours the inside of the classroom what they will look like conceptually and and maybe even a um schematic enough to give an idea of what you know we're looking at so conceptualize obviously when if we get past referendum uh i think we discussed tuesday council we're gonna get a ton of feedback from the community and what should be in there and there'll be no opportunity there so we're looking into it we're hopeful to put something together to visualize and exceptionalize what what could be but which i've been answering for lately it's a we love the detail but uh we've learned that uh being told to more detail put out there i had a referendum to work against you so but thank you it's a good question all right back to the main motion is any further discussion on the education specification motion i think we we covered it seeing as there is no further discussion all right i'm going to read it that the cheshire board education approves the elementary educational specifications for the new north end elementary school and the elementary educational specifications for the new norton elementary school as approved by the planning committee of the board on april 27th 2020 april 7 2022 and amended by the board education on april 21st 2022 to include net zero energy and or emissions all those in favor it is unanimous the motion passes thank you all right yes tim yeah before we leave the planning committee i just wanted to will we get like will the public get a brief update on one question in particular for me is referendum timing i just want before the meeting ends that's all i'm thinking sure just um yeah i can kind of walk through a couple of marquee issues good night and thank you thank you um so you know we've we've covered a lot of ground in the last two weeks or so from the point that you all moved forward the ed specs uh last tuesday not this past tuesday but the tuesday prior vin and i presented with colliers at the town council meeting there were a lot of great questions raised but i think the most important element of the questions was the fact that there was not a question about whether or not we should be doing this which is profoundly different than those conversations that we had four years ago there's unanimous agreement that we need to move forward the questions center around what's the most efficient efficient and effective way to move forward and so we started to examine a timeline there we met again is a joint body tuesday this past tuesday with the council on board where a timeline was floated that would mean that both schools would be open to students in the fall of 2026.

good morning we're convening the committee on transportation on our 9 30 am agenda here in senate conference room 225 as well as online we have three resolutions up this morning beginning with hcr 29 encouraging the department of transportation to work with stakeholders to develop a holistic management plan that will ensure hana highway is properly maintained and safe for residents and visitors and testifying first this morning on hcr 29 is the department of transportation you with us this morning oh good morning mr mccain chair lead vice chair annoying and honorable members of the senate committee on transportation the department of transportation supports the intent of the measure in the interest of time would like to stand on our written testimony thank you sir thank you very much uh we also have comments from the white public utilities commission support from hana health support from american medical response and one individual i believe that's all the testimony we have on hcr 29 this morning are there any questions all right if not thank you let's move on to the next measure hcr 156 requesting the department of transportation to take all necessary steps to expedite work on the bipolar oa bridge in maili oahu and improve traffic signal support on the waianae coast and urging various entities to work together to immediately open a section of the waianae coast emergency access road system extending paakea road to lualualei naval road for public use on a permanent basis and testifying first on 156 is the department of transportation cheerleading vice chairman and honorable members of the city senate committee on transportation the department of transportation supports the intent of the measure and in the interest of time we would like to stand on a written testimony thank you sir thank you you also have testimony and support from michael rice i believe that's all the testimony we have on this measure any questions right thank you everybody if not let's move on to the final measure on our 9 30 am agenda which is hcr 182 requesting that the city and county of honolulu convenient working group to develop recommendations to improve sidewalk maintenance and testifying first is uh oh one individual and i believe that's all the testimony we have on 182.

all right welcome ladies and gentlemen my name is larry tunforce i'm going to be the moderator for this uh town hall this evening and we're going to start with a pleasure allegiance to the flag so please stand in in the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for uh the president of the board cory burgess is not here this evening but he is on the telephone and he will be participating uh amanda amman who is the clerk of the board who will be running the meeting you might say uh we're going to start with dr carolyn stewart our superintendent who will give us a background on how we got here uh just to again let everybody know this is a done deal this is going to happen um this is not a night to give us 10 reasons where they should spend the money somewhere else it's not a night to sit back and say this was not a good idea the idea has already passed and they're moving forward so tonight is information and opportunity for you to ask questions for you to bring input and we'll start with dr kailan stewart thank you larry it's on i have i would like to give a little timeline for folks who are not aware in 2019 and 20 mr burgess and i had a conversation about we were just talking about good things for the district i had just come on board as the superintendent and one of the things that he talked about was retaining recruiting and retaining teachers and said something about housing and of course we kind of chuckled because we knew that that probably was not going to happen in our lifetimes in 2021 and even since then we have regularly lost employees we've lost some folks that we've recruited to come work for us because they could not find housing and so then they withdrew from their contracts we have lost employees who've been working for us because uh they're the homes that they've been renting have been sold and they have been displaced so in march of 21 i started googling to find out about teacherage because we knew we were going to be getting s or 3 funds and we did not know how many funds how much that would be i was also kind of lamenting and complaining on the at the chamber of commerce government and business affairs committee i'm on that committee and about the fact that we did not have enough housing and that we were losing employees the conversation then was we can either continue to complain about it or we can think about possible solutions so as a result of that and in that at the end of that meeting karen summit who is the chair of that committee after the meeting put together a bridge to bridge task team to help with this process and so from the very beginning there has been a conversation about a partnership a public private partnership and that continues in april last year we learned what our funding was for sr-3 it's 10.3 million dollars over 10.3 million dollars and and we had some rules and regulations we had to follow which i will go over in a minute we had meetings with stakeholders and this the bridge to bridge task team went and looked for various properties to recommend to the board for this for this project the board ended up selecting a property that is undeveloped and there is a photo on the wall on the north side of the room where the property is they wanted this because they wanted to create a neighborhood not take something that had already been designed and try to create a neighborhood from that but to start and create a neighborhood from scratch the district could do this purchase this property from unrestricted capital funds because the price was less than 250 000 and the board could decide to put houses on this property because we're considered a rural district by federal law and the district the district board could say that it's in the best interest of the district to have housing for its employees since january the team has continued to work with us the renderings that you see on the north wall under the photograph to the right and left of the photograph were donated to us by a local architect so that we could go to the city and talk about the zoning issues the the items between the two renderings are simply things that we have looked at in the past uh in all of these discussions none of those are actual things that we're going to do is just that we were continuously looking for various ideas of what we could do with this we did in fact meet with the city on monday to determine what we could do to to move along with this project and we will be applying for multi-family housing zoning for that property right now it is zoned as single-family dwellings so what you see is renderings are just that they're just ideas but it gets us far enough along that we can talk with the city about the zoning for the property and then move forward from there i have this up so that you know we had 13 stakeholder meetings we had a housing task team no the housing task team is that one from the city but we had educators and coaches and parapros we had a team for english language learners we had a stakeholder group special ed homeless transportation technology food service maintenance and custodial and and health and mental health so we had 13 stakeholder groups who met and came up with many many recommendations when we met with this group we had to follow some guidelines sr1 and sr2 funds were emergency funds and so the federal government waived all of the usual typical rules that apply for use of federal funds for grants and they have a lot of rules ordinarily for grant funding but for those two those two funds uh grant funds they just waived all of those so we could pretty much do what we needed to do with those as long as we were addressing things that were a result of the pandemic it had to be related somehow to the pandemic so the sr1 funds were very much used to backfill our budget pay salaries to keep our people employed during the covid the initial part of kovid and you can see over here on on the wall where it says sr2 esser 2 started pretty much this year last year and this year and you can see that of the 4 million dollars that we got from sr2 over uh it's over four million 4.6 and over 4 million of that went to our employees 17 teachers who are employed this year in the district would not be employed this year in our district if it were not for s or 2 funding and that will continue into next year from sr3 funding so you can see that from s or 2 funding almost all of those funds went to teachers and other employees either as salaries and benefits or as a professional development and we managed with some rollover because we didn't use it all to purchase half of a bus and then we had money for the other half of the bus from another fund so we could do it that way sr-3 on the other hand is considered recovery funding and so the federal government put all of those they took away those waivers so there were a number of things that we had to do with these funds so on this graphic that i have on the screen for you the things that are in blue are things that we had to incorporate into our proposal to the arizona department of education so across the top you see learning opportunities and continuity of services a minimum of 20 percent of the esser funds must go sr-3 funds must go for that and that is in the federal regulations the state submitted to the federal government the state's plan for how the funds would be used in the school districts in arizona and part of the state's plan was that after that 20 percent we needed to consider three other areas one is social and emotional well-being one is safety and health and healthy environment and the other one is educator recruitment and retention so when i met with those stakeholder groups what you're seeing here on the screen is exactly what i shared with them the other requirements are on the left hand side we had to have stakeholder involvement therefore we had those stakeholder meetings we have to have equity we have to show that we are spending these dollars equitably across the district we had to have a program or project evaluation built in and that piece has since been withdrawn but at the time it was part of this plan and we built it into our our initial proposal to the arizona department of ed and we do have to have plan updates every six months so the things that are in blue on this uh chart are the things that we had to incorporate into writing this grant i'm going to make the screen a little smaller because i want you to see i want the view a little smaller because i want you to see that when we had the stakeholder meetings we were not just considering what to do with s or three we were also talking about the fact that we can incorporate some things that we need into the proposals for other programs so you'll notice light green columns on the right hand side those light green columns are all federal programs from which we receive dollars in our district those are ongoing programs we apply for them every year we have to write a proposal mrs lot who's sitting over here in the front row is our person who does that and right now she's in charge of about 15 grants so when we were looking at the information from the stakeholders and their uh their wish lists we were also looking at where we could put some of those items in some of these other grant proposals not just in esser but the two dark green columns are what we call soft money these are federal grants but they have a deadline and when the deadline is passed the monies we don't have the money anymore they are soft money finance 101 for superintendents and business managers is you do not use soft money for salaries and benefits or for anything that you cannot sustain with other funding when that funding runs out so that's just kind of a quick glance at all of the things that had to be considered i know you can't read this it's too small the summary for this chart are the charts on the wall over here on the left and i would be happy to provide this this information to any of you it's public information at this point i just didn't prepare enough handouts for folks because it's about six pages and i didn't know how many people we were going to have but i would provide it for anybody who asks the summaries are over here on the wall where you see s or three the three s or three things and you see only three because we wrapped a lot of the social emotional well-being pieces of this grant proposal into the other into other elements so if you just even looking at this without being able to read it you can see the lists of things that fall under each of those categories that we have things in in all of them so you can see that under learning opportunities and continuity of services we have over 2 million dollars in salaries and benefits and we have learning tools learning tools can be lots of things but a lot of it is technology for us and professional development so you can see that 29.49 of this grant is going toward salaries benefits and programs that benefit our teachers and employees we have a whole list of learning tools we have professional development a lot of it and then you can see some things here where we've rolled in some social emotional well-being because we know that both our students and our employees have issues from this 24 months of tough times so we're trying to be very supportive safe and healthy environment this is where we are putting a good bit of money into upgrading the systems in our district so for instance 50 percent of the hvac units in our district are over 20 years old we replace them uh through the state facilities board when they go down but we'd like to get ahead of that process when 50 are that old we know that the state facilities board can't keep up with that and then for educator educator recruitment and retention there's a good bit of money here for our teachers this involves contract signing incentives that we will roll over into next year so for people who worked with us this year signed contracts that's the teachers they had a 2500 signing incentive so in in june right at the beginning of june those teachers who have been with us all year will get that 2500 the same will be in place for next year we have the state is requiring training for dyslexia for our teachers and so we will be using esser funds to pay for some of that and that's for two years it's over two years and then um the benefits that go with those things so that's not mine one other thing i would like to share with you because i know it's questions that will will relate to salaries and benefits i'm going to give you school finance 101 as quickly as i can right here so in arizona there is a funding formula and in its simplest form it is the weighted student count so how many students were enrolled in our schools last year and some students carry some extra weight because they are students who require extra services so for instance some of our special needs students some of our homeless students there are a number of categories that get added so that's called the weighted student count and that is multiplied times a base rate so the legislature says to school districts you get this many dollars per student so you multiply those dollars times the weighted student count and you get the budget for maintenance and operation that is our main budget so you see that bucket of money there for this current year that equals about four a little over 14 well almost 15 million dollars but it is a bucket of money and it is that's all we have we cannot overspend it we cannot change it other than if there are some adjustments made during the year if our enrollment goes up but it's based on the previous year we also get some funding that's called unrestricted capital and once again it's the weighted student count times a base rate so below where it says stu school year you can see that the the base rate for this current year is 4 45 dollars and some change and the base rate for unrestricted capital was 450 and some change per student so that's how we calculate right now the legislature is talking about a two percent increase in base rate for next year they haven't decided on a budget but that's the conversation that's going on right now and so you can see what the amount would be for next year i want you to understand that we have a whole lot of other buckets remember on that other chart where there were the light green columns those are some of these buckets they all have their own budget the only two buckets where we can move money in any given year are these two buckets up here we can move with board approval we can move money from mno to capital and vice versa all of these other buckets of money cannot be moved anywhere else you can use the money in the bucket when the money's gone too bad you're done okay so esser3 is one of these buckets and we can't roll the money into anything else we can only use it for the things that it is intended one of the questions that has been asked is why are we not making competitive salaries well we know how many people we need at any given time to work with our students and drive our buses and those things and that most of that money comes out of this bucket you can only pay salaries for so many people so you can either increase salaries and decrease employees or you can have salaries and more employees somebody recently asked us about well we keep losing teachers to california particularly to needles because it's just down the road it's pretty easy to drive down there here's the difference now i don't know their rate for this year but we met we had a meeting last week and this superintendent for needle school district was here and their per student funding for next year is 15 almost three times what arizona funds for our students so their starting salary for teachers is sixty thousand dollars they pay not insurance not only for their employees but for employees families to the tune of twenty plus thousand dollars a year they can do that because they have the funding so that doesn't mean they don't have to have a budget they have to have a budget just like we do it's just that their bucket is bigger than our bucket so i wanted to share that information because i think that will help people understand a little bit two things one is we don't want to pay salaries and benefits out of soft money when the money is gone in two years it's gone and if i can't sustain positions and salaries from this bucket then it means either employees have to go or salaries have to go back down and we would not ever want to do that to any of our employees we wish we could compete with california and nevada we wish we could it doesn't happen when you don't have the money in the bucket i thank you for listening to the explanations if you have questions for me later in the question and answer i will be happy to do that but for the most part i think you need to hear from the board thank you amanda actually our first uh cory are you still with us yes i am okay mr burgess is um gonna discuss property and project that's his um area that he has so mr burgess thank you for your time uh some of the questions that we have had is where is this property located it is on cali dave ricardo west of val vista and the type of housing we're planning on building at this point is thick built homes finger units with carports we're looking at an architectural design that will give us a neighborhood layout and some of these units will have yard space amenities we're looking at providing is that neighborhood environment ada accessible units at least one unit available for emergency employee situations pet friendly having landscaping appliance included and even some of them moving ready when we were asked who would lead this project bullhead city elementary school district chose to hire a construction project manager to oversee not only this project but some other capital outlay projects that we're working on uh this job has been posted and we're in the final processes of completing that we currently do not have a developer who is building these harms we are still in the uh early stages of this but when we do get to that point federal grants have very strict guidelines for procurement and service for services and materials we will put out service requests for the projects or we may select a developer from the cooperative purchasing contracts our timeline for this project we're looking at may of 2022 to begin our architectural engineering designs by june infrastructure work begins for our utilities and hopefully by july of 2023 our phase one will be remove and ready miss amen back to you awesome thank you mr burgess if you have questions on property and project when it comes to it we'll have mr burgess address those for you next we have tenants ms charlene diaz okay so the biggest question is who is eligible to live in these housing in this housing housing units and it's any employee that is employed by bullhead city school district be it the superintendent the principal uh a paraprofessional custodian bus driver if you're employed by us you are eligible to live at this unit um it can at this point we don't know how many units we're going to be able to um build and so at once we know that we'll be able to have a little more um understanding of of how to choose people to to live in those units whatever um the units will be available to families it could be available to singles if you're if it's a three bedroom and three single people want to live share and live in one unit they can do that um so it's available to any makeup of of people unfortunately the house this particular uni uh housing unit is not available to other school districts it is only bullhead school district and it's not available to other essential workers such as firefighters and police officers they have to be an employee of bull hit school district okay there was a question about how if this is going to be a benefit for teachers and it's going to affect their taxes no it's not it's it is no different than renting a house or an apartment from a a private landlord you're renting a a unit and that's it it's not going to affect any employees taxes and if you have any questions it's pretty simple uh if you have any questions i'll be happy to answer them afterwards okay um i'm up next i have leasing i know leasing's a little bit further out that's actually when we get prepared to get our agreements together what exactly we need to have in those agreements some of the questions that have been brought to us already are what will the rent include our discussion has to include in the rent not only the occup occupancy of the home but a uh one car garage kitchen laundry appliances we're going to include the electricity and gas if applicable water sewer waste disposal and the wi-fi that way it's one whole charge for everything at the same time there's no individual expenses they'll understand exactly what it would be we had asked how we were asked how it will compare to other housing area in the area how will the district pay for the program administration maintenance operation and long term and if there's a profit where does it go and that seems to be a really important question that we have that one asked quite a bit um since it's paid for um ahead of time with the sr3 fundings the expenses utilities the fees for the management firm everything when we have the rent that comes in that will be going in the teacher teacher account that will be used to take care of those expenses so um let's say that i'll just say a toilet breaks um and it needs to be replaced it would be that money that is used to replace that not anything that comes out of our our mno or our unrestricted capital or any other buckets for that matter it would be self-funding at that point when they talked about the cost how much would it be we've done some research there's homes that are if you can find a home for rent in this area they are kind of pricey right now i looked just today and found a home that was just under 1200 square feet for just over twelve hundred dollars a month so the idea with this is that the rents would be similar in projections to district districts across the country and hopefully be 20 roughly this is just a number we're working with um less than what it would cost currently out in um in the in in the just general general public for them to to rent so we're trying to make sure that it is workable for our employees what will this look like with the district as a landlord well we wouldn't technically be the landlord we'd actually hire a property management company and they would service the teachers account in which rents would be deposited we were asked will the renter be charged for repairs that will depend um when we get there there's some lease agreements that we've been looking up with similar to moving into any apartments or any houses that you may rent there's you know if there's a damage you would do an assessment just like you would most places where you you know you kind of do the walk through and you mark all the boxes so this is a sample that i had found when you do the premises and the content stuff like that like you would do in a natural rental of a facility would be things that we were looking at doing um is there a time limit for staying is this temporary or permanent i know that was another big question that was asked um and and this is not to be considered permanent housing for anyone however the board has not deter determined a definition for temporary at this time so the number of units available in phase one will really be a factor for us so if we have five to ten units in phase one we obviously aren't going to keep renewing we want to allow other people who may need that but if you're somebody who's currently in the facility and you still need the facility there's still that need that's something to take into consideration um terms of lease again it would probably be more of just year to year at this point kind of we're looking at july to june like what your teaching contract would be or other employees contract would be it's usually based on a school year i think those were the main ones that i had again i'm leasing so we're working on leasing we're gathering questions um if you have other questions when it's my turn i'm going to gather all those additional questions so as we get these and we get closer to that time it's going to help us determine what we need to include in these leases as well not just us doing research on teachers and finding what we can find it would help us to have what you know and what you can let us know needs to be in there as well next we have funding with mrs annaboyd hello okay uh so i'm going to cover funding overall it was pretty much covered in one of the slides there and then i'll talk about where we go from here in regards to the funding um so we all know that or if we've been paying attention we know that we spent 150 000 to buy the land it was five acres which is uh i guess pretty decent i don't i don't know i don't buy land so but i've heard that was a really good price um we have 2.5 million of the sr3 funding so when we build this that is our budget like that is like cut and dry we are spending only that amount we are not going over that amount unless of course we have donations in kind where we can actually like someone donated the architectural plans if someone wants to donate things and things like that then that's the only time that you're going to see above that so there's not going to be anything extra we are going to stick within those means if we have to cut things or whatever like that and then that goes into um what happens in the future in regards to okay now that we have these built what if we can only build five or ten units all right so i did look at other properties and teacherships that have been built and there's quite a few of them out there where they did them in phases because they didn't have the money or couldn't get the loans uh in order to build um as many as they needed to actually sustain their population and so they did them in phases and used the money and the profit that they would get if you will profit from the rent that was paid in order to eventually build more teachers okay um for property tax it's a it's a school property so as far as i know right now we don't have to pay property tax that's what was given to us is that there is no property tax so we don't have to pay that um let me make sure i have everything okay so a few things on the funding to kind of understand with what's going in there and i did a lot of research and i looked into a lot of other housing developments almost all of them were built with grants and loans or with loans that they had to pay back and so the rent a lot of times had to be substantially higher in order for them to pay back those loans and to be able to maintain the property many different affordable housing units can go as low as 700 and i would definitely want to push for something lower or not lower than some but you get what i'm saying lower than what a lot of other places have been doing because they were doing it because they had a loan to pay back we don't have a loan to pay back so everything every penny that comes in for the rent can be used to sustain the property to uh to uh fix things to do any of those kinds of things and then eventually to build more housing units so that eventually you have enough to to have enough for your population um one of the really good things that i have found with being fully paid that it does allow us to get a place to where the rent is low enough because i know that amanda had said about you know we're not sure how long we would have them in the house but the whole point of it is it's at the first at the beginning when you only have five or ten units it's kind of like emergency you know what i mean mojave high school lost several teachers this year because they couldn't find a place to live like the rent went up or somebody decided they're selling the house that they're renting and they could not find a place so they left and we had to replace those teachers and i think even one of them didn't even get replaced all the other students had to go to different english teachers because we could not find a replacement um and so if the if it is low enough that they can save right that was one one school district i can't remember which one i had the paper no i don't have the paper anyways where that one of the things they found was a lot of people uh could stay well they had like 77 units so they were able to do this a lot better with just 5 or 10 units but people would save and they would be able to put a down payment on a house and i could tell you right now as someone who does rent i cannot save enough to put a down payment on a house because my rent is too high to do that and so a teacher might come into this area they're saving a lot of money uh to to stay here and eventually could put a down payment on the house and that would is what i would hope would be the goal and so everything in this is can be funded simply from that so i just wanted to say that extra little things and then so if you have questions that's me all right in our last area we kind of had some questions that didn't quite fit into each of these little categories so we have other in that category is mrs sobrowski i want to i want to reminisce a little bit when i moved here to town in 74 there were two places for me to rent one was wing foot cottages over behind um swanees where swanees is now it was swanies wasn't there and uh a trailer a single wide trailer down here on coronado boulevard my dad almost didn't let me stay because there was no choice and if i hadn't been so forward and say dad this is what i'm going to do then he probably would have taken me home and we would have looked in a job and i'd been i'll be i would be down in scottsdale somewhere at this time but i am very happy to be here one of the things that happened to me is what could happen using our units i ended up with this the federal government wanting to build houses here because we were so rural and you got to remember back in 74 hancock was was only paved down just so far and the rest of it was was all gravel and that's where i lived so basically i saved enough money to get into what was called a farm home loan which was basically a federal government loan that kept my rent very very low and very reasonable until the school district jacked up my salary to the point where i ended up paying wherever what everybody else was doing so what i'm hoping for this teacher is that given the 20 that we're going to try to keep our housing a little bit lower that that 20 percent can be used to get into your own place and if you have teachers who actually buy their own houses then you have a permanent resident of the area and i think that's what we're looking for because that's real teacher retention is when you get somebody to say and commit to having their family and growing up in bullhead city so that's where i'm at but we had some interesting questions like were there similar projects located and where they what are the pros and cons they are all over some of the more interesting ones come from the east coast they started small they started with 12 units they went to 74 units then they went to a whole bunch more units until they they've actually created their own little neighborhoods so this is possible they are they've been on the indian reservations for forever i can remember applying to chin li when i was first getting into teaching and basically being offered housing on chin li or at shin leaf so i would it was cheap it was cheap um so i'm thinking that that those kind of things can happen the occupancy for the the ones that are currently running i have a 9 85 percent plus number down here but there are a lot of them with waiting lists they actually if they have 77 units they'll have 66 on a waiting list so these are not going to be houses that are just used for one year and abandoned the next time around by the school district because we will be using these over and over and over again to create this atmosphere that will keep our teachers here to make them permanent residents of bullhead city um i think they're very successful i was very disappointed i will say that i couldn't find any hard data on whether it kept people involved but there was a lot of what are called ancillary ancillary data which is data that's just word of mouth type stuff this basically says i'm really happy that i have a house to live in that i can save money or i'm really happy that i have a house that's next to an another teacher so if my kid forgets their lunch i can take care of that um [Music] there's a lot of that ancillary stuff there is no real hard data and i'm not sure exactly how you would actually create that hard data but there is no number that says yep 75 percent of the people stay around for for years the best i could get was that there was one group or one school district that had 77 units for seven for five years they upped it for ten seven years and they've been filled for that whole time people don't move in and out of them it's sort of like a regular housing if you're a real landlord the other question that was interesting is has the district thought of hiring a contra or contractor or hiring a communication person to assist we have one we have one um lance ross in the back of the room is the is the information officer for bullhead city and he does a really good job he's had the stuff online he's had the stuff in the newspaper um the gentleman from the the paper is always here at school board so we have several outlets to the public if the public uses them um twenty percent that yeah this is a good question what breaks do those of us who have lived and worked here for years and not gotten very much pay increase received since we we do not have the housing option i think mrs stewart basically explained that earlier there's some bonuses that you get 200 or 2 500 god what you know as a as a retired teacher i could really think about how about about that much money coming in for just signing up for another year so again these people are taking getting taken care of at the same time [Music] will they receive a housing stipend no they're basically going to be just like the rest of us we pay mortgages or we pay rent or we pay somebody to stay where we're at so that's about it [Music] could we provide the rent assistance no that's considered a gift and we can't give tax funds we can't give those funds out as gifts some of the rest of the questions were interesting somebody actually said how does the public stop this from happening it's not it's not going to happen mr tuneforce told us that at the very beginning of this meeting it's not going to happen this is in the works it's going to happen now what we have to do is a community is to get around this and make it into a community for teachers and for public or public school employees okay i think i'm finished awesome thank you mr toonforce all right you've heard from our board and our superintendent now it's your turn this meeting is being streamed and it's also on zoom so we're going to ask everyone to come up to the microphone if you want to speak raise your hand i'll point to you in a minute and then we'll have you come up to the microphone here's the fun part you're going to have two minutes the board made this decision before we got here i have a timer when it goes off you're done so at that point in time we'll ask you to sit down and let the next person come to the microphone please state your name when you come up only because if you ask a question the board would like to answer it and identify you by name hilda you want to go first hi there i just have a quick question um it's national fair housing is this on yes it is okay it's national fair housing month as we've been told over and over and um i was down in phoenix i just got back ran over here and we had a presentation by the director of the arizona department of housing just about these kinds of things and i asked him specifically about this with the school and he said quote if you take any federal funding you have to abide by every fair housing um requirement and you cannot pick and choose who goes in there so i just wanted to let i made him repeat it twice so i just wanted to let you know please if you need to get a waiver have you talked about this with anybody or or is the director of the housing mistaken about this the information that we have is because it is on school district property and it is teacherage by arizona law teacherage is housing for school district employees with federal funding yes okay double check it absolutely specifically asked him about this situation absolutely and we've had long conversations with we had long conversations with you with our attorneys to make sure now the piece of fair housing that we would absolutely make sure that we abide by is that a percentage of these units would be 88 you know they would be accessible because we have employees that you know we wouldn't want to do that i have another question in my two minutes i spoke with you several months ago and i asked you you didn't know the answer i'm hoping you have the answer now if the tenant doesn't work out in the school district is here for he or she afforded all the same rights as regular tenants that's part of the fair housing are you meaning like if they're if they're okay yeah for whatever reason it doesn't work out do they you have to give them the same kinds of things that you have to give to other tenants regular people have to give to tenants they'd have a they'd have a you know a termination date you know when they would have to move in those kinds of things in terms of the others i'm not sure we haven't addressed that with the attorneys at this point but we would certainly make sure that we did we don't want to do things that are illegal next hi i'm nan nichol i live in port mojave and i just had a question being i was a broker in california the fair housing law were very strict at the time and the last time my license expired was in 1999 and we know a lot of things have happened since then it to me it's a lot stricter and all these things under the fair housing discrimination and renting or buying a home getting a mortgage seeking housing assistance or engaging in other housing related activities if anyone feels that these things have been mishandled they actually have the right to sue so i'm very concerned that we would have a situation and hopefully i'm wrong that someone would say i was discriminated against because of whatever they they just there's all these reasons why they can say they were just can they speak in the microphone sorry and so i'm just worried that uh this might open the door to the lawsuits and things that maybe haven't been considered but maybe with the other ones they've already considered this you have a track record i don't know but i am concerned about that and i'd like to know that you folks feel have a good reason to feel comfortable that's a great question thank you thank you thank you who wants to tackle that question well i don't know that we necessarily have the answer to that because that would be something that would go along with our leasing and making sure that we have it spelled out to where we're not um you know discriminating against anybody for any reason so but that's definitely something that we've got wrote down that we can look into and speak more with the attorney when we look at the verbiage and we look at the things that we're going to do to put in there to make sure that we are following those federal guidelines and not not discriminating amanda i believe that dr stewart has had conversations with at least one school district that has a teacherage where they have have experienced a lot of this stuff a lot of these a lot of them and that they will be able to give her the guidance so that she'll bring it to the board absolutely we actually i had a 45 minute conversation last week with the person in charge of the housing for la unified school district and and as anna said their housing was all funded with loans and low interest loans and those kinds of things and and so you know he talked about the fact that they had some issues with the fair housing that they of course had to do relative to the loans so um and he he'll be available to assist us with any ideas but we'll be looking for anybody who's doing these kinds of things so we don't fall into any of the any of the pitfalls that they might have had we want to make sure that we're avoiding those uh right up front and and [Music] the number of houses that we actually can put say in phase one it's going to determine a whole lot about how that selection process you know our pi our pi in the sky dream is the 20 and and so you know how the board decides um uh that process when there are 20 is very different than if you only have five units but it's also a matter of having that having that property management company because they're going to have to follow some of those some of those guidelines so this those are excellent questions for us to follow up on thank you come on up john you brought up a good or everybody here it's a tough deal to do well i think the young lady on the federal issue brought up a pretty good speaking of the microphone pretty good point i think the young lady brought up a good point excuse me about federal and if the arizona gentleman in real estate doesn't recognize the teacher clause that you've said are we sure that the feds are not going to come in with that with lawsuits and everything else that could be levied against us but if arizona doesn't expect that doesn't recognize it how do we recognize it so it makes sense what i'm asking and you guys have policy and procedures for teachers that don't pay you know they're going to have family problems they're going to be behind on the rent they're not going to pay the rent all kinds of divorces you have policies for that are we picking up the tab when they can't make a payment we eat the taxpayers anyhow some policies like that should be pretty uh pretty stringent okay so adding in some definition some information on policies if there were someone to have a divorce or split or can't pay or something happens okay i got it yeah i can i can also well i can also answer that because uh the practice in any place where this occurs is the rent or the payments are taken right out of their salary before they get their check and that just that just complicates the issues with them now you got kids that don't eat blah blah blah i i think that's kind of a problem i don't think you want to get involved in so that's kind of similar to like insurance like our insurance comes out before we get our paychecks so i already know like that's coming off the top um so i do know like things like that are already built into our contracts like if you do a scholarship if you do river fund if you do mojave high school scholarship tax credit we sign up and so we know what comes out of our paychecks um ahead of time so like i know that i would then be able to go okay that much is is that you brought up good argument we're not paying enough or we're not paying enough salary and now we're going to start to take away because i just think you're going to open it well terrible work environment well to point out realistically one we are trying to make it affordable and i would definitely fight to make it as affordable as possible but uh also if they didn't live with us they would have to live somewhere and they would have to pay rent somewhere so somewhere out there they would have to do that i know i know but arguing the point you start getting them fist fights with your employees because they can't play no because they've got issues you know beyond their control yes and they would get in that with whatever wherever they would be living like like let's be realistic they would have issues with wherever they're paying a lot of money for well it could have been solved prior to yeah and the idea behind is where the money goes would go into there and if there was an issue or like i said a toilet broke or something it would come out of there it wouldn't come out of the taxpayers it would come out of the tetragen account that would be with the property management today we have to look at the future thank you ashley hopefully i'll be able to send them to caroline and actually get the answers this time um because i didn't get them the other day i can't hear you ashley can you speak into the mic please yes of course i can um so she had mentioned that they're going to be having these individuals get their paychecks taken out is that is that have you gone through the legalities of what that's like on being able to take somebody's paycheck for the cost of rent having lived in teacherage in my past no i'm asking you if you of course it's legal through it no i haven't we haven't had a teacher age so we haven't had lawyers yes your and not just your educational lawyers i'm talking about real estate lawyers no not resources haven't gone through any of the legalities for leases or what is going to happen so she says oh well it happens everywhere where but the fact is if a an employee is terminated how are you going to are you going to let them live out that lease no probably not that will be a bored decision okay but how are you going to throw them out of a leased home that would have to be part of what gets developed if you ask that question we're going to have to look into it if you have more questions you i'm just saying so i have my two minutes yeah you might you might get my job yeah um no and i think that i i feel sorry because our our government constantly makes decisions without making getting information first and knowing exactly what they're going to do and how they're going to do it you guys don't even know how much this is actually going to cost cost inflation is going up the roof it's crazy have you even do you know exactly what per unit is going to cost two million and whatever dollars we're going to get whatever we can get with the money we have asking a specific right do you know how each how much each unit is going to cost estimate yes one in a conversation 200 a square foot or slightly over that so whatever it is that we can get for the amount of money we have is what we would do in phases right but your whole spew in the in the beginning was 20 20 units correct that was our dream yeah i mean and that's the phase of through phase four we know we can't do that at this point i just think it's irresponsible thank you very much okay thank you sir i apologize for my appearance i just came from football practice not exactly board appropriate but that's okay so quick questions um so first i'd like to point out these are there is no loan right you're not borrowing funds and because there's no property taxes let's say worst case scenario not a single one of them is rented it still doesn't cost the taxpayers anything correct that's something i think the public needs to be aware of worst case scenario nobody rents them there's no loss there's no taxpayer responsibility we're not on the hook for anything because they're paid for in cash and there's no upkeep right correct so keep that in mind taxpayers that there is no way for this to come back on us as a taxpayer guys guys that's the first thing so that's worst case scenario now my next question is a little more complicated as far as best case scenario best case scenario they're all rented we have phase one two three seven fourteen you know and everything's wonderful and now you have 300 homes i have no idea right at some point you're going to say enough is enough and because we know how real estate works you're going to have quite a bit of money coming in and that money isn't going to building more units and it's more than enough to pay for the maintenance of those units what do we do with the surplus does that mean the rent gets just cheaper and cheaper and cheaper or can that money spill over into some other district it can't it has to stay with the housing development so then i guess i know this is probably 20 years in the future perhaps but when that comes to pass and the school district is flush with money for money that they can't use in their district what do we do with the money yeah that's a fire that's a dream it i bring that up anybody who understands real estate and follows guys like grant cardone follows guys to understand real estate that is a potent you have you as a school district has the greatest advantage ever of at this moment free money from the government and no property taxes it's a given that you're going to get make money it's it's undeniable that the district will be fine because it can't go bad i think the school the employ the taxpayers need to understand that the numbers can't be against you so when it goes well what then i'll sit down and listen to your response one thing one thing i can say is there was one housing district that i had seen that was a teach that had a gym and it had a pool and it had two playgrounds and it was fully fenced with security and it had over a hundred units and almost the entire teacher population lived within that community so i guess that's what we could do it's a dream okay thank you we have a zoom question i have to work with what i have done if the rental payments will be automatically taken out of paychecks will it then be out of pre-tax dollars that is a definite advantage over the employees who have to pay their rent mortgages out of after tax dollars and that's a good question and dr stuart just said it it cannot be it cannot come out pre-taxed it's just like when you when any of us sign up for river fund or any of those things that the taxes are already determined and then the money comes out so it cannot be true it cannot be paid pre-tax other questions right so i know i only have two minutes your name first ava um but i will speak to what would be lost if this is not successful and it would be your initial buy of the land for the 150 which i would like to know what else you could have done with that money because it was part of your unrestricted capital budget which could have gone to the teachers i would also like to know or understand better what you are doing for other staff members they are feeling like the ones who would be getting this housing would be getting more than they are and even if you get to that twenty percent which would off of let's say a twelve hundred dollar rent that brings it down to nine hundred and sixty dollars the twenty five hundred dollar incentive bonus that you spoke to ms swarowski was only instituted for this past school year and i know that because i was a previous employee and i signed on for that because of that bonus now i left the district so i'll be obviously i did not get that but that 2500 bonus is not a mainstay as far as my understanding and so that would not be in place of well we're not going to give you a housing stipend but you get a ha you know you get that bonus at the end and that's also before taxes the 260 dollars that would be that 20 number off of a 1200 rental idea is 2800 plus and that's not before taxes that's like the real deal 2 800 so there's a large discrepancy there and i do think you guys have to consider if you're really gearing this to say yes this is for the retention of teachers you're not paying attention to the staff that is here in your district right now in my opinion and i was one of your educators and i say that from experience and i say that from the heart this project is not retaining the teachers you're about to lose and i would like you to really consider that yeah mr burgess are you still with us still here do you i mean do you want to answer any of these we keep popping i forgot you were there for me i would like to to address the one that was just given from ava okay i understand that we're not able to help every single teacher but just because we can't help everybody doesn't mean we don't help anyone we're doing the most we can with these funds and as mr beck said this is a winning proposition for our district there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered we are working on that but we are absolutely heading in the right direction and mrs browsky had an excellent point when she said earlier we need the community to help us in this program to make it better we have an enormous opportunity here that i never truly believed would be possible but now it is if we get everyone behind this program this could be absolutely phenomenal other questions well i'd like to just one more follow up on that i mean to talk about what we've done for the staff now and i understand that the 2500 is unsustainable maybe maybe for the future and it's currently a signing incentive and the risk compensation we've done but we've also hired 17 teachers 17 positions two years ago we also hired 16 coming into the next we've been able to hire aides and all different people sent to pd's and by curriculum and supplies that we never would have and we have where we've spent what four five and a half million dollars just on salaries and benefits alone not including all the other things that we have done so we have actually we've done a lot for the staff as well and then this is just another added benefit that we can try to help somebody and and i like what mr burgess said where he said we'd like to help somebody like we we just really want to try to help somebody in our district and if that could be one and maybe it's someone who falls on hard times and they need that opportunity to have someone be there for them and have a place for them this is what we need we need them to have that opportunity so we don't lose them like mrs boyd said we we had someone leave that semester we had to divide up those classes i know it's happened at the elementary where classes get fuller teachers you know have to absorb those extra students because somebody had to leave due to housing and then or we have long-term subs teaching our students which is currently what's happening because we it's hard to find those applicants when you they leave mid-year and don't have a place to stay so i know that's difficult teachers teach it on their preps yes yes i i think we saw a hand in the back right would you like me to get to the mic there you go so i came here um really kind of upset by this whole thing when i saw it on facebook but i got to say your presentation answered a lot of my questions i have worked for jobs where my um rent came out be you know taxes were taken out and my rent was taken out um you know you're not always going to make everybody happy a hundred percent of the time so i kind of haven't always disagreed i haven't always agreed with this board but i say this has to go forward if it helps five people if it helps to some woman who ends up in domestic violence and needs a place to go i think that having that available as an emergency place to go and still keep her teaching job i think is a bonus so i'm just going to say go forward and have thank you thank you thank you and what was your name i'm sorry oh i'm brendan hi brenda sir good evening i'm i'm a teacher so i don't think we'll have a problem hearing me your name your name is a couple things you're not very short-winded so i'm going to say your name please my name is bill earnest and i teach right next door at bullhead city middle school fifth grade okay okay um i got a question in reference well a statement first to the gentleman that spoke to about there's no loss the whole goal of doing this is teacher recruitment retention could you please speak into the mic the whole goal of this project is teacher recruitment and retention if the units sit open sure taxpayers aren't anything but we didn't solve a problem either right and it was a waste of time waste money and a waste of effort okay so there is a loss there um you spoke about the teachers living in the apartments till they got the money together to buy home well if they're not making enough money to pay that apartment payment how are they going to afford a home would be my next question okay which seems kind of logical to me we're hurting for money and the third one on this document you shared earlier when i looked at the totals for a home the home building process it came up to three million dollars not 2.4 i'm kind of confused i was looking for clarity on that okay i can answer that one originally we were talking 2.4 and then as we as with anything in a grant and you start looking at okay well this won't work or that won't work and we understood some finances relative to prepping the property and that kind of thing we rolled some other dollars into there so what you have in front of you is and what's over there is what is designated so um anna didn't misspeak on purpose that was the original number so three million dollars is coming out of esters to fund the housing that you're going to build okay instead of 2.4 million which is a 25 increase okay thanks okay and then i can answer about the thing the whole point is to have affordable housing so it would be like i don't want to speak in regards to that but i know i would push for a lot lower than 20 unless of course rent goes significantly down anyway which eventually hopefully the housing market will burst eventually um as it usually does but uh i would definitely want it to be to where they can in fact save and purchase a home eventually and i do think this is possible my husband is disabled he does not work he works at home or basically stays at home takes care of the home we live 100 percent on my teacher salary at mojave high school with a twelve hundred dollar rent all right we still have a car we still are able to buy groceries i can still get health care and all that jazz um i am still able to uh fund my addiction with yarn you know so so the this idea that that it is 100 not a livable wage i would say i mean i have a friend who's a nurse practitioner and his wife is a nurse and they're always broke so i guess the question is is what are you doing with your money maybe it's that 750 car payment you have so there's things that people really need to think about when it comes to whether or not this is affordable or sustainable are you smart with your money or do you have a 400 motorcycle and a 500 car and you have netflix hulu amazon and uh you know we can go on and on and on but as someone with a disabled husband who lives 100 percent a 1200 rent house pays my bills they do not cover my electricity they do not cover my gas uh i have netflix i have hulu and i have amazon prime and i pay 1200 a month in rent on my salary alone so if the rent is lower if the rent is lower and they actually the minimum i think that the teachers get paid here is pretty much what i get paid okay so they might make a little bit more they might make a little bit more or maybe the thing but my point being is if the rent is low enough it is 100 possible like anyone else out here who has probably purchased a home or has done things you have to make sacrifices you have to just make decisions in order to save up to make a down payment on a house but from my experience it is a possible and if we can get the rent as low as we can to where it is understandable it is something that we can use i mean heck if i had a 700 house payment right now that's 500 extra bucks a month that i could have to put for a down payment on a house but i don't because my rent isn't that so i the one thing i would say bill like that i would say to you is i do agree with you and the fact that if it sits empty it's a loss because to me that means we're not helping somebody that means that somehow we miss something and and i do feel that if it if it were to sit empty for some reason that it would be but i don't see that as a problem i i really feel with what we've gone through in in the high school district elementary district and all the districts around us of the teachers that have left due to not being able to find affordable housing we will have a wait list for those we will have a list of renters wanting in as quick as they can because they understand or new teachers coming to the district or or veteran teachers that like she had mentioned earlier there are teachers that have had people their landlords come to them and say by september 2023 we're selling your house sorry we're giving you a year heads up year and a half heads up because the market is just too good and we have to sell our accountant had recommended it and there's nothing you can do about that you just have to continue on so um i hope that we don't sit empty so we can help somebody because i would agree that if it did so empty it would be a loss it would it would feel like a loss at least to me any other questions sir excuse me i've called on him i'm sorry let's go guys my name is james and i am mr chairman members of the board stuart dr stewart and i had a conversation about this at one time when i saw her at an event and uh and i'm in support of it um i think it's it's a it's good that we're thinking of other options to for teacher shortages my question is that if the 2.4 million or now three wasn't used for this project what would it be used for would it be used for teachers salaries to give raises if so how much how long would that last right at some point like you said you've got to replace that here you have something that you don't have to replace that gives some teachers a continuing it's a continuing benefit for teachers maybe not all of them but those who need it um and then let's say you can fund how long if you gave raises let's say three percent raises to your teachers how long would that last for maybe 14 years not even you can't even use it yes so the issue is the money the money stops on september 30 of 2023 and then whatever's left rolls over for one more year but whatever is not spent on september 30th of 2024 is gone so with that with with these these are assets you're going to have these homes that 15 20 years down the road you know they're generally real estate here in bullhead i've been here three years and real estate in this area has gone up considerably during that time sometimes it goes down sometimes it goes up but you're going to have that asset at the end of 20 25 years 30 years that if you need to get rid of it and sell it you're still going to have that pot of money so i don't see a loss here um the other question that i have and i'll wait for the answer in your spreadsheet spreadsheet presentation you mentioned that the sr funds are soft money right so my question is we don't use soft money for salaries because then at the end of that we we have to replace it but it appears that that's what we did and i think that's a question that we need to talk about and that's a great it's a good question so sr2 and sr1 were both emergency funds and when schools were shut down one of the things that fortunately the folks who shut down schools said keep your people employed do what you need to do to keep them employed and so that's how we use those funds and because sr2 is also emergency funds our budgets i talked about the buckets and one thing i didn't emphasize i said it but i didn't emphasize it is that our budget for any given year is based on our student enrollment the prior year so during our enrollment dropped by 350 students so the budget that was originally arranged for this year was based on 300 fewer students than we'd had the year before now the good news is that we've gotten a number of those students back probably about 250 it might not be the same 250 students but we've gotten about 250 students back so our the budget for next year will look better because of that increase in enrollment but to keep our current students so we started this year with almost as many students as the year before last not last year and so we needed the teachers so we could justify saying we can pay for these teachers so we can serve our kids our budget was affected by kovid we can serve these kids keep our class sizes decent but we know that those positions will either need to roll back into our regular budget or or some positions will go away but the beauty of that money and keeping those positions is that we could keep our class sizes a lot smaller and this board agreed to capacity for our classes so that we really could give the best effort to helping our kids they didn't lose education but they did lose opportunities for some education during that 18 months and this lets us have lots more focus per student than we might have otherwise so in that case that it is short-term salaries it's 17 positions next year it will be 18 positions that are funded with this money but at the year after we either absorb those positions back into our regular budget or we figure out something else so and those folks are making the same salaries the rest of our teachers are making it's not like it's less money it's the same salaries no they were existing positions that we got to keep yeah that's an excellent question thank you for asking that those were existing positions so had we not had s or 2 for this year 17 of our current teachers who are working with our children would not be employed by this district classes would be class sizes would be bigger considerably bigger at all grade levels and some things and some things would not be so good in those classrooms so yeah they were existing positions and that was the intent of that money was to keep people employed i will say that sr1 which was a hair over a million dollars kept our bus drivers employed during those three months that we did not have kids in school because our budget got cut for that year the budget had been approved but it was cut so it kept our folks employed so kudos to any of our legislative people for saying this is a this is an ugly situation but let's do everything we can to keep current employees employed and we worked at that excellent question okay we have another zoom question i'm curious about the cost of developing the land is there any water electric sewer etc already set up also would this land project ever be able to be sold in the future jeff record corey yeah mr burgess infrastructure is currently not in place but we are working on that that is in our budget of our entire project as far as selling this in the future i will have to refer that to dr stewart i don't know how i don't know the answer to that i don't really know the answer to that either i suppose at some point if we felt that it was not you know if the board felt that it was not a viable project it could be sold the difficulty then is you've got a pot of money in a bucket that you can't touch can't use it for anything else as far as i know but we would have to look into what would happen if we sold come on up man okay did i understand you to say your name please penny davis did i understand you to say that utilities were included with the rent so that's one of the discussions that we are having is to include it all together so then it's one joint package for them i know that you'd mention mec wanted to reach out and partner and somebody else about possibly wi-fi and so it would be we would try to develop a package who in their right mind wouldn't crank up the air in the summertime well they crank up the heat how are you going to regulate that and take care of it because where i live we don't turn the heat on much i take showers without the heat on all winter because we pay our utilities and we don't use our air conditioning to the max until you know i mean we don't use it to the max so how are you going to do this with rent i mean why would you move out if you're if your utilities cost more than your rent hey who's paying it good question and and that's one thing that was in here it was a suggestion and one of the things we talked about was including it all together so i mean that would be something to look at if if say somebody liked it like an iceberg in their in their house you know how would you regulate it would there be an allotment if you went over 250 then would they pay you know so that's all things that to look at so that just posed more questions just asking that one so who would not turn crank it up or i'm just kidding i hear you i don't we don't turn our air on we leave the heat the doors open as much as we can yes i hear you hey questions sir that's a good question hi my name is carrie and i think this is a really bad idea because i own properties and there is a lot of maintenance and you have to budget for that and you have to have insurances and all that i think you guys are just way out of your realm with what you do um but uh carolyn you mentioned social emotional quickly quickly um can you explain that no i was not talking about curriculum i was talking about that we are we had to build in there think considerations and ways of helping our folks deal with the effects of the pandemic so we're talking about physical health we're talking about emotional health of our kids and so we have our counselors and we have those things so we wanted to make sure that they had the materials that they needed the counselors had the materials they needed we wanted to make sure that our health offices have what they need we want to make sure that our employees have what they need because this has in fact been traumatic for probably all of us i suspect everybody has has experienced some trauma relative to this we're not talking about curriculum and about teaching things here we're talking about providing health services for our students and our employees okay thank you thank you yes sir brian burgess bullet city you said they would not be paying property taxes is that correct it's school district property and school districts do not pay property this is a housing unit it's not a school it's still school but district property as it grows five units 10 units 20 uses like the coach said back there 300 units you're using the services you're using the police you're using the fire that puts that much pressure on all the rest of the homeowners in bullhead city so i think you could rethink that and have a property tax taken out of the rent so as you grow five units it's not going to make a big difference 100 units this will make a big difference for the fire and police and all the other services that your property taxes pay the tax the property taxes here are county taxes they're not city taxes there are no city taxes okay but still but yeah your point is well taken and it would need to be considered but school district property is not school district but it's not a school it's too good school district property but it's going to be housing like my house up in bulkhead and i pay taxes a lot of taxes for somebody not to pay that it could put more pressure on everybody else you might want to consider that that's a good question thank you anyone else yeah i think dr stewart also had some questions some follow up on some earlier things and then we'll get to second questions if people have second questions i think if we go too much further than second questions we might be here really really late so um and we'll try to write down your questions so if you go through a couple of questions really quick like we'll try to like write them down so you get them asked in your two minutes and then we'll take some time to answer if we can so if that helps um i wanted to come back to something miss gary should sent had called yesterday i think it was and had asked some questions i don't remember all of the items that you had miss garish but i know one of them had to do with who's the developer we don't have a developer yet so we have to follow procurement we will have to put those things out for you know requests for uh proposals or bids and that kind of thing and we'll follow all of the procurement so i wasn't trying to avoid your question it's just that we didn't we don't have a developer yet we don't have those folks what we have are those renderings okay they're not blueprints they're simply renderings but i will be happy to send you a small version of those i have those you're welcome to have them and i'm sorry i don't remember the other questions you asked yesterday but we didn't answer them because we don't have answers for them yet so it wasn't trying to avoid your questions it was just that we're not there yet okay so yeah and and when we put out the requests for bids it'll be to local you know local contractors local whatever because we can't we can't legally say we're going to select somebody local but as much as possible this board has said that when possible we want to keep these monies in this community we don't want the money to go to you know if we can avoid sometimes we can't because we're supposed to take the lowest bids and the lowest quotes and those things but we will do everything we can to keep this money circulating in the bullhead city and mohave county community as opposed to going to maricopa or someplace else yep do you want to you want to do your two yeah you do a second round of two minutes you're go go for it okay i have a question because you're um obviously um well i don't know if most of you know i'm on the high school board and um speaking of microphone please i can't hear you say absolutely this is ashley garage are you ready for me burgess um so uh as far as procurement goes we have to send out our um we have to have our three bids right correct and there's a lot of times that we don't get our three bids back we don't we have um several projects that are out months in advance right now because we cannot get even a no bid and that is the requirement your three bids and we're not even getting that right now so i don't know if you've reached out um at least to see if this is going to be a possibility to get your procurements back because at this point um like i said we're months out and i'm sure that you guys have the same problem and i'm sure that you've had the deal with the same things in the past with procurement so um what are you gonna do if you don't get uh any bids back we will be looking for bids i will say though that um the the community task thank you that's an excellent question the community task team that karen summit put together those folks have been involved in some of these meetings and there's every indication that we will not have problems getting uh getting quotes and not have problems getting local quotes so as for procurement like i know being in the high school district like i've had to sit through procurement training where it was multiple hours over multiple days with a uh he had a lot of munchisms his name was mr bunch he he was able to answer a lot of those procurement questions and and if i were to go and seek out information we'll say um three quotes ten thousand dollars for two different football jerseys for home and away because they really do cost that much i could actually call a company and if they don't give me a quote there's a no quote sheet so if they refuse to give me a quote then i can go ahead and write that up obviously when you're looking at giant projects you want some submitted quotes you want to be able to compare quotes and we will do everything we can to receive multiple quotes and as she said we definitely want to keep things here in the community but there are ways that we have to do those things so um i can't just we can't just sit up here and say oh we want to create a new job and give it to so and so like you have to post it you have to interview so the same thing with developers like we'd have to send it out there and we'd have to say hey who would like to bid who would like to be a developer we'd have to interview we'd have to do the things that we have to do to make sure that we follow those procurement rules so we don't get in trouble so those are very important sir give a fault john i'm just going to make a comment that when we started the comment was it's a done deal maybe it's not a done deal and i think we ought to keep an open mind i was in government for 32 years there's no such thing as a done deal and i think you guys know that right come on uh things check look what happened uh two years ago things changed man and all of a sudden here we are with their pants down you got employees you've got to fill four four million dollars if you don't get it again that's a lot of people to absorb in this budget correct so i'm i'm just saying please please keep an open mind because a lot of people brought up some pretty good ideas and uh if it was such a a great deal that you could never lose the real estate i would have bought a lot because you can't ignore me anymore i'm going to ignore you one more time because larry's got a question and he hasn't even been up there yet come on up blair that's all sorry he'll do i never lived that down larry uh larry morse with arq engineering uh been a resident area for 30 some plus years i want to commend you for taking steps to try to to do employee retention which is critical in our area it's very hard to find anybody that's qualified to do anything it's really bad as an employer i know that i had a couple questions one of them was on this is federal money coming in so all the federal procurement including prevailing wage applies for not only the district but the contractors that the district hires okay that's one thing the other thing is recently last two years we've seen materials cost triple they doubled last month not on top of the triple that was i mean we were used to pay 16 a foot for an eight inch sewer line we're now paying forty five dollars a foot material cost only um anything like that a a water valve an eight inch water valve used to cost us six hundred dollars now it's twenty six hundred dollars just for one not installed that's delivered to your site that's about it uh just food for thought thank you thank you i think that's where we we got our dreams crushed when you know the original you know grand scheme was 20 and now we're hoping to push 5-10 and and it's because of things like that it's unfortunate that that that we got hit with that time frame because that's a large increase hildy [Laughter] can you reach a microphone don't let him do so much okay so in the beginning ms stewart said that anyone can go it can be custodian it could be an administrator who makes the decision who picks the people who get it and what are the guidelines or their qualifications you're going to have people submit like their their histories i mean who gets it there actually would submit an application at this point we haven't come up with specific guidelines as far as who's going to be first and who's not in some of the other teachers here in arizona that i've looked at it was first come first serve some of it was a committee was put together and that committee determined who you know so not be the board it would be a committee it would be a committee or it couldn't be property manager so or management firm so it may be them we haven't really because you said also that you thought there'd be like a big waiting list but then again you said that people can stay as long as they want so i don't really see how that turned over as long as we want we just said it wasn't permanent it was temporary but we didn't know how long yet so we did said we did there will also there will be so you know the idea that they're going to save up enough money for down payment in a time frame that you're going to set is probably not real but the other thing i wanted to say was patrick beck's assertion that no taxpayer money i mean we heard very similar things about something called the field house and i believe last fiscal year the taxpayers the school district paid 160 thousand dollars out of their budget to make up for the losses of the field house so there's never anything definite you cannot say the taxpayers will not pay i'm not saying that should be your overrun decision but be careful because you cannot say that thanks all right so amanda i'll try to just give you the questions okay all right um so first things first has the board read the exit surveys of the employees who left last year i don't recall a discussion at any board meeting about you guys actually seeing the 40 plus staff members exit surveys and the reasons why they left and i know for a fact that there was a portion of them that were not due to housing so that's first i also want to ask about the 2500 incentive bonus again that is not given to every educator in the district that was for a certain amount of the teachers certain teachers i believe i don't know if administrators got that i don't know if additional paraprofessionals received a bonus so saying that that would be in place of a housing expense stipend that would also not there would be a discrepancy there there are sites you have six sites in this district and there are multiple problems at every single site and i've gathered a list of those problems because my whole thing as many of you know because of my educator club is to advocate for the educators in this area and they have a lot of burden on them right now and so i want to make sure yes and i'm not saying that this does not have its pros to it and i'm not saying not to help anybody that's not what i'm trying to put across but when you've got five units let's say they're the one bedroom units that's five people how many employees do you have in the elementary district that's a real crooked crooked seesaw there i think that you would be helping five out of 200 to 300 employees so i have to advocate again and i know you said money went to the sites this year but there's still teachers who don't have air conditioning and heat in their classrooms as of april 6.

okay before we call this meeting to work tonight um i invite you to stand and pledge allegiance indivisible with liberty and justice from um i called the meeting in the order at 631 are there any modifications to the agenda i am an action needed item the recommendation to approve the renewal of the food service management company contract the 2022-2023 school year with compass group usa incorporated by through its chartwells division do i have a motion to accept the uh modification to agenda as presented any discussion carol yes yes stephanie yes amy yes thank you uh next is recognition of visitors item that transfer which is the change the effective date in item two from june 26 2022 to may 26 2022.

um our next meeting will take place next fall so thank you to the both of you for leading those efforts um okay kevin spoke to the crc today they held a job fair with 20 businesses community members were able to come our high school kiddos were able to come and look for work um it was held in the early not the early the educational service center um again it's a great event inside our new building that shows positive collaboration occurring in our community um to find and sustain the employees needed i want to thank mr greg bernard and his team for all of their hard work to ensure that this event was a success and our elementary buildings all held preschool kind of our enrollment last week we had a great turnout if any parent family you know of any parent family that missed it um don't worry we can still get anyone registered you can show up to any building you can call any office of any building and we will do anything that you need to get your kiddo registered so um if you have questions reach out to somebody across the district um and then finally goldman 19 report we have not had a positive copy 19 case recorded to us since march 4th our symptomatic percentages um don't go above 3 in any building so we're looking good thank you thank you and with that we have claims is anybody going to make a motion to accept the claims i will make a motion to accept the claims as presented [Laughter] you do need us to come in and sign stuff like that yeah anyways all right okay sorry and with that yes you have a motion to adjourn welcome carol yes vicky and stephanie yes amy yes talk to you later

thank you very much for having us here tonight and featuring north grove i have two students do not be fooled by the red curls and the blonde hair because if you look very close at their faces they are twins i have ava and emma mcneal and to tell you a little bit about them i was kidding with someone a little bit ago they are moving on to middle school next year but they're almost going to develop a monarchy at our school because we have three officers on our student council and they make up two-thirds of them ava is our president and emma is our secretary they're involved in multiple things at north grove they both participate in robotics along beyond student council emma is also on the folk dance ensemble team and then in addition to that outside of school they both play volleyball together at mount pleasant ava is also an avid basketball player i think she's going to be in ohio this weekend she plays for ig igb basketball on the north side and also plays for marlin academy but no worries to our program she also plays center grove basketball and then learned a little bit about emma she is also does modeling too so it's exciting that's the one thing that was brand new to me when we were talking today i didn't know about that so i want to welcome and i also want to welcome their proud parents aaron and leah for joining us tonight so and i want to welcome them to lead us in the pledge of allegiance states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Applause] uh tonight we'd like to honor a pass school board member gene workman of greenwood indiana passed away on april 14 2022 at the age of 95.

here here you i ask that we stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states thank you welcome this evening it's nice to have an audience so glad you're here uh we're gonna start with the uh school partnership awards so tim this is uh norton elementary and dr sullin whoever wants to go up there and present this honor principal grillo do you want me to read it yeah okay oh let me get my glasses oh kelly's just gonna read okay good evening everyone it is my pleasure to um present the school partnership award to the montgomery family lizzie and brian montgomery um at this evening oh should i read from there sorry here okay so the montgomery family generously donated their time and materials to renovate norton's front entrance last summer the gardens were overgrown and did not offer an inviting entrance to our vibrant school the work they did far exceeded simply cleaning up the beds as they offered to do the removal of the overgrown shrubs and trees and the addition of rock beds not only aesthetically replaced what was there but instead completely revived the energy our students staff and family members are greeted with as they enter our school each day norton is so grateful for the care time and resources they gave to supporting our norton school thank you so much for all that you did [Applause] hmm guys [Applause] so we're moving on to the next part of gender's public comment so there are members of the audience that wishes to address the board education you're welcome to do so as soon as there are none we're going to move on the report to standing committee uh starting with the curriculum committee report uh and you want to give us an update sure so i'll report on the curriculum committee meeting of monday april 18th um so we only did a couple of things it was a very efficient meeting if i must say so myself we had some informational items on the testing coming up so ms solano reviewed the 2022 smarter balance and next generation science standards assessment the parent communication sent out to families in the beginning of april and then the state assessments begin at dodd middle school next week with the ngss the next generation science standards assessment and continues during the first two weeks of may with math and ela in grades three through eight and conclude towards the end of may with ngss at grade miss solano also shared that the assessment information is used to identify strengths and needs from a curriculum and instruction standpoint as well as to understand student growth and performance from year to year and under old business we brought up again the and reviewed the language for the reconsideration of library books or other classroom resources and we made a recommendation for the policy committee so ms solano presented a draft policy language concerning the reconsideration of instructional resources and we reviewed it the policy draft is largely based on the k model policy and similar policies from other local districts um it's recommended that this policy be included in the 6000 series under instruction of the board of education uh policy manual so we made a motion to move that draft reconsideration of instructional materials to the full board for i'm sorry to the policy committee for review thank you and uh that was those were the two main items that we addressed at curriculum committee meeting awesome thank you so much up next is finance committee report thank you mr chair i will uh gladly hand the report over to mr massiana thank you mr grippo good evening everyone the board members do have in their packet the updated financial report as of march 31st i will speak to at the this report is rather brief the most notable item in this month's uh finance report is that the town council at their march um meeting and the board of ed at their march meeting approved the 1.5 million dollar increase to our budget and so if you look at the uh column called adjusted budget appropriation in either of the reports the total budget for the board of vet is 78 million 501.05 it was 77.001.052 prior to that edition but that money as the board knows it came in it was contributed to the medical benefits line and then it immediately was transferred into the medical benefits reserve fund so there's no additional spending capability it was money that we already had accounted for in the medical benefits reserve as far as the where we stand for the month of march which marks the ninth month of the fiscal year so three to go we are still in good shape we're at 91.7 either expended or encumbered we are actively in the process of reviewing all our accounts making our final entries for purchases and maintenance items and summer projects that we need to complete this summer you know as we look through the accounts some accounts are over on the maintenance lines but they're offset by accounts where we're under budget such as in transportation so i do expect a successful successful year-end close you know come june 30th the um you know only other thing that i wanted to mention this evening is that the um 2ser fund accounts that we have 439 000 in the esser 2 grant to be used by september of 2023 we are expending some of that this year i'm not sure we'll expend all of it so that would roll into next year we are again going through those details we meet now every two weeks as we approach here and close internally so again the message is you know we are in good shape um to close out the budget year successfully and i'll jump right to the medical benefits report and then we can come back if there are any questions so the board members do have the final uh updated medical benefits report as of march 31 this month's claims unfortunately took a significant jump to 1.29 million you know as we had reported in the prior months january when we turned the new hsu hsa plan year began our claims had come down to 843 000 in january then 7 45 in february bit of an uptick that was a surprise in march i will tell you that those are some significant large claims that are continuing to plague us so as a result the net change to our fund balance decreased by 257 000 and so as of march 31st the medical benefits reserve balance is one million two hundred four thousand i will share one other piece of news as i had our um the ct prime board met this morning and ct prime is the stop-loss carrier you know for the town and the board of ed as well as several other municipalities um our claims our stop-loss reimbursements actually reflected in the report you see is 361 000 but our reimbursements which we will receive total 520 000.

there was a lot of conversation around that obviously all of us would love to see it open tomorrow actually if we could and as tony was just mentioning about the schematics and everything and that part of what drives the timing of when we can start is the referendum date the groups the board and council have been operating on the idea that the referendum would occur on november 4th 2022 election day the proposal was made yesterday in an executive committee meeting that perhaps we consider an earlier referendum date it's only an idea it's only a proposal there's nothing set in stone about that but our town attorney was going to examine you know what would happen there is colliers would reevaluate the potential timeline for school openings i think all of us if we're gonna take the plunge the sooner that we can open the doors the better and so you know that is being explored but if i were to be held right now to a timeline the referendum would be november 4th the uh ultimate opening of schools would be both schools would be august of 2026.

okay um do i permission to accept the consent agenda item as presented absolutely discussion world cup carol yes vicky yes stephanie yes amy yes yes no she cares okay next is uh recognition of visitors and comments from the audience yes good evening i just wanted to basically take some time this evening i participated in yeah i was going to be less than three minutes if it's a minute i'll be surprised i just attended the job fair that was basically put on and coordinated by ray bernard i just wanted to come to the board meeting tonight as part of that and say he did a very good job it was a challenging effort had decent participation as far as the people coming in from the employ the possible employment opportunities here and um i think with a little bit more effort which he's already talking about putting in that could be a great thing that goes forward with that effort so job we do not have any presentation and we do not have any discussion items we have approval of public section minutes of april 7 uh 2022 do i have a motion i'll send it any discussion royal carol yes vicky yes stephanie yes amy yes motion carries thank you uh actually needed items i have the recommendation to approve professional cheryl wyman to work up to 40 hours per week as a custodian where needed during the summer months of the school year do i have a motion to accept the recommendation to approve the paraprofessional for yes vicky stephanie yes amy yes ocean gary yes i have the recommendation to approve the agreement between brown county schools and surveillance uh do you have a motion to accept the recommendation to include the agreement between brown county schools and surveillance to courses emily would you tell us a little bit more about this i i'm sorry i don't really know what it's about yeah absolutely actually i'm going to turn it over to mr scott woodall to give us a little bit more information on it he will be better at those details than me sure so the 24 7 is the brand of cameras that we have on all the school buses uh contracted buses as well as our corporate home buses and the system has been in place for roughly four years they did a few upgrades right before i came on board but we've had never had a maintenance agreement with the manufacturer and i i made contact with them because i've had some issues where we go to pull a video uh hard drive and realize then that it's not been reported that there's been some issue so um that's that's not a good thing if we have those cameras on the buses we need to make sure that they're working and so 24 7 the manufacturer has a factory guy that will come out twice a year and check every one of our systems he'll do the software and firmware upgrades all the units that they need and just make sure everything's working properly so we have a process of going through and making sure they're working as best we can but it's similar to the air conditioning units we have those serviced every summer um so we hope they come on where you need them um so we we just think it's necessary that they would come out and when we have this agreement besides coming out twice a year when you need to come out for an issue like we had uh two weeks ago there won't be an additional charge so they'll they'll cover it will not be okay and when he came out this last time he just swapped out the whole unit for then no charge to me um which was great so their service is really good but i just think it's we need to have them come out and inspect people so that's what that agreement is about any other questions for scott amy so this is just the cameras on the buses right not the ones in the buildings correct okay thank you yes vicky yes yes amy yes thank you question carers next and the recommendation to accept the donation from the cummins foundation accept the uh wonderful donation from the cummins foundation to see our city any discussion thank you thank you very nice yeah very nice and with that roll call carol yes vicky yes stephanie yes amy yes thank you i have the recommendation to accept the donation from the brown county fab 50 to the brown county schools early education center in the amount of eleven thousand dollars for toddler road equipment you have a motion to accept a donation from the brown county 50 to the early education center is anyone there from fab 50 in the audience okay so i am a member of the fab 50 and if you don't know what it is it is started out actually around the country of groups of women who get together and all donate a set amount of money and the idea is that when everyone puts a small amount of money together we suddenly have a big amount of money and so then when you're a member of that group then you decide what uh organizations are going to get the larger donations we now i i think betsy lease uh is our fearless leader uh and she's very dedicated to this mission and she i think we have something like 90 something members actually and there's also a i forget what the magnificent men actually is a a partner group and between all of that there are two grants given a year i think it's eleven thousand and five thousand right now um given each year um we have a process where you actually submit your favorite social service organization into a pot and then someone draws a couple out of the pot and then we vote uh out of those um we were selected this year for our early um education uh organization and um to get the eleven thousand dollar grant and it's just a you know it's it's a a random sort of thing but it's a really awesome thing when it happens so we're just really excited to be the recipients of that and to have so many um women and men in our county who think that this is a really uh good place for their funds to go so we're excited to receive that money and we want to really thank all those people who contributed a little bit and it turns into eleven thousand dollars pretty exciting and that's great thank you amy for the education on that welcome carol yes vicky yes stephanie amy yes or she carries next is a recommendation to accept a donation from an anonymous donor to the early education center an amount of 12 000 for the preschool room and the toddler supplies i'll make when they get there and with that robot carol yes vicky f stephanie yes amy yes oh she carries and apparently we have one more recommendation to accept a donation from an anonymous donor for one thousand dollars to the same organization any discussion broadcast carol yes vicki and stephanie yes amy yes motion carries i have the recommendation to approve the use of the brown county schools bus for beta field trip on april 23 2022 to attend korea night at the indiana memorial union to be billed at 155 for the trip you have a motion to approve the use of a school bus for the data field trip on april 25th all right any discussion sounds like fun i don't know i'm sorry right so it sounds like fun oh yeah i used to take kids uh to korea night with clara and um uh i think it might have been in 2020 right before covid i think i took 10 or 12 young ladies from the high school in the junior high and it is really a fabulous program so i'm excited that we're still going and with that welcome carol yes vicky yes stephanie yes amy next ocean carries next i have the recommendation to amend the retirement notice of being aborted to include a request to the vipa bridge do you have a motion to accept the recommendation to amend the retirement heirs of the department for the legal bridge any discussion roll call carol yes vicky yes stephanie yes amy yes motion carriage next and the recommendation to approve the agreement between red linton and brown county schools you have a motion to accept the arena between grant lincoln and brown county schools yes is in your word package oh so [Music] okay yes vicky yes stephanie yes amy yes management company contract for the 2022-2023 school year with compass group usa incorporated by andrew it's chartwell's division do you have a motion to accept the renewable uh approve the renewal food service management company as presented any discussion um can can you just fill us in on if there are any major changes in our agreement with chartwells slightly increase right which is on the first page right yeah yes i couldn't hear that can someone repeat it for me despite increased five cents is that a per meal or is that something else okay so any advices hey with that welcome carol yes vicki yes stephanie yes amy yes thank you motion cares next concentrative violence i have the separation of kermit elementary school special education teacher allison effective at the completion of the 21-22 school year through the transfer of helmsburg elementary school science teacher james jones to transfer to brown county high school cte early childhood education teacher effective may 26 2022. do you have a motion to accept the consent agenda items represented beginning with separation of uh sprint of special ed teacher allison freeburg at the completion of the school year and ending with miss jane jones moving from my father's school [Music] [Applause] this looks like my house i know carol yes vicky yes stephanie yes amy yes carries six superintendents report um thank you everybody for being here tonight i just want to take a few minutes to highlight some of our incredible students and staff first i want to congratulate mr dan lee miss christy billings mr matt finley and everyone that helped on putting together such a great performance of mamma mia last week the students were absolutely shining on that stage and i'm proud of the entire team it is a very heartwarming feeling to see happy kids and proud staff thank you for your hard work and dedication to the performance i also want to congratulate senior marie fields today mr austin ms billings and i escorted her dump to downtown indianapolis to celebrate an incredible accomplishment marie was honored today among 39 other indiana seniors across the state of indiana as an african indiana academic all-star mrs billings was chosen as one of the 40 of indiana's most influential educators today as well i'm proud of both of these young women and the future is very bright for the both of them we are so grateful for mrs billings and the influence that she provides for not just marie but for so many students here at the high school um again marie fields and miss billings have been busy with planning the very first annual pop pursuing our purpose event at brown county high school the pop festival will be held next thursday april 28th it is an opportunity for our high school students to participate in different workshops so they can explore their individual purpose statements marie and his billings were presenting their entire project for the festival at a board meeting in may so we look forward to that presentation um i also want to sincerely thanks christy reitzman this is debbie hartman for leading our very first broad-based planning curriculum meeting this is a large stakeholder meeting that consists of board members parents teachers administrators and this team will be directly involved with helping us review curriculum at moving forward across all levels k through 12.

so there's another 160 000 that is coming in stop loss reimbursements and if you factored that in it would take our reserve balance up to about 1.36 million even if this trend continues for the next three months of the year we still will have a reserve balance available um hopefully we don't continue to see these claims at a million dollars but you know they are what they are and there's really not that much control we have over what the actual claims will be you know the only unfortunate thing is with um stop-loss claims you know the more we receive and stop-loss reimbursement the more it affects next year's renewal right now for in the budget we've anticipated a 15 increase in our stop loss premium for next year hopefully that holds i think we will be in that general vicinity based on the board meeting we had this morning but i won't know for sure for another month and that wraps up the financial and the medical benefits report so if there are any questions i will be glad to address them thank you vincent so just for folks that are watching we'll be watching the recording so march we had uh 1.29 million dollars in claims you know up from 745 a month prior and our after all that and the um partial stopover same person got back and there's another couple of thousand dollars coming it's 1.2 million i was left in our trust in our reserve account so you know another month like march is going to wait about the account so in the end you know i cannot jinx us but um between now and end of june um if we that happens there's been any discussions with the town side if we need to shore up the reserve in case that does get depleted next few months we the council isn't aware of this latest month's update um but they they will be you know sean and i uh spoke with uh our usi consultant actually earlier this week so i'm sure that sean will report this and you know again i don't think we would wipe out the reserve but our balance will get pretty low you know over the next three months so we will you know continue to report and if if we hit may and and we still and we see that this claims rate continues we can certainly approach the council we can also look at what we have remaining in our balances before we close out the june 30th financials and if we have to undo some of the planned summer projects that is another way to contribute into the reserve fund we've done that to some extent in the past when we had availability so we'll keep watching and reporting and by the time the uh in the fiscal year june meeting happens we'll be able to review those that's situ if it materialize that situation we're going to figure out where to go right and we'll have claims through may by the time we have the final board meeting okay thank you welcome thanks vin i'm not sure if you mentioned this so you've got a variety of accounts that you tend to spend more at the end of the year like materials and supplies you usually have a number that you're targeting throughout the year percentage last time i heard you say you were at 60 that you'd open it up where are you right now we're at 80 now are you gonna keep it there until we get through you know into well into june i'm thinking at this point we are so the remaining 20 that we won't allocate you know we are yeah you know earmarking any purchase requisitions and purchase orders that go in you know we have an internal designation for summer projects so we know that we do not release those purchase orders until okay we understand exactly where we are okay all right thank you you're welcome um so when you met with the prime folks um are there other school systems experiencing the same uptick as we are are we unique for ins for some reason or no in fact um you know there's i think i've told aboard this before whenever i i meet with the ct prime board i there's a dr jekyll mr hyde and when we have high stop-loss reimbursements and i report at this meeting i feel good about it but then when i go to the ct prime board meeting i don't feel good about it because you know we're part of you know the losses you know for the year this year which is very unusual um all of our participating municipal members and some are like glastonbury we have uh like cheshire both town and board of ad other municipalities we have just the town or just the board of ed side this year all the communities are hitting stop loss limits and um right now we're running what we analyze is how much in premiums have we collected and how much in reimbursements have been paid out at this time last year we were about 40 percent of premiums collected were paid out as of um february 28th we're at 95 percent so and cheshire actually is one of the better communities this year so last year we weren't last year we were at one of the worst communities in terms of that performance so yeah the uptick is is pretty striking last year to this year and so i i think we were the anomaly the last couple of years this year we're not looking quite as bad as the other communities so that's a great question i appreciate you asking me because i can get it off my chest well now that you said that does prime have concerns about solvency no no because prime does not take on the we're not taking on the insurance risk anymore we haven't been for the last um this is the third year but we are shopping um you know for the renewal you know as we speak so you know we're looking at somewhere between a 15 to 20 renewal increase if we stay with the same provider last year the provider if you look at the difference between the premiums that they collected from all the ct prime members and what they paid out they were net revenue positive by three million dollars this year it looks like they'll be net at in a lost position of about you know 1.2 million dollars so over the two years they're still in the in the black so to speak and we hope that'll help us as we talk to them through our renewal but there will be an increase oh all right so you're like sitting right next to me tim's already had a question yeah i'll just i'll just i'm more than happy to cut him off all right go ahead uh a few months ago i don't know what the i didn't forget what his title is our broker tom kowalczyk yes so he was here a few months ago so i'm just thinking about the long term in addressing this he had mentioned that he felt there was the potential for doing um i don't know what the terminology is preventive prevent it taking preventive steps getting people to get out and walk wellness stuff like that wellness yeah just a general wellness program he thought that there might be some he thought there were some opportunities where we could uh put a little bit more into our wellness program to get some long-term benefits so i just want to put that back just remind you about it to make sure you follow up with him to see what he meant by that and what you could do what the schools could do with our staff about that yeah and and just to add and i guess explain a little bit so we do some wellness activities right now we have a step challenge going across not only the board but the town we also have a weight loss challenge that's running at the same time um there are um there's an active program called lavongo that's the company that has been rolled out to all board of ed employees these are for employees that have active diabetes to help improve the management and the care and the only other thing because there are more i don't want to bore you with all the details but we are negotiating with one of the bargaining units now you know the instructional assistants so you know we did put a proposal out and we've not completed negotiations but the board's proposal was that any employee that completes three specific measures you know one would be to complete a health questionnaire on cigna um the second would be to get you know their annual physical and and there's a third tier that's related to you know their health as well if they complete those three measures we would reduce the employees co-share in the following plan year and that is a program that you know was discussed and recommended by tom so we're negotiating through those details so there there are steps that we have been taking and we're trying to incorporate some additional measures into the bargaining unit contracts as we go forward thank you i was just going to ask what we currently do now and also um going back to the um esser funding with the governor's announcement for eight million dollars does that impact our current allocation for summer programming and so forth or how much did we we received last time i don't recall in terms of federal funding in total we've received about 1.8 million i think been and we didn't allocate any of that for summer well we did actually last year we did but this year we haven't really allocated that for some of the same summer programs we did last year last year we used it to bring students into the building we partnered with social services and just kind of it was more of a reacclimation program but we do have a robust summer program i don't know marlene if you want to add anything about what we're doing this summer i just wanted to add that we have some money left over from the transition summer programs that we did last year so i have a meeting actually next week to talk about a transition program for some high school students so we have that in the works funding from what they just disclosed the funding that they just disclosed i don't know that our numbers meet the criteria that they're looking for thank you seeing no additional questions this uh concludes the oh i'm i'm sorry mr gripper i just wanted to end one quick finance point that uh we've scheduled a finance committee meeting for may 3rd it's six o'clock to fulfill a couple of different objectives one you had made a good proposal back during the budget season that we have at least quarterly meetings to kind of examine you know future trends and what we'd be looking to to align our planning better fiscally for the operating budget in the future years one of the items that we're going to discuss is something that we internally had explored last year but never really brought to the board it's the department of justice has a what's called the stop grant it's students teachers and officers preventing school violence grant program and it can assist us with a lot of the different school security things we do i know that our policy committee heard a presentation from tom vivia who's a retired fbi uh behavior analyst now consultant who lives in town and we've worked with them for many years we've worked with him for many years about intervention um and you know we're firm believers in intervention to head off any potential violence and so this grant will help us toward that end so again that's may 3rd at six o'clock thank you for that reminder true seeing no additional questions now not quite as bad as last month right we now officially on the finance report thank you wow very efficient thank you so up next is planning uh andrew montel andrew martelly our planned committee chair could not be here this evening and you know before we turn over to sam uh tim and vincent just a quick update we we had a joint uh board of ed town council meeting this last past tuesday night especially talk about the next generation modernization plan a lot of great information was shared a lot of great dialogue it was actually nice we'll sit together with our peer repairs on the town council so for anyone that wasn't able to watch it please watch it is on on the town's youtube and i guess there's some um feedback from that which i've been seeing walk us through but one of the goals tonight coming our planning is to prove the education specs so that being said i'm going to turn over to sam tim and vincent and the approval of the education specs okay i think we're just going to turn it over to vin unless you want to add to it tim well no i'm just do we want to put a motion the motion is written on here but vin's going to lead us through this yeah but i don't think vin can read the motions so so um this is the question i had there's two potential emotions i i assume we're going to approve the revisions to the ed specs so traditionally i would put the motion up front discuss it so if you are comfortable making one or the other motion please feel free to present it probably the second one the second one yeah if you want geothermal it's going to be the same we want geothermal so the motion is that the cheshire board of education improves the elementary educational specification for the new north and elementary school and the elementary educational specifications for the new norton elementary school as proved by the planning committee of the board on april 7 2022 and amended by the board of educate education on april 21st 2022 discussion okay i will give just um a brief background the educational there are two educational specifications one for the new north end elementary school and one for the new norton school those are the educational specifications that were reviewed at a meeting of the of the planning committee of the hull so the board members outside of the planning committee were in attendance as well the educational specs were reviewed approved the change is going to be in both specifications under the section for environment systems and equipment and specifically on the building system so both educational specifications have the same exact wording for building systems i will read just that section and then i'll explain the change that we would like to make the building systems incorporated into the new construction will be designed in accordance with connecticut high performance building standards equivalent in performance to a lead led silver rating in addition utilizing renewable energy sources including solar and geothermal as well as net zero emissions will be considered in the building design in the context of a 50-year estimated useful life that's the way it reads now and the way it's recommended to be reworded has to do with that second sentence in addition utilizing renewable energy sources including solar and geothermal as well as net zero is the change net zero energy and or emissions will be considered in the building design in the context of a 50-year estimated useful life what that change essentially allows us to do is it gives us much more options and it reduces our limitations right now the way this is worded would essentially limit us to having buildings that are net zero emissions and with the change we can have a building that's net zero energy meaning that the energy that is produced at the site let's say using solar or geothermal um will be fully used at the site or you would never have less energy produced than you use if you have extra it can be sold off in in the matter that's allowed if we say just net zero emissions that means our essentially our carbon footprint would be zero i'm not sure we could achieve that but by this language change we have the options of potentially doing both or one or the other and you know this is something that you know we did discuss actually with collier's colliers at a meeting earlier this week did have a professional that does this is in fact is doing a lot of this work at um i believe is mansfield right in mansfield connecticut so that's the genesis of the recommendation the rest of the educational specifications as approved by the planning committee would be unchanged so that's the update and i will turn it back over for other discussion possibly mr white may have something to say about it just quickly then so that was the change that we had discussed at the meeting though correct we just didn't define the language so what i read is language we included and this is one more substantive change that occurred after okay and i think this was a clarification that was surfaced a couple two days ago yeah last night actually three o'clock we we met with is uh been said colliers in the executive steering committee and had a specialist review this language and we were concerned about the language that we had drafted is it was relatively limiting with respect to the scope of enhancements that we could you know examine we didn't want to just look at net zero emissions which means you can't use any uh fossil fuels at all in your program and to say and or net zero energy allows us a little bit more flexibility to take progressive steps with respect to our our energy consumption um just a point of clarification these those these are always some some of my favorite conversations so the motion on the floor right now is specs as amended but the specs aren't amended yet right because the copy you just read was not amended so do we have to make a motion to amend the specs before we adopt the specs i would amend that yeah i would amend the the specs to read the second you know right so we can make a change to the amendment so a motion to amend the amendment so can i can i make a motion to amend the motion on the floor to include include this language yes okay ask or ask for a motion to demand ask for a second i would like to make a motion to amend um that the ed specs for new norton school and uh new um or what are we calling it the end element then school um to include the modified language that or that the language be changed to um from net zero emissions to net zero energy and or emissions is there a second all those in favor to amend the motion if any yes tim thank you uh thank you for bringing thank you for the motion uh in passing it and thank you to jeff and vin for making that happen if i recall correctly it was two weeks ago we were at dodd and the the intent i'm not sure of my specific words but the intent i tried to convey was very much this have the experts weigh in on the precise wording here the idea i have is to make this flexible it is not to make this mandatory by any means i would love to see sustainable construction happen and i firmly believe that the economics i think the economics will make it happen or not and i do think the economics will be to our benefit um it's not just a matter of the environment anymore it's it's the technology the technology is improving the economics the costs ignore covet and the inflation that we see right now in the past year or so year or two generally the costs have been falling um and so i very much appreciate it i definitely think this is a great thing for the town of cheshire to be at least seriously considering it which is really all that i've wanted from the beginning a serious consideration of it um and this i do think this will make it happen because it is to a certain extent it's it's breaking a legacy system which is based on the initial cost of construction without looking at the ongoing operations and maintenance of buildings uh that's a huge cost i know that i've seen stories before where i think it's commercial buildings up to 80 of some commercial buildings the cost is in the in the operations of it over its lifetime so it's a significant cost and only looking at the initial construction cost it doesn't make sense when we're talking about particularly about new construction and having a 50-year life so i think this is great um and i do appreciate the wording here saying including solar and geothermal i don't know that those are the technologies that would be best to use i'm open to anything i just think moving this direction is the important thing so thank you for this awesome unless there's a discussion on the amended motion was but you're good at that it's okay well let's see did i amend the original emotion uh so the uh the amendment is adding the verbiage to change net zero energy and or emissions right to the motion right that is the amendment uh all those in favor asian animus the amended motion passes we're back to the main motion with the language net zero energy and or emissions sorry we're we have to follow robert's rules of order and et cetera so do you have a question sam do you want to uh talk about that so samantha and other board members this this came up at our border planning committee hall about two weeks ago samantha in particular said said you know obviously wants to move forward but has to see something envision something and particularly our taxpayers kind of want to envision what they're gonna be voting on so uh there's some discussion on that the challenge is until referendum has passed and there's a budget we can't hire a design architecture firm there's a a way to possibly without getting into some issues if money was available today certainly we can hire an architect to render something um i know colliers is walking us through tuesday some implications on that but the challenge there is if you render something and we actually get to the design phase it turns out something else then the voters are going to feel like they voted on something that didn't exist so long story short there's been talks uh there's reasons tuesday night about finding a way to show what could be other projects around the state of connecticut that are similar to ours the inside of the classroom what they will look like conceptually and and maybe even a um schematic enough to give an idea of what you know we're looking at so conceptualize obviously when if we get past referendum uh i think we discussed tuesday council we're gonna get a ton of feedback from the community and what should be in there and there'll be no opportunity there so we're looking into it we're hopeful to put something together to visualize and exceptionalize what what could be but which i've been answering for lately it's a we love the detail but uh we've learned that uh being told to more detail put out there i had a referendum to work against you so but thank you it's a good question all right back to the main motion is any further discussion on the education specification motion i think we we covered it seeing as there is no further discussion all right i'm going to read it that the cheshire board education approves the elementary educational specifications for the new north end elementary school and the elementary educational specifications for the new norton elementary school as approved by the planning committee of the board on april 27th 2020 april 7 2022 and amended by the board education on april 21st 2022 to include net zero energy and or emissions all those in favor it is unanimous the motion passes thank you all right yes tim yeah before we leave the planning committee i just wanted to will we get like will the public get a brief update on one question in particular for me is referendum timing i just want before the meeting ends that's all i'm thinking sure just um yeah i can kind of walk through a couple of marquee issues good night and thank you thank you um so you know we've we've covered a lot of ground in the last two weeks or so from the point that you all moved forward the ed specs uh last tuesday not this past tuesday but the tuesday prior vin and i presented with colliers at the town council meeting there were a lot of great questions raised but i think the most important element of the questions was the fact that there was not a question about whether or not we should be doing this which is profoundly different than those conversations that we had four years ago there's unanimous agreement that we need to move forward the questions center around what's the most efficient efficient and effective way to move forward and so we started to examine a timeline there we met again is a joint body tuesday this past tuesday with the council on board where a timeline was floated that would mean that both schools would be open to students in the fall of 2026.

but you know that's not been finalized yet does that help yeah i just wanted to highlight the point that uh sam had mentioned at the meeting a couple days ago which is at least for me i i very much agree with it if we go out to referendum this november that at this moment in time the plan leads us to the school being finished like october of 2025 which just raises all sorts of questions in the public i think in the public forum like wait the school's done you're not using it everything is there's questions raised that if we could move that up a few months i'm not saying it would happen but if it could get moved up a few months then maybe you could open up an entire year late uh entire year earlier not making any promises but that was that was my concern at least just taking an onion on occupied building for a while let's discuss the possibility of avoiding that yeah i think we all are remember colliers said it was a near impossibility the way the schedule is laid out to any further so um and there's more detail than the construction which we have in our timelines and i don't know the stuff i don't think this is gonna be available yeah we'll put that out tomorrow what i'm pointing to is a a gantt chart that shows all secret events so just so folks are aware there's construction that happens um that ends uh toward the late fall of 2025 and then from there forward there's punch lists fixes uh furniture furniture moving getting the the school acclimated uh custodial and and then trying to move kids and teachers toward the end of that year and you know so so there's a lot of moving parts but i i know that the team is trying to see if there's a way to move forward and we have something in our inbox today that shows you know for once for when i went into any details with one school opening in 2025 trying to put a prior one so they definitely look at it but you're spawn on tim you know i it didn't dawn on me until i saw the gantt chart tuesday night that there's about five six months that we're not in the school but it's gotta be clear what's happening and why so i'm with you know i i'm with you and uh man that's really pushing it at the brink of our enrollment capacity too so the sooner the better right so thank you before we uh go for planning any other comments questions awesome thank you everyone for passing that motion that's a very critical step to moving the process forward for the grant application as well okay up next we have policy gay policy uh thank you mr chair um we had a meeting i think that was last night wasn't it wow okay so we had a meeting last night um so uh just to kind of move through you know what we did um for a uh we reviewed uh policy number uh 4118.1 i read it correctly this time um uh where we uh change the policy where the statistic recognizes uh that is a discriminatory prac discriminatory practice to request or require a prospective employee's age date of birth dates of attendance at or date of graduation from an educational institution on an initial employment application unless requesting or requiring such information is based on a bona fide occupational qualification or need or when such information is required to comply with any provision of state or federal law this was a second reading there were no changes made by the policy committee to this and we moved this for a second reading and that policy will be listed on the fisher public schools website um we moved on to uh do our final review of uh policy number 1101.1 for community relations parent involvement which related to parent-teacher communication um and policy allows for two required parent-teacher conferences to be filled fulfilled by the use of telephone video or other conferencing platforms uh so that was more of a modernization of the uh policy in addition uh to the two required conferences uh shall be conducted during periods when district provides remote learning oh so this is a an update if we had to go to remote learning for three consecutive weeks or more hopefully that will not happen for a long time or never again maybe and they're for a very very long time um so we uh we made no changes to that policy or no additional changes um graduation requirements uh policy 6146 uh was about um let's see i'll just read the caption instead of paraphrasing and creating such student access plans considerations shall be given to career and academic choices in computer science science technology engineering and mathematics the student shall the student success success plan shall be created if possible in collaboration with each student in the student's parent guardian on or after july 1 2022 the student success success plans shall to the extent it does not conflict with the career choices of the student or his or her parent guardian include an academic plan that is in the compliance of the board's challenging curriculum policy um and but it was made to uh change the graduation date from 183 days to 180 days it was essentially what it was oh one okay let's say okay 185 thank you um next policy 6146.1 grading system where we um this policy although it's been in practice uh in this school system for quite a while that we officially endorse weighted grading there's a the gist of it there um no additional changes were made um 61 uh fafsa completion program this is again something that our school system already engages in to to help prospective students of all potential trades and or future education to to complete this application we also had an additional discussion about the merits of that and how can be applied and no additional changes were made and finally uh policy 6159 individualized education program special education um this was the addition of uh allowing a birth to three coordinators uh and was it other qualified personnel to participate in ppts and um what was the other term uh iep yes ieps um and again something that we already have in practice here but um again all of these uh policies that i previously mentioned were all uh subject to changes in statute although a majority of them we are already doing in practice here at cheshire public schools um so with that being said i would like to make a motion um that the cheshire board of education give a third and final reading to policies 1101.1 community relations parent involvement 6146 instruction graduation requirements 6146.1 instruction grading systems 6148 instruction fafsa completion program 6159 instruction in the individualized education program special agent education program and direct the superintendent to put said policies into immediate effect do i have a second second sam um is there any discussion on the motion yes and so i think we've talked about this before but um i'm having a reaction to the policy 6146 graduation requirements with this language on career choices starting grades 6 through 12.

there was a lot of conversation around that obviously all of us would love to see it open tomorrow actually if we could and as tony was just mentioning about the schematics and everything and that part of what drives the timing of when we can start is the referendum date the groups the board and council have been operating on the idea that the referendum would occur on november 4th 2022 election day the proposal was made yesterday in an executive committee meeting that perhaps we consider an earlier referendum date it's only an idea it's only a proposal there's nothing set in stone about that but our town attorney was going to examine you know what would happen there is colliers would reevaluate the potential timeline for school openings i think all of us if we're gonna take the plunge the sooner that we can open the doors the better and so you know that is being explored but if i were to be held right now to a timeline the referendum would be november 4th the uh ultimate opening of schools would be both schools would be august of 2026.

could somebody remind me what i know we had this discussion and i'm just wondering how we're getting around this idea that we're talking about career advancement starting in grade six sure it's not you know asking sixth graders to pick the career of their interest i'm still trying to figure out what i'm gonna do when i grow up um really what it is is and people would reinforce the idea that i haven't grown up yet some people on this panel maybe but anyway um the they start by looking at what your interests are the idea is about opening ideas and exposure to different uh interests and activities you know when you look at a lot of fifth sixth graders they want to be actors athletes you know the things that maybe they've been exposed to sometimes business people doctors the people in their community not recognizing that there are a myriad of other opportunities so from sixth grade through twelfth grade we're really encouraging students to take interest inventories to explore different courses and careers that's really what that process is about it at its heart i think it is a bit of a misnomer almost to call it a career pathway i mean ultimately it might help you find a career but the idea is to broaden your exposure to a variety of activities and interests and start you to think about that so that you might select courses particularly at the high school level where there are more options for you as electives and clubs and activities that might align with what your interests are and explore those things thank you for that explanation um is there any additional discussion on the motion uh seeing none i'll call for a vote all in favor it is unanimous those present thank you mr grip on policy committee and this team and administration for all work and the policies are um are never ending task on the board of ed is there kind of so i know it's a lot of time and commitment and i know our community appreciates to work on it so thank you uh mr chair before we move on i just had one more comment absolutely um so uh primarily uh this for most of this year we've been reviewing uh uh policies that are mostly uh sort of statue revision in nature uh driven by uh changes in laws from hartford um so moving forward you know there's i guess been some hot discussion this week about speech and expression and that sort of thing um so we've identified seven policies uh that pertain to these particular items and it was discovered that a lot of the policies that we have on the books have not been reviewed since we suspect that the law regarding speech and expression has changed quite a bit since then so that we're going to begin a review process on those policies i believe um mrs rosenberg had brought up a policy that we'll also be reviewing on i think what it was about gifted and talented and um hopefully uh we we have an audit review in for um the uh student uh activity account which will hopefully uh then uh have allow us to begin our review of the i guess the the six the 26 year old policy on internal controls for for that account as well hopefully uh they're not a lot of violations were found and that there won't be a lot of uh revision needed in that because it did seem pretty sound when we read we did an initial read through but you know we'll see if something gasby showed up that we'd have to do so uh there's going to be a lot of a lot on our agenda in the uh coming final months of this school year so i just want to bring that up oh just so we found seven of them that need some revision um i don't know dr review at least can we at least um refer to cape if there's language that has been updated that we're not aware of as well yeah so um you know adam sent those on to me this afternoon i passed it on to carol we're pulling the cave versions so that we have points of comparison from caves updated i mean for those people that aren't familiar we literally have thousands of policies and regulations and um there was a period where really i mean we made the major legal updates um but then about four years ago adam maybe we we had an audit done i think as you mentioned we identified probably a hundred policies we think about each one taking three months to basically get modify we got through that laundry list and now we're going back to the ones that were just really dated like adam said i mean what hasn't changed in the last 26 years so we're going back and reviewing those and we'll continue to do that process into next year i'm sure yeah uh just for our clarification there was no board discussion at all about uh speech but i'm sure that the song they talk about is sometimes update again the non-issue but uh just the fact that it's important to keep our policies consistent so that the messaging is consistent then you know there's transparency so i'm sure a policy will work through that that being said we're moving on uh there are no other standing committees however in our board of ed packets we have minutes for you tim two minutes yeah just uh for mostly for people on the board but also for the public uh annual review for the superintendent is i mentioned to him he gave me some dates but may june time frame i think it's worthwhile for us to get some meetings together the full board um to have those discussions right thank you yep and as soon as the dates are set we will publish those thank you tim for amendments that so up next is approve our minutes in our packets we have minutes from the meetings of march 17th and april 7th uh before we get into it uh is there a motion for miss adam um move that the cheshire board of education approves the minutes from meetings held on march 17 2022 and march 7th 2022.

but you know that's not been finalized yet does that help yeah i just wanted to highlight the point that uh sam had mentioned at the meeting a couple days ago which is at least for me i i very much agree with it if we go out to referendum this november that at this moment in time the plan leads us to the school being finished like october of 2025 which just raises all sorts of questions in the public i think in the public forum like wait the school's done you're not using it everything is there's questions raised that if we could move that up a few months i'm not saying it would happen but if it could get moved up a few months then maybe you could open up an entire year late uh entire year earlier not making any promises but that was that was my concern at least just taking an onion on occupied building for a while let's discuss the possibility of avoiding that yeah i think we all are remember colliers said it was a near impossibility the way the schedule is laid out to any further so um and there's more detail than the construction which we have in our timelines and i don't know the stuff i don't think this is gonna be available yeah we'll put that out tomorrow what i'm pointing to is a a gantt chart that shows all secret events so just so folks are aware there's construction that happens um that ends uh toward the late fall of 2025 and then from there forward there's punch lists fixes uh furniture furniture moving getting the the school acclimated uh custodial and and then trying to move kids and teachers toward the end of that year and you know so so there's a lot of moving parts but i i know that the team is trying to see if there's a way to move forward and we have something in our inbox today that shows you know for once for when i went into any details with one school opening in 2025 trying to put a prior one so they definitely look at it but you're spawn on tim you know i it didn't dawn on me until i saw the gantt chart tuesday night that there's about five six months that we're not in the school but it's gotta be clear what's happening and why so i'm with you know i i'm with you and uh man that's really pushing it at the brink of our enrollment capacity too so the sooner the better right so thank you before we uh go for planning any other comments questions awesome thank you everyone for passing that motion that's a very critical step to moving the process forward for the grant application as well okay up next we have policy gay policy uh thank you mr chair um we had a meeting i think that was last night wasn't it wow okay so we had a meeting last night um so uh just to kind of move through you know what we did um for a uh we reviewed uh policy number uh 4118.1 i read it correctly this time um uh where we uh change the policy where the statistic recognizes uh that is a discriminatory prac discriminatory practice to request or require a prospective employee's age date of birth dates of attendance at or date of graduation from an educational institution on an initial employment application unless requesting or requiring such information is based on a bona fide occupational qualification or need or when such information is required to comply with any provision of state or federal law this was a second reading there were no changes made by the policy committee to this and we moved this for a second reading and that policy will be listed on the fisher public schools website um we moved on to uh do our final review of uh policy number 1101.1 for community relations parent involvement which related to parent-teacher communication um and policy allows for two required parent-teacher conferences to be filled fulfilled by the use of telephone video or other conferencing platforms uh so that was more of a modernization of the uh policy in addition uh to the two required conferences uh shall be conducted during periods when district provides remote learning oh so this is a an update if we had to go to remote learning for three consecutive weeks or more hopefully that will not happen for a long time or never again maybe and they're for a very very long time um so we uh we made no changes to that policy or no additional changes um graduation requirements uh policy 6146 uh was about um let's see i'll just read the caption instead of paraphrasing and creating such student access plans considerations shall be given to career and academic choices in computer science science technology engineering and mathematics the student shall the student success success plan shall be created if possible in collaboration with each student in the student's parent guardian on or after july 1 2022 the student success success plans shall to the extent it does not conflict with the career choices of the student or his or her parent guardian include an academic plan that is in the compliance of the board's challenging curriculum policy um and but it was made to uh change the graduation date from 183 days to 180 days it was essentially what it was oh one okay let's say okay 185 thank you um next policy 6146.1 grading system where we um this policy although it's been in practice uh in this school system for quite a while that we officially endorse weighted grading there's a the gist of it there um no additional changes were made um 61 uh fafsa completion program this is again something that our school system already engages in to to help prospective students of all potential trades and or future education to to complete this application we also had an additional discussion about the merits of that and how can be applied and no additional changes were made and finally uh policy 6159 individualized education program special education um this was the addition of uh allowing a birth to three coordinators uh and was it other qualified personnel to participate in ppts and um what was the other term uh iep yes ieps um and again something that we already have in practice here but um again all of these uh policies that i previously mentioned were all uh subject to changes in statute although a majority of them we are already doing in practice here at cheshire public schools um so with that being said i would like to make a motion um that the cheshire board of education give a third and final reading to policies 1101.1 community relations parent involvement 6146 instruction graduation requirements 6146.1 instruction grading systems 6148 instruction fafsa completion program 6159 instruction in the individualized education program special agent education program and direct the superintendent to put said policies into immediate effect do i have a second second sam um is there any discussion on the motion yes and so i think we've talked about this before but um i'm having a reaction to the policy 6146 graduation requirements with this language on career choices starting grades 6 through 12.

very second sam suckins any changes to the minutes yes ian i have a just a technical change the minutes of the board of education middle school showcase meeting um that was held in at dodd middle school no yes okay so that needs to just be changed because it says held in town council chambers great catch that was a great meeting by the way thank you anne for catching up any other changes revisions just double check one last thing seeing as there is no further discussion uh all those in favor do i need to change that motion as amended or anything no no it was a terrible update though okay in the the motion itself is sound oh thank you it's good point order uh all those in favor is unanimous thank you to motion passes up next is correspondence i think we only have one correspondence letter from mr bestor and it's up to you if you want to walk through it or summarize but it's nice to hear from john from time to time um i think i will read it into the record it's not all that long to the members of the cheshire board of education once again our students return from spring break to have their school routines disrupted by multiple hours of controversial and discredited sba testing i fully understand that the usdoe mandates this testing and threatens to withhold much needed dollars if certain participation thresholds are not met but i think it is important that elected members of every community's boe understand that the nefarious history behind standardized testing and its toll on the education of our students i also understand that our teachers and school administrators do what they can to minimize the impact but that still does not ameliorate the additional stressors placed on our students by this week plus of testing i know that i know you feel that as boe members this is out of your bellywick and that you must comply with state mandated directives but i would hope that as elected officials representing what is best for our children students and their parents that you will find your voice in speaking out against this ongoing failed practice of mandated standardized testing even if you are unable to address these concerns at public boe meetings your voice can be heard in other venues like cave or with individual state legislators or perhaps by informing parents that they have a right to refuse testing and that parental refusal has been honored by the district in the past misinformed parents do not necessarily know what they can do if no one lets them know mr bester includes a link to a blogger who writes on this topic and closes with unless knowledgeable advocates like yourselves speak out this destructive practice of standardized testing will continue unchecked and unabated thanks for taking the time to consider my concerns respectfully john bester thank you mr buster for communicating with us certainly keep that abreast in our curriculum yes jeff question for you do you happen to know so my understanding is over the last few years some of the i don't know if it's just graduate schools undergrad they actually have been getting rid of standardized testing as one of their metrics do you have any idea like how many schools that is any sense like of a proportion i mean i i know at least one of my schools has sure you know i i couldn't give you an objective number i do know that certainly through the pandemic a lot of schools uh were test submission optional okay uh having a high school junior right now and going through the process i can tell you a number of them have shifted back to requiring sat or act but not um all by any stretch so we're i think we're still in a bit of a transition period not as flexible as it was during the pandemic but not as restrictive as it was in in terms of having it be a requirement pre-pandemic and i know that uh miss solano is you know pretty familiar with the process too i don't know if you have any objective numbers no thank you thank you up next as much anticipated superintendent's report uh you can move to the edge of your seat now uh i just want to start off by you know when you approved collectively the educational specifications you know maybe i'm too sentimental but i almost got a little bit emotional because it was seven years ago before i was even a superintendent in that i remember sitting in this room with perkins and eastman i know vin marlene you probably remember that uh and tony where that we were talking about school modernization and the need for that you know my my son who i was just talking about getting ready for college was 10.

could somebody remind me what i know we had this discussion and i'm just wondering how we're getting around this idea that we're talking about career advancement starting in grade six sure it's not you know asking sixth graders to pick the career of their interest i'm still trying to figure out what i'm gonna do when i grow up um really what it is is and people would reinforce the idea that i haven't grown up yet some people on this panel maybe but anyway um the they start by looking at what your interests are the idea is about opening ideas and exposure to different uh interests and activities you know when you look at a lot of fifth sixth graders they want to be actors athletes you know the things that maybe they've been exposed to sometimes business people doctors the people in their community not recognizing that there are a myriad of other opportunities so from sixth grade through twelfth grade we're really encouraging students to take interest inventories to explore different courses and careers that's really what that process is about it at its heart i think it is a bit of a misnomer almost to call it a career pathway i mean ultimately it might help you find a career but the idea is to broaden your exposure to a variety of activities and interests and start you to think about that so that you might select courses particularly at the high school level where there are more options for you as electives and clubs and activities that might align with what your interests are and explore those things thank you for that explanation um is there any additional discussion on the motion uh seeing none i'll call for a vote all in favor it is unanimous those present thank you mr grip on policy committee and this team and administration for all work and the policies are um are never ending task on the board of ed is there kind of so i know it's a lot of time and commitment and i know our community appreciates to work on it so thank you uh mr chair before we move on i just had one more comment absolutely um so uh primarily uh this for most of this year we've been reviewing uh uh policies that are mostly uh sort of statue revision in nature uh driven by uh changes in laws from hartford um so moving forward you know there's i guess been some hot discussion this week about speech and expression and that sort of thing um so we've identified seven policies uh that pertain to these particular items and it was discovered that a lot of the policies that we have on the books have not been reviewed since we suspect that the law regarding speech and expression has changed quite a bit since then so that we're going to begin a review process on those policies i believe um mrs rosenberg had brought up a policy that we'll also be reviewing on i think what it was about gifted and talented and um hopefully uh we we have an audit review in for um the uh student uh activity account which will hopefully uh then uh have allow us to begin our review of the i guess the the six the 26 year old policy on internal controls for for that account as well hopefully uh they're not a lot of violations were found and that there won't be a lot of uh revision needed in that because it did seem pretty sound when we read we did an initial read through but you know we'll see if something gasby showed up that we'd have to do so uh there's going to be a lot of a lot on our agenda in the uh coming final months of this school year so i just want to bring that up oh just so we found seven of them that need some revision um i don't know dr review at least can we at least um refer to cape if there's language that has been updated that we're not aware of as well yeah so um you know adam sent those on to me this afternoon i passed it on to carol we're pulling the cave versions so that we have points of comparison from caves updated i mean for those people that aren't familiar we literally have thousands of policies and regulations and um there was a period where really i mean we made the major legal updates um but then about four years ago adam maybe we we had an audit done i think as you mentioned we identified probably a hundred policies we think about each one taking three months to basically get modify we got through that laundry list and now we're going back to the ones that were just really dated like adam said i mean what hasn't changed in the last 26 years so we're going back and reviewing those and we'll continue to do that process into next year i'm sure yeah uh just for our clarification there was no board discussion at all about uh speech but i'm sure that the song they talk about is sometimes update again the non-issue but uh just the fact that it's important to keep our policies consistent so that the messaging is consistent then you know there's transparency so i'm sure a policy will work through that that being said we're moving on uh there are no other standing committees however in our board of ed packets we have minutes for you tim two minutes yeah just uh for mostly for people on the board but also for the public uh annual review for the superintendent is i mentioned to him he gave me some dates but may june time frame i think it's worthwhile for us to get some meetings together the full board um to have those discussions right thank you yep and as soon as the dates are set we will publish those thank you tim for amendments that so up next is approve our minutes in our packets we have minutes from the meetings of march 17th and april 7th uh before we get into it uh is there a motion for miss adam um move that the cheshire board of education approves the minutes from meetings held on march 17 2022 and march 7th 2022.

um my other son was only four or excuse me six my math isn't great but anyway you know tonight i don't want to overlook how profound the decision is and how powerful it is for our kids in our community the decision that was made and i look forward to the council as i said earlier i know there's really strong endorsement of this plan because it really makes sense fiscally logistically and it's necessary very necessary so thank you very much for all the time and energy that you have all spent on this as well on the topic of the town council i was in communication with town manager kimball they are going through their budget process i will remind the public i don't think i have to remind you that after a couple months of deliberation we as a board adopted a budget that was really incredibly lean because in in most part we knew that there was a 1.5 million dollar hole that we had to fill and felt it was probably fiscally uh negligent to really to push the budget so what we did was out of 50 about 55 major line items in our budget 25 of those came in at zero or less than zero pretty much all of our discretionary accounts either were flat or took a cut because we knew that we had to really increase not only the medical benefits but the the staffing we have so much enrollment growth that we have to increase that number um the council went through there is still in the process tuesday they'll be voting to adopt it but the latest agreement they have out of their finance committee is a reduction to our budget of 450 000 that you know certainly will impact us we have to identify how we mitigate that impact and to be fair i have had conversations with sean and finance committee chair borrowing about you know where we are today because you know we adopt a budget in january things evolve we've had five retirements which would net us again budget wise i can't guarantee it but likely about two hundred thousand dollars to the positive uh there was a pension uh actuarial account that came back that would be seventy thousand dollars to the positive in the next couple of months we'll probably have more uh updates things like some insurance accounts that we'll get feedback on that could be positive or negative but you know on may 3rd meeting we'll probably set a date for later that month to once the the budget is adopted by the town is a finance committee meeting of the whole to evaluate where those accounts will change um i don't think you know it'll be a tremendously long meeting but i just wanted to make you aware of that and we'll schedule that hopefully in the next couple of weeks um school modernization and strategic planning have been a real focus of our time over the last several months i've attended pto meetings at many of our schools and and marlene and i just did chs the week before break we still have doolittle highland and dodd on the agenda but marlene and i will be hosting preschool parent meetings to talk about school modernization certainly answer other questions that they may have but we have those scheduled on may 16th at 8pm may 17th at noon and 8 pm uh may 23rd at 4 pm may 25th at noon all virtual trying to make it accessible for young families to be able to participate and hopefully be able to engage them in where we are as a school system not only with modernization but where we're focused in terms of our uh strategic planning and i look forward to later next month and and by june really updating you on where we are with that process a lot of positive feedback a lot of data collected and powerful stuff um i would just use the opportunity to remind people to please enroll for kindergarten if you haven't already uh as you know we're expecting larger numbers this year so we're trying to really get everybody through the door as quickly as we can we'll likely be holding a um another couple of sessions for encouraging folks to get in uh tony mentioned a little earlier uh the components of about free speech you know a lot our students uh we have 40 4 300 kids with very diverse backgrounds and stories uh i know that everybody on this board believes that we embrace all 4 300 students and understand that you know kids are exposed to a lot of different stories but it's pretty narrow swath to be honest with you of backgrounds and diversity within our own community and the vast majority of our kids go to places that have much more diverse stories and we respect all kids and they come to our schools with passion and feeling and we uh encourage that uh there was a there's a small group of students at the middle school who uh we're recognizing tomorrow is a day of silence to acknowledge the silence that had been imposed on students that were gay uh transgender uh lesbian and uh that you know i think caused some stir with some people you know on on the internet and uh you know that's i think it's good to review these things but tinker versus des moines is a very famous uh supreme court case where students don't leave their political opinions at the schoolhouse gate is the is the the quote and so we embrace all kids we just need to be able to do so respectfully and i'm sure we'll talk more about that at policy committee meetings in the in the near future but i also want to you know thank tony for his leadership and and the board when concerns are brought forth i think it's great that we have open communication between the community and the board between the community and our administrative team starting at the classroom or building level certainly you know vin marlene and myself are available to answer questions but the principles at the building level is really where a lot of that takes place so again if if families have questions we encourage them to reach out to their teacher then their principal central office or board um is always available but thank you for that um i feel compelled as much as i hate to say the covid word uh to give a quick update because i know that you we hear about numbers increasing in the community uh as an update we have eight positive students at highland norton chs and dodd all have less than six chapman darcy hummiston and doolittle all had zero as of this morning so it's not bad um we're still in a really good place any case you don't want to see any of them but we're still in a pretty good place town white art show if you haven't had the chance to see that before it's mind-blowing it's april 29th from 5 to 8 p.m unless you can get there during the day uh from eight to two that's at norton elementary school and finally i just want to shout out to our birth to three leadership team particularly jennifer buffington and and also our former cheshire public schools teacher of the year and still working with us in a consultant capacity don and what they do is so incredible with terms of this program called circle of security you may remember that darcy's community uh acknowledgement went to a guy named charlie slaughter who was instrumental in us receiving grant money to do this circle of security work it's really about attachment between kids and parents and that work is so powerful and the work that they've done over the last several years is so meaningful that the state has actually shifted now that the training that our people do with these families that have such significant needs is reimbursed now insurance reimbursable because it's the the data is that it's that much that much of a positive impact and that beneficial for kids that they are reimbursing that moreover they've asked donna and jen to literally be responsible for training all birth to three programs in connecticut now we've trained enough people to be birthed to three facilitators that they can do this on the side and and cover it and we still sustain our level of service but in effect cheshire is being asked to train the entire state of connecticut on this and so that is a real testament to the job that they do um and i know as you know we heard ben and i heard multiple times today that they feel the the leadership that you as a board and us as a school system and community provide have led to this and it's so beneficial for kids what we started doing in town is now available statewide and so that's awesome it's something to really be proud of and i know we deal with a lot of challenges and a lot of you know consternation and things but this is something that is is changing a lot of families lives not just in cheshire but across connecticut so i needed to share that congratulations to you and to them on that incredible work that's it for me [Music] um on your uh road trip around the town uh your tour um what is the reception been so far of your presentation um i'm what standing ovation i think is the only way to explain it um now uh we we uh when we were giving most of the presentations that i've done so far i haven't had finances to share with them so i think it's fair to contextualize like there's only so much information that we can provide yet um i think like the council they understand that this work is really necessary and that we have to try and find a way to make this happen um so they've been receptive you know now moving forward we'll have some finances attached to that the data that jim jascot the town finance director has pulled together indicates that basically over the next 20 years it's about 45 a month now that's the worst possible case scenario if you know that's assuming that escalation of cost stays at eight percent a year for the next three years which isn't really likely but we're conservatively very conservatively budgeting this that um the the reimbursement rate from the state is where it is even though we know we're going to be applying for and likely to receive a higher reimbursement rate so we've we've set the the floor low because we don't want to be in a position where we were miscalculating being overly aggressive and then having to ask for more money so i mean 45 a month for the average cheshire taxpayer it's um not you know i think anybody would want to you know try and keep it as low as possible i think that's the work that the council and the board and our leadership team have done to keep that number as low as possible we will have to spend substantial money if we don't do this by the way on building repairs on um trailers for for schools and stuff so we'll see how it goes i know that was kind of a long-winded answer but after we we start doing the ones next week i think we come back next week with highland i do highland next week i just want to add to adam's question um i tend to kind of worry about the attendance in those you have a smaller crowd is there are you doing a follow-up um you know phasing as as we move along and then could there be a full presentation so that those that couldn't attend could either watch it or or something to that respect yeah yeah so we appreciate that as we come closer to really crystallizing you know tonight i think was a big step you know we know exactly what we're doing with the ed specs we have a better picture of the finances this week is that information starts to crystallize i really don't want to put out a ton of information and then have to take it back or amend it um but as i said to marlene the other day i will go anywhere anytime any place we've done the garden show already we've had pretty good attendance actually the record attendance at the schools we had over 30 at norton for pizza and that's not great but it's the most the most highly attended pto meeting they've had same with the record at chs um mike woods is talking about giveaways for his dodd pto meeting we'll get there we'll add the preschools then we'll we'll end up putting out a video i think to really kind of make it available we're going to put together carol and i were talking about a mailer to everybody in town once again once we have that a little more solid plan and really i think that'll pick up after may 10th that's the date that the town council is set to adopt the three resolutions that are required um and then that then it'll be i think rock solid and we'll start really getting information out after that that's the plan yes sorry thanks tony uh so yeah a few things jeff i just want to make sure i heard you right 45 a month is what jim jascott the finance director suggested at the high end there's not like a high end per se that's the average over 20 years based on the highest total cost is that yeah yeah the gross cost based on the net cost percent inflation okay right that's so that's what that is is the the net cost after reimbursement for both buildings uh that includes an eight percent inflation rate per year it and includes um the reimbursement from the the uh state at the current rate that we're at but i think i've explained before that we're anticipating that to be higher than we we have it budgeted it does not include the sale of darcy or chapman property which could further reduce the the impact on us so that's the average over the course of 20 years now some years it'll be a little bit higher some years it'll be lower but that's the average over the course of the 20 years okay yeah no i just want to um and i support this going forward but i just want to i just have to say that this we're talking about phase one right now and a big problem that i personally have had for years with the state of connecticut is we're largely based at a local level on the property tax which is regressive it's not based on ability to pay and that's one of the problems we face in speaking to that um you would mention the roadshow you're doing and you what i heard you talk about was basically connecting with parents of school-aged children right now okay one day we recognize that this is a community issue not just a parent issue and one of the things that goes through my mind i mean like the senior center or but one in particular really is i think of elan park and you know in from from one perspective i'm thinking the people in elan park they they have their own village there but i know people in england park who the grandparents of the kids sure so they moved out of their house over in the avon adams avon neighborhood the kids moved in the grandkids lived there now and they moved over to england park over to southwick there are a lot of people there with a vested interest both on the tax side as well as on the the services side and i think it would be very valuable to take the road show to as many people as possible i mean we can get a decent-sized group not you know yeah um but i'm a firm believer that there are uh many seniors in this town my parents i'm not sure how they'll vote on it but they have grandkids in the school system here um so i just want to make sure that you have those people you have seniors in mind too and it's not just a thought process well senior do we have a date yet for elam park i know what we're doing you have it on your list already we do fantastic um that's included we're you know you get the school modernization show we throw in pet partners for free because they picked up the cost on the pet partners so highland is bringing students and the their pet partner dogs to go to elam park at some point here in the spring too we're trying to arrange that date with them gotcha so we've got those bases covered okay again like i said i know this isn't just a parent but a a community issue and we're going to try and get to as many people as we can in the next several months thank you um thank you you had mentioned i wanted to try to understand this you mentioned that some of the birth to three program was insurance reversible all of the birth to three program all of it really is paid for by the state fee for service so we're the only school system that does this usually it's private contractors who are hired by the state to go to a family's home and provide service for that family they submit the bill to the state of connecticut who pays the contractor it's the same thing for us you know it's basically state insurance that we go through with our birth to three services so we'll send an ot professional to the home to provide support or some other educator works with the family they have to submit it through billing which is why we really need a secretary dedicated to that we have one that's dedicated really just to this process they submit all that billing paperwork to the state the state sends us back money when i say us i don't mean the cheshire public schools they cut a check to all of our revenue revenue goes to the town of cheshire um but that's factored in during the budget process okay so basically what it is is the private insurance companies this really was the state i say yes they said insurance it's really more state reimbursement okay yeah um and then the the last point i just like to make is uh the the town wide archo i think that's great i know of at least one super duper kindergartner i haven't seen it yet but i'm looking forward to seeing it tomorrow it is amazing yeah april 29th uh eight or nine to two uh five to eight thank you good stuff yeah she does incredible stuff um unless there's any questions thank you dr sloan for the update um we have no old business there is no audience tonight no new business other than i uh the only update i have there's a cave board director's meeting i'll be attending next wednesday i hope to hear some insights on what's happening with the legislature in hartford and some items though not to get into uh at all any kind of legislative discussion tonight uh but i'll talk to tim i know when we're talking about trying to get a date together for this legislative committee just to hash out a few things but um i think we're all getting cave updates as board members to email addresses there's one that was sent out i think last week about the ecs funding one of the items out there has been proposed as a sliding scale based on town is worth town worth but um so long story short that's the proposal i don't know where is the process depending what cheshire ranks you know we can see or you know less or maybe 90 reimbursement if you follow anyway it's a proposal but i think i'll certainly get information i have out to the board but i'm thinking maybe sorry by the end of the school year let's just meet see what's coming back discuss um and maybe gear up for next year i know we get a chance to do it back in january but again once that's more information on what's happening at cave i'll afford it as always other than that uh before oh i didn't want to show you something by the way cabin has a new website oh that's really nice we i i didn't want to say anything because i really don't want to say anything but we have been diligently working on that i got an update today from tom leewock one of our tech people he said you know we are cruising along should we soon almost all due respect to cave i think uh we're gonna be there if not better sorry but there is a new because there's those antiquated too i'm just saying it's uh if you want to see what could be i encourage the board to visit the site uh that being said the upcoming meetings uh thursday may 5th at 7pm with high school showcase at cheshire high school monday may 9th 7 p.m we have a curriculum committee at the hummington boardroom on tuesday may 17th at 6 30.

very second sam suckins any changes to the minutes yes ian i have a just a technical change the minutes of the board of education middle school showcase meeting um that was held in at dodd middle school no yes okay so that needs to just be changed because it says held in town council chambers great catch that was a great meeting by the way thank you anne for catching up any other changes revisions just double check one last thing seeing as there is no further discussion uh all those in favor do i need to change that motion as amended or anything no no it was a terrible update though okay in the the motion itself is sound oh thank you it's good point order uh all those in favor is unanimous thank you to motion passes up next is correspondence i think we only have one correspondence letter from mr bestor and it's up to you if you want to walk through it or summarize but it's nice to hear from john from time to time um i think i will read it into the record it's not all that long to the members of the cheshire board of education once again our students return from spring break to have their school routines disrupted by multiple hours of controversial and discredited sba testing i fully understand that the usdoe mandates this testing and threatens to withhold much needed dollars if certain participation thresholds are not met but i think it is important that elected members of every community's boe understand that the nefarious history behind standardized testing and its toll on the education of our students i also understand that our teachers and school administrators do what they can to minimize the impact but that still does not ameliorate the additional stressors placed on our students by this week plus of testing i know that i know you feel that as boe members this is out of your bellywick and that you must comply with state mandated directives but i would hope that as elected officials representing what is best for our children students and their parents that you will find your voice in speaking out against this ongoing failed practice of mandated standardized testing even if you are unable to address these concerns at public boe meetings your voice can be heard in other venues like cave or with individual state legislators or perhaps by informing parents that they have a right to refuse testing and that parental refusal has been honored by the district in the past misinformed parents do not necessarily know what they can do if no one lets them know mr bester includes a link to a blogger who writes on this topic and closes with unless knowledgeable advocates like yourselves speak out this destructive practice of standardized testing will continue unchecked and unabated thanks for taking the time to consider my concerns respectfully john bester thank you mr buster for communicating with us certainly keep that abreast in our curriculum yes jeff question for you do you happen to know so my understanding is over the last few years some of the i don't know if it's just graduate schools undergrad they actually have been getting rid of standardized testing as one of their metrics do you have any idea like how many schools that is any sense like of a proportion i mean i i know at least one of my schools has sure you know i i couldn't give you an objective number i do know that certainly through the pandemic a lot of schools uh were test submission optional okay uh having a high school junior right now and going through the process i can tell you a number of them have shifted back to requiring sat or act but not um all by any stretch so we're i think we're still in a bit of a transition period not as flexible as it was during the pandemic but not as restrictive as it was in in terms of having it be a requirement pre-pandemic and i know that uh miss solano is you know pretty familiar with the process too i don't know if you have any objective numbers no thank you thank you up next as much anticipated superintendent's report uh you can move to the edge of your seat now uh i just want to start off by you know when you approved collectively the educational specifications you know maybe i'm too sentimental but i almost got a little bit emotional because it was seven years ago before i was even a superintendent in that i remember sitting in this room with perkins and eastman i know vin marlene you probably remember that uh and tony where that we were talking about school modernization and the need for that you know my my son who i was just talking about getting ready for college was 10.

we have a policy committee meeting at the homestead boardroom and on thursday may 19th we at 7 30 p.m we have a board of business meeting here at town council chambers certainly should any committee meetings uh be scheduled between then we'll certainly post those that being said do i have a motion to adjourn tim first and sucker did all those in favor this meaning is adjourned thank you everyone

um my other son was only four or excuse me six my math isn't great but anyway you know tonight i don't want to overlook how profound the decision is and how powerful it is for our kids in our community the decision that was made and i look forward to the council as i said earlier i know there's really strong endorsement of this plan because it really makes sense fiscally logistically and it's necessary very necessary so thank you very much for all the time and energy that you have all spent on this as well on the topic of the town council i was in communication with town manager kimball they are going through their budget process i will remind the public i don't think i have to remind you that after a couple months of deliberation we as a board adopted a budget that was really incredibly lean because in in most part we knew that there was a 1.5 million dollar hole that we had to fill and felt it was probably fiscally uh negligent to really to push the budget so what we did was out of 50 about 55 major line items in our budget 25 of those came in at zero or less than zero pretty much all of our discretionary accounts either were flat or took a cut because we knew that we had to really increase not only the medical benefits but the the staffing we have so much enrollment growth that we have to increase that number um the council went through there is still in the process tuesday they'll be voting to adopt it but the latest agreement they have out of their finance committee is a reduction to our budget of 450 000 that you know certainly will impact us we have to identify how we mitigate that impact and to be fair i have had conversations with sean and finance committee chair borrowing about you know where we are today because you know we adopt a budget in january things evolve we've had five retirements which would net us again budget wise i can't guarantee it but likely about two hundred thousand dollars to the positive uh there was a pension uh actuarial account that came back that would be seventy thousand dollars to the positive in the next couple of months we'll probably have more uh updates things like some insurance accounts that we'll get feedback on that could be positive or negative but you know on may 3rd meeting we'll probably set a date for later that month to once the the budget is adopted by the town is a finance committee meeting of the whole to evaluate where those accounts will change um i don't think you know it'll be a tremendously long meeting but i just wanted to make you aware of that and we'll schedule that hopefully in the next couple of weeks um school modernization and strategic planning have been a real focus of our time over the last several months i've attended pto meetings at many of our schools and and marlene and i just did chs the week before break we still have doolittle highland and dodd on the agenda but marlene and i will be hosting preschool parent meetings to talk about school modernization certainly answer other questions that they may have but we have those scheduled on may 16th at 8pm may 17th at noon and 8 pm uh may 23rd at 4 pm may 25th at noon all virtual trying to make it accessible for young families to be able to participate and hopefully be able to engage them in where we are as a school system not only with modernization but where we're focused in terms of our uh strategic planning and i look forward to later next month and and by june really updating you on where we are with that process a lot of positive feedback a lot of data collected and powerful stuff um i would just use the opportunity to remind people to please enroll for kindergarten if you haven't already uh as you know we're expecting larger numbers this year so we're trying to really get everybody through the door as quickly as we can we'll likely be holding a um another couple of sessions for encouraging folks to get in uh tony mentioned a little earlier uh the components of about free speech you know a lot our students uh we have 40 4 300 kids with very diverse backgrounds and stories uh i know that everybody on this board believes that we embrace all 4 300 students and understand that you know kids are exposed to a lot of different stories but it's pretty narrow swath to be honest with you of backgrounds and diversity within our own community and the vast majority of our kids go to places that have much more diverse stories and we respect all kids and they come to our schools with passion and feeling and we uh encourage that uh there was a there's a small group of students at the middle school who uh we're recognizing tomorrow is a day of silence to acknowledge the silence that had been imposed on students that were gay uh transgender uh lesbian and uh that you know i think caused some stir with some people you know on on the internet and uh you know that's i think it's good to review these things but tinker versus des moines is a very famous uh supreme court case where students don't leave their political opinions at the schoolhouse gate is the is the the quote and so we embrace all kids we just need to be able to do so respectfully and i'm sure we'll talk more about that at policy committee meetings in the in the near future but i also want to you know thank tony for his leadership and and the board when concerns are brought forth i think it's great that we have open communication between the community and the board between the community and our administrative team starting at the classroom or building level certainly you know vin marlene and myself are available to answer questions but the principles at the building level is really where a lot of that takes place so again if if families have questions we encourage them to reach out to their teacher then their principal central office or board um is always available but thank you for that um i feel compelled as much as i hate to say the covid word uh to give a quick update because i know that you we hear about numbers increasing in the community uh as an update we have eight positive students at highland norton chs and dodd all have less than six chapman darcy hummiston and doolittle all had zero as of this morning so it's not bad um we're still in a really good place any case you don't want to see any of them but we're still in a pretty good place town white art show if you haven't had the chance to see that before it's mind-blowing it's april 29th from 5 to 8 p.m unless you can get there during the day uh from eight to two that's at norton elementary school and finally i just want to shout out to our birth to three leadership team particularly jennifer buffington and and also our former cheshire public schools teacher of the year and still working with us in a consultant capacity don and what they do is so incredible with terms of this program called circle of security you may remember that darcy's community uh acknowledgement went to a guy named charlie slaughter who was instrumental in us receiving grant money to do this circle of security work it's really about attachment between kids and parents and that work is so powerful and the work that they've done over the last several years is so meaningful that the state has actually shifted now that the training that our people do with these families that have such significant needs is reimbursed now insurance reimbursable because it's the the data is that it's that much that much of a positive impact and that beneficial for kids that they are reimbursing that moreover they've asked donna and jen to literally be responsible for training all birth to three programs in connecticut now we've trained enough people to be birthed to three facilitators that they can do this on the side and and cover it and we still sustain our level of service but in effect cheshire is being asked to train the entire state of connecticut on this and so that is a real testament to the job that they do um and i know as you know we heard ben and i heard multiple times today that they feel the the leadership that you as a board and us as a school system and community provide have led to this and it's so beneficial for kids what we started doing in town is now available statewide and so that's awesome it's something to really be proud of and i know we deal with a lot of challenges and a lot of you know consternation and things but this is something that is is changing a lot of families lives not just in cheshire but across connecticut so i needed to share that congratulations to you and to them on that incredible work that's it for me [Music] um on your uh road trip around the town uh your tour um what is the reception been so far of your presentation um i'm what standing ovation i think is the only way to explain it um now uh we we uh when we were giving most of the presentations that i've done so far i haven't had finances to share with them so i think it's fair to contextualize like there's only so much information that we can provide yet um i think like the council they understand that this work is really necessary and that we have to try and find a way to make this happen um so they've been receptive you know now moving forward we'll have some finances attached to that the data that jim jascot the town finance director has pulled together indicates that basically over the next 20 years it's about 45 a month now that's the worst possible case scenario if you know that's assuming that escalation of cost stays at eight percent a year for the next three years which isn't really likely but we're conservatively very conservatively budgeting this that um the the reimbursement rate from the state is where it is even though we know we're going to be applying for and likely to receive a higher reimbursement rate so we've we've set the the floor low because we don't want to be in a position where we were miscalculating being overly aggressive and then having to ask for more money so i mean 45 a month for the average cheshire taxpayer it's um not you know i think anybody would want to you know try and keep it as low as possible i think that's the work that the council and the board and our leadership team have done to keep that number as low as possible we will have to spend substantial money if we don't do this by the way on building repairs on um trailers for for schools and stuff so we'll see how it goes i know that was kind of a long-winded answer but after we we start doing the ones next week i think we come back next week with highland i do highland next week i just want to add to adam's question um i tend to kind of worry about the attendance in those you have a smaller crowd is there are you doing a follow-up um you know phasing as as we move along and then could there be a full presentation so that those that couldn't attend could either watch it or or something to that respect yeah yeah so we appreciate that as we come closer to really crystallizing you know tonight i think was a big step you know we know exactly what we're doing with the ed specs we have a better picture of the finances this week is that information starts to crystallize i really don't want to put out a ton of information and then have to take it back or amend it um but as i said to marlene the other day i will go anywhere anytime any place we've done the garden show already we've had pretty good attendance actually the record attendance at the schools we had over 30 at norton for pizza and that's not great but it's the most the most highly attended pto meeting they've had same with the record at chs um mike woods is talking about giveaways for his dodd pto meeting we'll get there we'll add the preschools then we'll we'll end up putting out a video i think to really kind of make it available we're going to put together carol and i were talking about a mailer to everybody in town once again once we have that a little more solid plan and really i think that'll pick up after may 10th that's the date that the town council is set to adopt the three resolutions that are required um and then that then it'll be i think rock solid and we'll start really getting information out after that that's the plan yes sorry thanks tony uh so yeah a few things jeff i just want to make sure i heard you right 45 a month is what jim jascott the finance director suggested at the high end there's not like a high end per se that's the average over 20 years based on the highest total cost is that yeah yeah the gross cost based on the net cost percent inflation okay right that's so that's what that is is the the net cost after reimbursement for both buildings uh that includes an eight percent inflation rate per year it and includes um the reimbursement from the the uh state at the current rate that we're at but i think i've explained before that we're anticipating that to be higher than we we have it budgeted it does not include the sale of darcy or chapman property which could further reduce the the impact on us so that's the average over the course of 20 years now some years it'll be a little bit higher some years it'll be lower but that's the average over the course of the 20 years okay yeah no i just want to um and i support this going forward but i just want to i just have to say that this we're talking about phase one right now and a big problem that i personally have had for years with the state of connecticut is we're largely based at a local level on the property tax which is regressive it's not based on ability to pay and that's one of the problems we face in speaking to that um you would mention the roadshow you're doing and you what i heard you talk about was basically connecting with parents of school-aged children right now okay one day we recognize that this is a community issue not just a parent issue and one of the things that goes through my mind i mean like the senior center or but one in particular really is i think of elan park and you know in from from one perspective i'm thinking the people in elan park they they have their own village there but i know people in england park who the grandparents of the kids sure so they moved out of their house over in the avon adams avon neighborhood the kids moved in the grandkids lived there now and they moved over to england park over to southwick there are a lot of people there with a vested interest both on the tax side as well as on the the services side and i think it would be very valuable to take the road show to as many people as possible i mean we can get a decent-sized group not you know yeah um but i'm a firm believer that there are uh many seniors in this town my parents i'm not sure how they'll vote on it but they have grandkids in the school system here um so i just want to make sure that you have those people you have seniors in mind too and it's not just a thought process well senior do we have a date yet for elam park i know what we're doing you have it on your list already we do fantastic um that's included we're you know you get the school modernization show we throw in pet partners for free because they picked up the cost on the pet partners so highland is bringing students and the their pet partner dogs to go to elam park at some point here in the spring too we're trying to arrange that date with them gotcha so we've got those bases covered okay again like i said i know this isn't just a parent but a a community issue and we're going to try and get to as many people as we can in the next several months thank you um thank you you had mentioned i wanted to try to understand this you mentioned that some of the birth to three program was insurance reversible all of the birth to three program all of it really is paid for by the state fee for service so we're the only school system that does this usually it's private contractors who are hired by the state to go to a family's home and provide service for that family they submit the bill to the state of connecticut who pays the contractor it's the same thing for us you know it's basically state insurance that we go through with our birth to three services so we'll send an ot professional to the home to provide support or some other educator works with the family they have to submit it through billing which is why we really need a secretary dedicated to that we have one that's dedicated really just to this process they submit all that billing paperwork to the state the state sends us back money when i say us i don't mean the cheshire public schools they cut a check to all of our revenue revenue goes to the town of cheshire um but that's factored in during the budget process okay so basically what it is is the private insurance companies this really was the state i say yes they said insurance it's really more state reimbursement okay yeah um and then the the last point i just like to make is uh the the town wide archo i think that's great i know of at least one super duper kindergartner i haven't seen it yet but i'm looking forward to seeing it tomorrow it is amazing yeah april 29th uh eight or nine to two uh five to eight thank you good stuff yeah she does incredible stuff um unless there's any questions thank you dr sloan for the update um we have no old business there is no audience tonight no new business other than i uh the only update i have there's a cave board director's meeting i'll be attending next wednesday i hope to hear some insights on what's happening with the legislature in hartford and some items though not to get into uh at all any kind of legislative discussion tonight uh but i'll talk to tim i know when we're talking about trying to get a date together for this legislative committee just to hash out a few things but um i think we're all getting cave updates as board members to email addresses there's one that was sent out i think last week about the ecs funding one of the items out there has been proposed as a sliding scale based on town is worth town worth but um so long story short that's the proposal i don't know where is the process depending what cheshire ranks you know we can see or you know less or maybe 90 reimbursement if you follow anyway it's a proposal but i think i'll certainly get information i have out to the board but i'm thinking maybe sorry by the end of the school year let's just meet see what's coming back discuss um and maybe gear up for next year i know we get a chance to do it back in january but again once that's more information on what's happening at cave i'll afford it as always other than that uh before oh i didn't want to show you something by the way cabin has a new website oh that's really nice we i i didn't want to say anything because i really don't want to say anything but we have been diligently working on that i got an update today from tom leewock one of our tech people he said you know we are cruising along should we soon almost all due respect to cave i think uh we're gonna be there if not better sorry but there is a new because there's those antiquated too i'm just saying it's uh if you want to see what could be i encourage the board to visit the site uh that being said the upcoming meetings uh thursday may 5th at 7pm with high school showcase at cheshire high school monday may 9th 7 p.m we have a curriculum committee at the hummington boardroom on tuesday may 17th at 6 30.

so okay okay i'm calling the meeting back to order at 9 43 am and we are continuing discussion on this so one well for me the csba like i said i do not like it except for the very person and i like orange counties it's very worried so from some redundancy then the policy but i like what it says except for the first sentence so if we can take the first sentence from um csva eliminate the first sentence for orange county and take that paragraph yeah like a good start yeah so you you like the first paragraph of orange county aside from the first sentence yes and vice versa and yeah and then csva's i like the first paragraph the first sentence but not these orange ones thank you so would it help if you're an agreement or a starting point if we pull up the orange county document take sentence number one out of the orange county document and put csva sentence number one there as a starting point at work okay and then this makes it available to the public so that's so it's not right now okay but what we can do to get further we could share it as we start talking through it before we before we dig into this can i just i have a couple of concepts that i want to um kind of just let you chew on while we're going through this so one of the things that i'm actually responsible for at work is is learning and researching and teaching about targeted universalism which is a concept that was developed um by the othering institute which is the part of kel uh burger kel and um basically what it says is that you have one goal and multiple strategies so in other words the goal is everybody gets good dental care the different strategies meet the peop the various groups whether they're socio-economic whether they're not spanish-speaking at home whether they're you know whatever it is whatever the the group is you're meeting that group at their point physically mentally and emotionally whether they need transportation whether they need money whether they need um extra tutoring whatever it is you're you're targeting your strategies to the population the ultimate goal is always the same so in other words we want everybody to be treated equally and have you know equitable outcomes not just the populations that have been historically marginalized we want everyone because you're right if you target one population if you target one population you're othering another positive so it's always this other population we need to have one population all of our students all of us students need to have equitable outcomes how we reach achieve that is different depending on where the person is and it could have nothing to do with their their race or their age or their anything else it's just where are they on you know the the spectrum of life in general the other thing um i wanted to mention and this is something that csva recommended is that we do i know i talked about before how some of the districts in the state have been basically put on probation so to speak they've been identified as extremely discriminatory districts and they are being told to go through this process it's kind of a punishment but it's kind of a great thing to support them in becoming better at diversity right but the first thing that they always do in these districts is they do a root cause analysis the reason for doing that is to identify unconscious biases that exist or conscious biases other people don't know about so like we might have a teacher that's you know that's extremely biased but they hide it well outside of the class and nobody knows or maybe you know we have a teacher that doesn't expect certain students to achieve whatever it is the root cause analysis is supposed to help us identify where where biases may exist so those were my two thoughts targeted universalism and a root cause analysis the first one applies to what we're doing as far as editing and the second one as far as what we might want to do in the future can i talk on a practical application so with special ed we have a disproportionate amount of uh after male students who are on iep the state has identified us over the years it goes back and forth within and so your root cause dialysis piece that's exact so to your point that is a practice that we even have got through with scoe difference to identify what what practices are we doing they can say why is it so disproportionate because your outcome should be similar to your population and so when we recognize we also recognize with african-american male students we disproportionately have higher suspension rates we went through that when we went into our d.a work so that your your process that you're explaining is something that is practically happening and it is actually it's a very eye-opening type of thing it's like what what can we do or what are we doing or what are we doing so anyway okay can i have you explain the second paragraph under equity education because i want to know if i'm looking at it wrong which one are you on second paragraph under a or for orange county so so my interpretation of that is the concept of educational equity goes beyond formal equality to fostering a barrier-free environment where all students regardless of their race class or other personal characteristics have the opportunity to benefit equally in order to succeed and thrive no problem with that so the next one the next oh uh [Music] calls on every adult to treat every student as capable and helps success and recognizes uniqueness and strengths of each student allowing for differences in time attention instruction and support to ensure all students can succeed academically and participate responsibly in our community so is that the one so so what that's saying to me is and again i didn't write this document but what i read out of that is providing opportunity that all students have equal access barriers are removed to help all students meet their fullest potential and for me regardless it means setting expectations right like you don't you don't set an expectation of failure based on what you perceive that person's characteristics but i read that what i see is that student regardless of whether they spend time studying or they um how much time they spend studying or attention in class or instruction support they get whatever we're supposed to move month we're supposed to make sure learning so really this is kind of an outcome i see with that in the learning environment we still have the the benchmark but how we get there may be different for you me or the other someone else we all we don't lower anything we have a high standard but how we access that information how we access that success may look different based on how you're demonstrating that it doesn't mean you know i only have to write one paragraph and you have to write 17 paragraphs it's if that's not what it means it's how do we get you to write 17 paragraphs so uh what do we need to do what do we have to do to get you past whatever barriers are existing in your life a good example of this in practice my son um had adhd and before he was actually in treatment for it in seventh grade he was quite the handful of his firefox because he was fidget and he distracted and so he starts distracting other students and uh mr myers music teacher at the time and he was incredibly frustrated but rather than just saying okay this kid's a problem and he's not going to succeed mr myers knows that my son came in before school to play around with the piano and was using youtube to learn you know he said okay this kid has a passion for music i don't want to burn that out but i have to allow my other students to succeed in class as well so what he started doing is he had a boss that would have my son empty his pockets to be in the class so that he could remove distractions he would find ways to remove my son's obstacles to help him succeed with the rest of us my son was still responsible for doing the same work as the other students but the things that were obstacles for him were addressed so that he would have the opportunity to succeed as well and frankly batman built a lifelong love for music in my son the other area we talked a lot about is the multitude of support so i may need certain supports to access and get in kelly may not um a student who might uh have a disability may have supports through an instructional specialist to access the curriculum it doesn't mean we're alone we're providing opportunity to make sure that students reaching their full potential let's get back to that paragraph because now we're really getting off topic we're meaning by the language i mean so so i think this is a fruitful conversation so are we all understanding it i mean are you getting right yeah so i think that's a great question that we can say so i think it's very relevant otherwise we're going to be designing a document it might mean something different to you and you and you yeah but we're just getting a little unlocked and another thing that i want to make sure is clear we're not saying district is necessarily not doing these things already it's just that we don't have a policy in place yet yeah this makes it intentional yeah yes successful policies are just under a different heading we're just making sure that we cover this so what can we what carol has up here just so you know is this is the the one we'll just have a working copy this is the orange county one obviously we'll take orange county please but if we what i heard was we'll dump that sentence at the beginning that was highlighted i don't know if you can do that and then we will add we'll toggle to the cia one more accurate find it there you go this one yeah okay and then if you take the first sentence on the first paragraph now is that yeah this one i can't see very well yeah one issue that i kind of have with the orange county documents is it seems to focus on uh racial inequities and loss over other inequities um so for instance things like disability or um homelessness or lgbtq or any other inequities that are covered by some faculty statements it you know it's set it doesn't technically exclude them but um it says the board establishes this policy in an effort to eliminate racial intolerance other forms of intolerance so it just kind of in my opinion it focuses on the racial it bosses everything else over okay together other forms of equities and then add awareness um actually though the second actually if if i go back down to section b3 though it does actually list other things so can we are we talking about the second sentence here so if we just take out racial but and other forms that he says this number three letter b describes it it does it does lay it out better so so never mind that may just be that i on you know this type of inequity or this type of diversity and so i think it would be good to remove a lot of that language let me just say what i think that second sentence could sound like ford establishes this policy in an effort to eliminate intolerance inequity opportunity and academic disparity services [Music] eliminate to the second intolerance would come out so uh racial yep right there leave the first leave that second intolerance yes um no no no racial here yeah yeah and i think that gets to what you were saying because then later it does clarify it but it this when you first read the second sentence it feels like it's just related to racial but it's all um and actually actually that's exactly a change uh the words that we're removing with the word all yes to eliminate all intolerance inequities of opportunity and academic disparities in our district perfect [Music] where's that the next one instead of just f strike we see and just say our schools are centers for culturally diverse learning where all students are educated with their fullest potential instead it would just say our schools our centers for culture diverse learning where all students are educated to propose potential period and then equity is critical to the success of our schools our students in our community so take out the rest steps is everybody happy with that equity is critical to the success of our schools our students enough um back to this document i like the idea of the definition of equity because that was discussed in the board boardroom um and i think it was dr lee that read the definition of equity i don't know it's the same verbiage as this but i think some definition would be beneficial the the other was i think with the uh didn't the end code or fair act yeah can pull it out yeah i'll find it um i really love email actually just um i just don't remember but i love that second paragraph now that we all understand uh same page i think that that's really well stated oh let's bring up mr jordan yeah if we were going to keep any of this i would take out formal if you're under definition this second paragraph yeah i like that second period okay um and then if we take a look at the third paragraph under section a equity is an interruption of systems structures policies and practices which privilege some students while discriminating against other students and i think that directly addresses nancy's concern about giving privilege to some while disadvantaging others what we want to do is make sure that everyone is succeeding and so and along those lines i was thinking right before after fairness and before by the following to add to all students so uh i'm sorry intended to ensure fairness to all students where are we um that paragraph third third paragraph down last sentence where it says um fairness and by the following at the end all right intended to ensure fairness fairness to all students um i don't know now i'm not sure about yet is that what you're talking about yeah to our students yeah fairness to all students i think by the following just is a lead into the numbered sections there so i just don't know if we're going to keep all of this because it may be a little redundant but we'll see and i might have been wrong so the fair act one it's very specific to social sciences it was a code it was instruction in social sciences shall include early history of california in the study of the role contribution of both men and women educational equity goes beyond equality to fostering a very very free environment for all students regardless all students period eliminate blah blah blah have the opportunity to benefit equally in order to succeed and thrive so taking out digging out regardless of their race class or other personal characters just saying there is if you were yeah no you're not it's saying we're all students period take that that that's exactly right carol you had highlighted but no leaving the have the opportunity to benefit equal because that finishes the sentence so just taking out regardless of their race thoughts or other personal characteristics there we go yeah um all students have the opportunity to benefit equally in order to succeed and thrive so that goes back to what we're talking about everyone having the ability to go up versus bringing something and not calling it out because you know your race or your social economic status may not identify how you're succeeding maybe it's the fact that you have a single mom and you have to take care of your kid sister at night and you could be purple little you know it does i think calling out the the characteristics limits initiative equity that's i don't know that's maybe i'll change my mind tomorrow that's my my perception at this point i can see that point of view i'm about 100 sure but i agree with it but i'm not 100 sure i disagree with it so it's something that yeah and you know i think it's a nice it might be a nice way to bring everyone together instead of othering people you know that we want this for everybody we're not we're not saying we're going to take away from successful students to support those that have bigger challenges we're saying that we're going to support the ones that have bigger challenges so that everybody has the same opportunity has you know better opportunities god only knows i support those that have the challenges yeah sure a couple of those in my own family yeah for sure i don't know steve i don't like the second paragraph i love that okay so what is it that you don't like about it let's let's read it because it's very wordy and yeah i mean if you can maybe break it up um and make two different sentences but because i you know you get kind of lost how about just take out an emphasis on because they're really big on these introductory phrases equity calls on every adult to t treat students how about eliminate everything all the time you could instead of every throw all in there all is kind of consistent instead of changing it to students and this doesn't remove the witness but yeah instead of every student what about treat each student because that acknowledges that the individual students need to be treated based off their individuals absolutely okay so then if we went to the word strengths and put a period after that and struck the rest of it i think we would be great done okay so equity calls on all adults to treat each student as capable of success and recognizes the uniqueness and strength of each student and recognizes their uniqueness and strengths yeah take all the rest of that out not be happy campaigning special ed was train them today or support them tomorrow i mean exactly even special ed you have to train them to be self-sufficient so let me read it again equity calls on all adults to treat each student that's capable of success and recognizes their uniqueness and strengths we can even take out recognize their uniqueness and strength no just oh no i like that i do like that okay my only concern is we're removing talking about removing um basically the part that explains what our goal is which is ensuring that students succeed academically and participate so let's take out then allowing for differences in time attention instruction and support and just go to ensure so then it would say equity calls on all adults each student is capable of success and recognizes their uniqueness and strengths to ensure to ensure that that to to ensure academic success to ensure all students can succeed academically and participate responsibly so leave it the same way so just take out from electing or just tip from of each student through sport so it'll go straight to ensure that okay sorry we come to an agreement now yep i think so okay so we'll take out this all right it falls on for all no all adults oh yes each student and then you know and then you take out everything from there to straight down to two so back one word there you go you got it okay yeah okay to ensure [Music] in our communities that mean is that like social to you is that what that means yeah yeah like socially mentally well we're trying to to build help build responsible adults regardless who will you know be educated but also will be good citizens so good and that's in our district uh strategic statement or whatever it is contributing is there a way we can better align this to our actual mission so that the wording here matches what's in our mission statement and i think with uh fairness because and then i don't have to memorize a fuzzy area where are we valuing people only on what they can produce and or are we valuing them on the fact that they're happy and healthy and not in jail responsible well what is it that we say we're doing when we have them do volunteer work in the community and that class they have advertising community service stuff yeah they have a name they call that yeah that contributing or no as far as what that um this says statement students will realize their dreams by developing developing communication skills reasoning integrity and motivation through academic excellence and are well-rounded education and being active citizens of our diverse community there you go so to ensure academic excellence and what's why that we just make a note to to align it with the the one we can just add being active citizens of our diverse community yeah i like that okay where uh so right where i'm at how about um to ensure and take out that all students can succeed and put just academic excellence and before you do that is everyone okay with that what's your academic excellence and then okay and then and become there's something wrong but let me just to ensure their academic excellence and no to ensure no don't put that in there [Music] and students achieve how about to ensure that students achieve academic and excellence and become active citizens there we go students achieve you yeah so academic it needed something to register yeah you know i would like to see something that includes the students i mean we want the adults to do it we want the students to do it as well oh i see what you're saying that that all staff students and and all staff and students treat treat everyone as capable of success yeah i like that right here what if we change it from all adults to everyone yeah calls on everyone to champions all stakeovers yeah well i think if we say everyone then it's pretty clear that means that students can violate this policy as well right and then parents and parents community members yeah everyone should be closing everyone to treat each student so that would be the student treating the student which is fine everybody calls on everyone to treat each student carol made a good point there we want to make sure that staff and everyone is treated fairly as well right right but this is specifically academic yeah having to do with their success their you know student success so we might want to address that in a separate paragraph and it might be two once you keep going can i take this down to ensure that can we go ahead and say each student achieves and become okay so to ensure that right here each student student yep and then you'll have to say each yeah each student achieves activity and becomes active citizen becomes an active citizen oh yeah eh i'm responsible probably well yeah yeah i think it's still a lot i mean even if it changed actively yeah actually responsible right maybe we need to be active responsible yeah mission who knows maybe that'll be next but it doesn't it doesn't um contradict it so i mean it just sounds better i think responsible does sound better right is that what we're all saying my my point of my point on this it may be somewhat minor but you can be active irresponsibly that doesn't make sense every calls causing everyone to treat each student as capable as oh we struck them capable of success yeah as capable of success each student is capable of success and recognizes their unique it doesn't sound right it's almost like a student of achieving success there it's almost like that bridge board again yeah each student i get what you're saying right as capable of success that does not make sense i think it does it is capable we're making sure that we're treating students i understand what it's supposed to say but it reads funny it should say it is comfortable okay so equity calls on everyone to treat each student as though they are capable of you see this that's right yeah that's indicated that they're not really getting yeah um as capable of success i think it's the of i don't think as capable as something success as capable of success i think maybe everyone as capable of success because it needs something to describe it yeah capable of achieving success treat each student achieving success does that sound better for you say it again calls on everyone to treat each student as capable of achieving success because you're right there's something like that loving the successes that they need something like no okay good good ones dudes [Music] thank you steve that ties it into our mission too so that's that's i like that instructions to all students the only thing is it's grammatically incorrect with which unless we put a comma or change it to that that's just kellyanne so it either needs to change to that or has a have a comma after that system structures policies and practices which i i think it works either no it's it's 100 certain that in which you're not necessarily interchangeable if the rest of the sentence is required then you use the word that if it's on the side to the statement then you use a comma and the word which in this case it is required so it needs to say an interruption systems that privilege some students while discriminating against other students so we're trying to interrupt things that privilege some while discriminating so what are we talking about there it's saying equity is an interruption of systems structures policies and practices that privilege some students while discriminating against other students so we're saying that we're trying to make sure that we're not privileging some students and discriminating against others but what are we what systems and structures are we talking about many that are identified over time and maybe back to that root cause thing that we have some something that we're doing that through this analysis we identify that this is causing a disproportionate outcome for one group but not the other you know maybe maybe we have i'm sorry counselors i i'm not picking like this where if you're listening to this maybe we have a counselor that leans towards putting white students in energy or ap classes you know and and is unconsciously doing it doesn't realize it's doing it or they see that you know someone who is spanish-speaking maybe they're not going to be achieved in the ap history another example is um there was a time that students were referred to by teacher recommendation and what that found is that teacher recommendations could have unconscious biases and so it was resulting in disproportional uh recommendations so what i've seen done as a different way to deal with it is test all students to see if they qualify for date regardless of teacher representation it's not something that was designed to create a bias but there was a bias that was identified so then that system was interrupted and found a way to see i had one in gate one in special edition full scale both so another good example is access to ap classes before there was always prerequisites and we've removed those barriers so anyone could take it so that would have been we're putting barriers in place that might limit someone's ability to take that higher level class i remember discussing that better about it when he was yeah about um what's i ready so so that's the type of thing okay when these obstacles are identified whatever they may be we need to identify them and then work to resolve them it's we're not getting bogged down in what they are because we want this to be a general strategy that can be applied to whatever we which is what this would help us do because it helps us look at it and say is this policy doing this or is this practical that which is exactly the ap thing the gate one we've always tested you know fourth grade all students you knocked out if you wanted but there are examples yeah i know when i was in school and eon ago it was teacher recommendation and we still have that as an option but but then you have to come present it's not just i think they'll raise gate therefore you're in there's a process yeah so since we're right here in somebody's restroom do you want to take another quick break or because or do you dance do you care if you step out or we've been no i just found it bothered me a bit oh i just didn't know if we wanted if we start moving along we're gonna i think that we should all be here okay okay let's take a break right now okay so i will recess the meat for about five minutes at 10 24.

sure [Music] testing testing testing testing okay ready to go okay i'm going to call the meeting to order at 9 16 a.m um we'll start with the flag salute in recognition of free speech and the following board agenda item we welcome all who would like to know that saying the budget of allegiance is not a requirement to participate in the business of this public board if you do not say the pledge for religious political social or personal reasons your most welcome hero is an equal participant in the business board oh you are correct thank you very much so going back to the roll call um alphabet order trustee anderson here uh trustee kelly trustee lee is absent trustee pope here and trustee bruno is here as well as superintendent player and the son had a word anderson oh yeah of the united states of america and into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all on that note if anyone ever would like to leave just ask and i will be more than happy to legit okay so adoption of agenda do i have promotion okay and uh can we do general consent is that person missing uh trustee kelly hi trustee pope trustee anderson hi and sharepoint agenda's adopted how much we already audience regarding items on the agenda okay so moving on to the board workshop policy on equity do i have a motion which is the motion the motion is to bring a support for discussion okay and do i have a second second okay trustee kelly yes okay all right so moving on to business item so if i may just to give a little background if someone were to be watching um at our january board workshop we were discussing with uh csba trainer monica and at that point we developed our idea the concept came out that we did not have a policy of equity we then agendized the csba sample policy in large and at that point the board decided that they would go ahead and schedule a workshop to spend some time going through that trustee lee did provide some edits so in your packet you have a copy of the csva template you have a copy the one with the highlights the yellow are the suggestions or edits from dr b and then additionally in the package uh trustee lee shared with me and mr bruno uh a policy that was found from orange county so orange county board of education just because i think at our meeting in april we discussed the idea that maybe the csb attempt wasn't the best approach so hopefully by that and then also uh sally kelly from her delegate assembly had taken some snapshot slides from a training she was in so that's the two uh pictures that are included with the k-14 so the concept that we were looking at i think for today was to try to identify where the board wanted to go with a statement around equity and then concept would be if something was developed to be brought back to a regular meeting run through our regular policy uh process additionally sorry i did skip one thing california department of education in your packet too is uh they have a website that does talk about equity in the different pieces that are going along in the state department for uh equity as it relates to the things so obviously this is not electronic if you want this page the url is on it if you want to but there's a lot of good resources within this as it relates to how the state department of education is moving forward in the states so those are the documents you have with clarification we're looking at the potential statement the statement does it is included in the policy but we don't necessarily need it says that that the statement is a component of equity policy per sba's direction that doesn't necessarily would be enough right so so it's kind of point of reference if you take a peek just at the template of the csba policy it was this one it's just the one cheater i think what they're getting at is the first three paragraphs would be more of the statement and then down below might be some of the elections or uh processes at which to get and [Music] measure the progress or the length of records these are the same thing they're the same thing except for those edits the additions and descriptors i mean it strikes me as negative and the word institutional i know that's a big word and everybody uses it but by that word just seems so institutional racism is a specific thing it's where policies that have been in place for years unintentionally or intentionally end up um you know creating a situation that is inevitable for certain uh groups of people so to take out the word institutional would be very difficult you have to find another way of describing institutionalization just to clarify your i think what you're saying was the whole thing seems institutional like it's coming from minister not specifically interrupted me i'm sorry sorry i know had that same problem with the first paragraph on the um orange county stars at one county schools it's just very negative and we acknowledge persistent racial intolerance i don't feel like we've had persistent racial tolerance of sinner well i know i yeah i don't think we have but i think the point is is that we don't want it either right but i don't think we have to say that we've had it say that we don't want it no we're not saying at all but but to to that point oftentimes there are policies and and biases in place that we ourselves are not even aware of that are causing inequitable outcomes so but this is just saying we need to look at things through the lens of equity when we're making decisions does it mean that we haven't in the past necessarily maybe because center was always the military base school district we got along and we knew the kids got along they're used to transferring and getting along with everybody and it was just a melting pot basically the kids from everywhere so let's just formalize that but just a couple things first of all um what nancy was referring to is the first sentence of the orange county one is orange county schools acknowledges persistent racial intolerance and her point was if that's not our experience in the district um that warning comes across as very harsh which i agree with but the other thing to consider is just because we don't see persistent racial intolerance and it hasn't been our experience doesn't mean that others aren't having different experiences i do know some people um have expressed me that they have some students have felt racial intelligence so um that's something to keep in mind also or not not just necessarily racial but it never exists or you know it doesn't somebody doesn't feel it at some time or another i'm just saying we don't need to put it down like that like the whole district has been hired and my my issue with that is this is a policy for now and you know essentially until further notice um our goal is to remove inequities and so to to start with the premise of they exist hopefully we're going to get to the point where they don't how about we strive to move any sign of racial i mean we could say something to the effect that um that maybe we are aware that inequities conscious or unconscious may exist and then that way um we have control over but we don't know on a daily basis may say something that can't control all the time you know right now something something to consider um we don't have to necessarily choose one of these or the other we can look at the intro from the csba version sure and then from the other language from kind of mix and mix and match exactly because i i do prefer the opening of the csv i have two questions it could take a few minutes to review the additional documentation that was provided from cde and okay so talking about orange county and i honestly am not sure which one is orange county this one so i haven't had a chance to look at it yet i i think taking a few minutes to rebirth is probably a good idea can have some recess for 10 yeah 10 minutes sure okay okay so we're going to do a recess yes thank you thank you okay so meeting this recess as 9 27.

okay i brought the wrong glasses ever since i had my eye surgery my eyes have just been okay and i'm calling the meeting back to order at 10 36 a.m number three under the mission statement same thing i just want to point out that it covers everything we talked about as far as the different groups yeah i i had glossed over that in my initial reading so i i had missed that so thank you for making sure that i'm aware though so i don't between one two and three underneath um definition i don't know if we want to strike that or maybe some of it belongs down in the mission because this is more an action than a definition like if we're talking about the deficit definition of equity but then we're talking about what we're going to do to counter it all under the definition of equity so it doesn't belong you know it doesn't belong there so you're saying just take end of the previous sentence at fairness and take out one two and three i would fairness period and they would eliminate those yep right maybe not learning but let's hold them in our back pocket and see if maybe we can use some of that language later but maybe not we'll just see okay so you want to highlight all this yeah too i would well definitely we're going to take out by the following um wait a minute can you seem to go out of that and then because i think you have too much language to all students period and then take out by the following okay yes so this no no no just take out by the phone yeah like that and change it to a period and then the rest of that i like highlight the one two three and and we're reserving that for maybe maybe yeah i mean like countering biased behaviors might be good language i wouldn't say that cause it's choose yeah if you go to text see how it says normal text go down right there and click on that i think it's because of your pictures you're so smart should we talk about this just for a second that one two and three we took one and two cut them down significantly and combined them it would it could fall under the mission so in other words countering biased behavior hold on did you read the mission first to see if that has similar um some of them do they do but they don't say anything about countering is this removing biases and barriers that contribute i think it's to achievement gaps which are unacceptable so that's talking specifically about achievement gaps but this is time well let me just let me just read what it said what i was going to say and if you don't like it i'm cool with that too but countering biased behaviors unfair policies programs and practices that consistently result in negative outcomes period and whether or not we need that i don't know you're right so i'm thinking between three and four it might be saying similar see i'm eating yeah and i think that countering those behaviors is more of a mission than recognized so maybe work on three and four and then using your verbiage like yes or maybe even um combining all three because we had a lot of redundancy there agreed can we go ahead and since we're talking about it okay let me go ahead and talk about that so instead of wrecking on mission number three taking out recognizing right that and changing it to countering conscious or unconscious biased behaviors so i had added conscious and unconscious and then we switched back up to number one above biased behaviors so countering conscious conscious bias behaviors and barriers that result in inequitable opportunities that result hearing uh countering conscious or unconscious behaviors and biases biases and barriers that result in inequitable that that can not get biased behaviors because that's what you had before so bias barriers not biased before you said bias should be taxes and biases and unconscious biased behaviors and barriers so biased behavior so we could just say biases is what you're saying and take out behaviors all right one more time countering conscious or unconscious biases and barriers that result in inequitable opportunities no behaviors thing yeah i mean i really feel like you might disagree i really feel like calling out all of the different biases is going to limit it no matter what we do it's good the more we try to be inclusive the less inclusive it will be because if we start naming all of the ways that we can bias that we have biased behaviors we're going to miss it's just like with the the discrimination or the recognition so those characteristics are probably directly from steve that document or the codes or the discrimination laws very similar um but i think we do need those because steve was making a comment on that paragraph above where we said all and we didn't name all because we have it down here so then if we say countering conscious or unconscious biases and barriers that result in inequality opportunities for students based on their real or perceived personal characteristics so take out groups of students because it's redundant it's unnecessary um uh that results in so countering conscious and unconscious biases and barriers okay so what does it start with countering so don't just recognize it do something about it okay uh conscious and unconscious biases and barriers con cio human city so t i n comes out and c i goes in so no t i can't see what no go back there you go t i o u s there it is conscious and unconscious or unconscious i'm sorry go ahead and finish it or you're dirty biases of barriers that result in equitable opportunities yeah so can can come out [Music] based on their real or perceived personal characteristics such as okay um now as far as calling out the specific groups first of all the phrase such as leaves this open to other groups as well and i'm kind of torn because i understand if we leave it more general than it applies to all but at the same time by leaving it more general it it leaves more room for some of these things to slip through the cracks yeah and so and we might be doing a disservice to populations and families and students who feel like they are being and i think why it may not be fully inclusive or something but it does cover me so it's not just race or just identity or you know it gives a broader spectrum greatness yeah great listening just about everything's on there but i color i mean you know it covers just about everything hitler certainly thought eye color mattered right yeah sorry um let me just build upon age or social well i think that it's got a simply because the list is numbered and so it's just a semicolon between each of the numbers it's just were you an english major no but i've been writing i've been a secretary for almost 40 years so you know how about are we done with that yeah number four i don't is before we do that um i mean obviously we're going to change much county skills to center joints so where are we okay with one and two i'd like one into it get number three above four seems to be a little repetitive of how we have three yeah i'm wondering if there's a way to include achievement gap to number three above so if you yeah if you can you add something about gaps in under definition number three eliminate all the other verbiage before so we could say result in inactional opportunities including achievement gaps for students based on their will received i like that so where or towards what if we just had inequitable opportunities or achievement gaps are you talking about three yes i was talking about yeah pulling part of four into three isn't that what you say so take oh oh oh thank you number three under definition that's a method for addressing the policy it's not i don't definitely not a definition of it right yeah it's not a definition and it could be part of the mission you're right equal distribution but when you do that through challenging and tolerant i mean by doing these things you're going to have to negotiate reality in realign resources yeah i'm just a little concerned that by calling this out that we're going to reallocate resources that gives people who are against an equity policy to require sorry people anyway you see what i'm saying is that this is kind of implicitly understood by what we want to happen they're going to have to reallocate resources they're going to have to just determine number three and just forget about it okay i don't know what's everybody think i'm talking too much no that's fine i'm not married i do partially like that um it's saying that when equal distribution of resources results in inequitable outcomes then we need to redistribute um i i do kind of like that but at the same time it it feels redundant with what we're saying elsewhere and i don't know that it okay maybe what we could do is add the reallocation or reimagining to another area where we talk about countering where we talk there's another place in here um where it says equity is an interruption of system structures policies and practices up above that's the third paragraph under a um equity is an interruption okay and then what are we trying to do interaction practices strategies um um it may be well i don't know that's weak it may be necessary to reallocate no um reallocation and reimagining of resources see then you're getting into behaviors and step definitions but really your systems your structures your policies and practices are about allocating negotiating i mean it's just really difficult it's just so the interruption is so equity is an interruption reallocation and reimagining systems opportunities and support that's what interruption means you're going to change what you're doing yeah to benefit so if you want to call those things out but those would be parentheses not that just that's too much can now come out because we've basically combined it all right negative wait wait wait can you go back i'm sorry no we did that okay we did that okay i'm sorry go ahead before we remove it let's let's leave it there for now in case we do want to borrow from it before we're done okay okay we'll leave the highlighter intending to delete it okay perfect okay so number four the only thing that's different from number three is that it's specifically talking to about achievement gaps so the question is do we say inequitable opportunities and achievement gaps or groups yeah or how about if we say instead of achievement gaps why don't we say academic outcomes inequitable opportunities and academic outcomes countering conscious or conscious bias in barriers that result in inequitable opportunities or academic outcomes for students based on their real beauty yeah very nice okay so we can strike number four in its entirety now just to be clear we're striking for all the way just that first paragraph taking out students of color are we gonna catch heat from taking that out or i know i'm the one that keeps saying we need to be calling out that's referring to specifically what they've got going on there um i think that yes that is an issue here but it's one of many issues and i think calling attention to just one group is at the ring yes yes so i like our definition of of what needs to be addressed above so it wasn't just me okay it was probably now that last paragraph so we're going to remove four but we're going to keep that last paragraph here no because it's indented so unless they did it wrong it is oh so that would be actually online it says number five i don't have a five interesting time yeah i don't have a five online oh i'm looking at tradition or commitment instead of admission okay so i i like that frankly um would say i was thinking that we should say something like striving to actively continuously disparities but maybe it's better committed to yeah says uh the center joining unified school district will disrupt all forms of discrimination in our school community by and then so the lead into the one through five of the mission one through four so the lead-in says already says the district uh will disrupt forms of discrimination in our communities by so then we can take out the school district information and committed to all the way up to the word actively by actively and continuously eliminating disparities dramatically speaking it is not right so okay we're taking out the orange county schools board of education is committed to because it's and then put by uh actually don't just start with activity yeah because it's that's why there's stimming goals instead of some periods which then at the end of oh and also it's missing a word and so we don't need uh continuously eliminating disparities in educational opportunities in its schools obviously our schools comma and in its schools and creating and supporting an environment equal unbiased and culturally responsible learning and so that whole last thing from supporting to system is one thought so it needs an and prior to that it also needs a comma oh no yeah you got it and creating and supporting yeah from you know you got it eliminating disparities and creating and supporting we need supporting what do you think of the oxford comma after unbiased oh yeah probably should have a comma there yeah after the word unbiased can we make that two sentences by creating and supporting yeah that would sound better so school so take out the comment and change ant uh bye i like that i like that much better saying school's period change eliminating to eliminate just i'm sorry schools period and then capital b yeah if you look at the grammar of the first three challenging accepting recognizing oh i'm sorry so so eliminated fair the point is that it's going to be fair very good okay sure it's about 11 o'clock we've got about an hour left and or would that be more under the procedures don't we get through it and see if there's anything that we would want to include in the mission and then strike that whole commitment section because it's a mission and a commitment seem like this to the same thing right we're committed to our mission or we could even do a number five and that because it starts to get like regulation like ar so if your idea is to create this what if you change the board commitment to board expectation if you look at three those provide general like expectations of how the district should operate maybe that's a way of getting your ass not around it but so here's kind of my thought i like number three in that section the rest i can move without what if we just made number three number five of the mission we've already talked about a lot of these things in the mission we have to reward it slightly to make it dramatically consistent but because i mean some of this abortion demonstrates commitment to equity by direct the superintendent to develop an equity plan to implement this policy we're already saying hey this is what we want you to do and i don't think it needs to be number six of the oh yeah i that's necessary i think this whole thing is is about directing him and again that goes back to implementation right yeah and i mean some of this is redundant promoter culture high expectations for all students we already talked about that but maybe we could change that expectation or maybe we could use that high expectations support and i think it'd be important of the commitment three to me that that list is probably the one that if we decide to somehow incorporate back up the expectations of like such as or something where we understand that these are the things we're doing okay i also like this language on number one active measures to provide an inclusive and emotionally support supportive environment free from discrimination so i think if we're gonna do expectations a section on expectation i know there's two two two subjects two options on the table right now one is to incorporate it into the mission one is to have a section called expectations if we went with expectations i would say um the district the school district shall take active measures to find an inclusive and emotionally supportive environment free from discrimination um to actually write every speech student kelly what if you moved your forget the commitment or expectation piece move sentence one out of commitments bring that into the mission somehow reward it and then rework three so that's also part of the mission that it's i think that would get added so since we're using the words we could say taking active measures is part of our mission taking active measures to provide an inclusive and emotionally supportive environment free from discrimination so that could be that can be like number five okay and we might look at you might look once we get it down reorgan maybe that becomes a yeah so i took this number one and changed it to taking okay and you are we officially moving it now well i just leave it there for a minute but if you go go down to number six yeah just delete those i think so delete six and seven and then i think number four and five two nine right is that okay guys um yeah yeah i mean four honestly i it needs to be done but that's not us that's just yeah it's part of his job yeah once we do what it's done so then why not number two seems to be actually part of what's now going to be number five so we have that similar information above so i think eliminating two is kind of redundant to what we've already said yeah did we talk about the and i really like this um language about um no but we it said is it in the first first paragraph [Music] is this it right up here with establishment you know academic disparities culturally diverse learning laws yeah pretty much covers it was it thank you yep that was so then number three becomes number six and leave it in its entirety or i know i think we need to reword it all right the board here by i mean change it to uh setting forth just to make it grammatically consistent mission is to take out the board here by sets and just change it to settings by setting forth a series of expectations indigent is a word that i we've not heard in our that's really used much what exactly does it mean indigent i can't remember homeless so basically i think that's important we should probably add that in there in that housing status housing so in other words race color ethnicity national order religion disability housing sex foster is another group that slowed down a lot yeah do we want to add it or no up in this it would be on number three of the mission identified right now lists all the different kinds of um b three um housing status i don't know if it's important enough um i mean that could fall under social media you could call out though like a foster buster youth i think would be more important we have a lot of those okay well this just says such as this it says such as these but it means correct the ones that are are would be i'd say foster youth homeless or at home and then also english learners are the the three missing but yeah so then those are like categories not characteristics so it's a little bit different so where you say or socioeconomic status you could say or foster housing or socioeconomic status so you put a semi after age i don't know i don't know groudon i know that's the kids they're 18 they have nowhere to go yeah i know it's ridiculous yeah but maybe we're trying to put something in here instead of characters it doesn't really fit with the list characteristics of some other part of the document no because you're saying characteristics characteristics such as ray is called an accident age based on their real or perceived characteristics through age or their you could even say their housing foster and social uh language language and social social economic stuff so go from foreign out there yeah i don't like adding there because dramatically that kind of separates it from the real or perceived there are real or perceived characteristics so by adding there yeah it does separate it maybe there's another one current because all of those would be real right and won't be perceived for instance let's say a student um is perceived associated it's perceived as uh for sexual orientation other students think they're gay and discriminated against them right even if they're not actually right but the thing is for the statuses my initial thought was those are real but they're not necessarily because you can perceive someone as being socioeconomically disadvantage when they really aren't it's just like their parents are too lazy to find their clothes whatever or they're thrifty who knows um or they just like that passion for socio-economic housing or staff let's just kind of clump those three things together and just borrowing from the uh the ed code for um prohibition of discrimination section it also mentions immigration status oh i like that so let's we're getting into the weeds here i mean it's just you cannot it can go on and on and on well that was so much so it just such as and leave it as is because we can we can continue this forever and then it's just gonna be it's gonna lose its meaning maybe what we do is if we write down those those uh groups and then once we get it done maybe we read through it again and you might see a spot where we can conclude yeah because i don't i just it it feels like now you're just creating that big list again and maybe maybe when we read it in its entirety it might pop out like gosh we're missing okay i i mean i don't know or maybe we take some of them out so like instead of saying race color and ethnicity we pick one race um instead of race color ethnicity and national origin we just say race religion in this section language is coming specifically from no person shall be subjected to discrimination on the basis of disability gender gender identity gender expression nationality race or ethnicity religion sexual orientation or any other characteristic that is contained in the definition of hate crimes set forth in sections i would forget about that 22.55 appeal code including immigration status in any program or activity blah blah blah i i like i like that except for the and what was the last part of what you read uh where you talked about status something or immigration or any other characteristic that has contained the definition of hate crimes set forth in section 422.55 penal code including an immigration status okay so what if we said expression or and um wait a minute let me think for a second or age and um [Music] okay so under item three on board commitment why don't we leave that top sentence and then list out all of the groups everybody sets forth a series of expectations with regard to equity in our schools communities that orange county schools will take active measures to include and list out everybody we want to include that takes away the the content of what's there yeah it's two different things but the language of it works um can we finish the number five yeah let's let's let's let's come back to b3 at the end um number six did you write that down okay and did you add the um all right let's let's look at number six in its entirety number three number five well it'll be number six now because five is taking active measures to private inclusion three from discrimination right so the number six would be setting for the series and setting fourth expectations with regard to equity in our school community we will take not a center joint that whole setting for the series of expectations with regard to in our school it's like prepositional phrase after prepositions right you could almost get rid of it except that doesn't grammatically fit with the rest of them um we'll disrupt all forms of discrimination our schools by setting active measures by creating by taking active measures taking active measures and we could do it that way no you're right you've got to have the expectations we're expecting them to take the activities by setting expectations setting the expectation set forth a series of expectations with regard to equity in our school community the center joint unified school district will take active measures too okay okay but we should be setting develop and promote a culture of high expectations for all students staff and stakeholders yep staff and stakeholders so setting expectations with regard to equity uh that our schools will take active measures too is that what you said um it says center unified school district will turn out measures too we're not there setting expectations regarding equity that and then take out our school community because that's just that the center joint unified school district will take active measures too right now setting expectations do we have to say with regard to equity this whole thing is about equity i mean that is the name of the policy right yeah setting expectations that the center joint unified school district will take active measures too i mean it's it's nice to have it but it does make it more wordy in the context of the equity policy i think it's unnecessary i'm not queen of like cutting words extra words but ironic right it's almost like you want to reverse those center universities we'll take the air well we're not we're not developing we're setting that expectation that everyone right yeah um in fact why don't we say setting expectation that uh all students and staff it's yeah maybe we put back in the school community the district that the sir joint unified school district staff how about your center community center joint unified school community center school committee center community will take active measures too yeah i think that's that take care of this with regard to yeah yeah okay and take out joint joint unified school district to communicate community yeah there you go center community will take active measures [Music] and then i like nancy's uh addition to number a which is to high expectations culture of high expectations for all students staff and families and communities community members because that's going back to the main line of center community good expectation no because now we are able to for instance we can expel a student for what they do on facebook right but i'm just saying i mean theoretically this policy says the neighbor that does not attend the schools or have any students attend the schools we expect high things from him as well and i think i think that's a good expectation so then when we say high expectations does that ambiguous of what those people um see and just take a minute their housing prices depend on how good their schools are so they have a statement but yeah i'm just saying yes they have a mistake but i'm just saying we are also expecting of them okay development i like it too i love the high expectations i'm just ambiguous like i think it's high expectations of what i think just leaving it ambiguous is is beneficial because as we go and you know we continue to set high expectations and everything as we meet them we continue to set higher expectations so i i think the ambiguity works here and you have for all students staff it should be our community the community or like or working with members or just take out all for students staff and community high expectations for student staff and crew okay identify and eliminate inequities in access to opportunities good right continuously raise the level of achievement for all each student while eliminating academic disparities for each student while eliminating academic disparities sure that personal characteristics will not predict any individual's educational office okay and honestly that right there i think raises it really well because that includes all of the other i mean seriously this whole thing can be boiled down to that it really can actively recruit retain a diverse workforce now this is something that dr lee had said that's all well and good but then to just take people who are you know of diverse backgrounds and dropping them into an environment that is not diverse friendly can create problems and so would maybe need to have a counterpoint to this well so we're talking about our school and we do have our district and we do have a diverse district so that's true i think that this speaks to us and it's all support so it's the support kind of possessing no i like what it says i was just saying maybe we need to add another thing to it but i think the whole policy speaks to the to the you know getting that environment not saying the is culturally affirming enrollment classrooms in schools there we go there's a new culture um and the community to build and sustain a culture emblematic of the ideals of the secular policy i like that well see our parents guardians added in here should you use the same language in number one where we said nancy's right or or get rid of parent garden please assume their community yeah actually i think we should take a new scroll on parents yeah because parents are part of the community so see right there where nancy suggests the student staff and community just so it's the same yeah so taking out parents guardians in number eight or put it up yeah let's take it out they're part of the community i agree that's why i don't know that and the community and i really like item i also because that addresses what was kind of taken out earlier and it's silly but it's my students first yes it's not silly it's and it's also consistent so i just didn't catch that uh to say the we're not saying sorry words okay then the last one and then we're just going to take out everything else can we can we just do a browse on it and see if we can add those other character not characters highlighted portions yeah i think we can take out the highlighted portion at this point if you want to send the printer oh so we want to look at a little bit yeah [Music] i think we're good um do we want to go back to number what was it three where it lists all the different places well let's print it out but i think that last line in in uh the last yeah it got at that funding yeah it did [Music] there we go you know it thinks it knows better than you don't you love were you ever on wordplay suggested we start with the orange county one instead of the csba one and i thought it was just like another one did she suggest are we gonna listen she suggested that we look at that because well that's just how to develop them i think you know i kind of like maybe we need to also look at some of her language to see if any of it needs to be incorporated um it's more cleaning up there's time okay um find another place and paste it i guess i just want you to see it well up here on the screen working in adobe huh are you working in adobe illustrator now this is in google docs oh that's why limited capability yeah so i can dump it into forward word and transfer and manipulate work for the format not more well like those indentations on the second and if we want to make it ada compliant it needs to be at least decide yes i understand um well it would go once board approved it will go into gambit yes so then they probably are already ariel or ariel i think yeah which would be the right thing [Music] yeah it depends if i'm doing dates i like to use a font that has equal size people read this quick break and then we can use restroom stuff for sure yes sure but we have to keep it brief because we only have half an hour left okay can we extend yeah i guess we could i mean i don't know because we started late that's for sure i would rather i don't know if there's limitations no wow look at how short we got it okay so okay so we will take a recess at 11 30 for what five ten minutes five five minutes very short okay five minutes okay okay and i am calling the meeting back to order at 11 39 a.m um and i just wanted to comment that i thought that the strip down thing is uh our version is much less wordy and i think it's easier to process and i'm really liking it there's one change that we we should make under the first paragraph which we talked about parents in gardening for good parents yes so that it's consistent okay and also one of those slides remove members because communities oh yeah oh no no it's just the members keep coming right yeah all right let me staff and communities integrated districts yeah okay that is consistent with our other board and then um all right and then in that same paragraph when you get down to the last line just reversing schools with students our students i was thinking the same things and communities now just really quick do we want to say schools or change it to staff because that's what we have in our life the success of our well it wouldn't be well we could have studied our students our staff and we would be all involved our students staff in that case we should have schools and we should have four in that game because we want the schools to be successful right yes well if you have research students understand that yeah okay so just do students staff and communities here okay yeah and that's consistent with our language throughout the documentary because students and staff are our students i kind of don't like that it says hour three times maybe our student staff and community section a paragraph three instead of to ensure fairness to all students i would say ensure fairness to each and every student i think so how about just each okay each student which is consistent with what yeah okay what's anybody else got anything in section b a or b i don't have anything in b okay i too of course um number three so back to this list of uh options i would kind of like to add for the last one where it says for socioeconomic status i would like to add or foster immigration or socio-economic status okay where are we going to put that let's make sure that everybody's happy with that change before we do it so before the order before socio-economic you would put foster comment immigration or um just if we're gonna do that what if we throw in something like housing housing yes foster housing immigration or socio-economic status housing immigration for social economic status there's an extra y in foster and should you say foster youth that's faster i like saying foster who's so foster youth because um first of all with some specialized students they could potentially be over the age of 18 so it's not true and also this is where we're turning this towards the community as well and foster parents deserve that poor treatment so foster status housing status okay and then anyone have any others did you want do we want it since we're adding foster household english learner status and that or does that apply i mean um maybe after age we add language proficiency english language proficiency in immigration not necessarily because you mean yeah because immigration standards you could be an immigrant from india and speak perfectly good english or you could be it's immigration or legal status um i i pulled i think we pulled the immigration status from the head code okay so so what did you say uh english language proficiency that comes from dr lee's edits to the original document bridge proficiency or foster housing immigration or socioeconomic status immigration yeah i don't think it adds too much to it okay what kind of names am all there's an extra space between gender and expression yeah she hasn't cleaned it up yet that's a formatting it's because it was taken from a different format and it jumped into this program yeah good eye color is still not on there we have one last recommendation and that is number 6e if we get out at the end to address opportunity and academic gaps okay so recognize and aggressively address what is that opportunity and academic gaps okay because you have disparities above limiting to academic disparities but that's yeah i mean what is when i'm not explaining it i guess [Music] you're right scott we don't need to maybe we need to change it to say opportunity disparities but do people understand what disparities are like and gaps when you get act it seems to me i i would leave it in your house i think it reads better if you swap the two words around though academic and opportunity gaps i'd be okay with that i still absolutely love the wording of d me too and like i said i think that boils everything down or not end what are you going to address oh no you're right d making sure that personal characteristics real or perceived will not predict any individual's educational outcomes and that's to me is the entire goal summarizing one one yeah yeah actually that should be under definition okay can we just everybody hide yourself um i mean obviously this is crap oh it's i mean yeah it's pretty darn good unless we want to make it is this an action item there's nothing so yes what i would recommend would be is we bring it to the may uh meeting as either a finalizing or first reading whatever i'm sure they're all watching right now i'm sure oh yeah on a sunday on a saturday morning i'm sure okay so um we've got the skateboard and the ramps we'll send this after you get back from your your holiday why don't you edit and send it to us i can do it today and then so we would then just i'll have them look at it and then let's bring it back from may for uh yeah and then when we post the agenda this will be part of the agenda population to see the public i mean yeah so that people can look at it so we would do it like we do any we would just do a edition of policy i can't remember the number we were using policy number of equity 415.

so okay okay i'm calling the meeting back to order at 9 43 am and we are continuing discussion on this so one well for me the csba like i said i do not like it except for the very person and i like orange counties it's very worried so from some redundancy then the policy but i like what it says except for the first sentence so if we can take the first sentence from um csva eliminate the first sentence for orange county and take that paragraph yeah like a good start yeah so you you like the first paragraph of orange county aside from the first sentence yes and vice versa and yeah and then csva's i like the first paragraph the first sentence but not these orange ones thank you so would it help if you're an agreement or a starting point if we pull up the orange county document take sentence number one out of the orange county document and put csva sentence number one there as a starting point at work okay and then this makes it available to the public so that's so it's not right now okay but what we can do to get further we could share it as we start talking through it before we before we dig into this can i just i have a couple of concepts that i want to um kind of just let you chew on while we're going through this so one of the things that i'm actually responsible for at work is is learning and researching and teaching about targeted universalism which is a concept that was developed um by the othering institute which is the part of kel uh burger kel and um basically what it says is that you have one goal and multiple strategies so in other words the goal is everybody gets good dental care the different strategies meet the peop the various groups whether they're socio-economic whether they're not spanish-speaking at home whether they're you know whatever it is whatever the the group is you're meeting that group at their point physically mentally and emotionally whether they need transportation whether they need money whether they need um extra tutoring whatever it is you're you're targeting your strategies to the population the ultimate goal is always the same so in other words we want everybody to be treated equally and have you know equitable outcomes not just the populations that have been historically marginalized we want everyone because you're right if you target one population if you target one population you're othering another positive so it's always this other population we need to have one population all of our students all of us students need to have equitable outcomes how we reach achieve that is different depending on where the person is and it could have nothing to do with their their race or their age or their anything else it's just where are they on you know the the spectrum of life in general the other thing um i wanted to mention and this is something that csva recommended is that we do i know i talked about before how some of the districts in the state have been basically put on probation so to speak they've been identified as extremely discriminatory districts and they are being told to go through this process it's kind of a punishment but it's kind of a great thing to support them in becoming better at diversity right but the first thing that they always do in these districts is they do a root cause analysis the reason for doing that is to identify unconscious biases that exist or conscious biases other people don't know about so like we might have a teacher that's you know that's extremely biased but they hide it well outside of the class and nobody knows or maybe you know we have a teacher that doesn't expect certain students to achieve whatever it is the root cause analysis is supposed to help us identify where where biases may exist so those were my two thoughts targeted universalism and a root cause analysis the first one applies to what we're doing as far as editing and the second one as far as what we might want to do in the future can i talk on a practical application so with special ed we have a disproportionate amount of uh after male students who are on iep the state has identified us over the years it goes back and forth within and so your root cause dialysis piece that's exact so to your point that is a practice that we even have got through with scoe difference to identify what what practices are we doing they can say why is it so disproportionate because your outcome should be similar to your population and so when we recognize we also recognize with african-american male students we disproportionately have higher suspension rates we went through that when we went into our d.a work so that your your process that you're explaining is something that is practically happening and it is actually it's a very eye-opening type of thing it's like what what can we do or what are we doing or what are we doing so anyway okay can i have you explain the second paragraph under equity education because i want to know if i'm looking at it wrong which one are you on second paragraph under a or for orange county so so my interpretation of that is the concept of educational equity goes beyond formal equality to fostering a barrier-free environment where all students regardless of their race class or other personal characteristics have the opportunity to benefit equally in order to succeed and thrive no problem with that so the next one the next oh uh [Music] calls on every adult to treat every student as capable and helps success and recognizes uniqueness and strengths of each student allowing for differences in time attention instruction and support to ensure all students can succeed academically and participate responsibly in our community so is that the one so so what that's saying to me is and again i didn't write this document but what i read out of that is providing opportunity that all students have equal access barriers are removed to help all students meet their fullest potential and for me regardless it means setting expectations right like you don't you don't set an expectation of failure based on what you perceive that person's characteristics but i read that what i see is that student regardless of whether they spend time studying or they um how much time they spend studying or attention in class or instruction support they get whatever we're supposed to move month we're supposed to make sure learning so really this is kind of an outcome i see with that in the learning environment we still have the the benchmark but how we get there may be different for you me or the other someone else we all we don't lower anything we have a high standard but how we access that information how we access that success may look different based on how you're demonstrating that it doesn't mean you know i only have to write one paragraph and you have to write 17 paragraphs it's if that's not what it means it's how do we get you to write 17 paragraphs so uh what do we need to do what do we have to do to get you past whatever barriers are existing in your life a good example of this in practice my son um had adhd and before he was actually in treatment for it in seventh grade he was quite the handful of his firefox because he was fidget and he distracted and so he starts distracting other students and uh mr myers music teacher at the time and he was incredibly frustrated but rather than just saying okay this kid's a problem and he's not going to succeed mr myers knows that my son came in before school to play around with the piano and was using youtube to learn you know he said okay this kid has a passion for music i don't want to burn that out but i have to allow my other students to succeed in class as well so what he started doing is he had a boss that would have my son empty his pockets to be in the class so that he could remove distractions he would find ways to remove my son's obstacles to help him succeed with the rest of us my son was still responsible for doing the same work as the other students but the things that were obstacles for him were addressed so that he would have the opportunity to succeed as well and frankly batman built a lifelong love for music in my son the other area we talked a lot about is the multitude of support so i may need certain supports to access and get in kelly may not um a student who might uh have a disability may have supports through an instructional specialist to access the curriculum it doesn't mean we're alone we're providing opportunity to make sure that students reaching their full potential let's get back to that paragraph because now we're really getting off topic we're meaning by the language i mean so so i think this is a fruitful conversation so are we all understanding it i mean are you getting right yeah so i think that's a great question that we can say so i think it's very relevant otherwise we're going to be designing a document it might mean something different to you and you and you yeah but we're just getting a little unlocked and another thing that i want to make sure is clear we're not saying district is necessarily not doing these things already it's just that we don't have a policy in place yet yeah this makes it intentional yeah yes successful policies are just under a different heading we're just making sure that we cover this so what can we what carol has up here just so you know is this is the the one we'll just have a working copy this is the orange county one obviously we'll take orange county please but if we what i heard was we'll dump that sentence at the beginning that was highlighted i don't know if you can do that and then we will add we'll toggle to the cia one more accurate find it there you go this one yeah okay and then if you take the first sentence on the first paragraph now is that yeah this one i can't see very well yeah one issue that i kind of have with the orange county documents is it seems to focus on uh racial inequities and loss over other inequities um so for instance things like disability or um homelessness or lgbtq or any other inequities that are covered by some faculty statements it you know it's set it doesn't technically exclude them but um it says the board establishes this policy in an effort to eliminate racial intolerance other forms of intolerance so it just kind of in my opinion it focuses on the racial it bosses everything else over okay together other forms of equities and then add awareness um actually though the second actually if if i go back down to section b3 though it does actually list other things so can we are we talking about the second sentence here so if we just take out racial but and other forms that he says this number three letter b describes it it does it does lay it out better so so never mind that may just be that i on you know this type of inequity or this type of diversity and so i think it would be good to remove a lot of that language let me just say what i think that second sentence could sound like ford establishes this policy in an effort to eliminate intolerance inequity opportunity and academic disparity services [Music] eliminate to the second intolerance would come out so uh racial yep right there leave the first leave that second intolerance yes um no no no racial here yeah yeah and i think that gets to what you were saying because then later it does clarify it but it this when you first read the second sentence it feels like it's just related to racial but it's all um and actually actually that's exactly a change uh the words that we're removing with the word all yes to eliminate all intolerance inequities of opportunity and academic disparities in our district perfect [Music] where's that the next one instead of just f strike we see and just say our schools are centers for culturally diverse learning where all students are educated with their fullest potential instead it would just say our schools our centers for culture diverse learning where all students are educated to propose potential period and then equity is critical to the success of our schools our students in our community so take out the rest steps is everybody happy with that equity is critical to the success of our schools our students enough um back to this document i like the idea of the definition of equity because that was discussed in the board boardroom um and i think it was dr lee that read the definition of equity i don't know it's the same verbiage as this but i think some definition would be beneficial the the other was i think with the uh didn't the end code or fair act yeah can pull it out yeah i'll find it um i really love email actually just um i just don't remember but i love that second paragraph now that we all understand uh same page i think that that's really well stated oh let's bring up mr jordan yeah if we were going to keep any of this i would take out formal if you're under definition this second paragraph yeah i like that second period okay um and then if we take a look at the third paragraph under section a equity is an interruption of systems structures policies and practices which privilege some students while discriminating against other students and i think that directly addresses nancy's concern about giving privilege to some while disadvantaging others what we want to do is make sure that everyone is succeeding and so and along those lines i was thinking right before after fairness and before by the following to add to all students so uh i'm sorry intended to ensure fairness to all students where are we um that paragraph third third paragraph down last sentence where it says um fairness and by the following at the end all right intended to ensure fairness fairness to all students um i don't know now i'm not sure about yet is that what you're talking about yeah to our students yeah fairness to all students i think by the following just is a lead into the numbered sections there so i just don't know if we're going to keep all of this because it may be a little redundant but we'll see and i might have been wrong so the fair act one it's very specific to social sciences it was a code it was instruction in social sciences shall include early history of california in the study of the role contribution of both men and women educational equity goes beyond equality to fostering a very very free environment for all students regardless all students period eliminate blah blah blah have the opportunity to benefit equally in order to succeed and thrive so taking out digging out regardless of their race class or other personal characters just saying there is if you were yeah no you're not it's saying we're all students period take that that that's exactly right carol you had highlighted but no leaving the have the opportunity to benefit equal because that finishes the sentence so just taking out regardless of their race thoughts or other personal characteristics there we go yeah um all students have the opportunity to benefit equally in order to succeed and thrive so that goes back to what we're talking about everyone having the ability to go up versus bringing something and not calling it out because you know your race or your social economic status may not identify how you're succeeding maybe it's the fact that you have a single mom and you have to take care of your kid sister at night and you could be purple little you know it does i think calling out the the characteristics limits initiative equity that's i don't know that's maybe i'll change my mind tomorrow that's my my perception at this point i can see that point of view i'm about 100 sure but i agree with it but i'm not 100 sure i disagree with it so it's something that yeah and you know i think it's a nice it might be a nice way to bring everyone together instead of othering people you know that we want this for everybody we're not we're not saying we're going to take away from successful students to support those that have bigger challenges we're saying that we're going to support the ones that have bigger challenges so that everybody has the same opportunity has you know better opportunities god only knows i support those that have the challenges yeah sure a couple of those in my own family yeah for sure i don't know steve i don't like the second paragraph i love that okay so what is it that you don't like about it let's let's read it because it's very wordy and yeah i mean if you can maybe break it up um and make two different sentences but because i you know you get kind of lost how about just take out an emphasis on because they're really big on these introductory phrases equity calls on every adult to t treat students how about eliminate everything all the time you could instead of every throw all in there all is kind of consistent instead of changing it to students and this doesn't remove the witness but yeah instead of every student what about treat each student because that acknowledges that the individual students need to be treated based off their individuals absolutely okay so then if we went to the word strengths and put a period after that and struck the rest of it i think we would be great done okay so equity calls on all adults to treat each student as capable of success and recognizes the uniqueness and strength of each student and recognizes their uniqueness and strengths yeah take all the rest of that out not be happy campaigning special ed was train them today or support them tomorrow i mean exactly even special ed you have to train them to be self-sufficient so let me read it again equity calls on all adults to treat each student that's capable of success and recognizes their uniqueness and strengths we can even take out recognize their uniqueness and strength no just oh no i like that i do like that okay my only concern is we're removing talking about removing um basically the part that explains what our goal is which is ensuring that students succeed academically and participate so let's take out then allowing for differences in time attention instruction and support and just go to ensure so then it would say equity calls on all adults each student is capable of success and recognizes their uniqueness and strengths to ensure to ensure that that to to ensure academic success to ensure all students can succeed academically and participate responsibly so leave it the same way so just take out from electing or just tip from of each student through sport so it'll go straight to ensure that okay sorry we come to an agreement now yep i think so okay so we'll take out this all right it falls on for all no all adults oh yes each student and then you know and then you take out everything from there to straight down to two so back one word there you go you got it okay yeah okay to ensure [Music] in our communities that mean is that like social to you is that what that means yeah yeah like socially mentally well we're trying to to build help build responsible adults regardless who will you know be educated but also will be good citizens so good and that's in our district uh strategic statement or whatever it is contributing is there a way we can better align this to our actual mission so that the wording here matches what's in our mission statement and i think with uh fairness because and then i don't have to memorize a fuzzy area where are we valuing people only on what they can produce and or are we valuing them on the fact that they're happy and healthy and not in jail responsible well what is it that we say we're doing when we have them do volunteer work in the community and that class they have advertising community service stuff yeah they have a name they call that yeah that contributing or no as far as what that um this says statement students will realize their dreams by developing developing communication skills reasoning integrity and motivation through academic excellence and are well-rounded education and being active citizens of our diverse community there you go so to ensure academic excellence and what's why that we just make a note to to align it with the the one we can just add being active citizens of our diverse community yeah i like that okay where uh so right where i'm at how about um to ensure and take out that all students can succeed and put just academic excellence and before you do that is everyone okay with that what's your academic excellence and then okay and then and become there's something wrong but let me just to ensure their academic excellence and no to ensure no don't put that in there [Music] and students achieve how about to ensure that students achieve academic and excellence and become active citizens there we go students achieve you yeah so academic it needed something to register yeah you know i would like to see something that includes the students i mean we want the adults to do it we want the students to do it as well oh i see what you're saying that that all staff students and and all staff and students treat treat everyone as capable of success yeah i like that right here what if we change it from all adults to everyone yeah calls on everyone to champions all stakeovers yeah well i think if we say everyone then it's pretty clear that means that students can violate this policy as well right and then parents and parents community members yeah everyone should be closing everyone to treat each student so that would be the student treating the student which is fine everybody calls on everyone to treat each student carol made a good point there we want to make sure that staff and everyone is treated fairly as well right right but this is specifically academic yeah having to do with their success their you know student success so we might want to address that in a separate paragraph and it might be two once you keep going can i take this down to ensure that can we go ahead and say each student achieves and become okay so to ensure that right here each student student yep and then you'll have to say each yeah each student achieves activity and becomes active citizen becomes an active citizen oh yeah eh i'm responsible probably well yeah yeah i think it's still a lot i mean even if it changed actively yeah actually responsible right maybe we need to be active responsible yeah mission who knows maybe that'll be next but it doesn't it doesn't um contradict it so i mean it just sounds better i think responsible does sound better right is that what we're all saying my my point of my point on this it may be somewhat minor but you can be active irresponsibly that doesn't make sense every calls causing everyone to treat each student as capable as oh we struck them capable of success yeah as capable of success each student is capable of success and recognizes their unique it doesn't sound right it's almost like a student of achieving success there it's almost like that bridge board again yeah each student i get what you're saying right as capable of success that does not make sense i think it does it is capable we're making sure that we're treating students i understand what it's supposed to say but it reads funny it should say it is comfortable okay so equity calls on everyone to treat each student as though they are capable of you see this that's right yeah that's indicated that they're not really getting yeah um as capable of success i think it's the of i don't think as capable as something success as capable of success i think maybe everyone as capable of success because it needs something to describe it yeah capable of achieving success treat each student achieving success does that sound better for you say it again calls on everyone to treat each student as capable of achieving success because you're right there's something like that loving the successes that they need something like no okay good good ones dudes [Music] thank you steve that ties it into our mission too so that's that's i like that instructions to all students the only thing is it's grammatically incorrect with which unless we put a comma or change it to that that's just kellyanne so it either needs to change to that or has a have a comma after that system structures policies and practices which i i think it works either no it's it's 100 certain that in which you're not necessarily interchangeable if the rest of the sentence is required then you use the word that if it's on the side to the statement then you use a comma and the word which in this case it is required so it needs to say an interruption systems that privilege some students while discriminating against other students so we're trying to interrupt things that privilege some while discriminating so what are we talking about there it's saying equity is an interruption of systems structures policies and practices that privilege some students while discriminating against other students so we're saying that we're trying to make sure that we're not privileging some students and discriminating against others but what are we what systems and structures are we talking about many that are identified over time and maybe back to that root cause thing that we have some something that we're doing that through this analysis we identify that this is causing a disproportionate outcome for one group but not the other you know maybe maybe we have i'm sorry counselors i i'm not picking like this where if you're listening to this maybe we have a counselor that leans towards putting white students in energy or ap classes you know and and is unconsciously doing it doesn't realize it's doing it or they see that you know someone who is spanish-speaking maybe they're not going to be achieved in the ap history another example is um there was a time that students were referred to by teacher recommendation and what that found is that teacher recommendations could have unconscious biases and so it was resulting in disproportional uh recommendations so what i've seen done as a different way to deal with it is test all students to see if they qualify for date regardless of teacher representation it's not something that was designed to create a bias but there was a bias that was identified so then that system was interrupted and found a way to see i had one in gate one in special edition full scale both so another good example is access to ap classes before there was always prerequisites and we've removed those barriers so anyone could take it so that would have been we're putting barriers in place that might limit someone's ability to take that higher level class i remember discussing that better about it when he was yeah about um what's i ready so so that's the type of thing okay when these obstacles are identified whatever they may be we need to identify them and then work to resolve them it's we're not getting bogged down in what they are because we want this to be a general strategy that can be applied to whatever we which is what this would help us do because it helps us look at it and say is this policy doing this or is this practical that which is exactly the ap thing the gate one we've always tested you know fourth grade all students you knocked out if you wanted but there are examples yeah i know when i was in school and eon ago it was teacher recommendation and we still have that as an option but but then you have to come present it's not just i think they'll raise gate therefore you're in there's a process yeah so since we're right here in somebody's restroom do you want to take another quick break or because or do you dance do you care if you step out or we've been no i just found it bothered me a bit oh i just didn't know if we wanted if we start moving along we're gonna i think that we should all be here okay okay let's take a break right now okay so i will recess the meat for about five minutes at 10 24.

and we would just we also put a mention in the weekly family email that just says the agenda note that the equity policy will be reviewed and addressed we do send in the thing saying there's we actually do that for the day too we've been sending a reminder okay so we could i mean i'd like to call it out particularly because it is such a hot topic i think that just making sure everybody is fully aware that we're going to be talking about this so that we don't have any disgruntled um families that say i don't know where you're doing it you know i mean i don't know can't hurt to over communicate mean we don't do that with everything but i think in this case so no just yeah so we will do a first and the second reading at the may board meeting so we can get this you could or if it depends how if you want more public input you could since you worked on it today obviously you went through it it's not you're not first you don't have to do a first and second reading but if we're gonna you do two ways you can either do it may finalize it be done or you could say first reading in may and then june would be the final reading we could make it a discussion item i think you would make it as an action for first right and it's going to be published you know like the public public before and then if the public reads it and then they can comment at that line item because they they have it i would say i just like to get it published enough i would say let's see what feedback there is if if we receive quite a bit of feedback um then we'll bring it back into then we might want to break it back suggested changes then i say we make an action item right there or make a motion right then dude so we can make it and if there's a lot of public then we'll we'll do the second reading discussion the results and changes right because it doesn't change then there's some amazing responses i mean the other thing is if we can receive public feedback later that that they would like changes this is a living document we can always change it later and yeah information yeah that's that's their fruit that's why i wouldn't call it whatever yeah and we're gonna call it so i think we've finished that item is there anything so uh advanced planning future meeting uh wednesday may 18th any suggested let's have another saturday meeting and we didn't vote to make a virtual i okay any know agenda items well if you can't remember now and you think of it later just send us an email that may agenda isn't that applies to members of the public as well if you come up with something you would like us to address please contact us yeah we have censure we have equity policy and we have the oh i believe we have that on there too oh wow so yeah that is so mr jordan's gonna do a lot of talking besides the eye ready do you want to postpone i write into you i'd prefer not to but okay but if yeah yeah we have the ela one right it june is the two meeting two meetings is the june meeting before or after we're out of school there's two both of them yeah so i would think that it would probably be better to do the i learned thing in may so that the families want to watch we have it might have it i haven't studied for that so it's not it's not hours and hours i mean it's just we're going to share the results because we have results from the second reporting member i think we should have two divided up two meetings two presentations we used to have two meetings if you're not yeah but we've already got posted and you have to add a section but we could add a special means because we have too much on the agenda but and i'm just saying if we're going to start adding evidence we have two reports we have the term limits we have the um censure and then we have equity this policy i have a feeling the censure conversation is gonna end um i think that maybe we should just see how the agenda is looking and if we feel that we're not going to be able to get through everything then create a special meeting after and don't forget our first meeting in june is also just a public hearing on lcap it's the annual abuse so that usually is a shorter meeting so if we need more time we could have other that's a good idea so we can see how this comes and if if it gets too much is that early channel yeah first week right first wednesday it's either the first or second well it should be the first because that's the one thing well at one point is trying to get the budget done because the budget we won't know and so lisa so we we used to i used to push it up as fast as i could but with that lisa's act it's killing her in the department so i'm like once june 8th and june 15th okay and school is out may 20th [Music] all right plus we have all the graduations i'm working on gathering that information i haven't gotten all of the data okay so i would recommend putting ilearn sooner in the agenda are they i ready sorry i keep saying i learned what's happening hr high school graduation considered seated so he no no she asked if if does the graduation count for a meeting yeah because it's not a gymnast right so like from um anyway we're off okay so okay so do i have a question to return second okay give me a chance oh do we have to do a roll call yes oh you got new vote trustee kelly yes trustee yes trustee anderson chair both sides let's go meet you she gets three back what should we talk about let's talk about wordle up there

okay i brought the wrong glasses ever since i had my eye surgery my eyes have just been okay and i'm calling the meeting back to order at 10 36 a.m number three under the mission statement same thing i just want to point out that it covers everything we talked about as far as the different groups yeah i i had glossed over that in my initial reading so i i had missed that so thank you for making sure that i'm aware though so i don't between one two and three underneath um definition i don't know if we want to strike that or maybe some of it belongs down in the mission because this is more an action than a definition like if we're talking about the deficit definition of equity but then we're talking about what we're going to do to counter it all under the definition of equity so it doesn't belong you know it doesn't belong there so you're saying just take end of the previous sentence at fairness and take out one two and three i would fairness period and they would eliminate those yep right maybe not learning but let's hold them in our back pocket and see if maybe we can use some of that language later but maybe not we'll just see okay so you want to highlight all this yeah too i would well definitely we're going to take out by the following um wait a minute can you seem to go out of that and then because i think you have too much language to all students period and then take out by the following okay yes so this no no no just take out by the phone yeah like that and change it to a period and then the rest of that i like highlight the one two three and and we're reserving that for maybe maybe yeah i mean like countering biased behaviors might be good language i wouldn't say that cause it's choose yeah if you go to text see how it says normal text go down right there and click on that i think it's because of your pictures you're so smart should we talk about this just for a second that one two and three we took one and two cut them down significantly and combined them it would it could fall under the mission so in other words countering biased behavior hold on did you read the mission first to see if that has similar um some of them do they do but they don't say anything about countering is this removing biases and barriers that contribute i think it's to achievement gaps which are unacceptable so that's talking specifically about achievement gaps but this is time well let me just let me just read what it said what i was going to say and if you don't like it i'm cool with that too but countering biased behaviors unfair policies programs and practices that consistently result in negative outcomes period and whether or not we need that i don't know you're right so i'm thinking between three and four it might be saying similar see i'm eating yeah and i think that countering those behaviors is more of a mission than recognized so maybe work on three and four and then using your verbiage like yes or maybe even um combining all three because we had a lot of redundancy there agreed can we go ahead and since we're talking about it okay let me go ahead and talk about that so instead of wrecking on mission number three taking out recognizing right that and changing it to countering conscious or unconscious biased behaviors so i had added conscious and unconscious and then we switched back up to number one above biased behaviors so countering conscious conscious bias behaviors and barriers that result in inequitable opportunities that result hearing uh countering conscious or unconscious behaviors and biases biases and barriers that result in inequitable that that can not get biased behaviors because that's what you had before so bias barriers not biased before you said bias should be taxes and biases and unconscious biased behaviors and barriers so biased behavior so we could just say biases is what you're saying and take out behaviors all right one more time countering conscious or unconscious biases and barriers that result in inequitable opportunities no behaviors thing yeah i mean i really feel like you might disagree i really feel like calling out all of the different biases is going to limit it no matter what we do it's good the more we try to be inclusive the less inclusive it will be because if we start naming all of the ways that we can bias that we have biased behaviors we're going to miss it's just like with the the discrimination or the recognition so those characteristics are probably directly from steve that document or the codes or the discrimination laws very similar um but i think we do need those because steve was making a comment on that paragraph above where we said all and we didn't name all because we have it down here so then if we say countering conscious or unconscious biases and barriers that result in inequality opportunities for students based on their real or perceived personal characteristics so take out groups of students because it's redundant it's unnecessary um uh that results in so countering conscious and unconscious biases and barriers okay so what does it start with countering so don't just recognize it do something about it okay uh conscious and unconscious biases and barriers con cio human city so t i n comes out and c i goes in so no t i can't see what no go back there you go t i o u s there it is conscious and unconscious or unconscious i'm sorry go ahead and finish it or you're dirty biases of barriers that result in equitable opportunities yeah so can can come out [Music] based on their real or perceived personal characteristics such as okay um now as far as calling out the specific groups first of all the phrase such as leaves this open to other groups as well and i'm kind of torn because i understand if we leave it more general than it applies to all but at the same time by leaving it more general it it leaves more room for some of these things to slip through the cracks yeah and so and we might be doing a disservice to populations and families and students who feel like they are being and i think why it may not be fully inclusive or something but it does cover me so it's not just race or just identity or you know it gives a broader spectrum greatness yeah great listening just about everything's on there but i color i mean you know it covers just about everything hitler certainly thought eye color mattered right yeah sorry um let me just build upon age or social well i think that it's got a simply because the list is numbered and so it's just a semicolon between each of the numbers it's just were you an english major no but i've been writing i've been a secretary for almost 40 years so you know how about are we done with that yeah number four i don't is before we do that um i mean obviously we're going to change much county skills to center joints so where are we okay with one and two i'd like one into it get number three above four seems to be a little repetitive of how we have three yeah i'm wondering if there's a way to include achievement gap to number three above so if you yeah if you can you add something about gaps in under definition number three eliminate all the other verbiage before so we could say result in inactional opportunities including achievement gaps for students based on their will received i like that so where or towards what if we just had inequitable opportunities or achievement gaps are you talking about three yes i was talking about yeah pulling part of four into three isn't that what you say so take oh oh oh thank you number three under definition that's a method for addressing the policy it's not i don't definitely not a definition of it right yeah it's not a definition and it could be part of the mission you're right equal distribution but when you do that through challenging and tolerant i mean by doing these things you're going to have to negotiate reality in realign resources yeah i'm just a little concerned that by calling this out that we're going to reallocate resources that gives people who are against an equity policy to require sorry people anyway you see what i'm saying is that this is kind of implicitly understood by what we want to happen they're going to have to reallocate resources they're going to have to just determine number three and just forget about it okay i don't know what's everybody think i'm talking too much no that's fine i'm not married i do partially like that um it's saying that when equal distribution of resources results in inequitable outcomes then we need to redistribute um i i do kind of like that but at the same time it it feels redundant with what we're saying elsewhere and i don't know that it okay maybe what we could do is add the reallocation or reimagining to another area where we talk about countering where we talk there's another place in here um where it says equity is an interruption of system structures policies and practices up above that's the third paragraph under a um equity is an interruption okay and then what are we trying to do interaction practices strategies um um it may be well i don't know that's weak it may be necessary to reallocate no um reallocation and reimagining of resources see then you're getting into behaviors and step definitions but really your systems your structures your policies and practices are about allocating negotiating i mean it's just really difficult it's just so the interruption is so equity is an interruption reallocation and reimagining systems opportunities and support that's what interruption means you're going to change what you're doing yeah to benefit so if you want to call those things out but those would be parentheses not that just that's too much can now come out because we've basically combined it all right negative wait wait wait can you go back i'm sorry no we did that okay we did that okay i'm sorry go ahead before we remove it let's let's leave it there for now in case we do want to borrow from it before we're done okay okay we'll leave the highlighter intending to delete it okay perfect okay so number four the only thing that's different from number three is that it's specifically talking to about achievement gaps so the question is do we say inequitable opportunities and achievement gaps or groups yeah or how about if we say instead of achievement gaps why don't we say academic outcomes inequitable opportunities and academic outcomes countering conscious or conscious bias in barriers that result in inequitable opportunities or academic outcomes for students based on their real beauty yeah very nice okay so we can strike number four in its entirety now just to be clear we're striking for all the way just that first paragraph taking out students of color are we gonna catch heat from taking that out or i know i'm the one that keeps saying we need to be calling out that's referring to specifically what they've got going on there um i think that yes that is an issue here but it's one of many issues and i think calling attention to just one group is at the ring yes yes so i like our definition of of what needs to be addressed above so it wasn't just me okay it was probably now that last paragraph so we're going to remove four but we're going to keep that last paragraph here no because it's indented so unless they did it wrong it is oh so that would be actually online it says number five i don't have a five interesting time yeah i don't have a five online oh i'm looking at tradition or commitment instead of admission okay so i i like that frankly um would say i was thinking that we should say something like striving to actively continuously disparities but maybe it's better committed to yeah says uh the center joining unified school district will disrupt all forms of discrimination in our school community by and then so the lead into the one through five of the mission one through four so the lead-in says already says the district uh will disrupt forms of discrimination in our communities by so then we can take out the school district information and committed to all the way up to the word actively by actively and continuously eliminating disparities dramatically speaking it is not right so okay we're taking out the orange county schools board of education is committed to because it's and then put by uh actually don't just start with activity yeah because it's that's why there's stimming goals instead of some periods which then at the end of oh and also it's missing a word and so we don't need uh continuously eliminating disparities in educational opportunities in its schools obviously our schools comma and in its schools and creating and supporting an environment equal unbiased and culturally responsible learning and so that whole last thing from supporting to system is one thought so it needs an and prior to that it also needs a comma oh no yeah you got it and creating and supporting yeah from you know you got it eliminating disparities and creating and supporting we need supporting what do you think of the oxford comma after unbiased oh yeah probably should have a comma there yeah after the word unbiased can we make that two sentences by creating and supporting yeah that would sound better so school so take out the comment and change ant uh bye i like that i like that much better saying school's period change eliminating to eliminate just i'm sorry schools period and then capital b yeah if you look at the grammar of the first three challenging accepting recognizing oh i'm sorry so so eliminated fair the point is that it's going to be fair very good okay sure it's about 11 o'clock we've got about an hour left and or would that be more under the procedures don't we get through it and see if there's anything that we would want to include in the mission and then strike that whole commitment section because it's a mission and a commitment seem like this to the same thing right we're committed to our mission or we could even do a number five and that because it starts to get like regulation like ar so if your idea is to create this what if you change the board commitment to board expectation if you look at three those provide general like expectations of how the district should operate maybe that's a way of getting your ass not around it but so here's kind of my thought i like number three in that section the rest i can move without what if we just made number three number five of the mission we've already talked about a lot of these things in the mission we have to reward it slightly to make it dramatically consistent but because i mean some of this abortion demonstrates commitment to equity by direct the superintendent to develop an equity plan to implement this policy we're already saying hey this is what we want you to do and i don't think it needs to be number six of the oh yeah i that's necessary i think this whole thing is is about directing him and again that goes back to implementation right yeah and i mean some of this is redundant promoter culture high expectations for all students we already talked about that but maybe we could change that expectation or maybe we could use that high expectations support and i think it'd be important of the commitment three to me that that list is probably the one that if we decide to somehow incorporate back up the expectations of like such as or something where we understand that these are the things we're doing okay i also like this language on number one active measures to provide an inclusive and emotionally support supportive environment free from discrimination so i think if we're gonna do expectations a section on expectation i know there's two two two subjects two options on the table right now one is to incorporate it into the mission one is to have a section called expectations if we went with expectations i would say um the district the school district shall take active measures to find an inclusive and emotionally supportive environment free from discrimination um to actually write every speech student kelly what if you moved your forget the commitment or expectation piece move sentence one out of commitments bring that into the mission somehow reward it and then rework three so that's also part of the mission that it's i think that would get added so since we're using the words we could say taking active measures is part of our mission taking active measures to provide an inclusive and emotionally supportive environment free from discrimination so that could be that can be like number five okay and we might look at you might look once we get it down reorgan maybe that becomes a yeah so i took this number one and changed it to taking okay and you are we officially moving it now well i just leave it there for a minute but if you go go down to number six yeah just delete those i think so delete six and seven and then i think number four and five two nine right is that okay guys um yeah yeah i mean four honestly i it needs to be done but that's not us that's just yeah it's part of his job yeah once we do what it's done so then why not number two seems to be actually part of what's now going to be number five so we have that similar information above so i think eliminating two is kind of redundant to what we've already said yeah did we talk about the and i really like this um language about um no but we it said is it in the first first paragraph [Music] is this it right up here with establishment you know academic disparities culturally diverse learning laws yeah pretty much covers it was it thank you yep that was so then number three becomes number six and leave it in its entirety or i know i think we need to reword it all right the board here by i mean change it to uh setting forth just to make it grammatically consistent mission is to take out the board here by sets and just change it to settings by setting forth a series of expectations indigent is a word that i we've not heard in our that's really used much what exactly does it mean indigent i can't remember homeless so basically i think that's important we should probably add that in there in that housing status housing so in other words race color ethnicity national order religion disability housing sex foster is another group that slowed down a lot yeah do we want to add it or no up in this it would be on number three of the mission identified right now lists all the different kinds of um b three um housing status i don't know if it's important enough um i mean that could fall under social media you could call out though like a foster buster youth i think would be more important we have a lot of those okay well this just says such as this it says such as these but it means correct the ones that are are would be i'd say foster youth homeless or at home and then also english learners are the the three missing but yeah so then those are like categories not characteristics so it's a little bit different so where you say or socioeconomic status you could say or foster housing or socioeconomic status so you put a semi after age i don't know i don't know groudon i know that's the kids they're 18 they have nowhere to go yeah i know it's ridiculous yeah but maybe we're trying to put something in here instead of characters it doesn't really fit with the list characteristics of some other part of the document no because you're saying characteristics characteristics such as ray is called an accident age based on their real or perceived characteristics through age or their you could even say their housing foster and social uh language language and social social economic stuff so go from foreign out there yeah i don't like adding there because dramatically that kind of separates it from the real or perceived there are real or perceived characteristics so by adding there yeah it does separate it maybe there's another one current because all of those would be real right and won't be perceived for instance let's say a student um is perceived associated it's perceived as uh for sexual orientation other students think they're gay and discriminated against them right even if they're not actually right but the thing is for the statuses my initial thought was those are real but they're not necessarily because you can perceive someone as being socioeconomically disadvantage when they really aren't it's just like their parents are too lazy to find their clothes whatever or they're thrifty who knows um or they just like that passion for socio-economic housing or staff let's just kind of clump those three things together and just borrowing from the uh the ed code for um prohibition of discrimination section it also mentions immigration status oh i like that so let's we're getting into the weeds here i mean it's just you cannot it can go on and on and on well that was so much so it just such as and leave it as is because we can we can continue this forever and then it's just gonna be it's gonna lose its meaning maybe what we do is if we write down those those uh groups and then once we get it done maybe we read through it again and you might see a spot where we can conclude yeah because i don't i just it it feels like now you're just creating that big list again and maybe maybe when we read it in its entirety it might pop out like gosh we're missing okay i i mean i don't know or maybe we take some of them out so like instead of saying race color and ethnicity we pick one race um instead of race color ethnicity and national origin we just say race religion in this section language is coming specifically from no person shall be subjected to discrimination on the basis of disability gender gender identity gender expression nationality race or ethnicity religion sexual orientation or any other characteristic that is contained in the definition of hate crimes set forth in sections i would forget about that 22.55 appeal code including immigration status in any program or activity blah blah blah i i like i like that except for the and what was the last part of what you read uh where you talked about status something or immigration or any other characteristic that has contained the definition of hate crimes set forth in section 422.55 penal code including an immigration status okay so what if we said expression or and um wait a minute let me think for a second or age and um [Music] okay so under item three on board commitment why don't we leave that top sentence and then list out all of the groups everybody sets forth a series of expectations with regard to equity in our schools communities that orange county schools will take active measures to include and list out everybody we want to include that takes away the the content of what's there yeah it's two different things but the language of it works um can we finish the number five yeah let's let's let's let's come back to b3 at the end um number six did you write that down okay and did you add the um all right let's let's look at number six in its entirety number three number five well it'll be number six now because five is taking active measures to private inclusion three from discrimination right so the number six would be setting for the series and setting fourth expectations with regard to equity in our school community we will take not a center joint that whole setting for the series of expectations with regard to in our school it's like prepositional phrase after prepositions right you could almost get rid of it except that doesn't grammatically fit with the rest of them um we'll disrupt all forms of discrimination our schools by setting active measures by creating by taking active measures taking active measures and we could do it that way no you're right you've got to have the expectations we're expecting them to take the activities by setting expectations setting the expectation set forth a series of expectations with regard to equity in our school community the center joint unified school district will take active measures too okay okay but we should be setting develop and promote a culture of high expectations for all students staff and stakeholders yep staff and stakeholders so setting expectations with regard to equity uh that our schools will take active measures too is that what you said um it says center unified school district will turn out measures too we're not there setting expectations regarding equity that and then take out our school community because that's just that the center joint unified school district will take active measures too right now setting expectations do we have to say with regard to equity this whole thing is about equity i mean that is the name of the policy right yeah setting expectations that the center joint unified school district will take active measures too i mean it's it's nice to have it but it does make it more wordy in the context of the equity policy i think it's unnecessary i'm not queen of like cutting words extra words but ironic right it's almost like you want to reverse those center universities we'll take the air well we're not we're not developing we're setting that expectation that everyone right yeah um in fact why don't we say setting expectation that uh all students and staff it's yeah maybe we put back in the school community the district that the sir joint unified school district staff how about your center community center joint unified school community center school committee center community will take active measures too yeah i think that's that take care of this with regard to yeah yeah okay and take out joint joint unified school district to communicate community yeah there you go center community will take active measures [Music] and then i like nancy's uh addition to number a which is to high expectations culture of high expectations for all students staff and families and communities community members because that's going back to the main line of center community good expectation no because now we are able to for instance we can expel a student for what they do on facebook right but i'm just saying i mean theoretically this policy says the neighbor that does not attend the schools or have any students attend the schools we expect high things from him as well and i think i think that's a good expectation so then when we say high expectations does that ambiguous of what those people um see and just take a minute their housing prices depend on how good their schools are so they have a statement but yeah i'm just saying yes they have a mistake but i'm just saying we are also expecting of them okay development i like it too i love the high expectations i'm just ambiguous like i think it's high expectations of what i think just leaving it ambiguous is is beneficial because as we go and you know we continue to set high expectations and everything as we meet them we continue to set higher expectations so i i think the ambiguity works here and you have for all students staff it should be our community the community or like or working with members or just take out all for students staff and community high expectations for student staff and crew okay identify and eliminate inequities in access to opportunities good right continuously raise the level of achievement for all each student while eliminating academic disparities for each student while eliminating academic disparities sure that personal characteristics will not predict any individual's educational office okay and honestly that right there i think raises it really well because that includes all of the other i mean seriously this whole thing can be boiled down to that it really can actively recruit retain a diverse workforce now this is something that dr lee had said that's all well and good but then to just take people who are you know of diverse backgrounds and dropping them into an environment that is not diverse friendly can create problems and so would maybe need to have a counterpoint to this well so we're talking about our school and we do have our district and we do have a diverse district so that's true i think that this speaks to us and it's all support so it's the support kind of possessing no i like what it says i was just saying maybe we need to add another thing to it but i think the whole policy speaks to the to the you know getting that environment not saying the is culturally affirming enrollment classrooms in schools there we go there's a new culture um and the community to build and sustain a culture emblematic of the ideals of the secular policy i like that well see our parents guardians added in here should you use the same language in number one where we said nancy's right or or get rid of parent garden please assume their community yeah actually i think we should take a new scroll on parents yeah because parents are part of the community so see right there where nancy suggests the student staff and community just so it's the same yeah so taking out parents guardians in number eight or put it up yeah let's take it out they're part of the community i agree that's why i don't know that and the community and i really like item i also because that addresses what was kind of taken out earlier and it's silly but it's my students first yes it's not silly it's and it's also consistent so i just didn't catch that uh to say the we're not saying sorry words okay then the last one and then we're just going to take out everything else can we can we just do a browse on it and see if we can add those other character not characters highlighted portions yeah i think we can take out the highlighted portion at this point if you want to send the printer oh so we want to look at a little bit yeah [Music] i think we're good um do we want to go back to number what was it three where it lists all the different places well let's print it out but i think that last line in in uh the last yeah it got at that funding yeah it did [Music] there we go you know it thinks it knows better than you don't you love were you ever on wordplay suggested we start with the orange county one instead of the csba one and i thought it was just like another one did she suggest are we gonna listen she suggested that we look at that because well that's just how to develop them i think you know i kind of like maybe we need to also look at some of her language to see if any of it needs to be incorporated um it's more cleaning up there's time okay um find another place and paste it i guess i just want you to see it well up here on the screen working in adobe huh are you working in adobe illustrator now this is in google docs oh that's why limited capability yeah so i can dump it into forward word and transfer and manipulate work for the format not more well like those indentations on the second and if we want to make it ada compliant it needs to be at least decide yes i understand um well it would go once board approved it will go into gambit yes so then they probably are already ariel or ariel i think yeah which would be the right thing [Music] yeah it depends if i'm doing dates i like to use a font that has equal size people read this quick break and then we can use restroom stuff for sure yes sure but we have to keep it brief because we only have half an hour left okay can we extend yeah i guess we could i mean i don't know because we started late that's for sure i would rather i don't know if there's limitations no wow look at how short we got it okay so okay so we will take a recess at 11 30 for what five ten minutes five five minutes very short okay five minutes okay okay and i am calling the meeting back to order at 11 39 a.m um and i just wanted to comment that i thought that the strip down thing is uh our version is much less wordy and i think it's easier to process and i'm really liking it there's one change that we we should make under the first paragraph which we talked about parents in gardening for good parents yes so that it's consistent okay and also one of those slides remove members because communities oh yeah oh no no it's just the members keep coming right yeah all right let me staff and communities integrated districts yeah okay that is consistent with our other board and then um all right and then in that same paragraph when you get down to the last line just reversing schools with students our students i was thinking the same things and communities now just really quick do we want to say schools or change it to staff because that's what we have in our life the success of our well it wouldn't be well we could have studied our students our staff and we would be all involved our students staff in that case we should have schools and we should have four in that game because we want the schools to be successful right yes well if you have research students understand that yeah okay so just do students staff and communities here okay yeah and that's consistent with our language throughout the documentary because students and staff are our students i kind of don't like that it says hour three times maybe our student staff and community section a paragraph three instead of to ensure fairness to all students i would say ensure fairness to each and every student i think so how about just each okay each student which is consistent with what yeah okay what's anybody else got anything in section b a or b i don't have anything in b okay i too of course um number three so back to this list of uh options i would kind of like to add for the last one where it says for socioeconomic status i would like to add or foster immigration or socio-economic status okay where are we going to put that let's make sure that everybody's happy with that change before we do it so before the order before socio-economic you would put foster comment immigration or um just if we're gonna do that what if we throw in something like housing housing yes foster housing immigration or socio-economic status housing immigration for social economic status there's an extra y in foster and should you say foster youth that's faster i like saying foster who's so foster youth because um first of all with some specialized students they could potentially be over the age of 18 so it's not true and also this is where we're turning this towards the community as well and foster parents deserve that poor treatment so foster status housing status okay and then anyone have any others did you want do we want it since we're adding foster household english learner status and that or does that apply i mean um maybe after age we add language proficiency english language proficiency in immigration not necessarily because you mean yeah because immigration standards you could be an immigrant from india and speak perfectly good english or you could be it's immigration or legal status um i i pulled i think we pulled the immigration status from the head code okay so so what did you say uh english language proficiency that comes from dr lee's edits to the original document bridge proficiency or foster housing immigration or socioeconomic status immigration yeah i don't think it adds too much to it okay what kind of names am all there's an extra space between gender and expression yeah she hasn't cleaned it up yet that's a formatting it's because it was taken from a different format and it jumped into this program yeah good eye color is still not on there we have one last recommendation and that is number 6e if we get out at the end to address opportunity and academic gaps okay so recognize and aggressively address what is that opportunity and academic gaps okay because you have disparities above limiting to academic disparities but that's yeah i mean what is when i'm not explaining it i guess [Music] you're right scott we don't need to maybe we need to change it to say opportunity disparities but do people understand what disparities are like and gaps when you get act it seems to me i i would leave it in your house i think it reads better if you swap the two words around though academic and opportunity gaps i'd be okay with that i still absolutely love the wording of d me too and like i said i think that boils everything down or not end what are you going to address oh no you're right d making sure that personal characteristics real or perceived will not predict any individual's educational outcomes and that's to me is the entire goal summarizing one one yeah yeah actually that should be under definition okay can we just everybody hide yourself um i mean obviously this is crap oh it's i mean yeah it's pretty darn good unless we want to make it is this an action item there's nothing so yes what i would recommend would be is we bring it to the may uh meeting as either a finalizing or first reading whatever i'm sure they're all watching right now i'm sure oh yeah on a sunday on a saturday morning i'm sure okay so um we've got the skateboard and the ramps we'll send this after you get back from your your holiday why don't you edit and send it to us i can do it today and then so we would then just i'll have them look at it and then let's bring it back from may for uh yeah and then when we post the agenda this will be part of the agenda population to see the public i mean yeah so that people can look at it so we would do it like we do any we would just do a edition of policy i can't remember the number we were using policy number of equity 415.

okay [Music] good job congratulations [Music] thank you okay congratulations to our columbus east top 10 seniors we are now going to move to columbus north so mr pemberton i'll have you come up as we are starting to play the video [Music] hi i'm matthew i plan to attend a four-year university hopefully followed by medical school my favorite part about the bcs experience was being on a tennis team all four years we've made a lot of great memories together and made a lot of great friends to stay as well my name is will literal i plan to attend the kelly school of business at indiana university and my favorite part of the bcxc experience was joining the cross country team and eventually winning the state championship my name is shaylon lee i plan on attending purdue university to major in computer science and the teacher that had the biggest impact on me in bcsc was mr spock because he was supportive in and out of the classroom and his classes first introduced me to computer science hello my name is tiffany poo i'm planning on attending a four-year university either purdue university or columbia university to study computer science my favorite part of the bcsc experience was all the programs i was able to get involved in whether that was athletics or music i really enjoyed being able to explore my interests outside of class my name is judgment wong i plan to study computer science at purdue university and my favorite part of the bcs experience has been the wide availability of activities such as math modeling and invade which have really allowed me to find what i enjoy doing my name is sam settle i plan on studying molecular life sciences at indiana university and the teacher that's had the like greatest impact on me is probably uh mrs bailey she introduced me to the c4 biomedical pathway and she was also my mentor for my senior project my name is anushka nayer and i plan to attend indiana university at the kelley school of business major in marketing and my favorite part of the bcsc experience has just been being a part of the student-led organization outside of academics such as key club and the triangle because they're both sort of giving me the opportunity to discover my strengths and interests and they've given me the opportunity to take on the position of a leader and help others discover their own interests and overall it's just been a very rewarding experience and i hope to sort of take everything i've learned over these past few years with me to college and beyond my name is trade osborne and i'm planning to attend kelly school of business at indiana university to study finance my favorite part of the bcsc experience was getting to go through my whole education with the people and grow up with my best friends hi my name is sanjin and jane and i'll be going to iu bloomington to major in chemistry on a pre-med track my favorite part about my high school experience was having the ability to explore a variety of my interests both academically and in the liberal arts through the various opportunities offered at columbus i'm planning to attend university and the program at bcsc that helped me decide what i want to do is the c4 biomedical program [Music] [Laughter] you all very much as uh mrs beck said earlier and she is a tough act to follow so but i will do my best so uh to the north top ten we'll follow the same uh example set by the east top ten uh matthew lew okay i apologize he may not have been able to make it will literally jaewon lee tiffany foo just one one sam settle and this good night paige osborne sanjana jane and rishi rao and i would like to present you the columbus north top 10.