do you have a motion to approve someone that was pushed by mr babjack and seconded by mr hoffman any questions or comments for mr mayors if not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye all right proposed emotion carries 5-0 we'll move to 5.2 the out-of-country field trip to france and spain we have mr g and fermi thank you mr president the crown point school world language department is seeking approval for an out of country field trip to france and spain for the summer of 2023 trip will be offered to french and spanish students in grades 10 through 12 and the teacher sponsors are ashley nazar and jolene smith tripp has been booked through ef educational tours which we have used for many many years for these type of overseas trips liability and trip insurance are included in the entire package teachers have secured the required chaperones and everything seems to be in order the administration is recommending the school board approve this out-of-school out-of-country field trip to france and spain for the summer of 2023.
in his tenure coach giffen has produced an outstanding 201-60 record 0.770 win percentage 7 out of 20 win seasons five mint titles four marion county tournament championships five sectional championships four regional championships two semi-state championships one state runner-up and the 2020 ihsaa state championship coach giffen and his staff have already produced nine indiana all-stars i miss basketball indiana as well as 15 division one players prior to coach coaching the girls team he spent ten years in various capacities under coach keefer and the boys program at laura storm coach giffin previously spent one season as the head voice freshman coach winning the prestigious marion county championship in 2004. following that he served four years as the head boys jv coach compiling a 67-11 record with those teams he also served as coach jack kiefer's top varsity assistant for two years an honors graduate of ben davis high school where he played basketball baseball and tennis giffen was named a member of the indiana all-state doubles tennis team in 1995-96 while in college at indiana university chris served as a basketball manager for three seasons under legendary hall of fame coach bob knight following his graduation with the bs in secondary social studies education chris became a graduate assistant coach for coach bob knight at texas tech university in 2003-2004 presently chris is in his 17th year of teaching in the special education department at lawrence north high school according to superintendent dr sean smith coach giffin has demonstrated commitment to the students and student athletes at norris north and has taken the girls basketball program to the next level i have full confidence and visibility continue the tradition of excellence in the boys program at lawrence north high school lauren swan principal mr brett krauser shares coach chris smithen will continue the tradition of excellence at lawrence north high school his student athletes perform at the highest level both in the classroom and on the court coach giffen believes in education-based athletics and has always cared deeply for his kid regardless if they are in the classroom or on the court his resume speaks for itself as he's proven to be one of the best basketball coaches in the state of indiana over the last decade mr mike penrose chris and his wife jennifer have two girls bailey and emerson and son harper congratulations uh that's quite the introduction um i'm humbled to take this new position and opportunity and very grateful for the continued uh belief from my administration and everybody here very grateful for the opportunity and again um i want to say thank you especially to coach kiefer and the people that have been so meaningful and helpful and have you know led me to this this day so it takes a village and certainly win with good people and i've had the blessing of having that drought so thank you [Applause] thank you very much my wife jennifer is here she's always my number one fan thank you this evening we also are here to recognize james lamplin named head girls basketball coach at lawrence central high school you can come forward this evening the school board of the metropolitan school district of lawrence township has approved the transition of coach shannon lamplin from that of associate head coach for lawrence north girls varsity basketball to that of head votes for lawrence central girls varsity basketball coach lampley has an extensive experience as both a player and a coach she graduated from urbana high school in illinois in 1993 where she helped lead the team to three state final fours while in school she was honored at the 1993 gatorade player of the year miss basketball and a kodak all-american she went on to attend purdue university majoring in organizational leadership and supervision during her four-year career with the boilermaker she helped me purdue to three big ten titles in 1994 95 and 97.
i just don't know how much more we can give you other than the wampanoags want this the town wants this miss wait um i know that you're a no along with miss jenkins um i can tell you that lynn turner in the election was only a few hundred points few hundred votes behind these two you know if you want to give her an issue to run on next year i think that by going against the will of the people that would be certainly an issue that i'm sure she would embrace and lastly ms jenkins i know probably in your circle that you run with you probably wouldn't get much pushback they probably want you just keep your vote the same but you mentioned yourself you're a political science professor i am a student a political science of of umass dartmouth but it was smu at the time and i think democracy has spoken if i got 19 of the vote and i ran against you and you got 81 percent and i said i'm smarter i know better i know school kids better i should be the one it would be hard for you to say yeah let's just give it to george he's got 19 of the vote yeah you know maybe the voters were just wrong the voters aren't wrong so please you know we have an opportunity for you miss jenkins admit let's wait to to come around to the yes side thank you [Applause] my name is david ahrens i have lived at dartmouth since 1990 my kids attended dartmouth schools and i appreciate the opportunity to say a few words to you first the referendum is not the only thing you must consider but the group that sponsored the non-binding mascot referendum is now demanding that you regard it as a binding referendum placing the issue on a town ballot reflects their contempt for you and a majority of the native americans we've never heard from on the issue of the mascot it turns out that the six organizers of this group were all members of the dartmouth republican town committee from their eight-day financial filing with the town clerk the group's top donors were the wife of one of the members and a republican florida real estate tycoon running for florida senate the fact is this issue has always been about republican culture wars and you committee members do not have to enlist in that war as the only body actually responsible for the schools the committee and by that i mean the school committee not the town republican committee you should be the ones making the final decision on the mascot it's an issue of human dignity of how we show respect and care for children of color in our schools as well as a matter of how we want to project our image at away games finally there are tribes offended by mascots throughout the region that have never been consulted native americans with the strongest connections to dartmouth can't vote here and those who can vote here are formal members of a tribe 25 miles away on martha's vineyard these may both be realities of the navy native american diaspora but that is precisely why you need to listen to many more indigenous voices on this issue the other reality is that the referendum was specifically engineered to dismiss native american concerns by permitting a town of overwhelmingly white voters to decide a moral issue as if we were deciding upon a homecoming queen that was a shameful call by a town selectman who was thankfully voted out of office the referendum should never have been placed on the ballot thank goodness it was non-binding and thank goodness that the committee still has discretion to make the final call don't hand over that discretion and your mandate to the town republican committee tonight thank you thank you michael matos i have three daughters in the school system including one here at the high school to the best of my knowledge no local tribes petitioned the school committee to have the high school's logo removed stating after almost five decades that they were suddenly offended by the use of the image or the word indian instead it was my understanding that this effort to remove the indian logo and to change dartmouth high's identity came internally from members of the school committee in their personally selected subcommittee that did not sound right to me when i heard that so i volunteered to help the defend dartmouth ballot question committee not because of my political party affiliation as some have tried to portray and the dartmouth defend dartmouth ballot question committee is not some militia group as others have tried to insinuate the ballot question committee was formed to help make other parents and voters aware of this effort to remove the dartmouth high school logo and seek community support to defend the logo via the april 5th non-binding referendum vote this is not a political issue this is a community issue not red or white it's green and on april 5th the voters of all political parties united and told the school committee where they stand i was encouraged to hear that everyone seems to agree that we should utilize this opportunity to strengthen native american education for students but now the question is will the school committee stand with the voters i truly hope they will but if not i assume that there will be recall efforts and dartmouth voters will have opportunities in upcoming election cycles i'm sure there will be other candidates that will step forward as a result of this issue to offer their service to the town and run for school committee voters will then have the opportunity to vote for candidates that respect their opinions instead of those who think they know better than them thank you [Applause] hello i am lynn turner i recently ran for school board on my campaign trail the hot topic one of the biggest hot topics was what do i feel about the logo and that was asked of me as well as my fellow candidates running for school board chris oliver and john nunes and we all three said that we would support the logo and the name and the logo john and i signed a pledge and chris oliver wrote a letter that was read in place of debating at the candidate debate forum that he would keep vote to keep the logo that was while we were running then came the vote the rear record numbers that showed up for the election and there was an 81 percent uh vote by the town to keep it i urge you all to vote yes to keep the logo in lieu of how much the town is in support of it and i think that it would be best to put our energies into creating a curriculum that's rich and celebratory of our local history and if we do this we can honor our native american roots here and work together left right center and make great things happen for dartmouth thank you [Applause] i'm gretchen baker smith i'm going to simply remind the school committee respectfully that your charge is to ensure the safety and dignity and vitality of children and youth and it's not about what the adults think it's about what the research shows which is that mascots with a native connection have a negative impact on youth who are indigenous and also confirm stereotypes of non-indigenous youth you can't refute that i really feel deep frustration that it is at this point and i want to just appeal to your moral fiber to do the right thing on behalf of the youth and that it doesn't really matter what other people say you can't vote on racism but if enough children and teens say this is harmful to me we need to listen to that and that is your charge thank you respected school committee member my name is shelly zhang dartmouth town resident i'm here today tonight just to show that i have done studies regarding this argument just brought up that the agility psychological harm produced by the use of native american mascot the supportive articles by david stenan and others in 2020 is a comprehensive review of empirical research fundings the primary work is done by freiburg atl in 2008 titled of warrior chiefs and the indian princes the psychological consequence of american indian mascot the first study in this work is conducted with 48 american indian high school students divided in three group first grade group is being showing a image of chief or hall the second group is showing with the image of princess punk hunters and the third group group is showing with the text description of their top stereotype negative outcomes and then students were asked to write down the first five words that comes to their mind these words then being classified as positive and negative but the result is the american indian mascot representation has more positive association than the negative representation presented in the stereotype negative outcome conditions even the author has to admit this result suggests that american indian mascot representation are not always regarded as negative but they did not stop there in the second study they added control group where students were not showing any of these three primers and then the word association activity is replaced by a by year questionnaire then it is found all three representations significantly depressed stated self-esteem score but the surprising result is chief wuha and pog tonghos depress the self-esteem even more than the stereotypically negative outcomes why the study cannot address how this undermined effect occurs but the author of the comprehensive review articles quickly jumped into the conclusion native muscles regardless of the type and regardless of whether they are perceived positive or negative they are all harmful to the psychological well-being of the native use this conclusion is far too bored overgeneralized and we must question its validity and reliability gave the numerous limitations in this experimental setting including very small sample size very small number of variable values and an over simplifying the long term psychological well-being with just the one-time one-shot questionnaire score the most fatal flow in this study is the failure to recognize uniqueness of each artwork and the societal context where the image is being used how this logo is being created and what kind of meaning from the people who use it has associated with with it this is our that most indian logo and there is no study support this logo has any psychological harmful effect on native use please support use of this logo thank you good evening uh chris pereira um town meeting member and former school committee member um thank you for uh allowing the opportunity to have a final discussion on this topic um some quick facts for everybody to kind of uh remind themselves about number one you know we've been at this uh kind of issue now for going into a fourth calendar year um it's time for folks to have some finality on this issue the town deserves that the people spoke extremely loud direct and clear on april 5th in a very high turnout election and another reminder that every dartmouth wampanoag every dartmouth wampanoag is for this logo and wrote you all a letter no tribe despite rhetoric from some people no tribe has come out against the logo have they gone on record against mascots that's correct but we don't have a mascot we have a logo i urge you tonight to uphold the will of the voters and vote to reaffirm this logo the people of this town have spoken and they deserve finality no more delays no more discussion no more excuses and no politics thank you very much [Applause] good evening rene vieira dartmouth educators association um town resident and parent of school children i originally was coming this evening to speak to you about um something else that uh we will discuss in a moment um but um because i'm an educator in town and um i just want some records to be clear for folks that are listening um i was a i did vote this uh in this past election and to my son's dismay i chose to not vote for or against the indian logo we here in this high school and in this district we are all about trying to make all children feel inclusive it is not my decision and i am grateful it is not my decision it is yours it is a burden that i think is unfairly put on you folks but it's also a decision that is probably i will ask the audience to remain quiet while our speakers are sharing their thoughts show courtesy for all of our speakers please it is unfair that you're in this particular situation i would just like to recognize that what we say to our students is that we bleed green we have pride in dartmouth public schools whether that needs to be a logo or a mascot i am unsure it's not my decision to make it is yours but i would just like to say that i'm sorry it it is political and it is political when folks are threatened to be voted out of a particular position i want you to be here for the students in this town i want you to be here for my children okay that's what we need we need children to recognize that they are he she them they are just unified and we need to accept them okay um so i just want that on record and last thing i'd like to say is that yes it was the greatest turnout that we've had in a number of years still less than 20 percent of dartmouth spoke so you can say 80 percent sounds great 80 percent of less than 20 percent spoke all right that doesn't change your decision i'm not asking you i just want folks that are listening out there to just understand that we can sway our numbers and i don't envy the position and the decision you need to make that being said good evening ladies and gentlemen my name is renee veer and this is my wonderful colleague jody parisi and we are here this evening standing in front of you because we know that you have the lucky task this evening of selecting the subcommittee groups so you know you get names in a hat or the short straw you have to draw um we are the queens of negotiations and um though we've enjoyed uh mr nunes holding on to that particular sub chair what's what i'm looking for designation or assignment thank you we would welcome anyone else that might be interested in just sitting in on negotiations with us for our dea contracts and i just wanted to point out that there are some districts who actually will hold some meetings in the evening recognizing that folks do have daytime commitments so if that's something that anyone else would like to be interested in whether you end up being the sub chair or not you know that you are more than welcome to join that is your right we do welcome any and all and we'd be very willing to um change meeting dates if there was a meeting or two that you would like to sit in on and we're beginning negotiations um dr gibbon and i and jody we're hoping that they're positive smooth sailing and quick because there are a lot of really important things to do and we thank you for your time thank you thank you thank you um i think we've had over 10 minutes now for public comment so i think we're going to move on to the next item on our agenda i will entertain a motion to approve the regular session minutes for april 4th 2022.
oh we were fit when when i first started superintendent i think it was 15 16 million before so we've been getting close you know getting closer but still not there and if anybody wants to double check any of these these resources are on new jersey school boards association website so here's our tax history and as you can see over the last five years the total total taxes for the last five years has gone down four percent or an average of 0.82 every year now for our budget so these were our strategic planning goals which are still in place i think we're in year three of that um so those have not changed our main goal uh every year seems to be decreased students and and the teacher ratio some of our classes particularly at the high school are very very high i think we're hovering around 30 30 kids per classroom um so that's a little high and i know at the middle school i think we're 29 30.
okay i'm getting us to slide 15. i have some concern when you start talking about using referral data because i think you're missing a whole group of information when you're only using referral data can you expand on that um i don't you said something i don't know if you i don't know if i read it but you said we're going to use referral data so one of the things that as you monitor the health of behavioral instruction on how we're doing is you want to look at for example if we were looking at fights that were happening at the high school are they happening in the classrooms or are they happening in hallways or they have oh they're all happening outside of bathrooms well then how are we redirecting our resources to do that or if you're looking at office referrals for disrespect in the classroom is it happening across the board or is there a certain teacher that has a lot of the office referrals for that and they might need some support so this is really looking at how are we looking at our the health of our instruction as we teach and reinforce and build relationships and i understand what you're saying and one of those pieces is that one of that is attendance another could be looking at those but what did you say at the end ellie sorry i'm i'm i don't disagree with any of what you're saying but what what i'm saying is you're you're missing a whole group of kids that are that are giving you some good data on what's going right if you're only looking at referral data so are you saying that we should be using the staff the student survey data um i think i think just as much as you're using the referral data yeah to identify what's working yes but to identify where we need to target improvements i think but that will also that'll also give you that too i just like i just i just want to caution you that just using referral data isn't really giving you a whole picture i don't think right it's just saying where we need specific areas of improvement um right and then slide 22 okay slide 22 um analyzing data to improve your instruction you said it was a high need but only 11 of the staff said that right and what i'm looking at that is the combination of high need and moderate need um of you know where the and i was combining those two pieces and that comes out in the top three i get that but here's my question to you which has been a question for many years now how are you looking at data if you're giving different tests so that is something that we need to work on but in our new k-8 assessment especially that we implemented this year that's everybody using the same data to look at our literacy and our math instruction on what that looks like and then as you're probably aware the high schools have been working on grading practices and finding common uh assessments among courses we're not there yet but we've been working on that for a good eight years now how long have i been here um slide 27 i'm almost done i swear that's that was my concern with five 22.
thank you mr jim firm we have a recommendation to approve the out-of-country field trip to francis maine for crown point high school students from june 15 to 26 2023 uh do we have a motion to approve soul move second moved by mr angel in second by mr hoffman any questions or comments from mr g and fermi if not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed that motion carries 5-0 and we have 5.3 disposition of obsolete curricular materials mr g in fermi well thank you mr president uh crown point school is seeking school board approval to dispose of obsolete curricular materials which are no longer utilized by the school materials in question are old social studies textbooks in the areas of economics government history and psychology per school board policy if approved textbooks would be disposed by offering to students donating the materials or appropriately disposing any remaining materials the administration is recommending the board authorized disposal of these absolute curricular materials as outlined by board policy mr g fermi for the recommendation to dispose of absolute critical materials uh motion to approve so second i'm moved by mr smith and second by mr hoffman any questions or comments on the disposition of these materials all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries 5-0 and uh 5.4 policy revisions and additions i think we're dr charles are you going to take this um so we're bringing to you tonight for your consideration a new board policy policy 1310 and this policy re is related to uh school board members being able to participate in school board meetings uh via distance of whatever that might be whatever that reason may be as is spelled out in the policy just as a brief update for you through indiana code there were changes made in light of the last two and a half three years and the public emergency that enables now school boards other civic boards to be able to have a policy in place to permit board members to be able to attend and participate and through voting as well as long as they have a policy so this policy that we're bringing to you tonight that is included uh for your review uh lays out this the particulars for that we are suggesting uh and obviously your choice to waive the first reading and go right to the second reading of this policy toward prove it this evening thank you doctor for the recommendation to prove to waive the reading of the policy and approve policy 1310 do we have a motion i move to reprove and waive the reading second moved by mr hoffman and second by mr angel any questions or comments here's the thank uh dr terrell mr keebler putting this policy together it came up for a little bit of discussion at the end of our last meeting and it uh you know i was unsure at the at the time but it seems like uh the right way to go was this the neola policy we no longer are using neola so we actually got this one from isba okay and working at the state level therefore that's correct you know what i actually do have one question what what was the uh need or was there a need to have a certain amount of time uh to declare that the board member would be absent i think they said 24 hours yeah 24 hours they had actually indicated their suggestion was like 48 20 or 36 to 48 hours um we went with 24 just simply to have time to facilitate getting a meeting set up digitally to be able to go back and forth with that okay um that's the reason for the 24 hours if there was some kind of an emergency situation that would take place but i mean that i think that's the conversation between mr warney now because he's the president and i to have the to see if we can facilitate that and do everything we can to make it because i could just see it being you i like the flexibility of being able to do this but i could see the need for you know if somebody were to be ill and didn't want to come to the meeting but they were well enough to still attend um virtually or if somebody gets called out for work and you know they're traveling that type of thing those things can happen last minute so there is flexibility to still have those at this point ultimately the loss would be that the vote you'd still obviously attend the meeting right just just be official okay right i mean um and i don't i don't have to i think that's for you guys too to have the discussion if you'd like that to be moved um to just inform rather than to give within 24 hours i don't have a problem with that i mean that's that's amongst the five of you and how you decide to um utilize the policy right yeah when i when i read through it i just kind of saw it as a formality but you're right it could it seems like a last minute i would say either way a last-minute situation would be more likely than right a planned out one a plan you know before on vacation or something like that then we're not obviously going to either attend or so would it be necessary but why not just be able to do it um would there be wording necessary for the instance that i don't know that that that electronically you can't be set up to join them you know um right now it's given the 24 hours notice the only other thing i would um caution is the fact that we have to have so many in person right you know to still have the board meeting count as a board meeting um and if we were to get to where say two of you had already said hey i can't be there and the third one came up last minute all of a sudden now we don't have the quorum to have the meeting so i think there's some concerns there with that as well i i'm not saying that that's the reason to not do it i think it's just something that you guys need to talk through to answer your question what we could do is just go forward with accepting it with said change to policy whatever that might be we our attendance is very is very good at these meetings so we don't utilize this we wouldn't be utilizing this all the time so we can we can approve it now and then revise it if it's not working down the road that's what i i'd prefer to that's fine i mean i i like the policy as as delivered to us i thank the administration because i'm the board member who pretty much requested this because of my retired status so maybe it should be considered a benefit of serving on the board after 20 years is that okay so let's take vote to approve to waive the reading of the policy and approve the policy as president presented 1310.
she hit the buzzer beating three pointed that helped the broiler shock then rated fifth-ranked vanderbilt to reach the ncaa women's final four an effort that garnered her an espy in nomination while at purdue she scored 1 662 points grabbed 582 rebounds and had 259 assists she was the only the second player in purdue history to rank in the top 10 in each of those three categories she was named the 2007 team most valuable player and the big ten player of the year lampley went on to play for the columbus quest on the american basketball league and was a 2009 ohio basketball hall of fame inductee she was drafted by the wnba where she spent a season with the orlando miracle and helped the team advance to the 2000 playoffs for the first time in their history her coaching experiences includes assistant women's basketball coach at purdue university founding and directing the indiana blaze aau program in fishers and serving as an assistant then associate pet girls basketball coach at norris north high school according to superintendent dr sean smith coach lampley has dedicated her professional career a basketball the development of young women in this world we're excited to see her take the reigns of the girls program at lawrence central and look forward to celebrating program success franklin bush the principal at lawrence central high school shares we're excited for coach lampley to lead our girls basketball program and continue to play an impactful role in our school community her coaching experience along with her dedication to player and program development make her the best candidate to lead our young girls our young ladies on and off the court coach lampley and her husband kenneth have five children in lawrence township jayla lola kenneth landon and kendall congratulations [Applause] so yeah i'll be brief i know it's been a long evening so uh just a quick thank you to president mcgregor dr smith and the board thank you for this opportunity i'm looking forward to it i'm excited [Applause] congratulations to both coaching it's only fitting that we will have a hoosier and a boilermaker on two different cities this causes a little bit more competitive speaking of competition tonight you've got a chance to see why we support two high schools two middle schools where you can see the opportunity that the students in lawrence township have now as much as we are competitive at the same time when we come here in this room and together we also support one another so even though we are bearcats we are wildcats and bears we are lawrence township and we are and our strength lies in the fact that we are one community with two hospitals so thank you coaches looking forward to some awesome seasons and again as the marriott boilermakers always not new thank you it's all well done to all four comments i'll start in the virtual space mr freezey well i agree with the last comment that you just made mr president but at the same time with uh mr krauser and mr bush in the room i can't help but stoke a little bit of the rivalry because with coach slamley at a great purdue brad there it appears to me that perhaps coach gibson is taking the men's position because he wants to dodge coach blantley's uh era at healthy that may i may be wrong about that and perhaps uh that can be addressed at a different time but uh seriously uh congratulations to coach gibbons i've long enjoyed uh attending games where he's been coaching the uh uh ln women's team and obviously he's had great stuff there i'm sure he will um with the men's side and then coach lampley congratulations to you too looking forward to seeing what you do with the bears and continuing their upward trajectory so well done sorry i couldn't be there in person but uh um glad to be able to participate virtually thank you mr freezey miss parker has uh tradition i'll come to you last it's amy to piggyback on mr friji i want to point out from miss lampley that great things are homegrown in illinois so i'm neutral in that but now congratulations to both coaches coach giffin and coach lampley and thank you for all you're doing pouring into the kids and then the only other uh comments i wanted to make was i forgot to mention it was so great to be at the transportation dedication last month just amazing beautiful facility um it's just so great that we have you know that transportation unit to transport our kids because that's important and then also i've been to a lot of spring sports lately and we all know how unpredictable the indiana weather is and the kids and the coaches everyone had a good attitude whether it was 20 and rainy or 70 and shining so thank you it was goals or not it was mostly i i stand by what my colleagues have said congratulations to two wonderful coaches very excited for your seasons and i also want to say that this has been an incredible week for me in the arts thursday evening i think it was we went to the early learning center art auction and i'm not going to brag or anything but i did pick up a beautiful art piece lighted the dark it's going to have a special place in our home and um it was packed any any art gallery would just would give their i guess their right arm for that many people to be coming through the and you couldn't you couldn't grab the art fast enough you know you went around the room once it was just a new incredible thing i hope you can go next year um and then on friday evening president mcgregor and i attended the performance of hello dolly at warren [Music] there's so much incredible musical talent in this district and acting the stage design i met the parents of the stage director and i said boy everybody made their entrances all the props were in place nicely done um congratulations and very much look forward to chicago isn't it mr krauser chicago this weekend at lawrence north so great job everybody thank you mr miss puckett i would love to thank everything that everyone has said really truly even with all the leaders that are also transitioning and taking on different roles and coming on board i'm grateful um i want to just add a quote really quick one of my favorite releases coming up um it is from c.s lewis and then the task of a modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts and i wanted to share that quote because there have been numerous pivots and adjustments over the past two years whether those deserts were meeting students need for food technology at home or helping with learning law monumental things go toward teachers and leaders and have irrigated those deserts with open hearts and open minds this coming may 2nd through 6th of teacher appreciation week is one of my favorite weeks i literally sit down with the kids they write every single teacher something that is personal that they have taken away from the the year um i can't thank our educators and leaders enough some of our prayers that they are honored well and recognized probably from the years but during that week may 2nd special teacher appreciation week so thank you to all that educated love boy thank you for your dedication commitments and your sharing of what's taking place i do have to say this to uh dr nashville there might be pathways before officials uh when you talk to students you know officials uh and mr bush you've seen hello dolly all weekend even when you don't mean to sing it you just keep singing and singing so outstanding to all i'll be three by smith and i'm gonna keep it great mr president of the board of education uh tonight we passed a historic document in our equity report and i just want to say that i've been doing this 32 years and i haven't really seen anything like this it is historic and our cabinet our principals our teachers the entire community looks forward to the work that we will need to do to implement items in that report so congratulations and that's all i have mr president thank you board our next meeting will be on monday may 9th the work session will start at 5 30 pm again on monday may 9th we will start at 5 30 p.m oh yeah and see i said thank you sir executive session uh following after that if there are no other items that would take a closer to the journey second second of my consent we are adjourned administrative staff thank you for being with us tonight
so move second all right a motion by mr news a second by mr oliver is there any discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor aye opposed abstentions that motion carries unanimously um next i'll entertain a motion uh to approve the executive executive session minutes for april 11 2022 so move madam chair with the stipulation that they be held until the matter for which they were intended is complete second i have a motion by mr nunes the second by my swag is there any further discussion on the issue hearing none all in favor opposed of sentence that motion carries unanimously the next item on our agenda is organization of the committee the first item is the election of officers so i will open the floor for nomination of the office of chair you turn it over according to policy the nominations for office of the chair is made from the floor so the floor is open and anyone on the committee may make a nomination for chair ms amber i would like to nominate my fellow colleague john nunes to chair i'll second that all right are there any other nominations from the floor hearing done the nominations are now closed given that there is only one nomination on the floor that means mr nunes is now the chair of the dartmouth school committee unless anyone else would like all right so mr news you want to switch spots sure all right give me a second here three hours a week yes yes yes you know you're trying to get rid of me that quick i like your job but [Laughter] you said you had the sniffles oh yeah [Laughter] all right give me a second here to get everything figured out all right so the next item uh is uh the appointment of uh a vice chair so i'll nominate uh kathleen ambrose to be a vice chair i was going to nominate you to stay another term quite honestly you can decline the domination council yeah i decline okay yeah for this year yeah okay mr nunes i would like to nominate miss waite for uh vice chair okay okay i want to see jenkins no mary wait no do we have a second second second by miss amaral any other discussion share here or none since we have none we will close nominations and as dr jenkins said about me it's obvious that you get to be vice chair congratulations congratulations you guys thank you so now you're like another year in this position [Laughter] there you go so now you and i get to you know rewrite graduation speeches just think about that okay so i promise won't be as long this time please okay anything over 30 seconds is too long personal opinion all right next on the uh mr new yes ma'am may i just make a comment i just wanted to thank dr jenkins for her service having had served 2020 and then my colleague chris the year after i know you had the difficult task and um you you um you served with grace and leadership and i appreciate your time thank you yep all right uh next on the agent next item next is a secretary to the school committee and that usually falls to our illustrious superintendent mr chair i'll nominate dr gifford to serve as our uh secretary for the school committee right so we have a motion by dr jenkins second by miss waite to appoint dr bonnie gifford as secretary to the school committee at the illustrious same rate of bank so we appreciate that thank you ma'am on that motion all in favor aye motion carries unanimously okay comments of the chairperson comments now i have really have done it's a privilege and an honor to be sitting here over my 31 years and uh such i've lost how many times i've sat here but i always take this position with uh the utmost responsibility and just on a personal note thank you to the citizens of this great town and voters who uh you know found it in their hearts to put me back in this position i appreciate it it's not something that i take for granted believe me so i thank you for all of that all right next item on the agenda school committee assignments we all got uh in our packets we all got uh the assignments that we have got at the moment uh we'll just kind of go down uh what they are there and such um dartmouth educational foundation ms waite yes you want to stay with that i can stay with that i'm taking a break for through the end of the year but i will be rejoining that in the fall okay that's fine okay uh southeastern mass educational collaborative mr oliver i am happy to stay on that and continue my service there thank you i think ms scooper would be happy too i agree i enjoy serving that board that's it uh i'll stay with the mass association of school committees unless someone else wants that i'm good with that thanks thank you negotiation representative um i'm in that position kathleen backs me up you heard what uh ms vieira and uh miss parisi uh said as i've said before it's not a popularity i'm more than willing to do it okay yeah yeah i'm getting all right i wouldn't mind learning more and you know and sitting in and you know even if it's like you know alternating with uh miss amaral i know certainly it's you know a lot of work but i just you know just to go through that process i think is instructive so yeah that's fine okay so we'll make you the back up to that well i don't want to like you know bump into no is all right uh policy committee uh is kathleen and mary yep still good yes thank you mr oliver i'd be happy to stay on i don't think we actually had any technology recent memories right now but yes i'd be happy thank you what's going to be happy to stay on yeah okay field in uh facilities committee i know we haven't we haven't met again with everything going on type of deal but i'll i can stay with that i'm happy to as well all right budget committee uh that works uh with uh mr kylie uh is miss amaral and dr jenkins and i'm the backup is that still good for everybody okay i would be happy to take that role on if anyone is uh wants a break but you wanna i i mean i feel like i don't i'm getting the easy way out this is like one of my only committee assignments so it's fine that's fine i could do something i'd be happy to share it with you but then i have like nothing and i feel like i'm not doing my work so miss amarillo you wanna yeah you can would you like to join it's up to you i would happily yeah have a lot on your plate yeah right pass that along excuse me okay that's fine uh committee representatives on the town charter committee uh miss waite and uh in haiti ms brooks do we need to uh find out if miss brooks can continue to serve as our rep i'll find out from her i'll reach out we haven't actually met because i think we've gone through the entire charter and now we're meeting with an outside you know group and kind of seeing our next steps so she's homing that group so we'll i'll i'll ask her yeah she's she's kind of sharing that something dr jackson there's a good argument being made for continuity there and membership because there's so much work that's been done on that committee just someone jumping in now would be too yeah i know absolutely i would rather keep her yeah she would i would too if she can stay i'm fine and she's homing it so i think that's you know having the knowledge of having going through the entire document there's there's a lot that's involved yeah correct me if i'm wrong she's cheering now she's no she is sharing that no absolutely so she's been fantastic and yeah i knew she'd be a good fit oh yeah she keeps it's a very diverse group so we've had some shifts over from other committees and it's been a little challenging and that so it's nice to see you keep this continuity for sure that's fine okay and then the diversity equity and inclusion dr jenkins and miss hammerl doc so i'd like to propose we just sort of leave that one for now because it's not we haven't made any decisions on the committee and picked the issue of who picked that issue of who's assigned to that committee back up when we have that full discussion of the dei committee um just full disclosure so everyone knows um that was originally on the agenda but i looked at our agenda our agenda for this evening was quite extensive so i just asked that we'd delay it till i think the 23rd meeting so i would just say we can i mean even if we leave that blank for now and we can pick that back up when we have that discussion yep that's fine i'm good with that and the one thing that i did i skipped over and i was i did that purposely too was the school assignments between high school middle demelo quinn potter cushman uh we made a decision a couple of committee meetings ago and we've kept up with the type of deal that not to have any one particular person assigned to uh one particular school and we just all kind of bounce in and out and see principles and and such we are we good with that does anybody we're good with that okay has anyone heard i'm sorry mr chair um heard from the schools how they feel about that in terms of no i haven't done much bouncing around well no i haven't no no nor did i believe me you know so i would see the principals outside walking that's exactly what i do too but that's you know but i think and i think they all understand whether if they have an issue where they can find us yeah type of thing you always just ask that if you're going to go by just let them know right now yeah oh yeah i've always done that mr chair um miss wake brought up the open space committee um that if you recall we had a conversation about this previously last year i guess um our co we were wondering if this is the open space committee which asks for our school committee rep as well yeah so it's not our subcommittee as the other one is the town charter commission would be the same so do we want to continue to add it you know probably have it there because i've been yeah no i mean yeah yeah i mean i'm happy to join i mean it's just not on the list that's all yeah did we did we vote someone in that i don't know we're both in that okay well we'll add it then because they're having some nights coming up or they're bringing in the community just small committees you know one night meetings yeah yeah why not no why not this yeah because there's a meeting actually there's a meeting tomorrow night at the uh there is one yeah and then there's one in may the town hall and the june one they haven't seen then there's the survey too so the survey is online so we'll add that to the list helpful for the next time okay so we are good with yup all right here we go all right anything else with organization of the committee no no we're good all right thank you okay uh discussion on the dartmouth indian logo so we have been at this for the better part of three or four years give or take and a number of other times before that in my tenure here i know personally because i've got them believe it or not all in a nice file in my computer i was able to figure out how to set them up into a folder and i've got probably close to fifteen hundred emails to pass between with the election coming up and now after the election this meeting tonight so i'm going to open it up to uh my colleagues for discussion mr oliver thank you mr nunes and thank you to everyone that spoke here this evening as mr nunes has said this has been a long road for all of us and on the committee as well as those of us the townspeople you know i came at this from an independent standpoint i'm not left i'm not right i'm an independent voter and i don't see this from my perspective as you know left or right issue i see this as from my point of view looking at the entire town what's been presented to us on both sides of the issue there's passion on both sides of the issue there's no doubt about that but at the end of the day i think we have a great opportunity in this town to do something special and i think it could potentially be a model at some point at least for the state at the state level you know i because one of the things i don't want to do though i don't want to reaffirm the indian icon and then just be done with it the voters have clearly spoken but the one common thing between the voters in between the public forum between the tribes we all agree on it was said this evening is that there has to be more done with the curriculum piece there has to be more done with the schools and the larger picture with the town the town in general so without doing that i you know it just we're no better than any other city or town that just says you know what we're just gonna keep this just because that's just the way it is we've got to do more i've heard it from multiple people um so for me you know i'm just gonna i'm starting i'm gonna open it up you can certainly have discussion i'd like to make a motion that the dartmouth public schools continue to use and honor the iconic dartmouth indian as drawn by clyde andrews a dartmouth high school alumni and member of the aquino wampanoag tribe in addition to tasking the school administration with engaging the tribe creating a formal partnership with them [Applause] please okay so we have a motion by mr oliver do we have a second the chair will second okay discussion um dr jenkins so mr marcotte is right i am a political scientist i think about the constitution i think about it a lot i teach it multiple times a year [Music] you know our founders established a constitution that does outline a provision for democracy um but the leading political theorists at the time edmund burke alexis de tocqueville were deeply concerned about the problem with the tyranny of the majority right and then the federalist madison wrote about tyranny of the majority and the anti-federalists working with the federalists outline the bill of rights because they believe right there are certain things that should not be subject to the will of the majority and history has shown us repeatedly that approval by the majority does not mean that something is right in world war ii large amer majorities of americans favored the internment of the japanese japanese-american citizens it's not right we know that now state majorities in massachusetts oppose gay marriage in 2004 when the supreme court legalized gay marriage i hope most of us know that that was right the right thing to do the state supreme court local majorities in the south favored segregation right so just because something is popular or supported does not make it right so the question for me is is there evidence that this is morally harmful and i think the answer is yes we have indirect and direct evidence of the harm created by logos and mascots all right i'm going to say this once and i'm only going to say it once okay if there is another outburst i am going to recess this meeting and i will ask everyone to leave okay am i clear thank you dr jenkins i apologize that's okay there are studies that have shown that there are indirect this indirect evidence that there are harmful effects of native mascots and logos that is part of those studies right leading to stereotyping prejudice attitude but we also have direct evidence in this community we have direct evidence from students in the high school who do not wish to wear that logo because they feel that it perpetuates harm in this community when they travel out of this community and while there are tribal members who live in dartmouth who support the logo we also have testimony from our indigenous neighbors including some members of the aquinawa pinochet the mashpee want benoit and the bokassa wampanoag who feel the mascot is harmful there is division in the indigenous community about that and so for me the fact that some members a good number of members of our indigenous neighbors find this mascot harmful it is that makes it deeply problematic to me right i agree 100 percent with my colleagues about the need for education i support that but i cannot agree with any motion to maintain the logo after hearing the evidence from those from our indigenous neighbors and our students samuel um so i somebody in the community shared a podcast with me earlier today and i'm so grateful that she did you know in the podcast it begins with talking about our town seal which i did not know in latin reads service through kindness and peaceful means and so my perspective and what i'm sharing and and my thoughts um i haven't spoken much publicly about this you know i'm at home my husband's like why don't you just come out and say what you're no that's my my deliberation my personal i take this like john this role very seriously and so here we are so my take i want to honor that message of service through kindness and peaceful means because here we are as a community seemingly swimming upstream from this us versus them mentality all the signs around town defend dartmouth you know what are we defending i've been asked often you know i want to be thoughtful and i want to be considerate and i wanted to decipher between what i believe to be the right thing to do and what i believe to be the most beneficial for this community um and i believe that there's always room for common ground at least for a beginning point you know after two years of covid school closures loss incredible mental health challenges i believe my role this difficult decision that we're here making all the time that we've taken discussing this my role i believe is to look for as much common ground as possible and so that we can begin to move forward towards some semblance of healing as a community so what would i like to see happen i don't completely disagree with your motion mr oliver but the only way that i would not vote to remove the logo or move forward is you know what would i like to see happen i would like us as mr oliver noted you know to add a robust history to include the real experience of native people in our area as a starting point because i think education is where this needs to begin this needs to begin with a deep education around what we're dealing with it's not about and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna anyway [Music] i would like us as a community to inventory where we currently use the symbol you know and set some parameters around its use in a comprehensive way more than just no bags on the gym floor that's not enough for example um this was brought to my attention by someone someone in the community we can't have indian heads on golf balls and hitting them across a green okay um we can't have that that's that's not right that's a non-negotiable um i'd like to allow us to allow i'd like to see us allow for student choice as to whether they want to have the lugo on their uniform or warm-up gear you know if they select to wear the logo fine in this interim during you know in this next phase if not fine maybe it's a patch an iron on maybe we have uniforms some with some without i would like us to consider no logo for away games no logo on away uniforms i would love for us to add native land attribution at the beginning of each meeting to um to complement the education that we will hopefully i would i would like to see happen within our school system more than just a third grade trip to plymouth plantation that's not enough we need to do better we can do better and um i i did plan to speak with to somebody about that my family got covered here we are never circled back and i would like to convene a town-wide subcommittee similar to the healthy dartmouth committee that we had where we had people from town government we had community members we had you know and we we did some great work on the health of the second iteration of the healthy document that i was on where we we were up against opioid pandemic and we did a lot of work in regards to that and it was something i was quite proud of and so i would like any future kind of conversations around how we could potentially what i would hope during this education phase is to have representation from from native people town government local boards community members students and so that's where i stand on this right now i think it means i don't disa agree with your emotion mr oliver but i i would like some some more detail in firming up what that education and what that looks like um because just to say education slap it vote agree disagree passes fails um i think we need to be more mindful and meaningful with this that's where i stand thank you ms white yes um so i think for all of us this has been quite a difficult and thoughtful journey i like to think i think that in bringing this topic um before the committee and on all the discussions that we had as a community i think we learned a lot i think the journey was valuable so that we could hear and be considered about you know what are the issues as we continue you know if we're going to keep the icon and the name what does it mean and to go through the process i think is you know it's clear that as a community we've decided that again to echo my colleagues we want more education we want more presence and we want this to be you know a rich piece of our collective identity if we're going to move forward you know i you know i did i do struggle with the concept of you know if we're as a town this is you know there's a lot of discussion this is you know mascots are dangerous and then you know we have another piece that says well it's not a mascot i think that's a difficult distinction if we don't have another placeholder because right now i think for the the middle school student and elementary student it's difficult for them to discern that it's not a mascot so i think that's you know i think we need to be careful around the language and the education but i also do think and again this has been a process and i i've talked to folks i've been you know all across the from the town i've i've talked to various members of the indigenous tribes and so i think that we do have and i agree with my colleague we do have an opportunity to be to make something better you know and and with that you know i i know that you know i'm talking to representatives from the select board that there is a very big interest in working with the town to kind of create this new identity and to you know really think about you know how are we going to if we again in part of keeping the logo if we do that or i'd like to say icon and name if we go in that direction and again i agree with my colleague that it has to be tied specifically to requirements but i would like to see the town as part of a standing committee representatives where as we're coming into town we would see signs that would say if we have the icon dartmouth honors and i think that concept of dartmouth honors should always if if the logo travels it should be on the back of the band bus that dartmouth honors and so again like taking it forward i would like to see those land agreements being formalized i would like to see the town and the school websites have you know on the school website and on the town website those relationships delineated again possibly under that tagline dartmouth honors um you know in thinking through i do believe that we do have a robust education that we're starting on um i know that i've worked with dr gifford a little bit going through the pre-k to fifth grade curriculum the social studies curriculum that the teachers are starting to work with now has been updated and they're looking at it and i think there are a lot of opportunities not to create a whole separate curriculum but to work within that curriculum there are natural segue ways to really do valuable education without we're not having to read them at the wheel because it's already right there for example and i've worked extensively within elementary schools in the fourth grade they're working around they do a whole project on different parts of the country they can easily as part of that include like work around the native americans and then bringing that education out to the community i would love to see those kids like having like a showcase night and that could be you know maybe even all the schools and i know that that's supported by mr mcginnistown at the town as well so i i think there are a lot of opportunities and again i do have to say we are doing i just want to acknowledge that we have some great teachers who are already doing a lot of this work certainly within the ninth grade that ela programming has has been working with uh with sherman alexis legworks and i think again there's just natural extensions and again it's just showcasing that and connecting that to the community but it is we were given the responsibility this is you know this is a school issue but it is i do understand it said in order to make this go forward we have to work together as a town and so and i think that we have opportunity with new people on the select board with a new and also bringing into the college a new chancellor and i think you know with our dedication we can make this something meaningful you know we can go to russell's mills garrison and see a kiosk and see those connections between you know what we're doing here in town um in this in the schools our history and connecting back to what teachers are doing so i i'd like to see this be again because i i'm this is a very difficult decision but if we're going to keep it we have to have it have meaning we have to go back and say okay we're doing this we're we are we are keeping the indians we're keeping the icon but it means something and we can show people that it means something we're gathering money for the through the dartmouth honors fund where we're donating to um colleges or providing resources for our teachers so we have to do this in a real way so i'm i'm again i would tie it to again the formation of a standing committee with equal representation between our indigenous peoples as well as the schools and the towns to kind of go through what are the standards for like conduct and all of that and we can talk about that later as well as the real robust education and you know asserting that there will be future relationships so that's kind of a little over the place but that's where i'm landing that was great thank you everyone um i need to i would like to just clarify one thing i mentioned something about the fact that i got 1500 emails on now i did also i did get some for and some you know some again so just you know i did not i hope to lead anybody's good type of deal i mean i do have them all in that folder i get that mr oliver thank you mr chair so i agree with with everything that you know um my colleague mrs waite and uh mrs amaral stated um i certainly respect dr jenkins perspective um i think that's one of the things that you know this committee is good good at is uh you know we can say what we want but at the end of the day we certainly do respect each other's positions and opinions the only question that i have in i can certainly withdraw my motion or modify the motion but i don't know how much into um the weeds we want to get with with some of the things that were presented because i'm in full agreement with both of you um it's just what's up i guess what's the purview of the committee of the school committee and what can we do to you know see can we say the formation of of a committee i i just don't want to get too far in the weeds that's why the motion was to some respect general with in addition to tasking the school administration with engaging the tribe creating a formal partnership so i can certainly withdraw the motion no i i i think the motion is is fine uh i agree with you personally i don't think we want to get dive into the weeds right now that type of deal uh we're going to have you know after the first of the fiscal year of january first some you know a couple of new curriculum people that can be tasked with kind of starting to put that together type of deal not along with everything else that they're they're going to have type of deal so i'm i'm good with that but no i don't think we want to get into the weeds dr jenkins i don't i don't disagree with either of that but i do also want to amplify you know what miss amarillo miss wade has said you know we do have a lot of rules in our handbook about the use of logo but we are not the only organizations in town that use that logo and it's been brought to my attention that they are not bound by the same rules as us um and that there has in recent years been some disrespectful behavior in some of those other organizations and so i don't disagree that we can't sort of we're the school committee we control the schools but at the same point in time i do think it's important for us to make some sort of statement as a committee maybe it's a separate resolution to give to the select board to indicate how important we think it is and maybe that's a separate motion from your emotion i don't know but that we can all say that we can then present to the select board at our joint meeting that we as a committee believe that the select board should do this so because otherwise we're not we're not fully getting there yeah i mean and that that may be something that could be a good topic for the discussion at the select the joint meet uh joint meeting with them on the night yeah and maybe again that's we have a motion on the floor and that's what we're discussing but maybe after that we could yeah do that good with that miss wayne and um and to that and you know when we talk about a standing community because i do think that's important because that standing committee if we have that representation can address you know and has you know would have the purview to address you know as part of their charge some of these questions about the use of the icon looking at the handbook so would we how would we go about that or is that something again to bring before at that point to bring before the joint and so it possibly be town committee or would that be something that we would want to consider you know from us like that's kind of my next i do think that's an important you know i've i've heard that you know there's certainly vested interest from um some of our local nations to you know really see that happen and have that representation you know in all these topics no i i i think that is something that probably should come from this committee yeah to to those groups that are you know using using the logo but not using it the right way type of deal and just you know kind of get to them and say here's what this logo is this is what it means and a little respect goes a long way type of deal i think it much to what kathleen said when we had the healthy dartmouth committee i mean that came from us it came you know right from the school department itself but we invited various groups to come in and people even from new bedford because we were we were battling the opioid thing we had great conversations great continued meetings with like chris mishu we formed that cope group so i think if we leave it to something like that and that we start to form and invite people to this kind of a committee without going through town as a formalized kind of thing because let's face it most of it's going to be coming the work from the school department so we can't we can't give it to somebody else just you know you guys do it all but we're going to be in charge you know what i mean if there's curriculum to work on if there's um i love your idea about the kiosk kind of thing where we can get folks involved but um even the golf ball thing i was totally unaware of that so those kinds of things i think if we just keep it but yeah put little you know statues with uh statues but like um um i'm trying to think of plaques kind of thing around to show how we're honoring etc but i would certainly take on you know for we've tried to have conversations with various folks already have like we'll we'll use healthy dartmouth as an example but i think we got a lot of work done with that so i would certainly want to i would suggest we do something like that and and take it from us yeah to doctor just to expand on that because it became you know light work right for each of us because we self-selected we had you know strategic planning session that that started us off you know out the gate and and i can see if you have people coming in passionate about this and having something to offer and they'll help um yeah they'll help give ideas and they give ideas and it was uh fantastic yeah i can see that okay one of the things i'll just interject also with the two new directors coming on every we already know it we have to restart the strategic planning process which we started just before covered and it got shut down um so that certainly especially under uh access and equity can be part of that as a big a big goal and a big objective and then action steps from there so that's great good you know it's i've listened there and i appreciate everybody we're all entitled to our opinion and i appreciate everybody's opinion it was interesting and that's what i was writing a note on earlier so i wouldn't forget but over the weekend i was watching cspan3 and there was a panel discussion going on and they had a history professor from the west coast and it was funny she was talking about social studies and such and you know professional development for social studies teachers which i think this is going to have to entail to go forward type of deal and she made the comment about the social studies teachers the professional development for them is down the bottom that's one of the first ones that gets cut type of deal that she's and i was thinking of that i said yep that's a good point for monday night that we make sure that there is money there for the professional for everybody there always is and you know i apprecia i appreciate that but uh i appreciate everybody's comment i think everybody knows where i come from where i stand so i don't have to get on my soapbox for that i will i will just say this uh and i've said it before but i it is worth repeating that uh dems that ignore history are doomed to repeat it and uh i don't want to do that so with that we have a motion on the floor and we have a second any other discussion cheer hearing none all in favor of mr oliver's motion did you have a question i did could you just re-read the motion i mean i just want to clarify okay can you re-read that sure that's fine i'm good i would like to make a motion that the dartmouth public schools continue to use and honor the iconic dartmouth indian as drawn by clyde andrews a dartmouth high school alumni and member of the aquino wampanoag tribe in addition to tasking the school administration with engaging the tribe creating a formal partnership with them okay so i'll just i'll just add one point of clarification for my other colleagues right the status quo is we have a we have an indian for our logo right so regardless of how this vote goes we still have an indian for a logo just to be clear right on on what happens the only way that that goes away is if there is an affirmative vote for it to go away so i just want to be clear sort of procedurally i think you would agree that's how this works right mary yes so i mean i i still think we need to add to that motion that you just had because you know i do feel that the standing committee to address and question all those things about its use you know where are we using a logo um how are we presenting ourselves on the websites you know do we see the you know dartmouth again i keep going with the dartmouth honors but all of that i think needs to be addressed by standing that would be that's my like so that's not we're going to get way over where we have to be my opinion cheers opinion okay so i would rather if you want to make a separate motion later that's fine but we'll leave chris's motion just where it is so we don't lose we don't lose the forest for the trees as they say type of deal so all right so we have the motion in a second any other discussion okay all in favor aye aye aye i can't until we see the education opposed i'm abstaining all right so it's three in favor one opposed and one abstaining [Applause] all right so john can i do a separate motion though okay if you want yes so i'd like to make a separate motion to organize to organize a standing committee to address the future use of the indian name and logo say that again i said i would like to make a motion for to form a standing committee or i don't know if it has to be a standing it would be a standing committee or what would healthy dartmouth be i guess if we were it was not an official committee it just came out of us we we made it work we invited people we had monthly meetings so we don't actually need to have a committee yet right it wasn't an official committee and okay well then i'll withdraw it i guess i just want to make sure that that happens i mean that was my whole like reason i abstain is that i just want to make sure that the education is a part of this so yeah yep okay and you'll be honest i think i think the education is part of it because that's part of mr oliver's motion was it i mean he wasn't so specific but i wasn't just no he wasn't i mean dr jenkins uh people okay mr mr chair i'd like to make a motion um that the school committee recommend to the select board that they also engage in an evaluation of town policies and use of the logo and education in the community um and that we request that they do that yeah it's a good idea good idea the dartmouth school committee requests that the dartmouth select board um engage in a process of evaluation of policies of use imagery and sort of education in the community beyond the purview of the school committee okay so we have that we have a motion and a second by mr oliver on the motion any discussion chair hearing none all in favor aye aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously so mr chair i'd just like to ask that perhaps we could deliver that to your point that since we have a joint meeting coming up that maybe we could send that to the select board i have no problem sending that to them i don't know if they'll listen to us but we can send it to them to just potential agenda items for next week put that on two weeks and we'll have somebody from them on our committee yes i'm going to shut the door mr chair yeah excuse me thank you [Music] okay no just public ben's in charge he's awesome we need a high school teacher to take care of us she knows exactly what she's doing i don't know no it's just just pull this should just be there you go there we go okay next all right new business revision to the handbook dr gifford um i'm hoping you had a chance to look at it because we most obviously it was just uh clean up a lot of it we did take the five dollars out transcript yes we made sure that um so it was a lot of cleanup and we really would like a vote because we do need to get it to printers and disseminate etc etc so hopefully you had a chance now this also correct me if i'm wrong this also has the school year calendar in the back for next year yes okay yes so okay all right comments on the student handbook dr jenkins i'll make a motion that we approve uh the student handbook as amended i second that good may i ask a question now after without motion no yes excuse me yes you may yes my question is you said we have to get this to the printer are are we required to print this yes like i think we got like a copy of it and never like it got shoved somewhere again and if i ever had a question i would just google dartmouth public schools handbook right so i'm just curious as to i mean there are there's a cost associated with printing a handbook forever i don't know what it's called do we have to do that i mean like how many people actually read it or use it well not so much not i think not so much that but i think the reason we have to print it is the fact that there are some families that do not have internet access and computers so they've got to be able to put their put their hands on it can we allow people to opt out right like because i will opt out and you know the other thing is too because it's a standardized handbook if you've got like three kids in in elementary school yeah do you need three copies of the demelo handbook or the pot or handbook they're all the same i'm just curiou i mean i know there's right there's gotta there's gotta be a way that we just you know it goes home digitally we have some paper copies available in the front offices that um because here's the thing let me ask you this yeah we can look at it are we sending home paper report cards oh yeah we do for them sometimes for the elementary school just elementary elementary though yeah i do yeah that's kind of yeah right if we're not sending home if we're not sending home report cards maybe i'm off a technology elementary yeah yeah i know we had the conversation about this before and for some reason kept printing it was a couple years back yeah we can look at it again okay we're always willing to save some money and yeah because we do the electronic sign-offs and all of that so yeah otherwise i'm good and i would just like to acknowledge i'd like to thank miss alivera for providing us with the document with the revisions that was super helpful i very much appreciate it so thankful thank you to her yeah it's been a while since we've got that but way back that was that was a helpful thing that that we got the way you we used to get so all right well sometimes we'd get it with italicized as to what it changed okay so we have a motion in a second to approve the handbook for school year 2223.
so that's also high we're also going to be uh you know continuing with our health and safety measures we adopted a new math curriculum um we're continuing with the district counseling and our mental uh wellness programs we continue to increase our instructional capacity uh we want to continue the district as a high performing district through cusack continue implementing our procedures and policies to support instruction continue our early reading intervention program increase support for learning loss and expand our summer program for learning law pandemic maintaining our progress we want to keep the extended school day program for grades one through eight our summer school reading program for k-1 and k-1 and um additional staffing due to our student growth and again because we are considered a high poverty district there are some legal statutes that we have to try and maintain in terms of class sizes of 21 23 24 etc and we have not been able to do so however this year because we did get four million dollars in additional aid here are all the positions that we're going to be adding this year an assistant register a social worker assistant to human resources manager a psychologist an ltdc is not going to be one of them um i think we needed a fifth grade teacher um so we're gonna do a fifth grade special ed special education teacher step at the lgbtc a newcomers teacher there's gonna be three teachers at the middle school that are at new ones um correct me if i'm wrong uh joe uh english no math math uh phys ed and computer science okay so and then uh smallie is a sixth grade teacher and another phys ed teacher high school it's almost one person per department so an english teacher math science bilingual guidance a history of specials we're splitting the assistant principle and um athletic director position into two so i'll have a standalone athletic director for the first time we'll have an assistant principal with the growth at the high school we when i was high school principal we were about 500 kids now he's at 8700 i think you're broke in this coming up here so 700 kids and you know he really does need a two full-time assistant principals instead of one that's kind of part-time assistant principal and doing athletic duties on the other side there are no staff reductions in this budget our increased costs obviously are healthcare contractual increases workplace compensation specialized costs new staff and our biggest maintenance project is the replacement of the high school football field which i can tell you happily that came in uh pretty under budget we're also going to be able to do the light so we're planning right now i'm doing re replacing our field turf and replacing our lights for next year last year's budget our difference is four and a half million dollars that's the increase in state aid our fund 20 is sitting at right around 380 that's all those special revenues the sr2 extra three those type of things um overall budget from last year was 42 million this year's 43 million and it's up two million dollars okay all totals i know sometimes the demand seems a little complicated so if you ever want to ask a question please feel free our families last year our payment was uh or this year's payments 1.2 million the lease ends in two years so that means that we're gonna have an extra one point two million dollars coming back into the budget which i believe at this point in time the the plan is for that edition that we've talked about at la lafayette so keep in mind that money is sitting there and it is earmarked for two years down the road to build that classroom additionally in a lafayette obviously the projects on the horizon are the cafeteria lafayette classroom edition replacement lights we start restoration as a high school second floor bathrooms and i believe the ones at the cafeteria um we have to look really look pretty hard at changing out high school boilers sooner rather than later some led light projects for some classrooms and obviously our hvac projects for the elementary buildings which we are out rebidding right now and what we did is we prioritized that with smalley first lafayette second lamont third and the annex fourth so we have alternates so we'll get some of that work done we're obviously not going to get it all done because we had to reject that very high bid that we got any questions on the budget a lot of questions but i think it's just i have to process them yeah and again i think our buds our budget looks really high but there's so much of that esser two and so three money that's sitting in the overall bottom budget numbers so give you an example extra three and i don't think we have it all put in yet but that's gonna be 5.7 million dollars we still have another million in extra two months that's there so all total right there you're looking at 6.7 million dollars in the budget um right now the current budget that we're in we look really great to finish the year right on track right where we thought we were going to be so we have no issues finishing out the year the way we had planned um next year's budget's really solid um i don't see anything in there that i i would anticipate hurting us the only thing i do know um that is coming unfortunately and i found this out after the fact and these are the things that when you're developing a budget that you have to be really aware of um we budgeted i think eight hundred thousand dollars for custodial services unfortunately all of the the vendors who do custodial services got unionized and everything else so um right now that i'm projecting a 1.2 million dollar number on that so we budgeted 800 000 we got to come up with another half a million dollars for that so we went back through the budget um tried to come up with a half a million dollars there's some some areas i thought we could take away from i found out i can't so we're gonna have to go back and come through there and see where we can come up with some of those funds um you mentioned the high school second floor bathrooms yes what's the deal with the second floor versus first floors well we redid the gym ones not that long ago i think we did a partial restoration of the ones in the basement we have not touched the ones up on the second floor and they're they're in some some pretty bad disrepair um and i'm not talking like you know for the kids and the kids don't notice a lot of things but behind the walls and you know we have some piping issues that really need to be taken what we're still i think there's still cast iron pipes up there for for drainage and things like that we always run into a problem with um but to do that i mean you know the issues that you're gonna have the first issue is asbestos because you're gonna be opening up very old walls it's the oldest section of the building so you're gonna have to deal with that um then you know obviously re-piping from the basement up to the second floor you know okay all that all that stuff that goes into it you know redoing the floors the walls okay new facilities i think thing okay yeah i was just curious second floor not first floor but yeah but believe it or not in that older section the only bathrooms are on the in the basement level and the second floor in the older section of the building and then the next set of bathrooms are actually here in egypt so for for a high school of this size we only really have three three bathrooms to contend with for the kids [Music] any other questions and this was what we was reviewed last right something simple yeah right okay i think so same presentation okay some of the numbers you know like wait did we do and just trying to figure out where that number lands where they come up with the the their own efficient numbers has always been the question and they kind of wait it out so you know you're going to get one number for quote unquote a general ed student then you then then they put a factor number on that if you're an esl kid then they put another factor on that of your esl and special ed and then it gives you a quota right yeah and yeah there's so many factors in there that go on free and reduced income is another fact that it goes on top of it and so on so if you recall this past year we did a lot of things with the free reduce because the the the first year the pandemic because all the food services ended up being free nobody filled out the free and reduced lunch form that really hurt us in the last budget cycle so this budget cycle we made sure to get all those forms in because that put us back up to where we needed to be and that's why we got the bigger increase this year is because we have on the on the books more free and reduced lunch kids and that there's a factor to that you know so instead of getting like one whole um say that they're saying the tuition for one kid is ten thousand dollars well for a kid who's low income it might be 1.5 so you get 15 000 for that kid and then you know if you're esl you get another factor on top of that and so on and so forth so those things kind of multiply out and really multiply up and then when you talk about a district of our size of being you know when i started here we were 1400 we're now 2 000 probably gonna be 2100 next year you know those things add up and they add up pretty quickly and i think so you feel like the state is the state of watch like they're they're they're well there was a huge there was a huge movement i don't know how many years ago where people started we were up and armed we were we were advocating there were there were so many underfunded districts where we had other districts that were completely over aided okay and once that started to come to light i do think they have started to and i was rescheduled like well yeah i was gonna ask if it was a somerset um eight years ago nine years ago whatever it was and part of part of the problem and this is what michelle's talking about is number one um the former abbots were still getting that avid type money that was number one and then number two um they had frozen our enrollment so our enrollment was frozen for like four or five years in a row so while districts were experiencing declines in enrollments they still got a lot of money even though they didn't have that that decline in enrollment while we were the direct opposite we had huge climbs in enrollment and we weren't getting factored into that to getting to getting more funds so that led to a lot of different things when you're talking about a small district like us being the third most underfunded district in the entire state there was a major problem there you know and i'm glad that you know we advocated and did make some headway on that and got some things taken care of on that because i don't think if if things stayed the way they were i'm not sure we would be in existence today without absolutely positively crushing the taxpayers because there's just no no way we could we could have maintained what we had back then today yeah okay so okay and i know that we had discussed like the the town with the patent you were saying you were going to mention pilots so yeah unfortunately it influences a lot and i'll give an example so let's just use meridian one right so when meridian one finally came up online the actual uh evaluation of town went up say a million dollars but they give it a pilot we get no money from there and the the borough gets a fraction of the taxes because that was the incentive to build right the problem at the time was itself correct me from wrong they gave him like a 30-year pilot which i i know has been redone since because we were kind of up in arms over that number one but number two you know um when you start looking at and they did fast numbers um a month ago with the number of pilots that that are already being built and some that are done and the number that's on the books coming up your loss in revenue for the district until the pilots come off come off the books of somewhere i don't want to say lost revenue but the the the the the realization is um you know you're going to be out probably somewhere in the vicinity of one to two million dollars in revenue for the district easily um the problem is that the board is going to have to make future boards are going to have to make the decision um since we're not getting that pilot money but your your state is going to start to fall while your fair share starts to go up are you going to raise taxes and are you going to put that tax burden on taxpayers because of the pilots and i've been very vocal about that um for for many years that you know there is a provision in the pilot program that we could get some money from those things i've tried to talk to the borough about it and to know about so to this day we don't get any money from the pilots um i think right now with the again i was just told that um old madeline's or venue five whatever it is that's can now be a four or five star story apartment building and the ones that they have i think all total from start from rooney one to now i think it might be 12 12 pilot programs or projects yeah and the one they're rebuilding downtown what happens are we proving that these that these buildings going up are improving the cost per square foot or the cost like and i'm gonna just use old man lines maybe it was five hundred thousand dollars you put a new building there now it's three million dollars so you have that but then you have all the people's income that are going to live there right that tax on a whole nother level of potential income that you lose because they're that there's no you're not getting any benefit from any property tax from that so it's kind of twofold robbie yes i know this has come up i've been here for a little bit i know this has come up several times are we able to i know there's a liaison from the city council that i would like to request because i think there's a lot of these issues that you know they're you're handling this a lot of these questions incredible but i think that there's issues that we need to address with the representative from the city council i think we talked about putting together like a community we did we talked about it but i just want to go back to that because you're going to remember there's also a fundamental there's a fundamental um objective way of looking at some of these things so from from a borough perspective they're they're looking at improvement of the overall community right and and raising your the value of your homes and your property taxes and things like that but at the same point in time though the problem that we have here is right our population is exploding so we have you know like i said over the years and i think this year we're going up another 100 pins i mean that that's a lot of kids for one year so again you're going up that that those type of numbers and the problem that i see though right now is while we're doing really well because a lot of unfortunate i'd say unfortunately the the the the circumstances are some of them are low income or esl or special education we are getting some some additional funding for that but the reality is at some point in time and i said this michelle you're my witnesses i've been saying this for years we're going to get to this point where we are right now we finally got our local fair share and we're right there the problem is moving forward your local fair share is probably going to go up yeah which is which then the board has to make the decision are we going to raise taxes to stay with the local fair share or not right and and i think that's going to become the problem that you're going to see is you know at times it may be two percent because at other times it may be four percent right and if that's the case um you know you're going to be dealing with your constituents here who are going to be screaming that you're raising my taxes and and let's just look at the in environment we're in we're talking about a recession really um and we're talking about stagflation so people are going to be hurting because gas is now four dollars a gallon groceries are more money and yet at this point in time we're lucky as a community we're not raising taxes but if you compounded if we were raising taxes this year i'm sure there would be a lot of people who are really hurting um especially in our community um knowing knowing their situations you know raising taxes at that point in time so i think again i think we're lucky this year i think we're in a good spot this year i just think that moving forward you know you have some real concerns that you're going to have to be very very very mindful of yeah um and i think you know i'll go to i'll go to past past issues like when i first became superintendent you have you had a five million dollar deficit in your budget so every year you were rolling over over five million dollars to offset your your your budget so in theory if your budget was 20 million dollars well really it was only right so that became an issue when we finally got away from that and got away from from those bad practices the problem that you have is when when you come in and say okay we got to raise taxes and the board goes we're not raising taxes we're not doing this um are there any creative ways of doing it and you fall into some of those traps that really hurt you financially long term short term they're great long term they're terrible right so you always have to be mindful that be be cautious of that um and again i think that's some of the things i've learned over the years is you know some of those pitfalls and have to deal with pitfalls but and then again to my point is that we're kicking the can down the road we have a buzz budget presentation here which i i i hate this you know it's like we're going around robin i hear you i hear you and it's nothing and i'm not addressing this to you i my concern is and i don't know if my fellow board members i know that we've talked in the past is that we're doing a budget presentation i don't see anyone from the city council here that concerns me i'm a taxpayer it concerns me that everything we're talking about we're talking about in in a ball and how come there's no representative from the city council here to discuss this that to me is a concern that i have well the only thing that i would say as a counterpoint is i believe city council or town council is going to have their budget presentation tomorrow night and i don't know that i mean i wasn't personally planning to attend and i don't know that we further does that so i just want to be careful and mindful and say that that street press both ways we've talked as a group about improving that relationship and making sure that the consequences of decisions on both sides are well understood before people actually make mistakes and i would say this you know over the years we've had a very good relationship with me right and i want that to continue but my point is we're sitting here year after year after year saying the same thing well and again the only reason i say that though roger is like right now we're not sitting here saying hey we need to taps or yeah position we're not there but i want to be upfront and transparent about it it's coming that's in common guys and that's all i want to do is make sure you all understand what is coming down the road and you guys know i i always try to plan for five minutes now i know okay yeah i just know i i i've spoken to people on the council and and their viewpoint is that okay this pilot money doesn't you know a percentage doesn't come to us but it's over here and so if we raise taxes they can use that to offset but however that's nice but it's also not true because they can't offset our taxes once you set the tax limit they can't change it the only thing they can do is lower their own right if we ask for 13 million we're going to get 13 right whether no you're going to get 13 million from the taxpayers they can't lower the tax rate you approve that's critical to understand the only thing they can do is lower their side of taxes that's all they can do right isn't there a cash because i remember doing a course years ago about the funding isn't uh special services like special ed isn't there like a 16 flat rate for like all special ed so that it doesn't like monetize going like placing kids and special ed to get the extra funding so like where does our district fall as far as special like what percentage of our population is that that number is 18 18 it's right around 18 and that's where we are right around 18.
you need common finals i know we keep talking about it and well then we dumped finals so if we are not doing common finals are we now doing common assessments so there will be common um assessments with as we work through our grading practices but as you had said that's a ongoing process and during cobit i did not make a lot of progress on that um and then slide 27 is my last one you said ongoing coaching yes um and you talked you talked about the high schools sharing people and the junior high sharing people and my question are those people that they're sharing where are their actual offices are they downtown so at edmond at junior high they are at dac but they do spend quite a bit of time out in classrooms and being at the schools or providing digital training and things remotely at the high schools one is at each of the high schools they do not have offices at deck and do we have room to move the junior high ones into the buildings yes and no we have one that really her expertise is in math and the other in is in literacy and to push them just to the schools or house them at one specific school right now we really want them to be servicing all five schools and working with our elementary coaches too so that there is cross articulation for k-8 so right now i'm not intending to have their offices be at the schools but they do have to be in the schools frequently observing classrooms even going in and modeling and teaching that right but i guess my question is when when we say frequently do we mean the same thing how frequent is frequent on some days they're out the schools five days a week some weeks for like an hour or like the whole day it varies greatly um and they did do a lot of the classroom walkthroughs and going through and looking at the junior highs and the elementary pieces um if you'd like i can gather more of the schedules yeah i just like i appreciate that they're doing the walk-throughs but if they're doing a walk-through for a couple of days and then they're spending two weeks downtown talking about the walk-throughs that they did it really doesn't help i can guarantee you they're not spending two weeks talking about the classroom doctors i okay it was an exaggeration for argument's pick i would just like them to be in the buildings anybody else yeah i have one thing it's really kind of more of a comment than a question uh maybe kind of a question but first just appreciate and thank you for uh strategy and the conversation around strategy of how we improve the quality of education in our district it's so refreshing to be having these conversations now and discussing what what is and what will be directly impacting our students as i was thinking about a couple things that you said early culture to me even when i'm going over those slides about what's missing the vision the skills incentive resources and action plan culture impacts our strategy far greater sometimes than any of those things and so one statement that you made because this is a lot and this is only one initiative that's a part of envision 308 and so when you made the statement of of death by initiative it just made me think about the teachers and and the people who have to implement it still and so my question was is what part or what role does the board play in the pace in which we're running and because the the thing that we're all of the things that we're trying to improve upon can actually have an adverse effect if we [Music] you know so i'm just trying to figure out i think it's all great and we and it's all just like you said the six and one half dozen in the other it's it's so needed but at the same time i just want to make sure that we're doing it right and not just doing it and so i wanted to ask you know what role do i we play in that pace that could be contributing to the way that the teachers are feeling and i know that's a very tough question but correct but i think many times and i can think of a particular instance where we're at the stage on oe that you know the more that we can work collectively to build trust and communication it makes all of that work better when you ask about the pace um we have to continue to listen you know i there were there were more check marks that i wanted off on green this year but we had to really look at where our staff as learners are and our staff is at at that and you know i think the more that we can collectively say that our teachers are phenomenal and they're great uh and our students are great but it's it's systems and it's things like this that if like if the systems break down we're not going to get where we need to go um the pace is hard because some teachers can be like faith catch up we should be doing more on this and other people are like oh if you talk so you know like um and they're all right i'm just like our teachers that have to face their students every day they're students that can be 100 miles an hour on something and other students need a little bit more time either with where their past experiences were or what else is going on in their life i don't have a great answer for you on how to determine [Music] the pace other than to really set a clear vision which is what we worked really hard to do this year and then help people monitor their own pace of where they're going with this to differentiate yeah and there was an unfair question well i say it this way is that we should be i should be asking ourselves that question yeah because we are the ones that set the priority so it was it was me thinking out loud you gave actually a great answer to it because that was that also helped inform me and made me say why am i asking her this question this is the question i need to ask myself but but thank you because you know this is great and great information but it is something that we have to discuss when we're when we're considering world priorities for next year and eugene i'll just add in when you talk about culture being completely separate from all of these when i look at culture i tend to look at the box incentives yeah that's what i was it culture culture is very often from my own experiences here and elsewhere culture tends to be harmed when you disincentivize individuals from achieving the action plan so that's where i place it it kind of overarches the whole thing but i don't really think it's separate so much as if you skip any of these it's because of the culture that they're missing well yeah i i agree i think culture is an overlay so if you look at the box the purple boxes to the far right i feel like that's the culture that we create when you and more often than not incentives is where i think you see what's in it what's in it for me or what's in it for our students or what's in it for our community or what's in it for whoever incentive to ins to play a large role in culture i think so one last comment is i agree with you but i think culture is all of the boxes and not just oh yeah definitely it's not even maybe it may be weighted differently with each person but i think it's all of these things contribute to it and so i just want us to be you know we just we have to talk about that it's just us that we have to have yeah i agree well this is where we do that yeah yeah exactly all right thank you so much thank you thank you doctor um can i go out of order because i think i'm going to have our student ambassadors because it's getting late yeah um so i'm going to start with 8.4 and have our student ambassador reports and then um you guys are free to go because i know you've got school tomorrow unless you want to stay and i'm fine saying you're fine thing can i ask just a quick question about that why did we move the comments till the end well all the comments yeah because because you're bringing up a really good point it's 9 45 and it's late for them well i was going to let them go first with their comments no i know but we moved the whole section to the end oh okay that's just like we can start with the 9.1 consent agenda no no no no no i think you're misunderstanding me i i was asking um the the most noticeable change to our agenda recently is that before we go into information we usually do our student ambassador reports and board member comments and superintendents report but now it's at the end of the meeting that's what i'm asking about yeah it was an effort to give the other the presentation presentation and the guest and if there's any if there's any uh staff an opportunity to go first but it's i guess not the same consideration for the students yeah those tend to not take too too long generally so without wasting more minutes because i've taken two um yeah i totally agree about switching to let them go first okay for today for today okay so well we're anyway i don't really remind you i'm gonna let you guys go first eight point four student ambassador reports okay thank you so much um so last week colton and i met with dr sparlin to discuss the structure and the future of the student advisory committee which our current members have been really excited to do this year and our returning members would potentially be really excited to do again and then last thursday the students from our student advisory committee uh made that presentation we provided earlier about the potential proposal for how we would recruit new members into the student advisory committee um and then we'd also like to say that we plan on evaluating a lot of the considerations that have been brought up by the other members today um such as setting a foundation for new members and our current progress that we've made so far at the beginning of next year or reaching out to more students to get into direct contact with the student advisory committee to really facilitate more communication um but yeah thank you all for providing such amazing insights we really appreciated it and thank you for listening to our proposal and i think that's it is there anything to add colton okay so i see what you're saying now you're just saying put we're going to going forward or just for today we're going to do students we're going to talk about it later i'll let's we don't need to worry about it right this second i'll i'll explain a little bit further when it's earlier okay all right so now we're going back up to 8.1 before mrs samuel if you don't mind could i do my 8.3 my superintendent's report the reason i ask is because i've incorporated our student ambassadors into the report so when i'm done with this then then they can take off okay all right uh so good evening board tonight i'd like to uh two things i'd like to start my comments by congratulating oswego east senior or as we student i should say hannah king for being named to the honorable mention allstate academic team of the illinois high school association for 2122 school year hannah is one of 50 students recognized this year out of hundreds of nominees so congratulations hannah we've uh we've we've uh congratulated hannah and a few different things so quite impressive and um since our last meeting i had the opportunity to attend the bsa black excellence runway show at oe and it was a really great night highlighting our students and their talents uh step teams performed student artwork and poetry were shared and the students modeled a different different apparel and the runaway walks it was a very well attended event and i know i enjoyed it and i saw that most people everyone seemed that was attending seemed to do that so last thursday i attended the large unit district association conference attending conferences such as luda provide me with the opportunity for some professional development as well as the opportunity to speak with other luda superintendents and to engage with my peers and professional dialogue and one of the sessions that i attended i wanted to highlight because i participated in a session that was all about student voice and as we all know student voice is a priority of ours here in 308 so one of the sessions featured a panel of students and the students were asked a variety of questions to provide student voice on educational issues so i'm going to highlight just a couple of the questions that were asked and then i i told i told anyone colton that i wanted to ask the our student ambassadors to reflect and respond on those same questions and the first question was if you could change anything about our educational system uh what would it be and what should we be thinking about and some of the responses from the high school students that were part of the panel were that you know they're not going to school to memorize and take tests maybe do more projects instead of memorizing information they talked about having this was interesting when they brought up the concept of open book tests as they said in the real world they need the ability to seek out resources to address problems being able to find the solution over emphasizing uh memorization they felt essay standardized tests such as sats where we spent too much time on those um and a senior that was going to college talked about how it out that being she's going to be a teacher and how she felt that in the profession we need to give educators more credit after all everything people learn in professions came from teachers and then one of the students spoke in depth regarding representation as a student of color and they we need more students more teachers to reflect uh our student body and how they through their entire k-12 experience they only had one student of color and that was something that was very important so when i listened to these student responses i couldn't help but um think what would our you know what would our student ambassadors and our other members of our student advisory committee and how would they respond so i wanted i i told cole and anya i wanted to ask them if you could change anything about our educational system what would it be and what should we be thinking about um so one of the um responses with relation to like projects my mind kind of was the same thing with like hands-on learning and changing curriculum i i would want to see you know and especially in high school when you're taught anything that is either just you know something that you have to learn in high school or something that may be struggling to you you always kind of hear the you say to yourself when you hear from your classmates that oh when am i going to use this right like when is this gonna ever come up in my life again or whatever you know whatever the case may be and my my thought is like you know what if there was an an avenue where at a high school at any school you could take what you're learning in any class and apply it to [Music] an industry or like a field you're interested in kind of like college i mean you go to college you learn specifically about a degree in high school it's kind of a lot less customizable you kind of have to pick and choose what you're interested in and there's programs there's actually uh one of our cte teachers was was discussing it with me but there's programs that use common core classes like geometry or or any kind of other english or math or social studies and it goes like hand in hand with another credit that you can get um for a specific industry so for with geometry for example it was you would take a geometry class and simultaneously take like a construction class because i mean right there you i mean how often do you use geometry and construction but just that aspect of seeing exactly yeah you will use this if you're interested in this field you're going to use this all the time and really it kind of acts as a motivator whether rather than hearing that voice that oh what am i going to use this and that really that just kicks it to the curb i mean it's really hard to focus or even absorb any information after that because i mean i i've said it about you know countless classes and i know 10 years down the line i'm going to be like oh well now i'm glad i learned this right but really having it more noticeable to students that you are going to use this and having actually an option for them to use it so that's as a student i wish that our education system focused more on as a whole i mean everywhere so yeah yeah i think that was like good insight into like the career aspect of things when i first thought about this question um i think something that's really like gets discussed a lot by students is the inclusion of soft skills and student engagement and the exclusion of like like you said right like memorization-centered academia so like the inclusion of like long-term and short-term projects uh teamwork engaging individual work or like guided research that i think colton was talking about a little bit can include students into the academic environment and involve them in class work in a way that's a little bit more like meaningful it's more memorable and it can also simultaneously teach students the soft skills that they'll need in their future whether that be uh in their careers socially emotionally and i think incorporating those skills into the learning environment can teach students not only how to be like a better student but it can teach them to be a better person and i think that's something that has to be incorporated in the educational environment because spending so much time here we are developing our personalities and our individualistic traits here so kind of incorporating that and those skills that you should be learning alongside your education i think that's really important but yeah that's just something like i wanted to build off of thank you so much at this the the panel that i i attended was an hour-long session so there were quite a few questions that were asked so we're gonna i'm gonna go with one more question and because it goes directly with what we've been talking about with some of our research and some of the information that we got that we garnered from the staff and from the student surveys and uh the second question was why do you feel there's so much anxiety and social emotional issues for kids these days and some of the replies that were given from some of the panel was that they got off track a bit during the pandemic and it's going to take a while to get back and this creates anxiety amongst kids they talked about mental health issues have always been around the pandemic highlighted this and social media causes problems deteriorates kids social skills by texting everything's texting texting texting everything on social media makes it look like everyone is doing all these amazing things which just isn't reality and uh a couple of other things that says like breaks need to be breaks so when we take spring break and winter break that we really need to step away and let kids de-stress instead or students be stressed and you know and step away from that and then they just talked about the amount of homework when you know kids these students have athletics they have work they have family obligations and things like day after school so i'll ask you the same question why do you feel there's so much anxiety and social emotional issues for kids these days i think i think a really big one that i agreed with was social media and it's not something a lot of especially like teenagers acknowledge they're like well it's a great way for me to talk to my friends it's a great way for me to talk to my family that's absolutely correct but what it also simultaneously does is that it shows a part of people's lives you know what people want to show it's part of the whole story they can show the best things about themselves their perfect academics or their perfect social life um and it makes people feel like that's the standard and that's what they have to achieve and it creates a lot of pressure and it makes you feel like why am i not like this all the time but nobody's like that all the time you know everyone has their own set of problems and everyone's completely different and completely unique but social media sets a really high standard because everyone's only showing what they want to show and everyone can only see what's shown there and i think another reason might also be because students lack direction and guidance um when you're deciding your career or deciding your like entire possible future it's like a huge burden and with um the age for finding your future career getting lower and lower as there's more competition in the educational field some students may feel like they have to start deciding things as early as middle school to get a head start to start standing out in post-secondary education because if you start in high school some people might think well i'm not going to be good enough and a college might not look at me or a future job might not think i'm qualified enough and it's a lot of pressure and i feel like there are so many options provided in schools which is amazing it's something that i've truly loved being in oswego east there's so many amazing extracurriculars i've really started to find my passion but a lot of people don't have those resources and that lack of guidance in finding that pathway means that a lot of people are under a lot of pressure all the time to figure out the entire rest of their lives between the ages of like 14 and 18.
uh all's in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed that motion does carry 5-0 uh 5.5 colonel john wheeler middle school renovation bid package mr reese thank you mr president members of the board earlier this month we received 28 bids over 12 different bid categories for the renovation of colonel john wheeler middle school low bids equaled 21 million 830 that's slightly higher just slightly higher than our budget of 21 million 750 the skill school corporation or stillman have worked extensively experience with the winning low bidders no concerns about their ability to perform the work with that we recommend approval of low bids as attached for a total of 21 million eight hundred and thirty thousand and eight hundred and twenty four dollars thank you mr reese i know at times i might get lazy or sloppy on repeating some of the recommendations but i will go through with detail on this one the recommendation is to approve contracts for colonel wheeler middle school and additions and renovations and related work project as follows the general trades to gary up to construction in the amount of seven million six hundred seventy nine thousand five hundred for mason masonry to adams masonry in the amount of 2 million 480 000 for roofing to ec bavilla in the amount of 1 million 975 649 for aluminum entrances glazing to trout glass and mirror in the amount of 395 900 for metal studs drywall and ceilings to collector interior systems in the amount of one million three hundred fifty three thousand three hundred for painting two i don't know and sons in the amount of two hundred eighty eight thousand one hundred seventy dollars for a terrazzo hard tile and art mosaic and tile on the amount of 769 900 for carpet resilient flooring to midwest tile and interiors in the amount of 360 thousand five dollars for fire protection to hill fire protection in the amount of 250 100 for plumbing to mechanical concepts in the amount of 970 000 and for mechanical to arctic engineering in the amount of two million eight hundred ninety three thousand one hundred dollars for electrical to sergeant electric in the amount of two million four hundred fifteen thousand two hundred do we have a motion to prove the recommendation as presented second moved by mr babjack the second by mr hoffman any questions or comments for mr reese or even include dr turtle on this one dr the public's information the reason for the addition and the work being done to wheeler so one of the things that we're doing as we're building taft we're making sure that this will be comparable in what it offers as taft will be along with the addition of a new auditorium bringing the learning center into being a portion of taft or a portion of wheeler again getting us up to where we can have 1400 students in that middle school we hear repeatedly about all the people who are moving here and subdivisions and developers and schools can't keep up with it we have a thorough plan that is in front of you that has been expressed here both in our board meetings and in on our website that puts us in a position to be able to handle those the growth that we're about to experience so that we continue to experience i should say thank you any other questions if not all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed welcome carries 5-0 thank you mr reese and we'll come back to you for 5.6 the vacant land farmed by a third party via lease agreement thank you the school corporation owns two vacant parcels of land that are tillable we worked with both of the farmers since the district acquired each of those properties mr wayne nelson for the state street property for three thousand dollars rent and the ej farms for the property in the vicinity of 231 in arizona for eight thousand two hundred dollars so with that we recommend approval of the farm laces for the 2022 growing season to those two individuals companies i've heard a recommendation to prove the farm lease is with wayne nelson for the property located at 11052-11084 state street and with ej farms for property located at 3615 east 129th avenue both located in crown point indiana do we have a motion to approve so moved second uh moved by mr angel and second by mr hoffman any questions or comments from mr reese just thanks to mr reese for getting these cleaned up we've had just a couple little issues with making sure paperwork and all that was right and not being able to lease out to additional tenants so appreciate your work on that david i'm gonna abstain on this vote due to a conflict understand any other questions all those favors signified saying aye opposed that motion carries 4-0 and mr smith abstained from the vote uh item six information items superintendent discussion groups it's probably mr smith any updates from cedar lake no i think i sent an email to todd who shared it with you guys today regarding some of their policies that they recently passed that you just may want to take a quick look at um and then todd i think you may have been meeting down at cedar lake i don't know if there's anything you want to add to what's going on down there yes we have we've met with them several times trying to work through um all of the appropriate plans for macarthur and the expansion there feel like we're in a pretty good spot with them moving forward we have a timeline that we need really need to adhere to to be able to get in and start working on that building while students are out for the summer so we appreciate the work that's gone into that and the the way that they're handling that as well so i feel like we're gonna be in a good spot about anything out of um let's go winfield mr mr mr angel nothing in winfield crown point redevelopment recently received their annual tiff report and i provided a printed copy of that to the superintendent if anybody desires to review it matt took it right away and i haven't been able to pry it out of his hands since they are they prom point uh basically he's phasing out one tif area and then trying to expand another one to take advantage of the anticipated development so okay let's move to unless there's anything else let's move to 6.2 director of elementary education thank you mr president and board members i would like to take this opportunity to thank our teachers and our blended instruction design specialists for the work they've done in curating and refining our ela curriculum over the past six to seven years in our learning management system and supporting student needs teacher needs that have evolved and really then now for their focus over the past four months and reviewing a new curriculum to make sure that we are best meeting the needs of our students through a knowledge-based curriculum moving forward i also would like to thank those who will be building and editing our buzz courses as this is really integral work for our students and for our teachers that we'll start this summer so i am very appreciative to all teachers and administrators involved over the process of our curriculum review and then our recommendation that was posed today i'd also like to thank our principals we are in the throes of our hiring season and teacher interviews we have a lot of talent in the pool of teachers that we are bringing in and are very excited to see how they will contribute to aligning our educational experience across our district for our students and becoming active community members any questions no thank you thank you i have a comment that david you kind of alluded to this and you our exact session read this morning from information produced by the indiana school boards association that a survey showed 96 percent of the school corporations in the state of indiana are reporting a shortage of teachers another school corporation that has 1500 employees had 120 open positions so there there's a potential significant problem [Music] which we have been fortunate not to have to deal with so i want to thank our administration and our leadership team for trying to deal with these issues and keep us uh fully employed thank you mr troffman thank you mr ramirez 6.3 director of secondary education mr gene fermi ah thank you mr president um first i just want to thank our middle school administrators faculty and staff we're in the throes of ilearn testing and i especially want to thank the students because when you walk in those buildings those are long days and the kids are doing about as good a job as you can expect out of them and it's just really orderly and well organized and really appreciate their efforts right now during this time so one more week and we'll we'll be into makeup season for that so thank you to all them and i also want to uh point out we are in the throes of kind of uh our senior celebration and awards nights we already had our academic law day ceremony right after our last board meeting but i do want to point out one that will be happening next wednesday uh at noon right on the circle drive our military recognition for all our seniors who will be joining our armed forces and we it's it's really uh well done with mr marcinick and his admin team so if you have a moment uh maybe take a lunch early or whatever and stop right there at that circle drive at noon and we just recognize those kids and we're kind of thinking them paying it forward for for what they're going to be doing for us so that's all i have any other questions you have i i i believe i watched a video of the uh the mr martinez in the military uh last year and i it would be what when did you say that's gonna take it's at uh it's may 4th wednesday at noon right on circle drive in front of the school that was really that was really nice to see if anybody didn't see it in person there was a video circling take it take a look if you get a chance and uh if i'm not mistaken it was windy yeah yeah i remember it extremely so no that was uh good to hear that's a continuing tradition any other questions or comments from mr g for me director of exceptional education ms pascus good evening mr warner members of the board tonight you approved two school psychologists that we're adding to our team we have three we will have five next year so we all thank you from the exceptional education department we're gaining two experienced dynamite school psychologists who will join the team next year last week we held our parent advisory group meeting and had a really nice conversation and dialogue with some of our exceptional education parents explained the new construction projects that are underway and how exceptional education has been at the table for the design and discussion of what is needed for all students at the buildings and a reminder that this fri this wednesday at the high school at 5 30 we will be holding our first annual transition fair so this is uh something we have to consider for our students once they turn 14 it's part of their iep we have to look at their education their independent living and any training and in and employment so we have colleges we have um like day school treatment kind of places we have the bureau of developmental disabilities folk rehab over 40 vendors will be there for a couple hours for our parents and students to walk around and get some information so love for you to stop by thank you ms pascus two things there was a date earlier you had given us some kind of event going on at the high school and you get that date for what that was wednesday may 25th is our unified game day it's our special olympics starting right in the morning or it's ten to one okay and then the other thing is how many parents were at the meeting you mentioned um there were about 15 invited and four attended in person one virtual okay thank you uh business office anything from business officers i have nothing to say thank you director of communications ms allen thank you um i want to take a moment to thank the individuals in our buildings who manage the social media pages mainly facebook at the end of the year i start running some numbers to see how we've been doing and this afternoon i was pleasantly surprised to see that we have had more than fifteen hundred facebook posts between 12 buildings this year they've been viewed nearly 1 million times by 300 000 different individuals and the school year is not even over yet so this was just from the start of school to now thank you i think we'll have a problem if the director of communications ever passes and has nothing to say right i don't think it's going to happen well miss allen while we're while we're uh well on you um can you give us the next two dates of coffee and conversation yeah absolutely we have one coming up thursday this week which is april 28th 1pm at the winfield library and then we have the last one of the year in may that's thursday may 12th at 4 15.
all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously next item the 2022 summer sport camps is that doc that's uh mr kylie thank you mr newman so i apologize for the late delivery of this information but um i provided it to you in hard copy here so we propose to hold a similar summer sports camp to what we've done in the past baseball softball field hockey flag football tennis basketball lacrosse volleyball soccer track and field we had 475 participants last year which was great especially considering you know we had some concerns at the time regarding kobit and um how that would impact our enrollment so we were very pleased with that we uh are proposing that we charge the the same amount as we did last year which is 80 for the week there are two short weeks in this span so it would it would begin with a four day week on on june 21st and then obviously the july fourth week as well is also in that in the midst of the camp so it would go from june 21st through july 22nd so we the camp's been successful uh serving students grades two through nine um it is modestly financially successful um we have actually not used it to purchase athletic and pe equipment in the last well the camp didn't happen two years ago but um in the last few years we've we've sort of just built up the balance in that account a little bit but um our hope would be that we could utilize it to freshen up some some equipment for our students so i just ask for your consideration on that any questions just a quick question mr kylie does this go into a unrestricted revolving account or student activities account where does the money go yeah it's a it's a sub-account of the athletic revolving account and it um it is all accounted for entirely separately so all the expenses come out of that and all of the revenue is deposited into that account no great i'm happy to see that um you know we're offering again and the amount the amount of campers uh looks like for last year 475.
i think the benefit for us is that most of our kids are in district and not at the district we've run a lot of our own programs because i know that there's a cap with that so yes and no i mean you do get penalized if you over classify or you or you send too many kids out to make sure that you're not just trying to get money out of kids exactly so and again i think i think we've done a really good job of having our own programs bringing kids back into the district um and all those things like i said i mean you know 2000 i think we're 2086 kids or so anything at a district we're 36 i mean the numbers proportionately low because we do run our own programs and another thing i have to say is is the shared services agreement with south bank has helped us tremendously well you know we're getting some of their kids they're taking some of our kids and there's a wash there which is great because you know we're doing a rape by our kids and at the same time both districts are benefiting from not having to pay that response i mean there's got to be a number to me there's got to be a way of figuring out what the value is of the pilot programs increasing the value of the town they absolutely have there has to have there has to be a number yeah it says because of this we're gonna have this and so everyone's property values are gonna go up because of this because of this uh value-added building which i agree like there's a value add to not having a downtown that's in disrepair right so like there's value to growth and there's value to building you know but we've got to look at the number and see what does that value bring because we're we're hearing that they're not putting children in like these these residents aren't adding students but and but to me that's not even the argument the argument is if it's increasing the value of founder of property and it's increasing according to trenton everyone's property now becomes more valuable more affluent like we can afford our own tax breaks then there has to be a number there where we can say how do how is a school district do we do we get that because we're obviously that's a number that's not translated that's right where where are you looking to get it from the problem is i i really like who are you looking like i can't get those i can't get all those figures i don't have that access i just once we get the number where do you want those funds to to funnel into our district i think i think what this number is because maybe it's not as big as i'm thinking i'm thinking it's big right but maybe it's not as big as what i'm thinking and then two is how do we work collectively as a town you know when people want to move to a town they want to move to a town with a great school district but they're going to pay more money per square foot on their house in a bridgewater a little war and then they are in boundaries and i'm sorry to say it's mostly because of the school grade right and the amount of taxes that they're able to collect so with growth comes great things but it also comes you know with a level of knowing where that value is well and i think i think i think what you really want to do is you want to know what that that value is right to explain to people the this is the value increase that we have yet you have to take a look at the evaluation of your house versus where you currently are versus where you're going right and just try to educate people on that end so they kind of understand um you know not only what their homes are worth or what the evaluation of the town is worth but also understand that it's and and i'll use michelle because she likes to jerk me or you know she's over taxed and she's over tax burden and and and everything else but when maybe when you explain that it would make somebody like myself feel a little bit better like yeah i'm paying a lot of money in taxes i get what you're saying i'm still paying a lot of money in taxes but i get what you're saying yeah because i don't think you'll ever get to a point where somebody says yeah i'm okay with that all right i don't think you'll ever get there but at least you you might be able to get to i understand where you're coming from i don't like my tax numbers but i understand where you're coming from right and again what and just a side note then i'll stop and then we'll move on to the board meeting but if you if you're look if you're looking at the overall housing market in general people are overpaying tremendously right now um i do think from an economic standpoint i think that you know i would be very concerned that there may be a housing bubble again four or five years from now like even 10 years ago the price per square foot for a house and bridgewater was going to be way higher than the house and you have to look at yourself why is that the house is just as beautiful sits in the same type of neighborhood what is the difference well and but but i also think some of that may be i'll say it's my fault okay some of that may be my fault because i don't think we've done a good enough job of saying that we're better than bridgewater now i will say that if you look at it it's okay but if if if you look at where our kids are going to school if you look at um our population versus their population and how many kids are going to two or four year colleges if you take a look at um like i said the colleges where they're going um how many kids would rather be here than in other districts um you know we we have a very vibrant choice program and and we do fill those seats so there are it's not like one of those things where i don't want to be here in bound but we have we have people who fight to come to bamberg right so um i think we just don't do a good enough job selling that at some point in time and again i absolutely agree with you because i think i think the school has been phenomenal and and again i always going to school and so i always said i'm not a pr person well that's why i've never never never been a pr person so um but yeah i mean i think they're i think there's some low-lying fruit now that we have we have that firm yeah that maybe some of those things can get out and i think part of that is collaborating with the council you know and working collaboratively on a way to and like those funds and i have to be honest with you over the years like you know michelle knows this if we go back eight nine years ago i don't think the relationship eight nine years ago is the same relationship we have today i think we have a very good relationship like i can call hector and say hector hey i need some help with this or he call me you know we generally work some of those things out um you know i i just yeah but i think it's just the politics of the town right now but i think i think that going forward if that's an avenue we really want to continue to explore then we need to be the ones to put together something to reach out to them to bring them on board you know what i'm saying because if we're going to wait for them that'll never happen okay i mean i i know i've been he's been on council he's been my friend for years he is asked to be the liaison for the education and they just tell him flat out no okay but there's no one sitting here either okay so it's there's there's some infighting that's going on within the council within itself um i know nothing about those things so so ps i think that if that's something we want to do and i know what's spoken about it i'm sure there's a couple of us that wouldn't mind volunteering maybe reaching out and and trying to have a sit down that way okay thank you dan no problem no problem and if you have any other questions if they pop up later on feel free to ask and i'll i'll do my best to update you it's all right i'll do my best all right um anything else back i was trying to be good [Music] all right yes we most certainly do so shall we education so um our most recent education commission uh committee meeting was i think this evening um i haven't seen it uh danny i'm not sure i think you were the member of attendance i don't know if you want to share anything from the meetings with the committee or maybe we can do that at the next meeting oh thank you okay so a quick brief about that is um so we discussed the language direction committee where we'll be previewing uh some of the possible different uh current resources that are gonna be um focusing on like some period instruction um eol materials and it's all all composting components we were also talking about the summer enrichment with the robotics team i believe it's going to be from grades 3 to 12 and it's going to be a two week uh two-week instruction with one week that um that's going to be split into two different groups and that'll be done over this morning there's going to be a required summer work for both math and language arts so they'll be working the local library for the elementary buildings and then um some there's uh some teachers looking for uh changes in regarding to the pd days um so like for example like martin luther king day or columbus days and things like that so that's something that may be coming down the line and so that's a little bit more finalized okay and i think if i'm not mistaken the enrichment program for robotics is actually going to appear later on the agenda tonight for everybody to review right yes that's correct okay although i don't know if we made the changes because i think that in the proposal it says one to twelve [Music] for governance um i think michelle you or i could actually do the empty do you have a preference i mean in governance we pretty much go over all of the things there are some board members that have to make sure that they get your ethics forms so um have you have you gotten in touch with them personally so that they i don't want to necessarily announce there's only one i haven't gotten okay so dr gallagher we didn't have a new human resources but we're continuing to look at stamping anticipated openings for next year uh the non-renewable list and then of course our negotiations i think we're are we still on first for wednesday so i have to confirm with mr paxton um exactly what we can schedule i think to your point you know our proposal is ready and [Music] an official uh letter tomorrow is we're moving the half day from friday before monday to thursday we're gonna do friday the following tuesday off so we'll make those changes on the calendar and um and then lisa maybe you want to say a couple of things about the website project yeah so uh there was a meeting today i know danny was on mrs fisher was on i was not able to attend but i believe the progress was made as far as getting a sub uh school site uh set up and reviewed i don't know what we wanted to share anything or do we want to just put out some notes for i um i had sent notes to both you and dr gallagher that you can share yeah so we'll have some notes to follow up on that i think um next steps would just be following up with content and um hopefully i can get with um dr gallagher i'll read you the notes that were sent to me and i'll have feel free to go through those go through those any questions concerns comments or anything you have please send them [Music] um we talked about having a community focused group also take a look at the sites um before we go live with those just to get some some other feedback from parents and things like that about the new website to make sure we have everything covered and it's user-friendly and everything yes sir so the question i was going to ask is what was that um link or oh the information that you provide well that also includes like a site map so we know what to be on the lookout for and i am not 100 but i would be advanced okay excellent thank you awesome thanks guys um yeah sure i mean i can talk through what we do yeah um so i had my first meeting uh with the county um somerset county educational services commission uh it was a great meeting i got to meet some of the representatives from different school districts around somerset county uh it was a general agenda being new to the meeting it was kind of kind of adapting and learning about what they were going through but i was able to listen and get a lot of feedback what i heard from that meeting was that transportation was a major issue among other school districts a lot of districts are struggling with getting busy getting roots kids are calling daily to see if their buses are coming to even pick them up so as a walking district i guess i was feeling pretty thankful that you don't have to go through that um it sounded like a hardship that other districts are really suffering through um getting the buses and getting the bus vendors to to show up i was able to also get a tour of the building uh which was pretty uh inspirational they've got a lot of workshop areas they have a complete shoprite store in store training facility there where they're able to train and teach their students how to use cash registers how to scan new pcs how to learn how to communicate with customers how to find product on shelves i was really inspired by that and they work closely with a few of the shoprite stores i believe the one in somerset uh works closely with them so i was really impressed to hear that students could come learn how to basically work within a shoprite environment and then go on to maybe working in a shoprite store so that was really great they also do a lot of electrical construction auto they have a full uh auto shop there where they're training kids how to put cars on lifts how to take tires off how to do brakes how to do you know tire rotations uh they also have this is the first time i guess they've done it in a while is uh uh they have a full enclosed uh bathroom that they're roughing in so they have the the full footprint of the bathroom toilet sink all the roughing all the tile they're teaching the kids how to lay all the the masonry how to do the outside flat boards basically everything from outside construction on your house to inside plumbing and inside bathroom refinishing which was really impressive and then they had um some electrical boxes that they were training the kids on basic electrical wiring electrical service so a lot of really good things um they did speak to me that we do have students that are enrolled in the program there which i was excited about because i think it's really seems like a very strong program so as i have a i have uh some pictures that i took and some notes from the agenda from the meeting that we can share so that you guys can take a look but yeah it was a really good really good first week so nice great operations were pretty much uh actually uh the budget presentation kind of eclipsed operations um everything that we talked about in the operations committee meeting budget uh was discussed uh as well as the facilities uh one of the things that i wanted to bring to light and i wanted to thank dr gallagher and everyone that put all of these ideas into motion is that the lamont field replacement and was it i'm very impressed with what i saw and uh because of it coming under budget as dr gallagher had mentioned we're able to get some nice lights on there um the main gym floor is also going to be repainted and and the lafayette sidewalk will also be aired as well as and my son tells me the high school pa system will be replaced so uh that was about it but uh and you know pretty much everything else in relation to numbers with budget uh you know talking about being in good shape finishing out the year great can can i just say because i know you guys um bring up the idea of women having trouble like simply so that you're not [Music] too much on the spot as an individual i think generally speaking we wanted to express that again we want to make sure as many people can exactly the point of having the community meetings is to have as many people at the table as possible so they can be productive discussions and if we need to adjust the schedule we need to change days we need to go virtual we need right so when it comes to the other ones you know if we're doing virtually maybe we could push them back a little bit if there's an issue within that time we should reach out to see if we can rearrange it ahead of time as opposed to this is a definite you know and then only have one person show up yeah the most important thing is when i send out those weekend reports so like this weekend's report's going to have everything for me there so if there's a time or a date that's not working if you let me know and then i can at least inform the committee members and say hey this state's not working maybe we can adjust to get a committee virtual consensus whatever but i have to know that to reach out to people and then try to make those those concessions and things like that but that's why i think it's really really important i'm going to stress this out really really important that you look at the weekend report when it comes out don't wait until before we need to look at it or anything but if you take a look at it that weekend that it comes out so you know you're informed but b if there is a scheduling issue or conflict that we can resolve it that you know pretty quickly starting in the next week so like again like what i'm saying is you know um i think it's may 9th there's two committee meetings in a board meeting but if there's a if there's a conflict that we know that this weekend it gives me that whole week to make any adjustments so mr minhaus and i did meet over google me yeah that's what i'm saying like i think i i i think you just traditionally thought well this is what it is and and and we're seeing where people you know for conflict reasons or whatever you know i get a last minute one but i i'd like more participation so i think maybe if we think of it more fluidly exactly yeah and i think the the the biggest thing is you know when i put out the dates and times if people could say hey that doesn't work for me then i can go to the committee members and start a committee chat and go back and forth because if i keep it within the committee it doesn't violate some time off so and then i can come up with a complex okay so the general takeaway is the committees are arguments the most important thing is that we meet and discuss the issues and however flexible we need to be in order to get there are all things that are for discussion and debate so i'm focusing this way so much same goes for you guys too okay but i mean tonight's committee reports compared to i think what we've been hearing in the past fantastic uh the progress that's being made and i know a lot of it's being driven by the administration but you know the sense of ownership about um the subject matter expertise i think is coming from the board and i think that's really important so um positive improvement and great to see any other questions anybody has about any of the reports they've been received tonight okie dokie open to the public yes for agenda items only there are no comments online so shall we move on to 5.1 approval of the minutes resolve that the bomber board of education approves the minutes for the following meetings regular and executive meeting minutes march 21st 2022 can i have a motion motion thank you mr powell a second second thank you mr zumko any discussion i need to abstain i was not there as any other comments or questions yep yes mr zorko is abstained so as mr thank you item 6.1 resolve the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions is outlined in personnel resolutions under district and high school this is 6.2 push through 6.15 have a motion motion thank you mr foster a second second thank you ms guzino any discussion it's nice to see that we'll update because all the new programs that we're using you know to keep up with uh the changing curriculum i'm glad to see that hearing no other questions can we have a role call please mr bail yes mr fawzi yes mrs casino yes mr januzzi yes mr minhas yes yes mr thoughts yes and miss lima yes okay we are now up to section seven resolve that the superintendent recommends for approval the resolutions as outlined in personnel resolutions under middle and elementary schools this is through 7.10 i have a motion motion thank you mr fazio a second second thank you mr zumko any discussion okay hearing none can we have a wall call please mr bear yes mr farzio yes mr yes mr januzzi yes miss lima uh mr minhas yes mr zipko yes and mr dawson yes thank you we are up to section eight result that the boundary board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in education resolutions under district and high school this is eight point two through eight point sixteen i have a motion promotion i can use the follow you in a second second thank you mrs discussion i'm so thrilled to see these all these trips like i feel like we're back to normal like we haven't seen trips for like two years now yeah um so i'm excited about that and i guess just an overall um you know as far as summer programs like how do our numbers look as far as like do we have a firm number of how many people we think we so we're still at the beginning stages of that right so um our after school program ends this week um and then we'll begin to look at the data and we also have linked form c um we'll be taking so that'll kind of determine a little bit more where we're at with those numbers now in the past i know we've been pretty successful for getting the buy-in for people to come to correct well that's good mm-hmm yeah i anticipate that all right good yeah and um that brings you just reminded me something mr januzzi i think we need to follow up with the ref committee um there was some discussion because it might not be an operation this summer that they would like to run some some programs here or you know put a code on some programs for our kids um if we can maybe establish some sort of communication and see what what's available yeah so we have our next recreation commission meeting this week i think our director is going to at that point share some details about broken arrow as soon as i have them i just wanted to do a shout out to our incredible robotics team and then i see they're going to the world championships houston and i cannot say how proud [Music] just bursting with pride so congratulations ahead of time i know they're going to win absolutely just one thing on 8.5 um it looks like there's a discrepancy in the numbers and the minutes it has a cost of 700 and on the enclosed slide it says it's 1248.
and kind of like piggybacking off that i thought of the same thing as like you know in the pandemic social media that was really one of the only forms that we could interact with students that we were no longer seeing seven hours a day and i think it only um exploited the fact of how i mean really toxic it can be and to the point of um you know to a point being made of you know school getting harder i don't necessarily believe that school or school work got harder but that huge event that happened to all of us it made it harder to deal with all of those same expectations that we once had for ourselves that other you know you know the school had for us um it really was kind of a a pause that that completely shook up what our generation our students as a whole thought was expected and so when i think of you know why there's so much anxiety and and and you know emotional uh effects on us i mean that my ad the first thing that came to mind was so it was really factors outside of like school and curriculum while that plays a factor in it it was kind of how those things affect how we can uh learn from school and learn from curriculum and and how that just exacerbates all of that so that's yeah well thank you so much for both of you sharing your responses i told the i told uh dr berkey the executive director of the large unit district association the next time they have a student panel i want to make sure i'm able to bring our 308 students to talk to the superintendents because uh i am always so impressed with your insight and what you have to say so thank you that's my report for this evening thank you if you guys would like to leave here okay all right so we're going back to 8.1 board member comments and i know there was a presentation that you wanted to do so over the past few weeks i've had the honor of participating in oswego high school's talk and hike programs as we all know that fall under the bionic umbrella they shared with us these programs last meeting at our last meeting until i experienced them in person though i truly had no idea the impact that they were making on our students i wanted to give a special shout out to the high school students who have created this amazing safe space to share vulnerable life experience experiences which with each other talk and hike have not only shown to be powerful but even transformational they center student voice and validate students lived experiences i know that a lot of people have contributed to talk over the um years but i wanted to just give a special thank you to the teacher sponsors wendy colleen and rachel who have poured their time and energy and heart into these programs last week uh during talk at ohs i also had the opportunity to speak with administrators from manuka valley view and romeoville they were all there to train them and their students to train with our students and teachers so that they could take those programs and implement them in their districts this next year yorkville elgin newark plano sandwich lasalle and tri point we'll also be training with our uh staff and students to the seniors i just wanted to give a hike was i spent the day at a hunt club with hike and then this was talk at ohs that's a former ohs student that came to speak to the participants i wanted to give a special thank you to the seniors just an incredible group of students who uh literally i think are gonna change the world while visiting hike at um boulder hill with the fifth graders i just wanted to show a little bit about um how each of the classes are introduced maybe maybe not do you know how to play the video it looks like something video would have to go what does that say yes oh there we go so here it goes there's no sound anyway it's very exciting it is if you haven't experienced well it's just like the football games the where they run through the tunnel and it's all that excitement and people standing on each side and look look there you go so the energy is absolutely incredible and those students um are so in awe of the high schoolers they're like superstars um and it was just it was beautiful to see try to get to the next slide here while visiting hike mrs simultan and i also had the pleasure of meeting the boulder hill watch dogs watchdogs is an acromen acronym that stands for dads of great students this is a family and community engagement educational initiative these awesome dads i really wish you could see the pictures there they are these awesome dads provide positive male role models for students demonstrating by their presence that education is important they also provide an extra set of eyes and ears to enhance school security and reduce bullying as you can see in these photos dads were reading with students patrolling the school entrances and hallways escorting students from one class to another supporting staff they had 10 staff members out and so much more i'm sure that they do that i wasn't able to capture uh mrs simultan and i took the opportunity to chat with them and learned that these specific dads take off uh one day a month they use their pto time to spend the month in the schools they were enthusiastic they were engaged and excited and they are certainly making a difference i also want to thank principal jones for the tour of boulder hill i had such a warm and welcoming feeling it is without a doubt a special place finally i just wanted to congratulate the banarsik junior high bulldogs on 20 years of learning growing and achieving i'm so sad that i can't be there on friday to celebrate with them but i wanted to extend my gratitude to the students teachers and staff that have made bedarsik a successful school we may not always be able to make event dates but i know that we all truly appreciate being invited and i was just very proud to uh represent 308 the last couple weeks great thank you anyone else um jared ally okay all right now we'll have 8.2 board committee reports i have some comments i'm sorry i thought you were starting with them oh no i was just i said anyone else and then okay go ahead you said anyone else as i thought you were speaking to them because i didn't finish with that um so yesterday i had the opportunity to attend the u.s navy band concert that they offered for free at oehs it was pretty packed i must say and it was an opportunity for anyone in our community to see for free professional musicians and singers that gave a show that i don't think our gym has quite ever seen the quality of before in 15 years it was it was pretty amazing to have that just hanging out on a sunday afternoon for anyone who wanted to attend so i wanted to thank mr rexra for bringing them here um it was definitely a one-of-a-kind kind of situation for for the whole community so that's pretty cool um yeah that's that's what i've got i'm gonna leave i'm gonna leave the rest for uh conversation later okay um did they answer jared alley anything for board comments no i'm good okay all right now we'll go on to 8.2 board committee reports uh we'll start with the equity committee okay um we met on april 12th renee sartor the director of vl services shared a draft presentation with committee the final version will be shared with the entire board soon committee gave feedback regarding parent communications special education amongst our el population the need for el services to be considered in all hiring and other decisions but um she'll be presenting that to the entire board soon so okay thank you now the finance and facilities committee report sure we met on april 19th um fun fact that was mentioned is that we have over three million square feet of space in the district which just blows me away but that's a lot of space that our facilities team does a phenomenal job at managing we talked about the uh just some some standards of how they use and what they do in regards to cleaning and using green products and and all of the guidelines that go along with that we talked about ada compliance and we even talked about facility facility rental income and and even the process of of what comes in and how we can how is that managed and and how it can even be consolidated we talked extensively about student fees and um and the process for which they are by which they are collected in in in the utilization of push coin uh we did go over the envision 308 maintenance plan uh talked a little bit about kluber and and even uh how the central office are oh and just even talked about how we can utilize the central office staff in order to address some of the needs that are in the building and then lastly we we also discussed our financial projections for fiscal year 20 and and and in detail in regards to basically everything that we talked about the last board meeting so we just had a a passionate very interesting conversation and i just love all the input from everybody on that committee okay thank you very much and last teaching and learning committee met on april 20th renee shared a presentation with that committee as well on el services discuss the growing population of students the need to track student progress over the years even after they're no longer considered el students again she'll be presenting that to the entire board very soon uh and then there's nothing really up to say faith also presented um professional development progress report so and that was presented uh 15 minutes ago okay thank you very much okay we'll move on to 9.1 consent agenda are there any questions on the consent agenda any questions on the consent agenda can i have a motion to approve the consent agenda please i make a motion to approve all items under consent including 9.1 minutes from the board of education meeting on april 11th 2022 open and closed session and 9.2 to acknowledge the foia request received by the district second miss simonton hi mr plogger no lights oh they're gone i could have had this often seen to see your phone jared i'm surprised he didn't text someone someone we're getting you back okay do we need to do it again do we need to do it again okay so um can i have a motion to approve the consent agenda please i make a motion to approve all items under consent including 9.1 minutes from the board of education meeting on april 11th 2022 open and closed session and 9.2 to acknowledge the foia request received by the district sergeant miss hamilton aye mr plogger hi mr gatewood aye ms swanson hi mr cerrone aye mr doyle i miss johnson hi motion passes 7-0 10.1 approval of the student rights and responsibilities section in the student handbook can i have a motion please i make a motion to approve the student rights and responsibilities section in the student handbook as presented second mr cerrone aye mr gatewood aye ms johnson aye mr plunker hi miss swanson hi miss doyle i miss simonton aye motion passes 7-0 item 10.2 student disciplinary case can i have a motion please i make a motion to expel student 2021-22-5 through the first semester of the 2023-2024 school year pursuant to the board's written findings and decision as discussed in closed session with a review by the district's alternative education coordinator in the spring of 2023 who is authorized to consider returning the student to goal at the beginning of the 23-24 school year based on the students successful progress in the areas of behavior including police involvement attendance and grades the alternative education coordinator shall provide a status report to the board of education at that time second miss doyle luna abstain miss swanson hi mr cerrone aye ms simonton aye mr gatewood aye ms johnson aye mr pluger hi motion passes six with one abstention 10.3 approval of board of education meeting dates 2022 2023 i make a motion to postpone item 10.3 until our may 9th meeting can i have a second please second miss simonton aye ms swanson aye mr plunker hi miss doyle aye ms johnson aye mr sirone aye mr gatewood aye motion passes seven zero 10.4 approval of destruction of the audio recordings can i have a motion please i make a motion to approve the destruction of audio recordings of the closed session meetings from april 27 2020 through october 13th 2020.
that one will be at the cedar lake library thank you and uh a couple of us were able to attend the first one in town here at the library um you know it's a appreciate the work you've got put into getting those set up thank you uh where are we going 6.8 superintendent of schools dr terrell and in transition um also uh mrs allen has and her department has put out the latest edition of our super things so if you haven't keep up on those it's just a they're a joy when we get to go out and film them with our kids it's amazing to see the things happening in our buildings so just another great way to keep those in front of you a few things i'd like to mention this evening as you heard tonight with the long list of those who were bidding on the projects for wheeler i want to thank our community members here who are bidding on our projects this is a rough time in the world of bidding for projects there are increases that are going up every three and four days and because we're a school corporation there's a no escalation cause that's built into that when they bid these and yet we're still getting dozens and of individuals and and companies bidding for our jobs we appreciate them and the way that they're continuing to sharpen their pencils and really give us best options that we can have for our construction projects the many that we have going on i also then want to thank gibraltar and skillman they both uh skillman with the way that they do their estimating uh prize themselves on coming in as close to that dollar as they can especially with the challenging times that are going on right now oh i would have said this if i knew dion just walked in but and how they do that we appreciate their hard work but both skillman and gibraltar we've had a couple late nights with meetings with different communities around here with different projects that are going on and they're always right there any changes that we need they're willing to stay and make sure that those happen before we get there so appreciate them along with our attorney cheryl zick and the extra work that they've been doing to help us stay on course with the things that we need to do here in crown point schools to be ready for uh the things that are coming so appreciate them anything else dr terrell not at this time all right let's move into um other business of the border school trustees who'd like to start well then i'll start oh usually someone else is ready to jump well i just want to address the crowd in the audience the young men that are here from the lacrosse team um if you guys don't know i see coach murkhansky who i was fortunate enough to coach back in the day in little league and i'm an avid sports backer i don't care what sport it is never played lacrosse one of the few sports i probably don't know any rules about the sport other than seeing it on tv and just following a little bit with the college game i understand the frustration with being able to play a sport maybe not be able to use it but it basically boils down to a couple things one that not being a sanctioned sport ourselves as board members are here to protect the financial interests of the school corporation and to educate kids and it being non-sanctioned just limits us and our capabilities to be able to accept things like this i can tell you what dr terrell mentioned things are moving forward it probably won't bring you guys any satisfaction but i realize the dedication and hard work that's put in to practicing a sport and acknowledging uh what your team captain mr mccall mentioned tonight mentioning on how i wanted to play in front of your on your school campus so i just wanted to go i couldn't go without saying anything i wish i could do more it's just a situation that sometimes the way things are laid out it just makes things very difficult so i wish you guys nothing but the best of success yeah i think there's i think it plays out into two parts um one is what can we do in the near future or even like long-term planning and that is stuff that this board the superintendent the athletic department have been working on and um i see good things happening in the future but unfortunately i don't know what that does for the the seniors on the team this year we or several of us get approached by members of the community different people that we know friends and families and and i hear about this there are a lot of people advocating for you uh so it's not just it's not just you guys coming here which is very cool but you have a large fan base and people that are trying to pull for uh the betterment of your of your situation so i think there's there i'd like to say thank you to to todd because todd is the first person that has actually heard some of these concerns and there is an action plan moving forward um but like i said i don't i don't know same thing that mr angel said i don't know what that's going to mean in the very short term bill how many students how many players did you say would be joining you for your youth you said it your next game you'll be honoring the youth program 78 players but let's hope that all of you sitting in this room today you know will feel proud to have come out this evening and encourage this board to consider things that when a policy is in place forever doesn't mean it's always that it can't be changed um again just echoing that you know we're sorry that we don't see it being able to be changed fast enough for you guys but i hope that you understand by being here there's 78 kids right now that you might change the road for them night you know it's as mr angel said you can't not say anything you're all sitting here playing a sport and we all love the passion for sports and um you know so i feel the same way speaking right now that you got to acknowledge you guys being here and what you're trying to accomplish and you know i just want to tell you that you know regardless of the outcome of your request i um you represent crown point and um i wish you guys the best of luck hey bill could you give us those two home game dates and times what's the start time for those uh start times seven o'clock dance before on wednesday and then six o'clock may 11th is the monster yes i'm sorry i'm not senior here yeah right how many seniors you guys raise your hands seniors thank you i would just add that uh bill you have handled yourself and conducted yourself very very well before this board very professionally it's it's honestly it's very impressive and your team should be proud of you and the way you've represented yourself and i concur with the the sediments of my my colleagues up here that we may not be able to move quick enough unfortunately however you know sometimes by you advocating your position others will receive the benefits of that advocacy in the future i would suggest that we i think dave you touched on this earlier i never had the opportunity besides reading your emails bill and listening to you and perhaps a phone call or two from a coach or parent that we sit uh with you i'd like to hear what you'd like to do in the future or perhaps where lacrosse is going and how we could be of assistance we are partners in this community and i would like to hear more and so if there are a few board members here that would be willing to sit uh or with todd or whoever else would be present maybe that's something you can discuss bill with your coaches or other players that maybe we could set up something to see how we could help and assist in the future i do know that your voices are heard you guys have been heard and i'm sorry that we may not be able to move quick enough but understand that it's not falling on deaf ears i just want to backtrack a bit to say that just so you know when we're saying not able to move quick enough that's not a result of you bringing up the email to us a couple weeks ago okay so it's not um you know we're you brought this to our attention was it august september october it was last fall um you know yes the email that came out brought this conversation back to the surface but it wasn't not talked about at length in the fall um so i just want when you kind of collect our thoughts here we keep saying that fast and fast you brought it to our attention and false don't feel as if you know what i mean like for yourself don't want you walk away say shoot i could i should i should have you know hit him harder in december or january um this conversation was really brought to us in full attention in the fall and we didn't we didn't ignore it at that point in time this just brought it back to the surface for us so i kind of wanted to clear that up a little bit and i think you guys know you've noticed the cranes out there there's a lot of projects going on around the high school so the timing for this conversation is very good right because a lot of development the facilities are being developed out there so um it would have been difficult to move what you said dave earlier we could we can come back with any thoughts of this i want to uh um bring up what i said i would at our coffee talk in the other business is to start at the start of the school calendar to start yes please i don't want my silence to be misconstrued that i'm not supportive or cognizant of your request and i i echo the sentiments expressed by my fellow board persons with with respect to your request so thank you tom um so in our coffin conversations there it was a good hour and 15 minute first time um a couple things i want to mention is number one uh through the the process of dr terrell asking us things that are important to us as a board this was one of the things that we you know we've all kind of heard about these taking place around the state we've heard uh presentations at the fall conference about uh and oh that's a neat idea it's something that would be nice for us to do to in crown point and you know miss allen dr terrell made that happen um now about an hour and 15-minute conversation um for the most part it was pretty much just an open open discussion of hey dr dr trail standing in front of the the group just taking questions we talked at pretty good length ms carr was present sorry i got your voicemail at our five o'clock meeting today so i didn't not mean to call you back but the school calendar board we have anything to discuss about school calendar um i had just said that this calendar was released in a very in a proud moment february of 21 february 21st of february 21 you know when the calendar was put together we were proud as a board that we were getting a two-year calendar out in front of everybody for them to make their plans and have some structure that we were hoping to move forward with uh right dr terrell would be a continuous two-year calendar um so i just want to throw out to begin with that it wasn't tried we by no means tried to hide this calendar it was something that we were proud to get out there yes the conversations about the fair took place um and we had a lot of conversation then about the fair the board meeting that we brought up the the vote for the calendar we talked about the fair i might be wrong for saying this personally but one things i said to ms carr when they're talking about safety we might not talk about and this is the part that could just be wrong for saying it this way we might not talk about or address safety and publicly because it's becoming embedded that that is the number one that mr g and fermi nodding with and you're responsible with mr akiwa now mr colson is out in the hallway you know and to say that safety wasn't the number one concern about this and that it's not you know so i feel like we took some emails to the board that there's not a plan well there may not be a plan that's 100 percent complete to release to the public or a plan to release there would never be a safety plan released to the public it it just it's not you don't you're not going to tell the public that we've got 20 people here that we wouldn't normally have and 10 here and 10 this maybe in private doctor tara will share something like that or you conversation with a board member but maybe i'm being too in fact safety is the number one concern and it's something that get you know and we've seen nothing you know but increased communication with the city and emergency services and the police department fire department with between artie um i know mark's been involved with those discussions i mean we have a good relationship with the city so all of these things i'm very confident that all of these things are being discussed and addressed and that safety will be priority number one and um they will they will do nothing but their best to make sure everybody's safe during those three days and and my the other thing that i've said consistently and i mentioned at the coffee talk was that two years ago the petition would have floated around to start school after the fair i would have been the first one to sign it but it wasn't for the educational that i mean that our role again just as we're speaking to the other issues this evening it's our responsibility financially to and educationally do the best for the kids and yeah and it was good at the coffee talk there were there weren't any current teachers there right we did have a couple retired teachers and some of them spoke up saying that they wish they would have had an opportunity to have this schedule that is going to happen this next school year they spoke about the importance of having the extra time off around fall break to kind of re-energize and spend some time you know with their families and what that meant to them mentally and so it was good to hear it was good to hear them talk about that and be in favor of it and i do feel confident of you know the fact that we did go out to the community and and ask them you know is this something that you're in favor of and we did it in a staged approach we're trying to balance the semesters we didn't do it all at once we did it over a course of of two years um keeping what the teachers what was best for you know the teachers and the students in mind the whole time so um that board meeting you know i did go back and look at it that's it you know it's nice to have those videos from time to time that february 21st um of 2021 meeting there's 20 minutes of discussion um about the survey results uh every one of us spoke you know about what we thought of that um so don i'm i'm proud of the way the board handled handled that calendar so it is good to get a nice two-year rotation going as well yeah the the amount of uh debate that could even take place right now on you know splitting splitting hairs because uh you know and for example you get you get past that week and now you're starting on a monday with a full week and if you push into december you're going to have someone that's not happy that you're going until the 23rd of december and they want different plans and we've added the wednesday before thanksgiving that there's been much appreciation children for and i i think that we all agree yes it's about the students the education but very very very close number two is the teachers and getting a you know dr taylor you've mentioned that it's split it's not it it might not be 80 20 it might not be 60 40.
that's great thank you dr jenkins so mr oliver's question and the mr kyle's response made me think of will you sometimes periodically get reports on the revolving accounts balances right i'm not going to ask you what the balance is on that but maybe as a future agenda item sometime this summer when things calm down maybe we can get a report on those again sure that would be great yeah it actually is also included in the annual town report uh information which you received but yeah i'd be happy to provide you an update with where it is thank you kathleen um i say this every year you know what i'm gonna say uh you know the the the weeks kind of um coincide or collide with uh those um esy you know the the summer school for for um you know our vulnerable learners and so i just hope as has been past practice that there is some meaningful kind of coordination and and um scheduling to account for you know during that time you you're not going to please you can never please everyone but clearly but uh anyway um but just to um you know make sure that there are some opportunities the most you know um the the the sports that seem to be most popular perhaps i don't know if that's a way to gauge it but don't happen during during the weeks of esy you know if basketball was during esy and liam was still you know he would be just upset to have to miss that because let's face it and i don't know if i don't know what any any compensatory services that might also be happening in the summer time i don't know how many students have you know i don't know any that detail but um i'm thinking that there might be more students partaking in extended school year than past years and so like past years i just ask that you keep that into consideration oh it's a good it's a good point thank you and we'll make sure that we try and coordinate as best we can like you said we can't you know solve everything we do have some issues with the camp this year in terms of the facilities we're attempting to attempt to um refinish the the gym floor here so um that is gonna sort of we're gonna be a little bit of a juggling act but we'll figure it out so we'll try and balance everything as best we can to serve as many you know as many students as we can didn't we just redo that gym floor yes not to that extent not just thinking right not not to the extent of what we did we replaced the floor correct when we were running we redid it we're not doing that it's just it's just the surface okay sorry attempting to like the lines it will include lines um as as you know um mr gaspar is going to um you know be honored uh with the new basketball season and uh we thought that that was a great time to actually try and fix up the floor a little bit which if you go out there is worn um and i will say that and so we'd like to incorporate the work that we need to do to to honor mr gaspar and his name on the floor and everything with uh actually fixing up the floor at the same time so so it's it's routine it's sort of maintenance that needs to occur maintenance sounds better yeah yeah yeah and i think it's great you know i want to see them go forward and you know any time we have kids coming together it's just right exactly what we need so yeah i was talking with the superintendent when she was coming in tonight and you know all the activity you know the fan truck being unloaded and everything and it's like it's a school that's what it's supposed to be full of kids and activities type of deals [Music] oh yeah no doubt all right next on the agenda do you need a motion to approve that any other discussion chair hearing none all in favor aye aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you thank you sorry about that guys get used to being here again wow okay uh next on the agenda is uh new bedford regional vocational technical high school school committee member dr gibbons um mr shea did answer that he was still interested in continuing so if that's the will of the community i have no i have no i have no problem with that at all but i'll just know i i received the letters get there sent it to me as chair informing me that mr shea's term was up and i think that was like after the agenda for the last meeting or after our last meeting or something so i asked ms gunther prior to this meeting to ask mr shea if he was willing to serve with the understanding that we could have a discussion do we want to open it up or do we want to just keep mr shea so just for the background on that i didn't inform anyone because that would violate open meeting law so that's sort of where we are we have to appoint someone new mr shea is willing to continue if that's the pleasure of the committee or we can open it up for nominations or applications i guess it would yeah i'm i'm good with the with him i was pleased with the last presentation where he came and i'd like to see more of those yeah makes two of us so okay so i'll make a motion to reappoint mr shea is the uh dartmouth school committee representative to the vocational vocational school committee second time all right so we have a motion by dr jenkins the second by ms waite to reappoint michael shea as one of the dartmouth school committee representatives to the new bedford regional vocational technical high school on the motion any discussion chair hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously i'd just like to say thank you to mr shea thank you yeah absolutely yes and thank you to reappointing him because i've been on this side having to sit at town hall to figure out who's going on so i'll tell you that sometime okay next item a new business superintendent's update okay thank you i have quite a few things tonight so um as you know i was not at the last meeting and so i did listen and i know two two topics were brought up would i want to kind of provide an update on one was the ell department so i just wanted to give you some statistics on that the reason as you know we did not replace a retired person um our numbers have gone from 92 down to 54 students else students right now our schedules people have enough time in their schedules our one of the things i want to do for next year to really get a handle on it is some of the things that are taking place are some teachers are not exiting students along with the desi guidance that we want exited they're scoring way over what desi provides as guidance that they should be scoring um like it's a 3.9 to 4.2 on on the testing and and we're well above that we also have done some longitudinal studies on our students which we call flaps which are formerly english language learners and they're scoring as well if not better on mcas on encase over the last few years so there's really good data out there so i wanted to clarify that the department really is has enough right now i get as i said from 92 down to 54 students one of the things i want to address next year is more of like i said exiting students when they should be exited uh so that we can service kindergarten students which are not always it's again there's no regulations with desi but i think it's important that perhaps kindergarten students get service so we give them that good jump if they come in we want to look into a second phase on when we do the home language survey which simply asks is there another language spoken in the home sometimes people just say yes and there's no follow-up well it could be perfectly fine that they're bilingual so then they get coded as l students which really there's sometimes no rhyme no reason so i want to do some work with that also about more of pushing in servicing students in the classroom because some of those students that are not being exited are not receiving tier one instruction enough they're being pulled out so there were there's just some of the things like i said i heard the conversation go on i wanted to kind of address some of that also the speech language department i've met with them over time a number of times you might know i think we're in a good place now but over the last i would say three or four years we've had a real hard time getting speech people not for lack of trying we post we get people oh we'll get just slpa so unfortunately we've had late resignations throughout the number of years we've had some people get ill so the departments had a you know an up and down um we were just able so some of the times what we did was thinking we were doing a good service was hiring an slpa because that was all we had to try to help with the servicing of students so we're meeting again with the slp with the speech people on wednesday and um but right now we just were able to hire a new one which i think she's starting tomorrow as far as i'm remembered today so we have right now um sevens if well we have one that's on medical but if she returns we have seven speech we do have three slpas and we contract with two people and we're so our hours of time that are required we're meeting i know that um the supervision that the speech people have to do is is burdensome and a lot so we'll be working with them a little bit more on some of the scenarios that they've presented for next year so i just kind of wanted to touch base on those because i knew those two topics were brought up also as you know if you recall we do have the desi audit coming up and miss aloe vera and i spent a lot of last week on our vacation dealing with them because it was a real disappointment i have to say they were supposed to get back to us and touch base with us on organizing this audit visit which is a three-day visit and plus uploading tons of our documents into their system which port tracy never got access to we were back and forth with emails on that finally i given the little you know snarly email two weeks ago like we haven't heard from you guys it's vacation next week and you expect to be here may 3rd 4th and 5th and so we did zoom with them during the week and we've put together a schedule as i said they'll be here may third fourth and fifth and basically they're auditing us on leadership in governance hr pd assessment curriculum instruction student support financial and asset management uh miss wait and mr nunes are gonna be the school committee reps that meet with them we've got um mr mcginnis is meeting with them we've got a group about seven community and uh parent people that meet with them focus groups so they're doing some virtual and some on site so we think we have it under control the high school all the schools are working with us on providing time the students from middle and high school so it's a big pretty big deal but as of today we think we have the schedules pretty much but i just wasn't happy with the group again it was a research group hired by desse and when we zoomed with them of course they were home in their basement while we were at work but anyway so that's happening some elementary news there's moving up days happening for grade five and again a lot of in-person stuff so that's fun uh recognizing recognition nights are being scheduled we have summer reading kickoff scheduled for june 7th field days and fifth grade activities are being advertised from the schools kindergarten orientation is may 18th and that will be in person as well and we're happy to say that we brought junior achievement days back into the elementary school so they're scheduling some of those for all grades the district art show is coming up at the high school here for may 5th i believe i have that date right some of the elementaries have decided to kind of do their own in schools to get their parents into the schools because they haven't been in for so long so i said that was fine the middle school honest society junior honor society is this week april 27th at six and then um you might have seen uh i didn't send it out yet ross just sent it but a lot of senior the final days are being advertised yeah so lots going on with that the final day for seniors is may 27th we've got june uh june 1 is the awards night and the senior stroll which they started so that's really fun and the prom is the second at kirkbray country club and of course there'll be an after prom and um june 5th is graduation and the last thing i want to mention something we're very very happy which matter of fact i have a brochure for you guys if you can just pass those out i think i mentioned at a previous meeting that we've hooked up with a group called the cook center for human connections and again we've been meeting with them quite a bit they seem to be very much on task as far as helping us get started it's all about mental health so what we're doing is on may 4th as you see we're going to kick it off with a zoom we're advertising this people can register it it's a virtual meeting there are therapists available um they're going to explain all that there is ability to ask anonymous questions to these people but that's just part of it so that's the kickoff and it'll explain what's happening um on the other things we're doing is um there's a parent guidance it's called parentguides.org which again we'll put out parents can go online it's all free there's courses they can take free things like helping your child when they're bullied how digital media is changing our children's mental health there's a plethora of opportunities on that particular website that they can just go through along with this kickoff what happens next is we're going to continue uh with a series and we'll be advertising this but just so you have an idea june 7th and they're all going to be six to seven and they'll be virtual the session is going to be protecting our children and again parents are going to have the opportunity to anonymously ask questions which can be then answered you might have all been in sessions like that already i know i do with mass etc and the questions they say oh a question is and it might be questions that a lot of people have and they have therapists they can be help you know helping out august 23rd is going to be your child's anxiety we thought that'd be kind of good getting kids back to school and then october 18th once we get started it's going to be um one that's very very sad that we have to do but how parents can help prevent suicide giving people skills and ideas and and also the last thing i'll mention you can tell them we're very happy about this is um we are going to provide parents the opportunity to sign up for individual coaching sessions with therapist it's like a once a week 30 minute session and once they sign up they can just do it it's completely anonymous and um we we're just going to offer that opportunity so we we just thought this was a fantastic opportunity for parents with the mental health issues and things that are happening and our staff will get a little bit of pd on this as well matter of fact the i'm not sure if they met with our social workers already and our guidance but we were setting up a meeting i know lori joden was working on that so anyway this will be going out on our facebook page and home in the parent backpack the newsletter thing and that's it that's for you that's fantastic lots of stuff lots of stuff kathleen that's fantastic that was uh but i i have something to share uh i'm also very excited although it's the day after so on on may 5th uh i'm excited to share that the special education parent advisory council is hosting a topic entitled well i modified it but life post pandemic healing our hearts our minds and our relationships um you know it's about you know the past two years have been rough for everyone and just the mental health challenges physical health uh how we you know we're highly charged and emotional right as a community and we invited maria tricario she's a registered nurse she holds lots of lots of degrees and she's a nurse administrator educator and consultant in our areas of expertise our communication problem solving grief mitigation program development leadership and ethics and so she's going to come offer some tips and strategies and some good just stuff for those of us who are just reeling with exhaustion overwhelm worry fear to name a few things and um you know the reason we thought this was important is that you know we've we're all at that point right our students our educators our community uh it hopefully i'm excited for it to be a reset button so that we can see each other again and start having kind and thoughtful conversations and feeling good about how we are in our in our standing so i'm really excited uh you can find i've shared it on facebook today i'll tweet it i guess but the dartmouth cpac facebook page has like an event where you can get the link and it's via zoom six to seven um on may 5th so i'm so excited about that anybody else any questions comments for the superintendent doctor not for the superintendent whatever i was just going to note um for any of our educators who are watching that the grant the call for grants for the dartmouth education foundation is open um the deadline for grant applications is may 15 so we love to see great applications from all of our schools thank you for doing that mr oliver i just have two quick things for future meetings of gender items the next time we go into executive session i was wondering if we could just uh add the topic of school security i did have a couple questions um so we could have that to exec executive session in addition now that we're kind of open um and you know hopefully the pandemic is cl it's slowly winding down it would be nice to see um central office as well as maybe some building representation back at our school committee meetings kind of like prior to um covet just sometimes things come up i just want to say you need to knock on wood because the last time we said that i think mr michoad was here and we were like have some time off have a great vacation yeah i know don't jinx us it's it's so true but yeah just reset button when things come up it would be nice to have some representation yeah yeah that's fine yes i'm good with it that's all i have we can do that okay uh yeah a couple a couple of things that i have uh she talked about it uh and we got our invites tonight from the theater company for yes shrek the musical thursday friday and the two matinees on sunday saturday i should say that'll be good uh do we have a time that miss wait night now are they going to interview us individually or be together i'll send you tomorrow i don't yeah no no that's right no that's fine okay but did i tell you the school no nothing just just just like you know well hopefully yeah when can you be you know okay are you this day yeah because it was the fourth or the fifth i'll send it to you tomorrow i'll as soon as i look it up i'll get to it okay that's fine we have to be nice to them no no okay say good things about us oh that's not a problem that that's that's not a problem second one right the tracy send it look at i think okay that's fine forwarded for tomorrow that's right fourth don't the fourth at eight it says at least three members we told them we can't have three because we can't have three because that's a quorum so the four um eight o'clock on the fourth at the high school at the house okay damn okay yeah they've been fried in bacon and eggs yeah probably not they'll probably want us to buy yeah she just said the same thing eight o'clock on wednesday okay that's fine thank you and again uh just a congrats to uh the color guard for their outstanding performance out in dayton ohio and also our indoor percussion that took third place and uh wins that took second place uh last night their first year first year doing a wgi competition so congratulations to uh to the all those students for what they've done i know our false uh spring sports are going gangbusters they're doing well so very impressed so i wish them well so all right our next meeting is may 9th and i guess we're going to be town hall at town hall we're going to meet at 5 30 in the planning board room dr jenkins um i spoke with ms guenther who can speak to you about some and dr gifford can fill you in about we need to do an executive session after that so i wonder to mr oliver's request do we want to do is it pressing do we need to do that no it's not pressing because we're good i i just want to sort of maybe get that out because we are going to need to do an executive session after that one but we can put that for the next one yeah that's fine that's fine no problem all right anything else okay chair will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second mr oliver second by dr jenkins on emotion any discussion chair hearing then all in favor say aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you good evening and be safe [Music] you
i don't know which number um if you open up the attachment attachment versus the narrative yeah any attachment it has 1248 listed yeah i think the that is a salary discrepancy i would go with the attachment higher number all right okay unless there are any other questions let's go ahead and do a roll call mr bale yes mr fazio yes ms kazina yes mr januzzi yes ms up to section 9 resolve the boundary board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in education resolutions under middle and elementary schools this is nine point two through nine point four we have a motion motion thank you fawzio second second thank you mr bob discussion yay trips lesser to a lesser degree but it's still good i'm sorry i second that motion yes mr bear yes mr fazzy yes mrs casino yes mr news you guys it's lima mr minhas yes mr zipko yes mr dos yes up to section 10.
second mr cyrone aye ms johnson aye mr pluger no mr gatewood aye miss swanson hi miss doyle no miss simultan aye motion passes five five to two 10.5 approval of the release of those closed session minutes can i have a motion please i make a motion to make available no closed session minutes at this time due to a determination that it continues to be necessary to protect the public interest or the privacy of an individual by keeping them confidential second mr gatewood aye ms doyle aye ms johnson aye mr sirone aye ms simonton aye mr poger hi miss swanson hi motion passes 7-0 10.6 approval of 2022-23 administrator contracts can i have a motion please i would like to make two motions the first motion i make a motion to approve the building administrator contracts as presented in closed session second miss simonton aye mr plogger aye mr gatewood aye ms swanson no mr cyrone aye ms doyle this is build the building thank you this is the building aye ms johnson aye motion passes 6-1 i make a motion to approve the district administration contracts as presented in closed session second miss simonton aye ms swanson no mr plogger hi miss doyle no miss johnson um i mr cerrone aye mr gatewood aye motion passes 5-2 point seven approval of personnel report can i have a motion please i make a motion to approve the personnel report as presented second miss doyle aye ms swanson no mr cyrone aye ms simonton aye mr gatewood aye ms johnson aye mr plunker all right motion passes 6-1 can i have a motion to adjourn i'm in favor i make a motion to adjourn oh sorry second all in favor all the favor aye
it might be 55 45 but we need to this is a process that we need to continue to make sure we smooth out to i mean the teachers need we want to really consider you know yes the parents but the teachers have to be at the top of the list absolutely yeah i mean i would almost be in favor of the future that the survey goes to the teachers and you know the the parents and they're just going to have to deal with it but that's a little bit blunt i mean any other thoughts or comments on the excuse me on the calendar i'd add one thing it was mentioned tonight and was misquoted in the paper with some uh journalistic liberty that i said that safety didn't matter not quite what i said it's kind of like going to church on sunday and picking what you want to hear from the preacher and saying well he said this or he said that not quite you got to look at the context of the message those of you who know me know that safety is always the top of our concern with that as well just wanted to make sure that as you sit up here and say safety is number one well he said not quite well i think this is something that you know i feel the need to comment on um i agree with what you said scott and i understand that nobody's excited about starting school early i mean the best weather we have is august september i think we all know that if we could we'd start school in september if we could but we can't i mean at the end of the day our decisions have to be based on education it has to be based on what's best for the students finishing the semester before the the break is going to be a huge plus to the children's academics their performance on testing which then translates into gpa which translates into scholarships and everything else so we can't be short-sighted about that i understand it impacts you know people's lives with the fair you know but you know we're we're consistently provided facts and we have to make decisions and sometimes it's not a perfect world i can tell you and i know the board knows this i've shared with you guys on multiple occasions that there are other states that are starting august 1st august 3rd that is the movement to push forward and start earlier uh for these reasons for academic reasons so i know we're not the only school in the area that's starting i think there's some that's starting even earlier than ourselves so with that being said i i would have no problem going on the record saying we should start as late as possible every semester under the circumstances so we look at the calendar and we start as late as we can i'm in favor of the fall break the week that's a personal thing that impacted me like many you players out here i never got a spring break because i played baseball in high school i couldn't go anywhere i don't think that's fair either i think there's an opportunity for people who play spring sports to be able to travel with their families and spend family time in the fall and that's important to me and i'm personally not going to apologize for that so i know it's not perfect ms carr thank you for coming today and speaking and sharing your thoughts i understand i but you know my position is i and i agree that we made the best decision for the school corporation and our students and our teachers um again we can circle back to anything but i did have to bring up i want to bring up that we're going to have the um retreat coming up in may uh dr terrell sent me a rough draft agenda pretty pretty final draft uh broken into segments of about 25 minutes i think five segments 25 minutes something like that with a little bit of break in between um we have plenty of time to send some uh recommendations questions however but we uh just bring it up here as so we can discuss because this will take place before our next board meeting um and then that leads me to ask a miss green would you there's a decent amount of things going on in the next uh six eight weeks could we get an update of events please uh we've said in the past and you know if any of us are able to make it to certain you know way i know we have a retirement breakfast coming up if we get a date for that and i know we need to be respectful and responsible to let people know if we're gonna attend um we have the retirement breakfast we have the the coffee talks um and that's more for the two of us that are over 50 diana the young guys here so if you would please well and even miss green adding on there the military tribute um yeah whatever it might be out on the agenda or the calendar in the next six weeks would be great thank you what was the date of our retreat again tuesday the 10th tuesday yeah may 10th that's why it's awesome um at 5 00 p.m dinner will be served at 4 45.
resolve the boundary board of education approves the resolutions as outlined in special services resolutions this is 10.2 through 10.4 we have a motion motion thank you mr fazio a second second thank you mr bell any discussion hearing none can we have a roll call please mr bale yes mr fatih yes yes mr genevieve yes miss lima mr minnock yes mr zorko yes and mr dawson yes we are up to section 11 resolved that the boundary board of education approves the resolutions is outlined in financial resolutions this is 11.2 11.19 have a motion motion thank you ms defazio ii second thank you mr zumko uh i just want to point out for everybody's benefit that the adoption of the budget that dr gallagher presented is in 11.2 yes and there was an additional leak today of 11.3 which is the preschool uh budget workbook we already approved the um the plan um it's actually in the budget so this is the first year that they're asking us to do it separately from the budget overall so there so our our pre-k program is completely funded by the state yes so you know that's completely separate the only other thing is that they use our any facility like when we first did the preschool grant we we set a favorite way that that would be something we would have to discuss whether we were going to keep it or not and that's still the case because that's not mandatory right there are some districts that don't right because they're up to eight classrooms did i say on that that's a lot of that's a lot like when we're looking at like numbers and we're saying like yeah we're like classrooms are getting up to 29 and we have eight classrooms filled with you know your preschool like you're capped at 15.