knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals thank you very much so we're now on to the roll call but before we take the official roll call i'd like to acknowledge um this is the last meeting for several of our commissioners um cole stevenson is going to be going off commission as is robert york george i should say uh that's my german pronunciation sorry about that robert and then also chuck hookham and mark levy and i'd particularly like to call out chuck and mark chuck served for 16 years on the energy commission and when he submitted his resignation he noted that he thinks he was absent from two of those 16 meetings so that is quite an exemplary record and chuck has really illuminated a lot of our discussions over the years and he's going to be moving on to another opportunity to illuminate our climate action activities and that is he's going to be working part-time for osi and consulting on the sustainable energy utility so that is why chuck is stepping down mark served for nine years on the commission at least he's served consecutively for nine years he may have even served um before that and we thank all four of the commissioners uh for your service and we hope that you learn something and gain something out of your time on the commission and we appreciate what you brought to the commission in terms of your comments and questions as well as obviously your votes because those have helped us develop policies and help give input on programs and things like that for osi so i just wanted to acknowledge that um i we were supposed to have a new commissioner tonight and that is teresa smith i think i have do you have her cell phone number missy i do i think i could text her when i'm done i probably can after roll call yeah okay i'll do that when you're taking roll call i'll tell you that okay she is if she does join us then we'll introduce her um and then uh two two other notes um travis is in lansing for a work related event and he's traveling um that lasts till 6 30 and he'll join us at around a little bit shortly after that and um participate um while he's driving by phone and then uh i got a note just a few minutes ago from noah and noah is going to be commissioner levin and he's going to be joining us also a few minutes late so um i that's all the notes that i had missy i think we're ready for the roll call and while you're doing that i'll i'll um text terese i'll call you first uh chair mursky president uh taking part from my home here in antarctica excellent vice chair colvin garcia i'm here from ann arbor thank you commissioner juno here from ann arbor commissioner mccomber uh joining from arcadia michigan cheated and pre-populated and that's wrong all right commissioner kerber i think you said here from ann arbor but i couldn't hear you you're muted larry we still don't hear you got you there just a little way all right commissioner george uh here from eaton township and you will be missed uh commissioner peck here from ann arbor commissioner mccoy here from ann arbor excellent council member briggs you're in ann arbor your back here looks beautiful uh and then accent noted commissioner stevenson and commissioner smith and then uh late attendees commissioner levin commissioner radina thank you missy i checked i at least don't have teresa's contact information in my contacts so if you could text her that would be great just as a reminder so um first on the agenda is approval of the agenda uh we have a pretty full agenda um can i get a motion to approve the agenda and a second um moved by council member briggs and seconded by commissioner mccoy all those in or any discussion i should say first um no when raising their hand we'll go ahead and take a vote then all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed so the agenda is approved as posted next is approval of the minutes the minutes are posted on legistar i took a look at them can we also get a motion to approve the minutes and a second so moved by commissioner george and seconded by commissioner mccumber um all any discussion about the minutes all those in favor say aye and raise your hand everybody approved it so the minutes are also approved so next is public input this is an opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes to the commission if you are watching on ctn call three 888-788-0099-4877-853 two four seven and enter meeting id nine three seven six seven five one six eight one nine this information is also displayed on the agenda and in the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand and to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated message that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any background noise so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments uh caller ending in one three four thank you dr stoltz and chair mursky this is ken garber 28 haverhill court i look forward to the discussion of the ipcc working group 3 report let's start by acknowledging our complete failure to bend the emissions curve over the last 30 years we've known since the first ipc assessment in 1990 what we need to do gradually eliminate fossil fuels and we've done the opposite global emissions have risen 67 since then and it's not getting better co2 emissions rose 6.2 percent last year to the highest level ever this at a time when we need double-digit annual emission decreases by rich countries to have any hope of staying within our carbon budget for 2 degrees celsius 1.5 degrees is almost baked in the world meteorological organization said yesterday that we have a 50 50 chance of hitting that by 2026.
but i was just thinking about everything in the book but overall i did all that overthinking in android tc is not what i expected it to be i made friends i joined a drill team that i never thought i'd ever be on because of how shy and soft spoken i was i'm just grateful that petty officer reed petty officer smith miss trish and the district and also my fellow cadets i wouldn't be who i am today this program has so much to offer for you guys the cadets you just have to make the best out of it because i promise you if you don't you're not going to have fun or enjoy what this program has to offer so i encourage for this for the people that are coming back next year which i hope that is everybody the cadets that is here today to do these drill teams and community service events and and be active in the program so on that note this is my farewell letter and i'm cadet hall signing out i would like to introduce gregory hardiman [Applause] cadets petty officer reid principal trish members of the board superintendent kagalinis good evening and thank you for having me my name is cadet chief petty officer hardiman and i am a proud plank owner in this outstanding unit we have done so much for our school and community thanks to petty officer reed as long as he's a naval science instructor at creep money high school i believe our beloved program will be in safe hands petty officer reed has made a positive impact on so many cadets in the program i have never met a leader so invested in his work nor a teacher so invested in the lives of his students without him we would not be nearly as successful as we currently are not just our program but most of our cadets and my fellow plank owners we will never forget him for his sacrifices and sticking with us through our trials and tribulations to my fellow cadets it has been a pleasure working with all of you and i wish you success in all of your future endeavors whether it be college or going into the armed forces as i will be in three short weeks after graduation to all of you our board members on behalf of myself and all of the cadets in our program thank you for all that you do and thank you for hiring petty officer vernon reed [Applause] i would like to introduce cadet hicks good evening my name is charlize hicks and i just wanted to say during my time at njrotc i'd had many things and many opportunities and many experiences i've never had prior to joining njrotc community service parades and so much more i am very thankful for these experiences but most importantly i am thankful for my njrotc family especially petty officer reid these are the people that i've grown and matured with for the last four years i've got to laugh and cry with my fellow cadets and honestly they've made my high school career much more enjoyable especially petty officer reid he taught me what confidence courage and being a leader was he helped me get through high school and shaped me into the strong independent person i am today without my fellow cadets and petty officer i wouldn't be the person standing here talking to you in the near future i plan on using the skills njotc taught me such as leadership courage confidence and so much more to help support my community one of the best things during art one of the best things that i've done during rotc was joined as a freshman and honestly i can say it's been a highlight of my high school career the last four years i hope the incoming ns1s know that this program is more than a class but a family and this program builds leaders so this petty officer i hope that they take advantage of the experiences and opportunities and dreams njrotc has to offer and enjoy it like i did i know because petty officers leadership and our grand cadets this program will grow and prosper in the future thank you for four amazing years i'd like to introduce jasmine sprue hello my name is senior chief jasmine sproul i would like to start off with the thank you thank you for the best four years of my life thank you for the district that helped this program be it sorry help this program thank you for petty officer reid petty officer smith and my fellow cadets this program has brightened my future in many ways than one i would not be who i am today if if it wasn't for this program this program has broadened my perspective on life and let me tell you it has been a whirlwind when i first started um high school i thought that njrotc was a science class let me tell you i was wrong petty officer pushed us into drill into community service and god am i thankful for that i have had so much fun in this program now to my fellow cadets i hope you take our legacy and make it greater make this program brighter make this program what you expired for it to be now petty officer has been the role model the father and the leader that we all needed in our lives he has brought in a better a better future for us and i will truly miss this program i'll miss the laughs that we had in class i'll miss the little corny jokes that petty officer tells every single day [Laughter] but most of all i'll miss being a part of this program let's hope that this program flourishes like it will that we all know it will thank you [Applause] now introducing our master chief manuel greyer good day for the people that doesn't know who i am well i'm the command master chief of this program and it's an honor to stand here and read you guys this speech by the way my name is manuel greyer i joined this program my freshman year of 2018.
probably less than 10 but it's probably fairly close to that i would guess it's changed much but but i feel like that is a it is a source of challenge but it's a source of pride um we work really hard to tell to let those classes go and sure not many school districts would invest the money to do that they would just cut it but we don't and so even classes of two sure and it's nice that we can be able to do that but it's a two-edged sword schools in the past have talked talked to us and i've talked to them 12 to 15 is what their cutoff usually is so when you think about saying 50 reducing 50 sections would not be good you know they would not be able to take anything right that's why but we can do that and people like to talk about the ap classes so just because it's kind of like the sports it's easy to picture that but it's your business classes it's your ag classes it's your industrial arts like it's all of those classes that we really want kids to have that make it really challenging and so people i felt like the last time i had this conversation people really last time we're doing this all for those kids well this trickles down to pretty much every program headlines he has i think english like i said english is probably the safest one where we are able to bunch things together but even there we have an object speech speech and drama because like chris pointed out as we get smaller with our staffing you have fewer people to to coach and to leave those extra curriculars right like um that we feel on our kitchen team and so all right coming out to finish up here just get started our next year about four minutes so we thank you adam for coming and thank you going over that with us so i appreciate it thank you yeah absolutely let me know any questions happy to keep working and answering everything again great another [Music] break
we we did a very loose conceptual all right here's a group of classrooms here's a gym here's a field house just to prove that the program would work that's why i don't have it here it's not a design to show you it's just to prove that the math works that's where we got to the 165 that we feel good about showing you and any in any design in any building as you would go forward you know the goal is always to make it efficient always to you know first dollars and long-term dollars to make it efficient but we feel that starting off with that number that square footage would be a good place and a comfortable place to design this sort of building what adam why don't you say each building is about 138 000 square feet each one yeah they're basically twins yeah so 100 yeah 140.
what's up jail accept the motion as presented discussion jerry where are we with the um e d report i mean certification i think we just got certified um but i'll i'll let the superintendent sort of cause i'm sure they did a lot more work on the on the end so so we finally got the e and d certified today after about 20 calls to our auditors and 10 calls to the dor we finally got it all resolved well it's not totally resolved but it was certified with a lot of mistakes from the past that have to be resolved and fixed which we will be working on over the next month or two between our auditors myself the new business manager and the dor but they did certify the amount uh so it was um that was done um two o'clock today uh in may 23rd okay anything further all those in favor anyone opposed thank you jerry okay our consolidated uh cash reconciliation report is a handout our revolving fund report is in your packet the following is uh because of the late certification of the e and d it was suggested by the department of revenue that we revoke the fiscal year 2223 budget along with the uh adjusted numbers are certified not necessarily adjusted number certified numbers superintendent yeah so not only for that but also in our original budget we in an original budget we had originally when we built the budget that was 10 built into the budget for health insurance the committee uh was not in favor of that so we're gonna i'm gonna talk to the committee about what percentage they want to increase the insurance um so that we can make the correction in the budget when we first built the budget we had had ten thousand ten ten percent built into insurance um when i went back and looked at we were trying to figure out whether we're gonna anything from five to ten percent we put the maximum and now um given that the committee uh feels uh that they'd like a number other than 10 percent um i have the report from the uh we'll get into the budget situation john would you be down to the highlighted figures all right so uh the we put the one million dollars into of e d into the budget with the one million dollar in the budget and 1 million dollars in the budget the total budget for [Music] is now 44 million 587 821 uh which was the same figure that you voted on the last time you vote last school uh last school committee meeting the total figure hasn't changed but given the recommendation of the dor recommending that we vote committee vote on it again just so that we don't have any pushback from our cities and towns they would feel more comfortable so our cities and towns don't challenge the budget here's a recommendation from the superintendent i have a motion please have a second second uh discussion questions all those in favor aye anyone opposed thank you superintendent uh communications john donations see none articles public uh oh yes mrs fitzgerald yes i guess while we're still on the finances um i'm sorry what going through the warrant i've mentioned this before i noticed that so many of our items are being purchased from amazon this month it was a total of 11 000 and something some months as much as 20 some less so i guess my concern is are we just using amazon which isn't necessarily the least expensive as a total convenience because we know that everything will be here within 24 or 48 hours or in fact are we um researching the best prices and i know certainly if something's an emergency um then we should do it but i'm afraid that for many of the uh teachers it's become a huge convenience and i'd love to be shown that that's wrong so by law anything over ten thousand dollars we need three quotes under ten thousand we do not we've made recommendations to the staff to uh seek three quotes uh as much as possible um excuse me john yes these are not i these are individual items some of them as low as twenty dollars or six dollars but in the course of a month they're adding up in this month of eleven thousand dollars it doesn't mean that there was one item for 11 getting three quotes these are all small items my question is if i want to get the best price for something at home more than likely i'm not going to get it from amazon if i did a little shopping or in this case we have established vendors that have supplied been supplying us for years i i guess it's i'm asking as a question are we in fact getting the best prices from amazon or are we using this as a convenience because it is so convenient so that is my question it has nothing to do with anything that would need three quotes because from what i get looking at the warrant articles none of them um would need that quote uh correct and we've uh encouraged our staff to purchase locally as much as possible whenever possible provided that they're getting they are getting the best price they're also encouraged to do their research and purchasing any items that they purchase so that we are getting the best price regardless of whether it's over 10 or under 10 but in terms of documentation that they have to submit when they put in the po they don't have to submit documentation on three that they got three prices um we just encourage that they uh due diligence and um and be respectful of the fact that we're looking for the best price particularly if it's local [Music] but we don't do any research we'll take each item that's po hpo and into our own research uh we certainly can do some spot checking if that would make you more comfortable when we get pos or we can require if the uh if the company would like that anything over 5000 we get three quotes if you wanted to change that policy but uh in terms of procurement law uh we have been meeting the law yes i totally understand that john and that isn't my question at all i'm just asking have we fallen into the trap that i do at home um or quickly go online and order it versus i guess what i'm saying would be for instance if it were possible to order gases online we would no longer be working with middlesex gas because it would be just easier so i'm just asking that going forward you know starting with the new budget in july 1st that if it is being used just as an easy way out then we need to stop it if in fact we're getting the best prices and some of these i mean i really looked back through this particular warrant and you know some of them were for two dollar items or whatever so i i guess i'm just asking that we do find the best and cheapest way instead of waiting to the last minute and ordering something from amazon and so i'm not at all questioning the procurement laws just are we doing the best thing we can do to get the best prices and if his amazon is it fine it's okay yeah so you know in all honesty um we don't typically research when they give us a po if it's under ten thousand we assume that they've done their best job in getting the best price um moving forward we can do more spot checking and more uh to see if we feel like that's what they're doing trying to utilize the simplest approach by just ordering it on amazon and waiting for it to be delivered versus checking with some of our typical vendors that might take a little more work a little more effort so moving forward we can uh do a little survey a little bit of work to find out if in fact we are trying to be uh due diligence and getting the best prices for anything we're buying and not strictly depend on amazon but you know in the past if i personally have not done any research i've asked anybody to do any research regarding what you're speaking of now thank you francis hi uh and i agree with you john it's it might be coming some to go through that process because it's not violating procurement law but my question is um are they getting approval prior to ordering um because if you gain a po for something and there's no prior approval then what happens then because the item is here now we're dealing with an issue of stuff that's being ordered without prior authorization so first of all whatever they order needs to be in the budget because if it's not in the budget then it may require a transfer so if it's in the budget then they put a po and it goes to their supervisor who checks to make sure well they're supposed to be checking to make sure that the item has actually been is in the budget and then if it's in the budget the supervisor signs off and and then moves it to the in the vocational uh situation they move it to this cte director who then moves it to the uh principal and then um moves it on to the uh excuse me business office for um final uh uh order final approval so each each step of the way we make sure it falls within the within their budget that the original budget they did and that's why when it doesn't they need to do a transfer and get that approved before they can order sometimes that may be the case so they're not just going on to amazon and ordering things without prior approval even if it's five cents you know if it's going to amazon it needs private approval yep they can't order on amazon without a po first anything further okay a report from the superintendent health insurance john so um i don't i think you got a report from uh ed i mean from uh yeah ed uh ed boyd uh what said last name from our uh insurance adjusters um and he broke he he had two proposals uh where he shows the claims for the uh since way back in november 19th up until december 21st and uh to show what our our premiums we paid and what the claims were and what the final adjustments were so following his recommendations he had two scenarios where we had in both cases where our claims were higher than our uh premiums uh on the first one he had our premiums were 5 million 177 if you look at the very bottom of the second page you'll see that our in which he's basing our need for increase that the annual premiums uh were 5 million one hundred and seventy seven thousand nine dollars and uh the claims uh came in at five million six hundred and eighteen are six hundred eighteen thousand three hundred and uh four um eighth projected annual claims oh so he's showing the claims premiums versus claims and a loss fixed costs at one million ninety eight thousand 964 so he's showing that we needed to increase our premiums and which we would have been 577 0009 to 5 million 618 342 which is a 8.5 2 increase is what he's projecting we will need based on our uh trends from the past uh two years almost um based on what the claims have been versus what our premiums are uh and the projected future costs so and then on the second one he's showing a lower increase of five hundred and five million five hundred four fifty four thousand four hundred seven uh the current current claims was five million one hundred sixty two thousand five hundred and fifty four so its projections are a little bit lower uh so that would require a seven point five nine percent increase so i would recommend that we increase our our premiums by eight percent next year based on his report there's a recommendation from the superintendent of motion so moved second discussion uh mr mr hayden seconded uh mrs fitzgerald moved it excuse me any discussion yes francis um because i know that last time we're here we're talking about ten percent increase now you're looking at eight percent is the eight and you before that you say eight point five percent to make sure that we're where we need to be if we need to increase it when do when would that have to happen uh that would happen uh in june so we approve now for the eight point eight percent and if we find that we're falling short we have until june two vote 2.
don't feel you have to be there for the whole time you know come out for an hour walk around see our early childhood programs and some of the activities that we have planned for the kids this is a group endeavor with ourselves um and five other agencies in danbury putting this on i'll make sure you all get invites as well thank you yeah kate i just wanted to add you know i i you know i know we've we focus sort of more on the mechanical issues when we um when we do these forums it's more often times about you know how the budget process works or something like that but you know would i wonder if there'd be interest in sort of you know aiming a little bit you know more academic you know the latest research on reading or cognitive development or something like that i wonder if there would be any traction in that and then from there you know you could kind of have you know back into some of these other questions well what's happening in the english classroom and you know all that kind of stuff so just the thought you know um again the the you know actual conduits for this i'd completely leave to end but you know i think i you know i know kevin would love something that's just you know um you know just you know less less about the mechanics of of schools and more about you know exciting stuff you know learning and you know you know the new new curriculum and problem-based learning and you know all the things are going to be happening at the academy with you know project-based learning things like that so just a thought okay thank you um as far as this this uh this goal is concerned and i mean i i think really from my perspective the best strategy right now is to you know look at this as a board goal because i think it's not just buy-in from this committee it's buy-in from all of our board members to you know participate and help uh help that initiative so um you know my hope would be to sort of you know in the strategic planning piece um you know where the board goals come into play to make this a a goal of the group um and to look at um you know starting something probably next school year because i think at this point we're we're pretty close to the end of the school year there's a lot of things going on um and i don't think we you know it makes sense for us to start to move forward with this and then lose that momentum over the summer as everybody kind of goes their own ways so i don't know if anybody has other thoughts on that but i certainly don't want to make that decision without without everybody else being on the same page i think it's a great idea to sort of uh you know those that are not going away uh just sort of uh over this summer come up with a sort of a more plan that we and when i say we the committee can submit to the board and then look at you know starting it from the beginning of the school year okay does that sound okay to you as well al you can take that as a yes you're a mute but i'll take those again sounds like a plan king excellent thanks al i do some research in my office too um and through our partnership districts um for like initiatives in other districts that boards might do and maybe get some you know lessons learned from them and what what are the most effective ways that they've seen things like this uh work well that's a great idea i love that yeah um luis i don't want to leave you out if you had any comments i am all for um getting out there in the community and and um and just building that bridge um that kind of makes us a little more accessible to people and i i think it's a great idea i remember at the high school i remember dan donovan used to do breakfast with the principal monthly and you know the parents could go and sit with him and it was you know informal but it was you know place to get to know the principal and make a very large school seem a lot smaller so you know i think i think it's a great idea and i'm all for waiting you know getting a really good format in place and kicking it off come the next school year i think it's a great idea okay great thank you so much all right so i think for now um you know again i'm i'm just gonna suggest that we um you know under the purview of the uh the strategic plan and the board goals as part of that strategic plan sort of um you know start that conversation in that space and just get some feedback hopefully from the rest of the board on that particular goal and then uh dr mita you know whatever you're able to to find or if you have leads and that you want me to find the follow them up um because you certainly have a full plate um but i would be happy to uh you know take a look a closer look at what other districts are doing as well great for guidance um all right so that's that's the the sum of what i wanted to talk about for uh a board meet and greet and then the other thing to do to that is on here is um the upcoming referendum um we're pretty limited as far as you know what we can do because public funds cannot be used um you know for any kind of advocacy work but i think it's important that um you know we sort of understand ourselves that uh as board members we're in a sort of unique position to be able to advocate for um this referendum um and that uh you know we we make we do our best to raise the level of awareness in the community about uh the date of that referendum and how people can vote um you know i think um one of the things that that we could consider doing is possibly putting together an op-ed um you know when we talk about why we support the uh the project overall um and what we think it can do for the district but i sort of wanted to get a sense as to whether or not there's any appetite to do that so i think this um everybody needs to understand we need sick kids if i have the number wrong let me know we need 6 000 people that pass this okay so no matter what happens if we don't have six thousand people to come out next month well in another week and a half or two weeks it's gonna fall and we don't want that to happen so it comes right back to the question since we can't do it and do too much what is it by law that we can do because i there's a group of people that are not they don't have the time to sort of deal with educational issues and everything else that's going around like you know some of us that are retired and and interested in the school system there's no way we can't send messages home to kids anymore in backpacks so i guess my question would be would it be against the law on the 14th at the dome to have something to say um please show your support on june is it june 7 june the 7th we need 6 000 danbury residents to come up and vote in order to pass this referendum okay uh and i understand people can do absentee ballots too right no i believe so i believe uh the legislature passed and authorized uh that that folks can use absentee ballots going forward so so something really brief because people are bogged down with everyday life and reading a whole lot of other stuff that comes into them just three items and and maybe put that out there is there a law against us having a table at the dome and handing out that kind of information i mean i think my understanding is that public funds cannot be used for advocacy so if we're talking about folks who are paid position um you know being in those spaces it would not be appropriate for them to to advocate i mean i think you can share basic information like there is a vote coming up on june 7th this is what the vote is about and this is where you can go to vote or get more information about voting um so we can we can in that kind of limited way talk about um you know what what about the referendum but in terms of saying you know we're looking for your support um that would not be that would not be okay to do so is the city paid for the dome okay i mean the city's renting the dome so therefore public funds are being used so i don't know um i don't know who's paying for the dome rental i don't know if that's being done through organizations or if that's being done by the city i i will check on that i believe it is a smaller agency here in danbury because the actual event is a plti graduate project okay so i'm not even sure that there is being a cost to the dome but i will check on that i'll email people tonight and get back to you but it's not coming out of any of the the budgets that i um that you're handling correct okay i mean i think the other question is if we were to get something if we were to print something up to hand to people like i mean we could have people standing you know like we could have board members talking with folks as they're going by like dr mead was suggesting and that might be an opportunity to have that conversation but in terms of putting something in people's hands we're a little bit limited as well because we can't use public funds to produce any information that has you know um a position one way or the other on the referendum but again my question is if if we came up with something with two splits the date the date the referendum the date okay and 6 000 people to support it no take the word out support okay to participate and could we uh will we be violating anything uh any type of law to give out that little strip at the dome on saturday i mean my sense is no that might be you know that might be a question to go back to to um kim thompson about and just look for some clarification um but my sense is that as long as it's not uh advocating for a vote one way or the other if it's just informational like you know they they printed i believe they printed in the paper an announcement about the referendum um so as long as we're sticking to that those very simple facts um i don't think there's any restriction on that okay and if someone wants to donate uh you know if someone have a printer and can do it you know within the group you know somebody wanted to donate a thousand sheets of paper so it won't be no is that can a person do that as long i i believe as long as they're not using publicly funded equipment or or materials um if it's private i believe that you can spend up to a thousand dollars you know as a private person before you have to file any paperwork with the state okay so black and white um staples charge is what 16 or 20 cents a copy now for an eight and a half by eleven so a thousand thousand sheets of paper uh but it's going to add up quick dr me do you know how many people are expected at this event on saturday we don't the weather looks really good so that sometimes lessens the amount of people that come because they're involved in sports so we don't know the first year we had 400 the second year we had close to a thousand oh wow okay yeah okay what about the ptos the city-wide pto um you know i i'm envisioning i'm visiting kids standing out there with signs on the street corners down by the on a maintenance south at the entrance to rogers park and we do have a lot of young parents that i mean if we can raise their awareness we'll come out and do that but how do we do that um that's the million dollars we missed the may may pto meeting uh citywide meeting was that what last monday night um yes i believe that was last week okay and and there was a mention about the the referendum and i think there was some conversation about the referendum and you know again folks are trying to be respectful of that line so you know i don't i don't want to you know i don't want any of us to wind up in a position where where that we're we're crossing that line kay i'm envisioning you on uh i-95 fm at 7 30 in the morning given given the word of getting the word out there for us look at that smile i i mean you know channel three you you belong on tv with that smile i appreciate that but i i feel like uh my time in the press is uh best spent out of the press um i don't think charisma i do think i do think i'm bringing it up in this space though because you know it's my hope that you know as board members that you know a lot of the work that we're we're tasked with is advocating for education in our community and we're in a unique position in that our positions are not paid um we do this as a volunteer service so we don't have the same level of restriction that administrators do or that city officials do um you know if they're taking a salary so um you know i guess my thinking is too that you know what are there any ideas about how we can get board members to to do more public facing work okay a little late in the late in the game i mean we do have we have a month left and i just don't want to i i'm not i'm looking to not squander that time that's that's really what it comes down to um i-95 i mean don't they have the city politicians on there all the time can't we poke one or two of them to go up there and advocate for education that's an interesting thought i mean i think you know part of this too is um you know to gladys's point earlier we have to bring out 15 percent of the population to participate in the vote um you know and that's that's an interesting that's a that's a difficult ask for a june referendum when folks are not accustomed to going out to vote so that i think is is you know it's an awareness thing um you know to make sure that folks are even aware that there is going to be a vote and i i'm sorry and that's the most frightening part because as long as i've been in this city i've never known a referendum to be in june unless it happened when i was in the hospital so you know people are trying to find out what's going on in june all right i'm not sure we're gonna come up with any better answers here um on this but i just wanted to sort of put that in you know that thinking out there um and certainly to anybody who might be watching this meeting to raise their awareness that you know we are looking to to make sure folks understand that we do need 15 of the community to show up for the vote on the 7th in order for it to be certified as a a referendum a formal referendum um and that you know we're we're trying to um you know make sure that folks understand what it is that they're voting on um you know it's go ahead small i'm sorry i just stuff swirls around in my brain kate i just can't help myself what about the voter list um do we have phone numbers attached to that and maybe we have 11 members on the board of education and give each member 100 names each or to make 100 calls uh there's 26 letters in the alphabet and an 11 vote runner so we can't bump into each other uh at least we would get get some phone calls made and i i don't think a hundred phone calls in a little less than a month is outrageous to to accomplish even if you leave voice mails so uh just just a thought i'm ready to make calls with you are al um but i think that the bigger question is how would we access those voter lists because that's got to be done through the city and i don't know what restrictions there might be for something like that especially because they're sharing it with not you know elected officials i would check with your chair of your town committee i'm stay or your vote registrar voters um i suspect that they are accessible um i i suspect that several several oh okay i mean some of the experienced councilmembers that that's how they they they promote they vote they get on the phone and make phone calls they had to get the list from somewhere yeah um and there are phone numbers attached i believe to these lists just one small avenue of how how do we contact people and raise their awareness i'm not going to make 1400 phone calls kate but i'll make 100.
that's k that that was measure k oh you want to talk about your i not k measure i it was oh measure the first one was passed in 2001. okay and so my my understanding was that that the strategy was we would do one school modernize that school move on to the next school modernize that school and so it's kind of in terms of strategy was more based on school um and so like many things unexpected things um material uh labor uh those kind of changes in in pricing um then by the time we were um running kind of fulfilling that that bond and expending that bond then we found ourselves with some school sites that fell short when measure k was passed because of the lessons learned or we a different approach was taken and that approach was projects so fencing well everyone's going to get fencing now we're going to move on to underground or rooftops everyone's going to get roots and so instead of thinking about by sight we were going to do by projects except the commitment to those school sites that had not had modernization and so it was kind of a shift a little bit in in the strategy so that we didn't find ourselves in a situation because again we know about the copper recently we know about the lumber uh we know about staffing and so those are you know unexpected and unpredictable things and so that this would add a level of safety and equity uh amongst the amongst the sites okay um and so for underground utilities um as superintendent ortega stated um all sites that were left be runnerized between dalton lee and paramount all sites received underground utilities with the exceptions of lee and so to complete that project it'll be approximately four million dollars and it will take a year to complete um once we get the go ahead yes sir but could we actually now as we're starting to talk about these figures could we share this on yes sir help do that okay and i will pause and fill this up and while he's doing that i was wrong it was 2002 that we passed measure i not 2001.
countries are ignoring their paris commitments top 26 in glasgow like previous cops was a failure greater tindberg aptly called it quote a global north greenwash festival a two-week celebration of business as usual and blah blah blah end quote joe biden just opened up another 144 000 acres of public land for drilling his infrastructure bill does relatively little for transit and will have a huge emissions cost vehicle traffic is once again at record levels with bigger vehicles methane levels at record highs industrial emissions up commercial aviation meat consumption fertilizer concrete the list goes on why have we failed so miserably because dominant economic and political interests are invested in the status quo and work hard against change i'm not talking about the fossil fuel industry i'm talking about our economic system as a whole and it's growth imperative income inequality especially has been disastrous for the climate according to oxfam the richest 10 are responsible for half the world's consumption based emissions i see no will to implement most of the social and demand science solutions identified by working group 3.
in rotc i was known as a quiet one that didn't talk a lot me being known as a quiet one that wasn't confident in himself pio reid saw a future leader he pushed me out of my limits by making me join the new cadet drill team making me charge of color guard sending me to basic leadership training making me the orienteering commander and now as you all know me by the cmc command master chief during these four years he has made me more confident and a leader i don't know what p.o saw in me my freshman year but i thank him for making me into who i am today so leaving this speech off i want to i left this speech off to the cadets i wanted to let them know what pio has shaped me into and what he's for me to be a better leader i leave this speech to say cadets to join us uh activity in rotc do community service do orienteering color guard drill team we have so many teams that you can join just keep making this program grow and be what it is today i want to take the time out and thank our booster parents our district people our principal miss trish our staffs at the school and our cadets for always being there and supporting our program i want to thank p.o smith our new instructor for just being there helping us out i want to thank p.o re for shaping me and being who i am today and helping me grow into who i am today and then to our plank owners our seniors i thank them for just working hard bringing up the courage the dedication to this program and being the best that they can to make this program great so i left this speech to give out a torch to the cadets but this speech is going to give the torch out to you district people i want to get this torch is supposed to represent the family that we have with njrotc this torch is supposed to represent the dedication the courage the commitment that y'all put into this program and i thank you guys for everything that y'all did for us i'd like to call up our executive officer christina jones sorry about that everyone prime example good evening everyone i'm cadet xojones i would first like to give honor to the district board members and also my principal the lovely miss marjorie trish can give them applause please thank you for allowing me to stand on this platform and share with you all some encouraging words i won't be before you long high school has been a very interesting ride i've been in the njrotc program going on four years now considering the fact that we've all been in quarantine for almost two years it is clear that everyone has changed in a good way so applause for that um when i first joined the program i wasn't looking for anything specific to take away from it if i'm being honest like jasmine said i thought that it was a science course because it had naval science i'm like ships yay um but i i was sadly mistaken i was very reserved and a bit timid when i first joined the program but i got used to the way that rotc worked petty officer would always try and look for people with potential to put in lead positions and i was actually handed the position to take on the first new cadet drill team i was super excited for the opportunity and of course i was going to pursue it our first few practices seemed to be the most difficult task that i have ever been expected to do i started to question my own abilities as far as ypo would choose me to command i would complain to him and say things about how i couldn't handle leading other cadets and they won't listen to me and i can't control them and he would always say jones figure it out every single time that i heard those three words it just agitated me but let me tell you that those three words have helped me in a lot of different situations to get through i figured it out and the model that i try to live by is if there's a will there's a way um thank you petty officer for teaching me that there's so much that i can say about petty officer reed but if i were to describe him i would call him a perfectionist he has taught me how to pay attention to the little things like having our feet standing at a tension at 45 degree angle keeping your thumbs at the seams of your trousers standing at attention um making sure that it is six to the front three to the rear i'm always remember that we're marching this is how we do it here he's taught me how to correct and address in a professional way love that um he's taught me the essence of life now i know that that previous statement seemed like oh that's a lot it's really surprising but it's very true through observations for these past four years i've seen petty's petty officers consistency motivation and determination every day of course he's been through our struggles you know we're all human but to just see him come in like i said with the consistency and the dedication that he's had has been an inspiration for me of course i've had my own issues um which i've tried to keep private and i just wanted to say thank you petty officer for being that mode of that that example from me and honestly through quarantine through high school just thank you and i wanted to say to my fellow plank owners congratulations on all of your accomplishments um we're almost about to graduate um and just i applied you all on the past four years of all the hard work like everybody you know can't make it to community service but everyone here has done community service has done a lot of different things so i just want to applaud you guys today for that [Applause] and um i love you guys and again thank you to the district thank you to the superintendent um ms kira kalanis thank you for coming to the awards ceremony i love your presence there um and that's all from me so i just wanted to say farewell exo plank owner jones thank you sorry guys i wanted to call up my favorite person in the program our ceo miss rachel perry good evening everyone um so this is our farewell speech as you all know it's very touchy but we're gonna keep it together tonight um so i would like to start this off by saying i thought it was my last time but this is now my last time staying saying good afternoon everyone i'm the commanding officer rachel perry and i would like to say farewell to everyone farewell to the district who has been by our side supporting us through every step of the way hard times good times thank you to ms trish who made sure this program got up and running at all costs she called other schools had other people come out to help us and now we're able to do the same for other schools because of her i would also like to say thank you to the cadets and farewell to the cadets who make me smile every day they put a smile on our face you know they're the ones that really keep you moving it's like our own little kids you know in a way but you know we're gonna wait for that um also i would like to say farewell to my amazing exo jones who made sure she took of everything took care of everything that i needed her to do my noble cmc who oversaw my cadets and made sure things were in order and farewell to petty officer who petty officer smith who always had a door open for us to talk to last but certainly not least farewell to petty officer reid the father figure that we all see and all recognize the one who has been there good or bad up and down the one who has played a part in molding all of us into the cadets that we are today and the young adults that we're about to step out and be now um you set a very good foundation for these cadets and as we were talking about in class we had an open discussion we're the ones who laid the foundation well he's the one who laid the foundation we put the bricks and now it's time for the other cadets to set up the wood do the interior put the roof on the house all of that you have helped me stand up for myself to speak out and sharpen my leadership skills you have been the one to tell me when i was right or wrong even when i didn't want to hear it you have certainly made all of us cry but it was all something that we took and learned from it it's very something that we really needed even though it kind of hurt um also as you always tell us we would like to thank you on a job well done for making this program the best thing that it could have been as plank owners of this program i think i speak for all of this this was directed to the cadets and not only to the cadets to the ones who are watching the parents or the students who are watching encourage your students to join this program it's a life-changing program but down these four years with p.o guiding us to the cadets we were i ask that you keep these memories and the ones that you gained and cherish them forever we love each and every one of you as you as if you are our family and we want you guys to build that family and don't let it fall apart all the things that petty officer teaches us take them with you in life because they are resourceful devote your time to this program because blessings will come in return and when i was explaining this to them i always thought that a blessing was supposed to be something that you can physically get but it's something that you a mindset that i got in return and it's a mindset that i'm gonna carry on um and then also these cadets are a very special group of cadets so i asked that two board members don't give up on these cadets and push them to be their best every day and i said miss trish oversees them and petty officer oversees them and gives them the discipline that they need to make sure that every step of the way that they're by their sides and also we'll be there you know coming back to check in on them and stuff but um we are passing our legacy down to these cadets and we're asking that they carry it strong and hold it up high because we are holding them to the highest standards and we expect that you guys do the same for the cadets um last but not least i asked the cadets to take constructive criticism and to build a family i know you guys aren't the cadets but um i feel like everybody should be able to take constructive criticism and better themselves don't be in your feelings don't get annoyed and just be the best that you can be p.o always said perry talk to your cadets perry heat up my food perry but petty officer oh petty officer always said perry go get my ice my knees hurt which probably was my favorite thing um but now it's turned around petty officer i need you to give me some ice but last but certainly not least i personally want to see this program thrive so we all want to see this program thrive and prosper they are a family to us and we want to keep this family strong and as we all said farrell creedmoney high school's njrotc cadet perry signing out um i would like to introduce to you the lady who set everything in standards and you know made everything work our own principal miss marjorie trish thank you it definitely has been a whirlwind experience it's been four years of absolutely pure joy myself i did not have experience with an rotc nor an ndcc program i am overjoyed that we were able to set history within one year of becoming a njrotc under the leadership of p.o read i appreciate and acknowledge the vision of the board of education with the support of dr cara coghlanis it wouldn't be couldn't be done without you and our booster parents our booster parents can you stand please there's only two here tonight but there's been many that have that have been instrumental and supporting the students on field trips and at parades and whatever we need to do they are there first making sure that the hats are on right and the pins are in the right positions and the sashes are on and harris tucked and pinned and shoes of shine all of those things and we appreciate all the things that you've done for this program um last but not least to the students i remember each and every one of these students when they came into the school and when they say they were shy they absolutely were shy they were not the students that you see here today these are the students that will call me that will email me that will send me presentations about things that they would like to do or things that they have done they don't have a problem coming to the office and say hey look mistress we have an idea for you when they talk about commitment consistency honor lord loyalty and truth they mean it and we are so excited at creep money high school to have them a part of our program so let's give them a round of [Applause] um applause i'd like to say how honored i am to be a plank owner there's only nine students and four board members five board members i'm the principal and dr coglinis no one else will ever be a plank owner but us because we were the ones who were here from the beginning and we are concluding with their four years so what an honor to be called a plank owner for the njrtc for crete money high school all right [Applause] last but not least i'd like to bring up dr caracoglinis for a couple of words it is my privilege to be here tonight to get a chance to see how much you have grown in the last four years we have come to many if not all of their ceremonies and we have watched an amazement to every step was done in correct uh every and i don't what you would call those dances you would do those are my favorite those are my favorite you were right on step every single time and on behalf of the school board and myself in the district you couldn't make us more proud you really couldn't you know every board meeting ms roop gets the honor of reading our mission statement and it's empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future and i can honestly say by watching and listening to your speeches tonight and how articulate you are we are graduating a class that will definitely go out and make a difference because you were here so we thank you for that and just in a few short weeks we are going to get a chance to be part of your graduation and that will certainly be bittersweet for us to congratulate you and say goodbye at the same time however you will be crea money alone you will be cremini alum and you are always welcome back here anytime so thank you for being part of our story thank everyone for those outstanding speeches we will now have our final departure our bell ringing um ceremony um this would be our final plank on our departure uh we asked the board members once you hear your name just follow suit with the cadets whatever they do that's what you do just follow suit and you can come right back we will now have our final plank owners uh departure each person will be given two bells for the departure a stinger after the name is called indicates that the person will be returning so that's you guys are returning we don't want them to come back michaela freeman departing madison hall the party gregory hardeman the party charlie's hicks the party jasmine sproules the party manuel grier departing christina jones the party rachel perry the party marjorie trish the party nelson albrecht departing maurice brown the party janine galbraith departing cheryl root the party care colonies departing ladies and gentlemen this will end our conclusion of our ceremony thank you very much wow uh thank you yes it is hello um yes take me a year okay so next up under superintendent updates i'll turn it over to dr cara thank you it's hard to believe but this year is almost coming to an end at the beginning of the year you know we wanted to take a look at our communications in the district in particular to marketing in anticipating a teacher shortage as well as many other things there are so many great things that occur in this district and you just saw one of them there are so many others that we haven't been able to share with the board that go on all the time in our elementary buildings our middle school our high school and we want to do more to showcase what is going on in our district with our family to our families and so we wanted to take some time to really do a thorough overview of our current communication systems but more importantly to figure out how we're going to go into looking at marketing next talking about creating brochures about what's going on in our high school the various programs that we have such as the jrotc but many others that we are in the midst of building and that will be coming next because we want to attract families to our district we want to attract teachers to our district and we want to retain the high quality staff that we have so this was a project that we began early in in the fall and it's really come to closure at this point and we had contacted the donovan group and as you recall they had helped us with our referendum at that time to help us go out and get the information through a survey focus groups and we asked them to help put together a report to share back with with us so that we can help guide our work going into next year so i'm going to turn this over to mr joe donovan and he's going to be sharing the presentation he is virtual but he will be sharing i believe the presentation from his slideshow correct okay mr donovan nice to see you tonight oh this is a test sorry about that there we go thank you you made me nervous thank you doctor thank you uh board members and um thank you also for the opportunity to witness what we all saw earlier this evening i that was i will tell you i've spent a lot of time in board meetings over the last 15 years and i don't think that i've ever seen anything so moving so thank you for that and i i would i would just uh also say um that that truly is a testament to great things that are happening in uh in your schools um as your superintendent mentioned i'm here to provide some information about some marketing and communications engagement work that we are very grateful have to have been working with the school district over again uh much of the last school year i'm going to cover what we the results of our work very very quickly know that you have a busy board meeting um tonight i'll leave some time to answer some questions and so um as as your superintendent mentioned um the donovan group has been working with your school district on the first few phases of a marketing initiative and part of that is to do really a couple of things really starting with collecting data very grateful that dr kaglin needs to really um stress this as do we which is you start with collecting data and use thing data to improve efforts toward that end we conducted a marketing inventory a readiness off audit through both a staff and community survey a series of district focus groups and some other items that i'll discuss as well board members the staff and community survey that i'm going to discuss in a moment was opened february 7th through the 18th 2002 it was offered in both english and spanish and in addition to that i conducted some face-to-face focus groups in the district on march 16th of this year i'll cover this very quickly but as you can see what i'm going to cover are is is part of really a large project that started with data collection of stakeholder groups a swot analysis a review of a medium inventory that is the different ways in which stakeholders are engaged in your community a marketing readiness effort followed with um a phase four which was identify stakeholder groups for a marketing plan looking at marketing gaps and then um creating some goals and so again i'm going to cover this at a very high level um with that in mind again the survey that was conducted from february 7th to the 18th of this year was anonymous a total of 216 participants including two in spanish completed the survey the survey was administered using our uh district's survey engine efforts were made to ensure that all respondents had the opportunity to take the survey but that no respondents had took it multiple times this is the same survey engine and really the same methodology that we've used in your district before in advance of your referendum board members as i present the data and i'm going to go through this very quickly just i want to be very respectful of your time this evening i want to cover the results of this survey next to each of the items you're going to see in blue there's going to be a series of numbers please understand that that first group are all respondents so everyone who took the survey completed it is included in that first group included in that blue number a comparison group which is comprised of district residents who are not currently parents of preschool or school age children employees or students are in the gray box we use this methodology because we think that it's important to get kind of an inside outside look of the school district often we find that that people who have a familiarity with the district differ significantly from those who don't that's why we use that comparison group so let's we'll go through this fairly quickly here i am satisfied with the school district i'm going to see strongly agree for all respondents 7.87 strong agree 26.9 um disagree 44 strongly disagree about you're going to see board members that this was fairly similar with both groups both the all respondent group and the comparison group next i know what's going on in the school district again strongly agree uh and agree we're going to see that it's about 40 percent for our all respondent group it's about the same for our um our comparison group um and you're and you're going to see i'm sorry nearly nearly 50 percent um and so pretty evenly split between those who strongly agree and agree and those who disagree and strongly disagree in terms of i know what's going on in the district as we would expect it's quite typical that we have people who are again don't have children in the district would say yep i i guess i don't know what's going on in the district so seeing seeing that we might have more people in the comparison group saying that they disagree or strongly disagree is fairly typical next the district informs the community about the schools well you're going to see that it's about 32 percent for strongly agree and agree for our all respondent group and the balance would be those who disagree or strongly disagree we asked a question again as i mentioned we looked at the medium that is the ways in which people learn about the district where you get information about the district you're going to see and this is typical that for our all respondents and our comparison groups it's friends and neighbors and we see that that's fairly typical in most school districts you're going to see that it's heavily influenced especially by those who are closest with facebook we're also going to see that district mailings are very high up there especially for people who are not uh meaning you know don't have children in the district and again you're going to see the things like the district website are high for both groups other things like local television you know twitter even parent organizations are are lower in some cases those might be expected i always point out community newspapers um especially for people who aren't as strongly connected again higher 10 points higher at 34 than our all respondent group what types of information would you like to receive from the district again pretty typical updates on the district's strategic plan people want to know what's happening in the district board of education agenda in minutes very high updates related to the district's efforts to meet the needs of all students urgent updates um other items not as high alumni news such as class updates or reunions um so again part of this is that we did a review and we created the district's uh strengths and again this was an open-ended question nearly 130 responses were provided in the survey it should be noted that many use this open ended question to to vent or criticize rather than offer strengths that is fairly typical other respondents use this open-ended question to leave a wide variety of responses we found that they tended to fall in these categories people said there's a caring committed and supportive teachers and staff diverse population although some people indicated that maybe stuffed stuff demographics are not the same strong community and parent involvement and athletic programs new high schools some facilities and then credit scots king school were mentioned as strengths in terms of weaknesses this was pretty universal school buildings are aging and needing repair you're going to see that that's going to be a trend concerns expressed about the quality of education about the middle and high schools overall lack of engagement between the schools and community and there was a lot of uh criticism about the district i will say that at the time that we conducted this survey it was a time that we we noted a lot of turbulence um in in districts and so i'm not terribly uncommon that there was um criticism but in this case significant amount of criticism about the district in terms of opportunities uh the o of our swot analysis um some respondents indicated that they desire more communication people wanted that families seem more engaged and positive about that about their experience we did see some families that were thrilled with what's happening looking for increased engagement with families and the larger community about the work of the district i've just mentioned before that people are interested and hungry for information about like the strategic plan wider engagement with the district's website social media platforms again there's a hunger for information and again just as i mentioned updates to the community about the district's strategic plan they want to know where the district is headed threats perception about the fighting at both the middle and high school another threat was the amount of community support for the school including financial support that was largely linked to the building referendum political divisiveness the pandemic was starting to create a divided community again keep in mind that this was done in february and march we saw that and a significant amount of the participants again about 30 indicated that they don't trust any information provided by the district indicating that it was biased slanted and incorrect so again 30 out of 200 um you know so so significant um something that we should pay attention to um and which is why we're mentioning it here in terms of the focus groups i'll cover this very quickly um top themes frequency of of communication safety people said that there was a transient population um students you know students were kind of in and out that it was difficult in some cases as a result of that on the other hand caring staff trust people talked a lot about the facilities some perceived inequalities in equity some staff mental health came up a real high point was the international baccalaureate program that came up many times during the focus groups i'll i'll i kind of hit this at a high level and i want to keep things moving but we did include some focus group themes they largely kind of spoke to some of the the items that i mentioned before in terms of the transient population again this idea that you know students come and go it's difficult to make friends because students are coming uh and going in some cases people say um you know we really want more uh community you know more communication and some perceived issues with uh safety as we've mentioned um one of the things that i wanted to mention very high point um was um both coretta scott king as a school in the international baccalaureate pro program very well received um the pandemic came up a lot just as we would imagine again um it it wasn't that long ago but in some ways it was a long time ago as it relates to the pandemic people wanted some increased transparency related to covet mitigation so now i'm going to cover just a couple of marketing goals be happy to take your questions after this number one our suggestion develop a communications and engagement plan that focuses on building trust and transparency by highlighting the positive work and progress of the district more frequently number two construct and implement a communications and public relations campaign to retain and attract both families and educators really saw an opportunity again to talk about the good things that are happening in your district we certainly saw that earlier this evening creighton launch a district-wide community task force on school safety to identify recommend and report progress to the board of education in overall school community number four conduct a strategic planning process with the community our suggestion is sooner than 2023 to develop actionable goals focused on student academic performance and opportunities educator capacity community engagement partnerships and facilities and operations again your community is hungry for this information and they're you know our strong sense is that they will strongly engage with this effort so again i wanted to keep this very very uh short and a quick overview for you and so with that in mind i'm very happy to take any questions that you may have i'll mention that i can't see you i was able to watch earlier on on youtube and i'm having a little trouble hearing maybe uh so if i if i miss it i may have to ask you to repeat the question but with that board i just want to tell you thank you very much for the opportunity uh to be with you this evening on behalf of my colleagues and i thank you for the opportunity to work with you on this and again thank you at a personal level just for the opportunity to witness a beautiful ceremony earlier this evening with that i'm happy to take any questions hey joe this is nelson albright can you hear me i can't yes sir okay of the 216 respondents how many were in the gray column that did that didn't have they didn't have a family member connected with the district do you recall i don't recall off hand that's something that i can give back to you on we have a full report on all of the items and so um it would have been deemed um enough to report on okay uh but i don't i'm not able to tell you sir i'm sorry i shouldn't know that and i don't hi this is janine galbraith i have two questions on the survey were you allowed to take it more than one time or was it one time per login so you can the the survey allows for people you could go in and you can take it more than once however the way that we uh gather the information we are able to know if someone has taken it more than once there are a couple of reasons a couple of ways that we can track that um and the reason we do that and that we leave it open is because we've learned over many years of doing this that in some cases household members um you know pass a computer around and so we want for people to be able to take the survey that way if if it's a situation where it's deemed fraud if there's an electronic you know stuffing of the ballot box uh we can we can sort that out and we can remove the response okay thank you for that and my second question is how were the focus groups formed how did somebody become a part of a focus group yeah we put together i can i can uh maybe uh start to answer that and then i can uh yield to dr caglilanis who helped put this together what we do is we put together a profile of the panel of individuals that we that we wish to communicate with that we wish to engage really what we're looking for is we're looking for a broad swath of individuals to participate um so the survey participants that we we spoke with included some parents students some people who were very very engaged in the community in the school district maybe a little uh who were less so and we put together a series of asks and then we asked the school district specifically dr cogley niece and staff to help you know get people to participate and so um uh dr kaglini i don't know if you'd like to speak about the specifics of that beyond what i've noted yes i can miss galbraith we utilize the um the list the database that we use for the strategic planning group for the first round because it was well spread out it had all the stakeholder groups so ms tobin sent out a letter to all the stakeholders and asked them which which individual would like to participate in that group so they were members that already were on the strategic correct okay i guess that i don't understand we went that way because we have so many new people in our communities and so many more people coming forward i i almost think that some of those numbers might be slanted because those were people who have already participated with us and kind of do know what's going on because they are following us i wish we would have thought more random maybe that's my personal opinion because i'm not certain by going back to the same group we've used for other stuff that we're really getting what we're looking for all the time that's why i was asking because that strategic planning group there were many people who said they didn't even know about it so the people who ended up on there were people that i think we reached out to even then at times some of us were talking to him and i've never known anybody other than elected officials or somebody in the know that gets on these focus groups and i'd like to see neighbors and people who do have kids who don't have kids and i'm i'm not sure i'm not saying that these are slanted figures i'm just saying that i would have liked to have seen us reaching out to people who had never participated and find out what they're really thinking about our district because many of them might have been giving us more insight into some of the issues i guess that's what i'm getting at because just and i don't want to pick any one thing on here but you can tell by some of these responses that these are people who are well informed about our district and stay well informed about our district and so i think that we we didn't really see a lot of the people who don't know much about our district in those numbers that's that's the way i was taking them when i was watching it and certainly you know i can appreciate that and again this was a sampling however once we go down this journey we will be doing more focus groups once we start doing some of the suggestions there and to double check and to dip stick how we're doing so that would be something that we would do differently next time and i did have people who said to me i never get asked to do this i do a survey and nobody ever asks me to be in on these and i think you do have more people in the general public who would like to be involved yeah and that would be excellent because we would like to tap into them thank you yes thank you for the answers yeah those guys that's 216 people took the survey right 4 400 plus students so is that 216 individuals or 216 families those would be individuals yeah that would be respondents okay i will i will also if i could i i will i will uh say i think um the district did a very good job you know we have a process for informing and getting the word out about the survey there was again we call it turbulence there was a lot of turbulence as we know in uh the spring that was that was a lower than expected number and in some ways i think that there's something that we can they can uh we can be learned about the lack you know lack of engagement that comes from trying to engage an entire district community and getting a really small uh response rate but it certainly was not the result of lack of effort on behalf of the district that's for sure any other questions yeah i have a question uh joe this is maurice for remember brown so what was your expectations we said we had a low sample of the populations for this survey was there a number that you consider a reasonable percentage of the population to obtain data that's informative with this survey yeah thank you for the thank you for the question and and i appreciate it they're they're this is a question that we address a lot uh we do a lot of these surveys i wouldn't say that it's a particular percentage of the overall universe of people in in the community what we're looking for is we're looking for distribution across the community but we're also looking at in terms of the responses that we're getting if they are aligned i think that there was a fair a lot of them there was a fair amount of alignment in in the survey and so even though we didn't have a lot of responses in terms of numbers i would say that there was a great amount of consistency i would also say that i both did much of the analysis of the survey and i also conducted in person um the uh the the the focus groups i felt like i was hearing the same types of responses in the focus groups that we had in the uh in the in the surveys so i don't know that i think that the question that we always ask with a survey we never know for sure is would more survey respondents change the the outcome of the survey i don't have any reason to believe that it would but again i think from a district perspective and a board perspective it does suggest that there's work to do because that overall response rate was as low as it was despite the efforts of the district to get people to take the survey i think that it's a valid and i think that it's a helpful uh survey respondent pool it's not a scientific sample so we can't run regression on it however sometimes i say it's just like we had an opportunity to sit down individually and have a cup of coffee with 216 people in the community about their school district that's how i would look at the data and i think that it's very valuable data with that in mind okay thank you thank you thank you joe one other question i believe i saw on the information that you gave us about you are recommending that these we have a strategic plan in place i believe by end of 2022 i believe he said i thought for the marketing yeah for the marketing plan the strategic plan for marketing in place by the end of 2022 they're about if so our district strategic plan i believe that ends in 2023 so given our strategic community or district plan ends in 2023 you're recommending that we have a strategic plan for this marketing in place it's basically it as soon as possible how do you well what do you recommend how you can both join those two together in some way um yeah thank you thank you for the question i think um i i'm gonna take a step back and i'm gonna i'm gonna answer the question a little differently and maybe provide some clarification what what i think that we saw in both the the survey and what what i think came out in the focus groups is that community members are hungry for more information about the district's strategic plan um so so i i think i think that strategic planning process the large strategic plan um gives the district a tremendous opportunity to engage community members about the direction of the district and and it was very clear that people are interested uh in that as it relates to kind of the next stage of this process i think that i'll yield to your superintendent on that because again i think how this is staged with your strategic plan will be will be very important and i don't know that at this point i can speak to that specifically thank you so thank you toronto as i understood it just so we're clear he wasn't suggesting a separate strategic plan for marketing it was instead of waiting to 2023 his recommendation was we start the scripture planning process now okay it wasn't a separate that's what i looked at i thought it was a separate strategic plan for the marketing that he was looking to put it on a fast track by the end of this year but this is going to be incorporated with our overall next strategic plan right okay thanks for the clarity thanks any other questions dr karen do you want to wrap this this up or uh um i just want to uh again thank the donovan group for assisting us with this process it was a large process and a lot of information to kind of pull together what this does is it gives us information and we've already started to make some changes already based on as the information was coming in we already started tweaking things right away to try to start getting information out this has been very helpful for us this now creates the plans the goals you know that we're going to start working on for next year to start getting on top of this a little bit earlier and again the the various vehicles of who gets what what whether you're a community member that prefers something that's in the mail which we heard is something that we're going to already do for this coming summer we are going to have something in the mail in the post to kind of summarize the year to start that process as it is and we will continue with that and i will be providing with you a plan in the fall okay well joe thank you very much and uh sorry for the delay but you got to see a great program so yeah thank you it was it was wonderful i am again so grateful for the opportunity to work with you and again so grateful to be a part of your meeting and to experience what i saw earlier this evening so thank you i hope everyone has a great evening thank you joe good job joe okay mr cerma are you still there i am here good evening ford how are you doing good um i apologize for not being able to be with you this evening however a positive covet test has prevented that so i apologize for that but glad to join you at least over the phone i'm going to run through the items that are going to be on the agenda at the regular board meeting next week i'll of course stop between each one in case there are questions or or comments the first one is discussion to establish a date for the 2021 amended budget public hearing which would be june 14th of 2022 which is the committee of the whole meeting in june we do have to amend the budget the reason for that amendment is primarily because of the sale of bonds that were not included in the original budget so we will have an amendment for the budget the hearing would take place on the 14th with approval of that amended budget then on the 21st of june so that is just kind of a preliminary thing we will go ahead and do the normal publications and all of that stuff for and posting of the amended budget once i once i get that completed and and ken just to clarify for kind of the public uh amending the budget it's kind of a perfunctory process at the end of the year you mentioned because of the sale of the bonds we're not selling new bonds this is to kind of record and update the plan for the sale of bonds we already completed yes uh you know one of the discussions we've always had in in previous years is that you know i am not a fan of amending budgets however we are required by the illinois school code to amend the budget in certain cases one of those cases is when we have sold bonds during the year and it has brought in additional revenue we have to go ahead and amend the budget so we did this last year because of the sale of bonds and we're going to be doing it again this year okay thank you are correct yep number two is a discussion of proposals from rhoda of linwood illinois in the amount of two hundred and eleven thousand dollars approximately two hundred eleven thousand three hundred ninety dollars and fifty eight cents for the purpose of installing new school signs at del maro crete monie and talala elementary schools along with coretta scott king magnet school and the early learning center so i think i have in my board report attached the various costs at each of the buildings so i investigated and looked at getting electronic signs at all of our schools that are very similar to the signs that we have which is about the same with the signs that we have now at the high school and at the elementary school so this would get rid of the current signs it would put in electronic signs they're monochrome which means one color just like they are at the high school and the middle school they are also wireless so the messages can be changed from inside the school via council the same way we do that at the high school and the middle school so everything would be uh standard and consistent with all of the buildings then can i or i wanted to add something real quick before you went on to the next room again adding these signs was another thing that came up earlier this year as you know is you know people having to go out in those old signs and then doing them by hand and we couldn't keep them as updated as we would have liked to and i think this goes into exactly what we said here with this marketing plan and communication we can use these signs to better inform we can put more information on there and we can have them really out in the community as people are driving by we can start putting things on these signs so this is actually another one of our marketing plans so so what if you don't mind me asking what part of the budget or line item are these coming out of ken yeah ken sure so yeah so we were surprised that uh and please that we receive a little over 400 000 in evidence-based funding um additional evidence-based funding if you recall there was a news report where there was a miscalculation i put this in the fyi also to the board that there was a miscalculation that was done by the consulting group three years ago and so it resulted in the district in the city of chicago being overpaid about 80 million dollars and the other districts in the state of illinois being under funded the result of that was the district received an additional i believe it is i don't know exact amount but i believe it is around 440 thousand dollars this year so we are getting that money right now uh from now until the end of june uh as additional money in our payments from the state so this money would come out of that additional money that we received i would not take it out of fund balances or anything like that um i i think the signs look they look nice but the one thing i'll remind us is you were saying that it about updating them what doesn't get monitored won't get done so we drive by the high school and for a long time we see the same stuff that's still outdated regardless of if somebody has to go out there and put it up or put it do it from a computer and then how many times have you driven by a sign saw a couple words and wondered man i wonder what that said what the rest of that was which is totally different than if it was already out there put and you can read it really quick versus driving by saying come see what that was unless you slow down or you need to just stop and hold up traffic and so i'm not against it but i'm just reminding you that while they look pretty they're not as informative always and while they look pretty the upkeep of them or keeping the information current depends on the monitoring of that it would be nice to have a message that stays up there or right instead of the words that rotate maybe something that stays and then i know i realize that it switches but it's for example billboards on expressway you're going to miss some things because you're driving which you would either way but at least it stays up long enough where you can say oh that's i want some pizza tonight or whatever you know i'ma call dominoes because they have a special i don't know so we're going to ask you to do a pilot with us and ask us uh how long we should have something up there so that would be something for us to look at but again this is about the marketing we've only used the boards before as you know uh early dismissal those kinds of things but i i think if we're using them for more of the marketing pieces we'll have a different bent on that well we got to be able to read it we can say hey uh dr coghlanis and then what what did doctor what do i drive back around the corner to see what doctor cognition did and then by the time i get back he's back on something different that's that's my point that's one of my points yeah and i'm assuming the marketing piece is the philosophy behind having at the maintenance facility because i don't i don't really see a lot of value of having one at the maintenance facility but is that i don't know who drives by over there but uh right well am i reading it wrong where that's one that we'd have everybody gets something okay so so ken real quick on the 440.
that would include the auditorium and all that yes yep the oxygen yes yep yep i mean one main difference between what you currently have and let's say a new a new design for a school is we would typically just start off with a typical classroom being 900 square feet you're building most of them are lower than that 800 somewhere in the 700s so that's just one quick example of starting from scratch not thinking of anything but comparing it to what you're used to and some rooms could very well be under 900 some rooms needed a little larger but as a place to start we would start at 900 and you'll see an option where we reduce the square footage below that for a classroom just as a talking point but that's the one thing we're trying to compare existing to building new that's just one quick way to kind of think about it i'm curious are there state guidelines you have to have something squarely close to not for a typical classroom like that i mean there are other guidelines for pre-k and things like that but for it's more functional for a typical like high school classroom class size and you know what you're doing science is much different than the business classroom you know things like that does 165 000 have lunch [Music] growth or yeah so that's totally based on the design of yeah if we let's say we don't build a field house on day one can we design the building in such a way that's very simple and economical to add it or we might need 10 classrooms in the future how do we design it so that that's just part of laying it out and you know having a smart design to give you room yeah the amount of land you know that's potentially there you don't foresee any issues with that to be able to design a building for all the future needs i thought about acre you should see the acreage we're looking at how much do you foresee like this um really hard to say quickly i mean it depends on if you so the very basic thing that we just laid out had a bit of a two-story classroom piece if you do that you know you have a smaller footprint building which always helps you for the future a lot of schools just go totally one story which will take a little more ground it depends too on you know parking and how we divide up where the buses come in and students and parents and where the stadium goes and you know all the athletic fields so it's pretty hard to say just shoot from the hip um but we're very comfortable with them [Music] yeah very different proportions of land but um but yeah we don't feel we don't feel like it would be we've got bloody range for future explanation for what the church is there economics to two stories or not there is for um a classroom repetitive type block there is um you know all your other big gym spaces and band and auditory the tall stuff doesn't really do much for you you're paying for stairs in an elevator but if you can stack and get those things you know basically replicated to some extent it can be very economical to do that with the amount of square footage we're talking the size of the building it might be it might be close to a wash one story versus the two but the two does give you more flexibility for just overall space and land aesthetically does it change anything with designs and things like that it does some people you know go both ways on it some people really like you know two-story you know classroom blocks some people prefer something more big and spread out there's a lot that goes with that a lot of its preference any impact on lucy yeah [Music] so yeah so it's a low slope roofing never flat but yeah so so a sloped roof a pitcher of a metal roof you don't want a big wide area you end up with massive volume of space that's nothing you could have you know 40 50 foot of attic space that's just just up there with nothing going on so yeah for a sloped roof you want to keep things narrower so a classroom wing is very easy to do that with you get into a big wide space gym in a field house plus if there's things on the side it might be a little harder to do that with so most buildings that have most schools i should say that have sloped roof do have some flat pieces here and there for some of those big areas but again that all goes to design so on day one we absolutely want as much slope as we can get great we know that we can start to lay it out for that you know if you design a building that's very let's say it's a big rectangle it has everything you need but if it's 200 by 300 now you want a sloped roof that's not gonna look very good you know it's not gonna not gonna work so well so it all goes back to design and your goals so yeah on day one if that's what we know you want that's we can definitely provide that and lay it out that way so the pieces and parts of this um you can see the the general high school number and that's the square footage of the building including all of the programmatic spaces you know the music spaces and auditorium gym field house all the things we talked about um times a multiplier cost per square foot which nowadays we're estimating 300 bucks a square foot when we started this we were 260 a year ago we were 280 now it's 300 square foot and that seems to be what people are estimating at and now not all projects are equal you know some small addition somewhere might not be the same but for where we are at this level we feel comfortable with that number so that's what it's based on us wanting to know that for sure um this is a question when we were considered programming and stuff how many students are we looking at here today well we had the combined total of your current schools it would have been a year ago i think this was i think we were around 5.50 to 600 cases yeah six hundred months for the for the nine to twelve yeah yeah yeah so 600 would be about 150 a class and right now we're probably close to averaging 130 130 plus there's an outlier there but other than that the only thing in the program that was really extra we have one extra future classroom whatever you would like to call it in there that's the only um i just want to say extra i guess the only extra type space yeah it's not a building design you know with 12 extra classrooms empty classrooms or anything it's an efficient kind of for your needs and again that that 165 is still pretty generic at this point if it was to go ahead the whole goal is i would keep it what do you need keep it efficient make sure we know your goals and not have a bunch of fluff in there and a bunch of extra that you don't need on day one but design it to where if you need it you can easily add it i think that gives us a little flexibility in the long term too if enrollment were to continue to decline then you know we would have space for moving our eighth graders or seventh graders over kind of our setup now if it was growing and we would have flexibility in the long term to maybe add on spaces and since mike brought up the soft things about the building in the last round i'll bring it up here we've had people ask about programming and how this might impact it we i sat with mike and did a comparison is that all right we compared ourselves to two schools near us um and our offerings are just on par like i mean you don't we don't look any different than the other schools around the real love of course is what we offer and what we actually schedule is not the same and what a kid can fit in their schedule is not the same so we may offer ap environmental science but when two kids sign up for it then it's going to line up at the same time as ap chemistry and so they're going to have the choices become smaller and so our offerings are very comparable but what we actually get may be a little bit
no we have we would have to vote this now in order to get it for the next insurance fiscal year start which is the in june the beginning of june right um so we vote for the eight percent now yep and we find out that we're falling short because i know the business match we started on the 23rd yep um so i'm hoping that a lot of eyes are going to be on this moving forward um if there's in a need for an additional increase after june we can do that how long do we have to wait or can we do that as soon as possible i believe it's three months increments because we we get our quarterly report we have to pay our quarterly reports every three months anything else all those in favor anyone opposed no she carries out of state travel uh tony sarkis coach and football students are requesting out of state travel to exeter high school in exeter new hampshire for the seven on seven football tournament on july 16 2022 there is no cost to the district you have a motion on that please discussion mr fitzgerald yes i'm just making sure that um this doesn't violate any miaa regulations in terms of being off season okay john yeah this tournament we typically play in every year thank you anything further all those in favor anyone opposed thank you very much co-op report superintendent please did you give that to sue please so as of uh right now we have 230 students on co-op you'll see the numbers [Music] if you look at i'm going to have you look at the second page because it shows the 12th grade and the 11th graders so the class of two if you look at the very first one advanced manufacturing the class of 2022 which are this year's seniors 17 students are on co-op and then class of 2023 there are 10 students on co-op so that's a total of 27 students uh that are on co-op uh in the out of that program and as you work your way down you see the amount of students in each of the programs so advanced manufacturing and health assistant both have 27 students uh welcome i think health assistant actually health assistant has 19 students on co-op just the seniors the juniors aren't ready to go out yet but they have the most seniors out by two and then electrical has 17 and five so some of the programs have a substantial amount of students out working because the demand is very high for those particular students but it gives you a sense of uh the numbers uh are are very good this year questions for the superintendent we have admission reports john are you done with your report on that mission report please so we continue to uh get new registrations in the last 17 days you'll see that we got 16 more applicants and in 56 in the last 30 days we have if you look at it a substantial wait list [Music] still out there between lawrence 628 just from from students from lawrence 136 from methuen about i believe 30 from andover and about 18 from north andover so we still have a substantial amount of students out there and i think i believe we had about 375 come for the saturday test yeah so we've had a little over 400 i think we've had about 420 students accept uh so we're pretty close uh we could probably take in ten more students uh through uh appeals but we're pretty close to our limit and uh we had a really good turnout on saturday for the uh test that we gave for a placement test that we gave us uh incoming uh ninth graders to determine uh uh which uh level of uh coursework they should be taking in math and science and ela mrs uh fitzgerald yes so obviously those two numbers don't equal the number of kids that have been accepted versus the number that um were here for the test is there a second opportunity for the children that didn't make it yeah i'll be speaking about that in my principles report but um we had uh 375 come out of 419 and um we recognize that especially in this time there's there could be conflicts in terms of saturday so we always have a july assessment for anyone who is accepted or doesn't make that they'll get a second invitation our goal is to have a hundred percent of students come to that and parents to come to that event before september francis two things one and i keep hearing this throughout conversations what is the capacity right here it is 16 1600 for students in capacity is that accurate and that was after the last expansion of the building so capacity for us is somewhere around 1600 i think we're about 1640 right now um and then the other thing the assessment test um and i know that was had that happened this saturday but a lot of parents are asking the question is this a requirement to become for the school at first i wasn't aware there was an assessment test happening but then it dawned on me that we had i think you and i had talked about this before early in the year so i was a little bit aware but parents are not aware that the assessment is to see where there are and they're thinking is to see how they get into the school so there's a misinformation that they're or disconnect between the parents and what the assessment test um is supposed to be because i had a long conversation with parents to say no you got a letter for for approval and i believe this is assessment to see where they fall to if they need hope supports or so forth um i'll be giving you a report during the principles report but just to respond to that um we actually even changed the day we changed the name of the day we said trial we used to call it the freshman assessment testing day this year we called it um student acceptance day so it was the class of 2026 acceptance day in other words it's not about coming just to take an assessment that is part of it but it was for it was targeted for accepted students and the purpose of it especially this year was to ensure that all of our students that did not have the opportunity to come to the building during covet for an in-house tour or parents have never been here to ensure that they were able to not only see the building you know have a tour they got to meet with coaches clubs and part of it was an assessment and that assessment has nothing to do with getting into the school it's to ensure that we have some data for students especially in the last couple years to make sure that they're properly placed the test we changed testing as well the test was shorter than ever and we had we got great data for it i know that all all families that were invited were sent a detailed letter outlining and stating that it was it was not for acceptance anything further good uh john would you give us a report on the aviation program please so um last week went out to visit with the cte uh coordinator who will be overseeing that program to visit the westfield aviation program to get a little more sense of and take a look at the curriculum the frameworks they utilize the equipment the size of the hanger that they're utilizing in the different shop space that they're using and the hand tools and the things that they need so we'd have a better sense of what we should be looking at in terms of budgeting moving forward and pursuing grant dollars to start the program a year from september and also build some relationships with them uh they were they're more than happy and eager to help us develop our own curriculum and support our us in any way they can help get the program going so that was our next step we're uh in the process of planning a meeting out at the airport again to talk to the gentleman [Music] to see the availability of both hangar space and also land our plan is also to meet with the mayor of lawrence to talk about apostle possible partnership with lawrence with this program city lawrence to help support the program and the financing of possible uh space and a place to uh build the shop space out there so uh our next step that's our two next steps one meet with the mayor and some of our key state representatives uh to look at what's possible in terms of the needs for a facility and as well as uh to go out and learn a little bit more of what what's available out at the airport that would make sense uh to build a space out there but we uh feel good about uh moving forward the other uh thing that we learned uh important thing i think that we learned while we were out there some of the many pathways that the program offers beyond just working on airplanes but everything from doing manufacturing work to manufacturing mechanical work to drones to just a varied amount of opportunity and some of the opportunities that they've their students are getting working for some of the different airlines across the state including jet blue and some of the other airlines that some of their students have already obtained jobs for so it was a very productive also encouraging uh exciting meeting for us to to have had and just uh inspires us to work that much harder to make sure we get final approval john what school did you say what's excuse me what school did you say you visited uh westfield uh technical uh school okay is that program off-site for them yeah well they have a small shop in the in the in their school with a couple classrooms and then they have a full-size hangar that they have for themselves out there as well and they own uh 12 airplanes in one jet which they uh most of the airplanes and a lot of the items they have were received from the federal government so they gave us all the documentation and will work with us to help us obtain donations as well good mr hayden mr lavoy i know what it takes to be a uh airline mechanic and it's uh quite a bit of work i wasn't thinking of the um spin-offs can you go over some of the spin-offs one more time please that other things they can work on so there are well for one thing uh much of what you learned so just to give you an example in uh learning to be a basically uh airline engine recap repair mechanic they need to know electrical they need to know hydraulics they need to know plc's computer programming those are just a few of the skill sets as well as electronics they do a lot of [Music] electronic board work so all of those lends itself to career areas that can lead to other careers as well so in some of the manufacturing plants that not only build and manufacturing airline airplane parts that they can go to work for different manufacturing areas they also they also can learn how to fly a plane so part of our program we're looking to have students obtain their pilot license as well so our goal is to have them obtain three different certificate two certifications and one airline i mean air pilot license uh so it's uh the frame of the airplane as well as the uh the engine itself for two separate certifications they're faa certifications and if they obtain an faa certification then commercial airlines will hire them to not necessarily off the street they'll then continue to train them specifically for working on the types of airplanes that are in their own fleets which are a little more complicated but having the faa certification really gets them a good start and also allows them to work on smaller aircraft as well so and there's a lot today there's a lot of technology that they learn that is pertinent to drones particularly in the military drones which are basically in most cases a lot of cases are basically airplanes as well as small drones and so those are just a few of the pathways that are available available to students francis did you have a question no sorry anything further thank you john uh superintendent will update the committee on school safety john as you are aware we there was a particular issue in one of our own sending communities high school which alerted us to look at our own safety procedures and protocols in seeing if we were following our own rules and keeping our buildings safe and meeting all the safety rules and expectations we have on the books which was i think you can get really laxed at that over time so the one we were able to review all of our as well as to review all of our documentation in terms of what we have for our crisis plan our safety plan in all areas so as a result of of our review we are reinforcing with a new i won't say new but additional personnel on our safety committee so that we can have subcommittees in specific areas of school safety everything from specific crisis to day-to-day school safety [Music] medical safety all the areas you could think of we're redeveloping our plan and hope to have a new safety school safety plan in place that is more rigorous and touches upon every aspect of not only school safety but support for students in crisis in different areas so that's work that we will continue to report to the committee as we start to develop and put together our original plans once we have our initial work put together on the directions we're going in i'll report that out to the committee before we actually put in hundreds of hours of moving forward for any feedback that committee might want to us give us yes vivian so in terms of school safety [Music] when i come in to visit the school how often is the security guard in um the security shack how like the handle that goes up and down is there a specific time that it has to be down or when it goes up because i feel like there is inconsistencies regarding the scheduling of when the security guard is in the shack i think there's inconsistencies of whoever comes in um are you asking are the questions being asked as to who they are are they identifying themselves with an actual id um it's not oh who are you oh i'm john doe i'm going for x y and z and it's go on your merry way um when a person comes in and they're stating who they're here to visit where they're visiting is that being jotted down um on a you know on a document are we keeping track as to who's coming into this building who are they coming to visit and where they're going to be at um i i don't believe that that is the case and if i'm wrong um please let me know um and if i'm not wrong then what are we doing to improve the security measures regarding the security shack so um everything you say is absolutely accurate in the sense of uh the guard has been told several times the guard needs to be in the guard shack once all students are in all buses have arrived and the gate should be down and once the gate is down it doesn't it stays down throughout the day until the end of the day when parents start to come in to pick their students up at that time we open the gate and the security we have two security people out there helping them uh park their vehicles where uh so that and they can't go beyond they have to stay in front of the school they can't go around the back of the school no no visitors should be going around so now at this point um what i've reinforced with the both with our own security uh director who oversees security uh for the front there uh on some of the issues that have been addressed in the past and again with we have a security that we have a contract with what we're looking at possibly doing is to have our own security person in the front next year rather than rent it and rather than have uh somebody that we have a contract with because it seems it's very difficult to get what uh get that person to respond the way we want them to but what how it's supposed to work is that the gate goes down at approximately 840 the guard should question every car that comes in and the question is who who are they where are they going um and um and then to park in the front only not the back the only time they should be able to go beyond the front of the building is if there's a uh if they have an appointment with let's say automotive to have their car looked at in that case each shop if they expect someone to come to their shop to have uh either to have their car inspected or have their car looked at they're supposed to 24 hours before notify the front gate he's supposed to keep a list if that person's not on the list and he's not to be let into the into the facilities uh if he's and if it's somebody that's coming in to uh meet with the principal or to meet with someone in guidance area they should have appointments everyone coming to the front should have an appointment other than we have delivery trucks and those kinds of things that may come so when they come we they're supposed to take their company their plates and notify where they're going so if it's receiving they call back to receiving let them know that the vehicle is coming around with a package for them if they're going to a specific shop like automotive might have parts coming in for a vehicle they're working on they they call automotive where we have uh cleric we have students who are on co-op doing clerical work and they notify them to know that so we don't have procedures and expectations for the operation of that front gate and so all that was reinforced last week to ensure that it was working properly so one day i went out to spot check and um there was a vehicle that came out and was way over on the right and i said to the guard you can't communicate like that you can't be screaming across stuff parking lot trying to communicate with people that's why we have a window so i i put two cars on the left on the right side as they come in and say no the future makes sure those crowns are there so people are forced to pull right up to the window so you can communicate with people take their information properly and hold them accountable so and i met with our security people that uh they have a responsibility that that's the way it works every day uh so we've tried to improve that and uh make that better so yeah you're right john are there cameras in the front of this building there is cameras in the front of the building okay yes i asked because you know if if the guard is not jotting down license plates um that we at least have some sort of record as to the vehicles that come in and out of the building and lastly i do feel like there's going to be a discrepancy regarding vehicles that go to either automotive or auto body because i've asked due to potential clients that want to bring in their vehicle and i was told that all they had to do was come in um i think what's the cut off time too 2 30 is the latest that they could come in and get their vehicle uh inspected in in terms of service and they could get a quote and get advised us to the time it will take to get the vehicle fixed or whatever the case you know whatever the case may be so i'm not aware that a potential client has to contact um automotive or auto body first to make an appointment to have their uh vehicle inspected if that's the is that the case well in the beginning of the year they were all instructors were told that they need to their clients need to make appointments and they need to notify the front people have not been following the procedure so i reinforced it and at a staff meeting the other day i reinforced that saying oh anyone coming to the building needs to know if they're coming to have anything repaired or fixed they need to notify you and you send forward who's coming to notify you so we'll put that in our newsletter we'll reinforce that in our next newsletter we also sent out at our last in the last newsletter we sent out some information to the parents about safety school safety here and some of the things we're reinforcing to ensure safety in the building one of the things you know that we struggle with all the time is ensuring that all the doors stay shut all the time particularly since we have kids in and out working around the school but even given that we may have students out in the field working but the doors still need to be locked and i told the instructors they can't send students back to the shop without them so plan what you need before you leave the shop and if for some reason it's instruct a student has to come back if you can't notify someone in the shop then they need to bring them back and bring all your kids back together so you may have to make them wait to the lunch or whatever but we want to make sure security comes first [Music] i'm sorry yeah and i agree with vivian where when it comes to the shaq and the guard shack in the front there's been times when i've come during the day to meet with you or we have been meeting with other people where either guy is either sleeping in in the shack or he's asleep in his car in the window the arm is up so there needs to be something better in place for that because that just that just doesn't scream safely especially with things that's happened transpired recently because somebody let somebody in to a building that wasn't supposed to be there i know that when they come in to get to the door um the reception is they have to put in their information in their license and they get the the little badge thing that they they stick on before they come in but that's like the second line of defense where our first line is definitely lacking um in all that so you should see improvement in that we also notify the security company to let him know what we expect of the front guard that has been he's been told several times number one that he shouldn't be in his vehicle that he needs to be in the guard shack all day long and if he needs to go to the men's room or wherever he may have to go he notifies the front desk and we'll get him coverage he notifies nancy at the front desk and we'll get him coverage so he or if he has when he has lunch we put somebody else out there so that's why uh we're i think we're going to have our person that works directly for the school because i think it's that important that we have someone that answers to us directly as opposed to having someone that doesn't answer to us directly i feel like we'll have a better chance of getting a top-notch person that understands the importance of the job vivian francisco you're absolutely right i think you're putting too much emphasis on this front door if anybody's going to enter the building the instructors are usually our first line of defense our second line of defense is always the hall monitors our biggest fear is what francisco touched on a student letting somebody in one of these doors they don't come by the front door they can walk on the sides up to the football field anywhere if they wanted to go in our instructors are very conscious of the fact of who coming in their doors but you're both absolutely right but don't get overly concerned about that front gate excuse me what's that vivian you all said mr hayden yes no problem mr vivian excuse me well i'm concerned because if we're pouring money into building a security shack i'm hoping it's because the superintendent explained the purpose of having one um and then my question was going to be and it's because you just you mentioned something that made me want to question it so we hired this security guard through a third it's a third-party company so is there a contract um so is there a contract there is a contract what's the how long is the contract for three years three years uh it's it's a three-year contract i'm not sure if it ends i believe it ends next year but we've been able to work very cooperatively with the company so we'll have a meeting with them and discuss the issues and why we think it's important for us to have our own person if in fact that's our final decision okay yeah and i agree with mr hayden you know security in all you know in all aspects from um from teachers to administrators but you know the security that that's the first person you see when you come um so if we're if we're paying this person to do his job i would hope that every dollar that we're paying him he's actually doing what he's supposed to be doing francisco yeah um because that is the first line of defense and i know that we have a police officer from andover that that works here so there's an issue he's direct line to to that person a teacher should not be our first line of defense that should be our very last line of defense they should never get to that part where somebody's with a teacher but time is right um kids do let peel the people in or just right now as i'm watching that side of the of the parking lot has no cones and i just saw a car just swim through there and swim up this way um so there's a lot of things that need to be looked at um but yeah we are i don't know when the contract is up um i know you just mentioned it um would it is it cost efficient to have our own person or uh as compared to a company well it's it's much cheaper to have a company uh but we're going to have a meeting with them and my expectation is if the person cannot do what we ask them to do then the company needs to replace them so we're going to put that's my next conversation with the company owner look at this is the requirements of the job that was the agreement in the contract and if you can't uphold the contract and we either need somebody else or we'll hire our own person mr mr rossi yes i would like to say a couple of things about uh the the um john uh you you uh have uh somebody that's uh going to uh work next year yeah are if if we in fact are not satisfied with the third party uh employee that uh is working in the guard shack then uh i will uh talk to the owner and say since they're not meeting the contract to our expectations that we are going to would like to eliminate that aspect of the contract and and hire our own person it's hard to get anybody that's at work these days yeah well we have some we actually have some uh we had some postings recently which we were pretty successful in getting some applicants so i feel confident that we could get someone dependable that could do the job i would feel much much more comfortable i guess i would personally feel much more comfortable having our own person in that role you all said frank okay mrs fitzgerald yes i guess in defense of merrimack security when the bids go out we haven't had a plethora of companies applying to provide our security and i will say over the years they have provided us with some of the most loyal employees including the person that greets us each time we come to a meeting the gentleman that is on the last shift of the day that basically greets the teachers as they come in in the morning loyal to us i almost feel like they are our employees even though they're not and i know that there have been certain times and positions that haven't been as easily filled but on the whole i think as john said they have been the owners or whoever it is that we do the negotiating with um have been very attentive to our requests and if someone hasn't worked out they removed them and give us someone new to try but we certainly have been blessed with um people that seem to care an awful lot about reggieland thank you vivian oh i'm sorry anything for the superintendent i just want to say that second shift and third shift have been very good particularly the third shift gentleman constantly contacts our director of uh of facilities in the middle of the night i can't tell how many times rob comes here if there's a smallest problem he notifies there's a little a leak or there's a refrigerator that went out i mean he checks every little thing he walks through here many many times during the night he's been terrific we have no complaints and the second shift person has also been very attentive so and i think it's really getting that first shift person uh a little more attentive and understanding how critical and important it is to do his job at a higher level and if he can't do it then our first attempt will be get to have the company give us someone that might be able to do it francis yeah the first shift is actually the most critical one because that's where we have a lot of people that come in um case in point yesterday we had a lot of tons of people coming in if miss sullivan was out front um what was it mr was mr vogel was out there um and they were directing traffic um as for our visitors um but that's what we're paying a security guard to do um and and it's crucial i mean i don't and i believe i know who the third person third shift person might be um then they're they're they're great so we might need to negotiate um to bring our own person for the first shift but absolutely okay anything further ladies and gentlemen okay in your package you have the school calendar have a motion to accept that move the recommendation for the 22-23 school year calendar i just want to say um i don't think do we have a new draft that you got today oh susan has it just yet we changed some of the colors on the existing draft thank you when somebody's ready to give me a second okay after you get a chance to eyeball this what did you say the changes were mostly the appearance of it john yeah i mean i could highlight some of the changes from this draft of this calendar that's different from last year if you wanted me to yeah yeah well yeah the stuff that you okay so if you look on the calendar uh we moved up the back to school night to september the reason for that is we thought it's important uh uh to have the opportunity for the parents uh to talk to the teachers particularly for the teachers to have a conversation about curriculum start to build a relationship on a very positive note rather than wait later when there are maybe issues that we may be able to get more parents in who are right at the beginning of the school year excited to find out information about about the school year and and in particular to take a look at the program and we just felt it would be a more positive event if we moved it up to september so that's why that was done um the uh one of the big changes uh for next year i think is professional development uh days that we typically do in the afternoon uh dismiss the kids early we're moving it to first thing in the morning uh so uh it'll start when the student teaches arriving and then this until 10 40 in which the students will come in at 10 40.
i'm putting you down for seven 700. well you you get my point i do i do thank you and i think we could do this i i don't see anyone on board i don't want to speak for anyone but i think a hundred phone calls in a month is a doable dual will ask just as a thought okay now i don't know if the cabinet or teach uh teachers cabinet folks they are you're right they are paid so that would probably eliminate them from the volunteer status just a thought kate i like it al i'm uh i'm i'm i'm on board with uh that that voter contact you know that direct voter contact to to let them know what's going on because you know to me this is a bigger community issue right we're talking about it from the school perspective because that's what we do here on the board but um you know this is a project that really has um you know roots in other a lot of other parts of the community as well you know it's directly connected with the business segment it's directed with you know it's connected with um you know the overall health of our schools which is a community issue so um i know i'm preaching to the choir bit here but you know whatever we can do to help again raise awareness that this is happening and let folks know that they need to get out and vote um you know i just think we need to jump on those opportunities wow and we do have this robocall system don't we but we can't use that i was just gonna say uh you know if if maybe if we could come up with a specific scenario and then run that by legal just a message that says get out and vote don't vote yes don't vote no but even i mean and that's what i mean because the guidelines are so fuzzy we keep saying what can we do what can't we do if we came up with a very specific message you know tailored it you know and please chime in here you know when we pump this through you know parent square either the robo call or the text or the email you know if we could get clarification on whether it passes muster for being objective enough you know maybe we could use it as long as it's because i've been looking at this law now for the last three weeks and they always use the example of xerox machines right you can't use the photocopier to run pamphlets and then you can't use kids to act as couriers right these are the sort of big examples but it specifically says you can use the resources to make uh informational text and if the phone call is strictly informational the email is informational how is that any different so you know maybe i'll i'll run this by the general counsel as you know as a scenario and see what and see what they say okay mike i'm in agreeance with you i think um you know run it by uh kim yep the legal counsel to the board and then also perhaps bring in tom mooney yeah who is our other uh attorney that works closely with the district for his perspective on this too okay and we'll just carefully craft the message to make sure it doesn't look like we're we're pushing an agenda okay that'd be great great you know and that's twelve thousand kids so you know hopefully a thousand kids is twenty four thousand adults yeah even if half come out it gets us home so we have 40 000 voters in the city of denver if 15 is 6 000 i i just i'm not a math major that means 10 percent would be four thousand right yeah yeah yeah you know fifteen percent fifteen percent yeah so we're at about i think forty six thousand so it's just over six thousand it's just over six yeah okay that's my two cents i'll be quiet well and that's what we're doing here is just kind of talking through some of this stuff so i appreciate everybody's patience because i know it's um it's delicate to talk about some of these things and um you know i i i feel very cautious right now so i appreciate that um is there anything else that anybody wants to to discuss before we adjourn if i could get something else i reviewed the minutes from last time and i think the minutes are absolutely correct i had reported out that stop and shop foundation had donated twenty thousand dollars in food uh gift cards for our families um they revisited that they and they came back with thirty thousand for um to be divided between the four schools so we're really excited about that we're right now looking at signage and the amounts of each card and this will be rolled out in august for next year in the food pantries the schools are going to name their food pantries you know special names and make them really welcoming to our families the last thing that i just had is we are right in the middle of doing all our welcoming school walkthroughs i think some board members have been contacted to actually do the walk through at their child's school if they have children in our schools and so we'll wait on reports back from the people who are doing the walk-throughs but i have chatted with them so far and they said they're really excited about what they're seeing in our schools a level of welcomeness already and so they'll generate reports on next steps so that's that's all that i have from my department we did a graduate uh graduate 19 parent c graduates last week and we have about 32 i think it is right now families our parents taking the people empowering people class on wednesday night so that's wonderful parent leadership training is taking off again like it did in 2012.
okay all right in addition another prior commitment was to upgrade the fencing at the three remaining sites again keep it in consideration of dalton lee and paramount and the two schools that are left to have fencing upgrades would be lee and paramount that will be approximate cost of eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars and to complete that task that'll be approximately one year per site does does that mean that there is one we're working with one company that's doing that and they're there so it'll take them three years to do that so we're not we're not we don't have multiple companies that are on multiple sites correct that would be the plan our desire it would be um for each project to have a contractor to do that that way we have symmetry so we won't have one contractor using one type of material one side and then another side filling they're going to get a better material or vice versa so if we're breaking this up in phases we'll have one contractor doing phase fencing once we do underground utilities it will be one contractor dedicated to that yes ma'am is there a way to make sure for example for fencing is there a way to find a contractor that has the capacity just to do two sites simultaneously rather than in sequence yes that is possible so then it wouldn't be 24 months it would be two sites completed in 12 months yes ma'am i would think that that um would be well received by the community okay because if you're at the other school and you're waiting but if everyone's waiting and everyone knows they're going to finish at the same time i think it um would make all uh residents feel better about project because they could see the progress at their own school yes ma'am can i have just a layer of nuance just so we're completely transparent and open um sometimes uh you might find yourself in a situation for example since we're talking about this uh we know lee has to go to underground and so while they're doing underground um paramount can be working on fencing and dalton can start classroom modernizations and then you kind of just rotate in that manner not to say that that's what we can do but again just nuances that sometimes those things also come into play and i said well it doesn't make sense to do this right now because we're doing this uh but to your point that all sites are moving on something um does make sense there's the potential for both end though right so so they're kind of 100 correct just wanted to throw that nuance just in case there was a situation where well how do you want us to work on the roofs when we're doing xyz over there got it so also some of these schools um that are going to be worked on they will not be having summers through there yes ma'am so our goal i'm only one in this on um dr mitchell um and ms normal was facilitating and identifying the sites to host summer school we took possible construction of what site would have to have construction going on and we were not going to have actual summer school on our campus okay um and so for all three sites dalton um lee and paramount they are all due for classroom modernization and front office upgrades which also includes restrooms um this has a list of other items from carpeting vinyl towels um dropping yes ma'am can we reflect what what your this is this area that i was taking care of yes um so it includes all the items on carpets um dropping the roof i mean dropping the ceiling um if you and actually one of the pictures in here shows it at dalton you'll see that you'll see all the um what do you the t-bar where you see the air vents and everything actually that's actually visible and when you drop the ceiling all of that will be invisible to the eye but it will still duck yes big silver duct tape up there yes ma'am yes um and additionally so to do everything in the prior commitments um that would equate to 24.3 million dollars um yes and so this will be the time frame um again this is showing per site 12 12 months to do underground utilities 12 months for fencing and modernization is 24 months of all three projects the only one in that category that requires dsa approval would be the modernization um the modernization plans have been submitted for dalton um and we're waiting for final approval and the modernization plans have been submitted and drawn up for paramount um the architects are currently writing up drawing up the plans for lee and getting ready for submittal for those so can i ask you a question regarding the office yes offices so um i know the offices are small but [Music] the modernization consists of enlarging it or breaking a wall or kind of what what does it consist of so it's a little bit of both um each principal had the opportunity to identify how to have a better flow in their front offices so like if you go into paramount when you first walk in we have the health office right here so it's not really privacy so they were restructuring their flow so you can actually receive service and then if you're going through you have an entry point to go directly to the health office so each one is not so much to make their front office larger but it's to improve the flow and um two of the sites are actually um having a teacher work room added in that they apparently do not have one yeah that makes sense you know um you know of course including the um the principle what have you spoken to the the classified employees that are working there because i mean they work that i don't work there but so they would kind of also did you get any input from any of the workers other than the principal i'm gonna say yes but again these plans were the design of offices was prior to my appointment um so but i know they've been getting feedback and up um up input as of now just to making sure everything is still in place but i can confirm as to who all was provided input for that decision okay thank you you're welcome a couple other questions so we have on page five we have on here windows that are listed that they're listed as part of the classroom up uh modernization however there we have been in conversation with another company that was kind of coming in and doing some window upgrades so so is that reflected here that the so the costs then are less or or can can you speak to that and then also we have 6.5 million in each school's category or uh budget line is how how recent is that assessment uh that cost assessment for or what would need to happen on each school site so that's a great question so the 6.5 is actually increased previously i believe allocation was lowered from 4.5 million to 5 million for each site and based on the cost of materials and the increase of everything the architect has increased their projections to 6.5 on the listing that we see here was the listing of what every site was supposed to have upgraded if needed in modernization so if the windows were good they would not get windows um so that's why each category shows may include should include um but the great point that you brought up is that yes for our esr funds we were upgrading all the windows at our sites but this would mean that during this modernization the part of the windows could either stay with the esser side or um the funding will still come out of measure k but right now the windows were subject to upgraded with the modernization plan is can you help me understand how there could be benefit to not utilizing escrow funds and instead using bond funds for windows i don't think there's a benefit but i think it's a position of we committed our measure k funds to do x y and z and to make sure we're having doing that and fulfilling that obligation i think would sit well but there's no right or wrong um there's no benefit from using escrow dollars because it's still funds that the district currently has in position at this time and and so these figures here are um [Music] they can be higher and they can be lower or you know um right and then we will have a change order either more or less yes ma'am and so that's one of the points that were not even the points but one of the pressure points that we have when we're meeting we have a weekly meeting with the architect team i'm stating that every day they're realizing an increase in cost so it's just one of those that we want to get the kind we want to get the approval so we can move forward and have those contractors award the bids and then we're locked in that price at any moment because then you're locked in that price yes ma'am once we have a approved contract in the bid yes ma'am okay thank you knowing the knowing the volatility or there's some volatility with some materials costs and so we look at lumber that that's gone up if if by the time construction takes place we see that that some of those numbers have leveled out is there anything in uh any any of our contracts or bids that would allow for i mean because we're seeing almost three times the cost of lumber or whatnot so if it goes back to regular levels by the time we're doing this would we save money on those on those costs or is it locked in it's not locked in and so the short answer would be yes if that portion of the contract has not been bought out meaning so if they were going to buy lumber to do the modernization but they're starting with the restrooms if they've already procured the lumber then the price has said that they have not procured that portion yes and we can always have contingency language in our contracts i have a question around the classroom monetization so will classroom modernization only happen during summer break and other school breaks um we try that um but then that shortens our window for construction so what we do is we work with the sites and we pick phases of the um the sites that we're doing so we'll probably do the east wing and then we will work with that site to ensure that we have all our classes scheduled um and we're not utilizing those courses those classrooms for um instruction at that time would there be any need to drop down portables to be able to safely do construction i know that's an additional cost but just in terms of safety and completing construction um at this time um based on the um our capacity and our enrollment at our site we don't foresee the need to bring in portables but that is an option if we went um i found ourselves going in that okay so the in terms of the capacity you think at this point we have enough room vacant rooms even with increased capacity because of school reorganization to move students around and do construction in a safe way a small classroom yes ma'am so any other questions on the safety so the um prior i'm saying prior commitments um equates to 24.3 million and we currently have enough and measure k dollars to fulfill it any other questions um just one more question about the possible use of bond funds to do the window project so if the windows are currently being uh billed to esser if we don't build the windows to sr what would we then use the esser funds for so i know esther you have to charge them to the year to be able to expense it to get those funds yeah um and so the answer would be um our esser project we kind of we know we're going to exceed but our current allocation so if we were to say the windows for these three locations are no longer coming out esser that would just mean that we will have more available to either for our hvacs um and our doors for our other sites because at the same time i'm sorry i was just going to say just at the same time that we have with where we're saying the cost of everything with our bond funds when we first submitted our essa project to the board of education for approval um those our projections were based off the cost of material at that time and those prices are also increasing for windows doors and hvacs and can you please tell me what's the esther fund yes ma'am you um so um the esther funds for the um funds that we received from the state for coped so receive esr1 esther two at so3 um sr3 was our last allocation that we received during the 2021 um fiscal year which we have three years to complete in order to spend those funds we had to have a plan identify how we were going to utilize those funds to improve our heating and ventilation as well as airflow in addition we had to allocate 20 instructional services okay thank you paul you did see that before no problem thank you sorry no that's fine thank you any other question i i have another question in regards to i don't know if this is really a prior this probably starts to maybe it's a segue to look at safety related there is fencing upgrades and safety related but there's also fencing upgrades and prior commitments why is it that we've determined that some of the fencing items are listed in one and some of the fencing items are listed in the other so the fencing upgrade and prior commitments were for those sites that were not ever modernized and the fencing upgrades um for the remaining sites those were previously modernized under measure they were previously modernized why are there why are there monies here for those upgrades to upgrade from the um chain link so they were modernized under eye but the fencing quality is still not up to par so we would like to have all to have the big i'm going to say large the black bins that we see at dalton and at slauson we would like to upgrade all our sites that have um that type of fencing instead of the chain link for safety reasons it was it was it wasn't comprehensive it was a full site the majority of it at those two sites but not full and there are there are certain things um that even um some schools that were fenced um looking at right now looking at and when we're thinking about safety maybe converting to like single point of entry or when we think about for instance center middle school is a perfect example those fences have to remain open because people have to get on campus but when you have fencing like for instance uh murray that they can have the main fence open but they still have that inner fencing that doesn't allow like access to the school so you still have the main one to get into the into the office but to get to the actual school you have a second layer uh and so looking at things like that that might increase when we're talking about safety looking at again like single point of entry or things like that that again just some tweaks or some to finish off um those are kind of those kinds of projects and it's roughly just looking at the amount so i see on lee fencing upgrades it's 350 and then as i look at some of these other schools there with the exception of longfellow which is a much smaller campus i imagine that's why it's less the the other items are on par with lee which has not been touched so i'm trying i'm just trying to understand what why we would just why would we not look at gladstone middle school and see maybe that's not a good example because of how large the campus is if we're going to look at valley dale why would we not look at valley dale and include that in a prior commitment so the pri um so it could be a prior commitment but fire commitment only identified the three sites that had not been modernized which was the three that we have at the top the fencing below does not mean um the fencing below is to identify those sites that we would like to completely upgrade all their fence whereas before it was partially done valley dale's price is 500 000 because they have a huge field that currently just has the chain link it was never monitored um lee again i mean um longfellow that is a smaller campus podge is to completely put the fence on their outer area so the prices of the price the amounts um projections are both they're in line with lee but lee is for the entire campus where the others is to just complete to make sure they all have the what is the defensing complete instead of having partial the new upgrade and then the chain link we will completely remove remove the chain link throughout the entire campus and we'll have a symmetry for all of them sorry the fencing at a hodge very large so that's so much money he goes all the way back to the golf course i have a question is there a possibility um for the schools that are going to be closing to reuse the fence that the black fence that has already been put in place so um in construction when you try to repurpose stuff like that a lot of times when you activate and try to remove it it damages the actual fencing itself if you really wanted to you could um it's not recommended um just because you would leave that other campus open to vandalism and other things like that and it's just during the construction process a lot of times it gets banged up good to that so when we move forward and thinking the long term um that's a lot of fencing yeah will we be recycling are we going to do something with that fencing i think that would be a better discussion when we identify what we're going to do with the sites because if we're leasing the site or doing we still want to have our facilities secure but if we weren't um depending on the decision of what we're going to do with our facilities then would have that discussion are you talking about the so lee for example that's that's going to have its fencing replaced we're talking about the old fencing and what are we going to do to recycle that or are you seeing i think um and one of the points on the board remember we're stating is i guess lawson they have the new upgraded fence and the question was what would be doing with that one okay yeah we we we do recycle metal when we do take out certain you know like our playground equipment we recycle all that old metal so we do do that now if a contractor came in we could put that in the contract for them to take care of it that way but that would be a board member rodriguez uh yes so we you know talking about the safety and the fencing so um [Music] i i think on the safe part when you he gave an example we'll say center and murray well you know their offices way back and maurice is like right by the fence so safety wise you know what would you have to do move the office more forward or you know so you don't have everyone going into the no all right okay in case like in the case of center it's um you can still have that first enter but then you just need a fence that runs east west from the office and then a fence that runs north south north south on the other side uh and maybe east west so that when you go when you go in through that initial gate you are funneled to the office and you don't have access to the entire campus yeah yeah but most of the schools do have their offices closer to the curb yes ma'am right okay i think we can proceed well so any other questions in regards to prior commitments from any other board members or president does does it make sense i'm just throwing it out there does it make sense to say okay um where are we in terms of consensus moving forward with this and then we can move on to another one instead of that right now yeah i think that's great yeah any any any thoughts or consensus in regards to these items that we've discussed um you know yay or nay as far as moving forward with these prior commitments i think that it it's really important um that we do move forward with this and um that would like you said to secure you know the the pricing and so forth and to be able to go ahead and move forward with the dsa approval and stuff so i'm uncomfortable with moving forward with the 24 million um for this yeah i i i agree i i think this is fine for the conversation for me thank you for the clarification on our questions thank you we appreciate it um i'm comfortable moving forward with the prior commitment um projected expenditures and i just have a really important question about paramount okay so does the paramount modernization plan include additional staff restroom additional staff it includes traditional staff restrooms not additional staff restrooms that includes modernization of their restroom so i'm wondering if there's been a conversation with staff at paramount specifically about the number of stalls and the location of staff location and you know number of stalls and how easy it is to get to one particular end of campus with two stalls has that i don't know if that's been brought to you know this level of conversation um i'm i'm not going to say no but i will say that the dsa plans that were submitted did not include additional restroom so i'm i don't want to say because i was not a part of that conversation i don't want to say that yes we did explore and got feedback from staff and this is how the decision was rendered i just know that the plans that were submitted and submitted for dsa approval did not include additional restrooms so we would like to explore that that would be an additional cost more plans drawn up and we will have to allocate more funding for that well my request is i'm not dictating of course that the plans change but my request is that there be a an authentic consultation with staff to find out if you know the staff that are there now if staff restrooms are true are adequate um i mean not just by the number of you know um occupancy but do they actually make sense from an end user perspective yes ma'am thank you for remember as we're moving forward into the safety related items we're getting there i just i just want to throw i don't see i see the roofing but i'm talking about paramount um one of the things that uh i don't see here is the ceiling inside the classroom um that's part of the modernization of 6.5 million that's all in prior commitment 6.5 million for all three sites at the top in the green [Music] the cluster modernization um is going to include the roofing i'm sorry yes ma'am okay sounds good i just wanted to make sure because i know that um i've seen the roof it's fallen i mean not the route this feeling it you know some of the classrooms some of the teachers have expressed i've seen it for myself that it's just a major priority especially at paramount thank you so to confirm we're a green for the greens that's yeah that's a green so move forward with uh with the items in green thank you uh actually thank you yeah um board member cruz gonzalez did you have anything to add no so yes that's uh definitely moving forward okay also uh process wise on page seven of this document it lists it lists a timeline and it has the number of months but i see nothing highlighted in months one through five what is month which what is month one so month one has not been determined we were just using this to give you a visual of how the months could lay out but it from the day that we have submit for our bids and we identify and come to board for approval for the awarding of the contract it would be 12 months from that period or in one case 24 months or 12 months for the underground and 12 months for the fence so this was just to give you a visual how i'm going to say the title of the title of the graph [Music] so it's a gantt chart so the intention of the gantt chart is to for project management and so it'll tell you so if we started today right these projects wouldn't begin depending on which we're looking at four or five months from now and so because of of approvals all the stuff that has to happen once that the project actually began and they started you know doing whatever part of the project had to get done it would take the yellow part is how long it would take right yeah and that makes that makes sense to me i guess what i'm trying to understand is let's look at underground utilities for example so this this gantt chart says that it starts on the the project will begin on month 12.
technological magical thinking also keeps us from taking action negative emissions technologies may never be scalable while the unit costs of wind and solar have dramatically fallen their energy density remains vastly inferior to oil and gas so the market will not drive the transition in anything near the required time frame we need alternative economic models and a willingness to imagine different futures ones that are much less materialistic but more just and more humane if there is to be any hope for us thank you for your comments that's all thank you very much okay so now move on to the body of the agenda and the first item is an update on energy concierge services and i see funnel is with us and let me just make fun of a ghost you're fine i'm going to give you a post you can choose should i share my screen if you want to i think that might be easier unless you want me to run your slides for you okay um okay i can hear my screen okay so uh good evening everyone oh sorry thanks for providing me the opportunity to present the i energy conservative service to as this evening the presentation contains what the energy control service is and its vision what lessons we learned from established programs the current development status and the problems we identified what our next steps to move the program forward lastly we also wanted to hear your feedbacks and suggestions so why do we need an energy configuration program it is a critical piece of the 820 plan as it connects the first of three strategies which are renewable energy electrification and energy efficiency improvement it helps the residents and businesses to reduce carbon emissions based on their situation and make money saving strategies to develop a work plan to implement the service a working group of energy commissioners worked with me for months to collect and screening ideas interview established energy control service programs and platform providers and they also reviewed the work plan multiple times i wanted to take the opportunity to thank them so the 8 in the 820 plan we define the energy conservative program as an easy to use service to help residents and businesses understand the best highest impact and most affordable methods to carry out greenhouse gas reduction activities it also requires a high level of community outreach and engagement then and we hope if if the program is successful we should be able to help at least the 2500 customers by 2025 um and how to make it happen with the help of the working group we defined the division of the energy conservative service it aims to it aims to reduce community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by helping residents and small business owners small business owners reduce energy use electrified buildings and transportation implement renewable energy improve resiliency save money and improve indoor comfort through education individualized consultations and referrals it still contains lots of information and subjects so to make it um easier to understand we call it a one-stop shop where residents and businesses and property owners can get money and energy-saving tips while learning strategies to electrify their buildings and transportation and the many ways to improve their homes and businesses and improve the indoor comfort because the program is still under development and not fully completed so we the success measurement is to be determined um to to develop the program we interviewed multiple well-established energy conservative program and four of them are a state of country level programs and only one of them are utility wrong program so after based we learned a lot from those well established programs and the the five key elements listed here are information we found that determines um determines the success of the energy constructor program first we need a platform to provide an easy to access information help that can help a web a user to find the information they need quickly secondly a virtual energy advisor is also very important for customers who are tech savvy and not have a clear goal it is provided through a website services where customers can input their information and the system could generate a roadmap to guide them to their goal the third piece is people service or we can call it one-to-one customer service uh it provides energy audit and developer customize the home improvement plan depends on their situation and the the sports element is the contractor coordination service because it helps that when you need to aim to provide up provide an energy upgrade finding a qualified contractor sometimes it's overwhelming so a program assists you to match contrast contractors with clients and perform quality control is also very important lastly and also more very important the program need the dedicated funding to support the operation we also interviewed two well-known platform builder and energy consultation service providers the first one is clear results they can develop a customized website platform for you to to provide a virtual energy service and if you need they also could provide certified energy devices to provide customer service and community engagement the costs listed here are the quotes they provided to us for a two-year service contractor we also interviewed another platform operator called bright action they they provide a standardized platform service which is great for campaign and the challenge services um but it lacks customized service because it's a standard platform and also they have they control the customer's data like say they are users signing up the platform they have access to all the users private private information so we are we are worried about the security issues regarding private data management so therefore we after the interview interview those established programs we think we want a platform that can be modified as the conservative program expense it should also be able to provide a road map for planning for energy efficiency improvement and electrification and also we want the city have the auxiliaries they have the city have the full control of the platform finally we developed a structure of the energy control service that can utilize the city's i.t service integrates multiple programs the osi has developed and leveraged the support from a20 collaborators it starts with an energy controlled website that is under the current osi's website it includes energy consultation community engagement and education i will talk about the details of each component in the following slides currently the community engagement and education section includes multiple programs i guess most of you are aware of the first five programs and i would take the opportunity to update you the progress of the collaboration between osi and the michigan slaves michigan state is michigan spring bank which provides low interest loans to residents and businesses on energy upgrades and the renewable system installation so starting last year we worked with them to develop a contractor training program on electrification contractors who pass the training program gets an electrification badge they also add the electrification service as an as a service option if you want to find a qualified contractor through their contractor finder contractor find a web page and then let's talk about the people service uh people service include this provides a service to vulnerable customers you know such as for those customers who don't use online service who don't use smartphones and not tech savvy the goal is to help them to find information they need so they could make informed decisions regarding energy improvement investment currently we have two programs under this category the first one is aging in place efficiently and the second one is the llmi community development assistance the briand community is our pilot program and secondly programs to provide this special assistance such as solarize program heat pump education program and easy station installation support and the benchmarking program the the last two road map development and appliance replacement consultation are under development i will talk more about it later then the third component of the people service is contractor coordination we collaborate with michigan saves on electrification contractor training program and and we also hope the program could extend to to provide more service in the future i will talk about more about this later secondly about energy consultation there's another component is virtual energetic it is also under development it helps users to find relevant information quickly based on their input it can provide general information on money saving and energy saving tips actions to reduce carbon emission by changing your behavior strategies to electrify buildings and transportation it also consolidates local resources and assistance programs on energy efficiency improvement and electrification it can generate a roadmap to home electrification and carbon reduction based on usage input so the expected timeline i listed here so um our office has worked with the id office or to develop the multiple custom web pages to make it work and uh so that by the end of last next month the we hope to get the testing web pages ready for internal review and then collect feedbacks from invited users to test it out before we publish those websites to the public and you may want to know what kind of road map a virtual and energy advisor can provide to customers the the picture on the right shows an example and it after you type in your basic information regarding your energy usage and your expectation it will generate a a road map like that and it shows step by step instruction and each step provides tons of information and and the local resources that you can utilize so it's it's the target customer for virtual energy advisor are those customers who are tax savvy and all who have a very clear goal they know what they want to do so it took this we expected these services to be very you know convenient and i'm saving for them to find the information and assistance they want and then secondly oh sorry then there are many customers who are not tech savvy and thus they don't use online service and not even don't use smartphones especially for those senior residents and then they need people service one to one people in action to help them to make optimal decisions regarding energy upgrades and secondly some cost some customers they may want a customized road map to with more technical inputs to help them to transit to electrification and enough zero form then we researched based on the market research we performed we found there are many problems with the current energy conservative service programs many of them they are project based they provide assistance and the consultation service based on projects such as how the place hvac system you know how what options would they be best work best for you you know if you wanted to be electrified what option but however our home is is a whole system and it's not like a cookie cutter one one service may not work for each one and secondly um we also found there the their the service performed by different service providers are disconnected or you know for example the the energy auditors may not check your ductwork may not tell you the roof problems you know how what's your indoor air quality you know whether your electric system is outdated and not safe and the contractors they may not tell you how to reach like how to transit to electrification and they may not tell you that if you improve your insulation you could downsize the hvac system which may save you upfront cost and the long-term operational cost and and also like for larger retrofit projects if you hire a general contractor they may not develop a whole home retrofit project project focuses on net zero emission they may not be able to find the contractors who are qualified to do home electrification work and they may not be aware of local programs that could provide a financial support on electrification et cetera as a homeowner what what kind of service people service they want to get they want to get a customized roadmap to a net zero home with cost information and the steps for implementation they also want assistance to help qualified contractors that will help them to transit to electrification and they also want more information local information local resources like rebates income qualified programs and how to apply for them etc and lastly people are interested with buy and discounts so therefore for people service when when we talk about the roadmap development we wanted to define the priority priority would be carbon footprint reduction and the road map should be a whole home prescription for a home owner to electrify their buildings and transportation in a cost effective way and it should also help to identify and assist to apply for financial incentives and rebates and for people who need appliance replacement consultation and assistance the people service should help to elevate the home owner's burden to find a contractor capable of performing electrification projects and it should also help apply for eligible rebates and income qualified financial assistance then actually then after the market research we found there are no energy consultation companies that can provide that kind of service as we expected so currently we we have been communicating with multiple eight to zero partners collaborators such as equal works welcome miller and elevate energy and michigan saves you know to develop a pilot program that could meet our expectation and based on our interview with those established energy conservative service programs the average cost to provide a one-to-one consultation service is about 400 per household so it is very expensive and as the city budget has multiple limitations so we are looking for sources to start a pilot with our atrocious collaborators it may be state and federal grants and or other funding sources we haven't you know we need to apply for so the timeline will will be depend on the funding resources and the demand of the service so this concludes my presentation and now it's a time for questions and suggestions thank you thank you fun to open the floor for comments and questions so i have a few questions if i may if no one else does karlene you're talking it looks like you oh here we go sorry about that erica go ahead and then i think carlene but i'm not sure yeah go ahead eric i was gonna wait mine was it's a great presentation thanks for all that information that sounds wonderful um i didn't see any hands raised i was just gonna make a suggestion potentially for the website if it works out i was also um wondering i know the city's thinking of updating its website i don't know if that's happening in conjunction with this project or if um since this is like such an amazing website that's kind of built in as a sub website for the city cities i was kind of curious just a little bit more about that and then i had a potential recommendation well yeah the the program is a separate program it's not related with the city the whole city website uploaded it will still stay with the osi website except that we are the pilot uh one of the pilots in the website update that the whole city is doing so parks is one and then osi is one of the pilots to to make sure that these kinds of functionalities can be built into the entire overhaul the website that's great um and the recommendation if it happens to work out i know a lot of folks are if they're thinking about doing these sort of updates if they're homeowners they may be thinking about it in conjunction with sort of remodeling and so some folks come at this really interested in energy and some people come at it interested in aesthetics and just how things look and so if there's a couple of you know as as you build up a kind of portfolio it might be interesting just to have you might draw on a different clientele by just kind of showing pretty kitchens or pretty different things um not a big a huge recommendation but just something to ponder ripping forward thinking about how people might enter into this conversation i guess yes you're right exactly so that's that's exactly one main purpose of the website provide a place you know for people to engage on share their story and also engage the community hi uh thank you very much um commissioner mursky uh great presentation um it was a really a lot of work that you're doing on this program and um it's a it's a it's a huge project um as you see it unfold and very complicated and um i just have a couple of uh of questions the first one has to do with the scope of the of of the cost uh as you were seeing at the end of your presentation the expense of the 400 to 1000 you know estimate per customer uh to to go through the whole process is is it's really big if you're going to be meeting the 2500 satisfied customer goal um by 2025 so um you know i'm glad that there's going to be a virtual concierge uh to help to help you know folks along the pipeline and um it it seems like there are ways to build an efficiency using using established you know programs in the country and it looks like you did some research and everything but i just you know like the more you can utilize information um i don't know if you call it off the shelf off the shelf programs or other programs that are really successful right now i would recommend you know being open to that um what are what's thea the support for um electric vehicle charging installations that the city plans on offering um i think we uh in our uh current sustainability and me web page you will find information regarding ev charge installation and so if you need more assistance you could contact our energy advisor semibar so he he will provide you more information and also help you to go through details okay so basically it sounds like there will be multiple uh contact points done with an e-osi for the energy concierge based on the um the the area of electrification or or or how does that work is that gonna be one contact point well that that would be ideal if we provided one point contact well however because the current currently it's still at the beginning phase and uh in our office and different people have have have you know his or her own expertise so that's why we we will point people to depends on the subject like solarwise and the renewable energy will point point to the customer to to truly lost yeah so it depends okay all right and i think well when if the program grows you know we if we have lots of you know incoming inquiries every day then then we probably need to set up a point of contact and uh and a dedicated like a multiple dedicated personnel to to handle provide customer service but currently i think we the workload is okay for us to handle internally this is yours yeah yeah and then just one last last um suggestion a request actually uh maybe i'm i'm just inviting myself but i would like to be and it might be a great idea to invite the entire energy commission to be on the test in the test group for the new website thank you that's that's a very nice offering for us thank you yeah we could we could really work it you know and give you some good feedback between all of us we have our different areas of you know of you know we could create little scenarios for ourselves and then tested very very well for you thank you very much other comments or questions so i have just a couple um first of all the road map that you showed um seems to start with a home energy audit or at least um and is is is that indeed the attention that basically anyone that approaches osi or at least a significant portion of the people would start with a home energy audit and is that one of the reasons why the cost is 400 to a thousand dollars per person i'm trying to understand why you think it's going to be 400 to 1000 and if a home energy audit is a part of that that would make sense to me but is otherwise i i have questions like carlene did where that number comes from and what just what what makes that up thank you for pointing that out um i should clarify the cost of estimation per household is for one to one people service that's also a lesson we learned from interview or other energy conservative programs for example the boulder counties and energy smart program that they that's they they also think it's the one-to-one people service is too expensive and that's why they wanted to more people to use virtual energy advisor because it really depends some people they are tax savvy and they know what they wanted to do and all they have a very generic question so if they go to the website and the website can navigate them to find the information they want then they don't need to make the phone call or email you know email uh customer service representative to ask the question it will greatly save the cost and i didn't put that cost in into consideration right now and then for one to one people service because even if it's i know if provided by internal staff or or hire a third-party energy advisor you know that the time we have the ceremony the times you know build up quickly as also depends on the project if it's like a big project it may involve more time more hours and if it's like an old home very complex retrofit project it also may involve more hours so so but basically that's their estimated average cost if you provide one-to-one people service okay thank you another question that i had was with regards to confidentiality um so you mentioned that was one concern with the bright action platform and i'm wondering um if that's a concern uh how is confidentiality protected um with the ann arbor um developed platform so presumably in order for someone to provide a good consultation services they would have to have basic profile information um about the user and if a home energy audit was done that would have to be shared so there's there's certain information how many people potentially are in the household what's the household look like how many rooms um is that a gas furnace is it a whatever it is what are the starting conditions um how is that information going to be inputted into the ann arbor platform and if so how was the confidentiality then going to be handled so um this question i think thank you and i think i should check with it office you know how they handle the you know the accomplished confusion conflict confidentiality and because now um this is it is not my area so i really don't know you know what what answered you know the b and and then i think for for people to people service and because it's very likely we may outsource it to a third party to do it if given we have you know we have security funding support and customer demand so that would be another sort of um agreement to legal agreement between the city and the service provider okay okay um does anybody else have any comments or questions so i i i would just like to close by saying um my my frank opinion is is that i think there's some fundamental misunderstandings about the bright action platform and i'd like the opportunity to potentially um talk with um you and missy about what you're doing and the bright action platform and whether or not there is indeed an opportunity to merge the efforts and some of the some of the concerns that you expressed on your cover page um or when your early early page um indicates to me that there's some misunderstanding i spent some time um in in recent weeks looking into their site more closely and so um i will circle back um with the two of you after the meeting happy to have that that call although we've had a demo and i i know you did i'm i'm not i'm not super excited about it but happy to have that follow-up conversation i i realized that and and as you know um i was not able to participate in that demo um so i'd like to have an opportunity to to at least share um what what my understanding is and what the basis that understanding is with you commissioner kerber yes uh fung um one of the i don't want to get too much into the weeds but one of the concerns that i would have is when you are providing connections to various services and providers of various capabilities how are you going to go about doing the vetting of those first of all and then how are you going to capture the actual experience of the participants through the whole process so at the end of the day when new people come into the system they'll be able to see what the scorecard has been in terms of different providers in providing quality service in terms of how they view the knowledge of the project rider the the cost of the provider and other issues that relate to the quality of the solution thank you that's that's great that's that's a very great question actually it's we are considering that part that's why we we are developing a program with michigan saves you know as you know michigan state has a very good good relationship with contractors and they certify contractors who perform you know energy saving projects and the renewable projects and so now we have developed developed the energy residential electrification training program like people who complete the training program while get the badge electrification badge to different differentiate the contractor from the raster contractors so this is the first step actually we are we are uh developing and what what's the next step would be you know say if a customer you know through our conservative service wanted to do energy uh retrofit projects then we can refer them to michigan saves then michigan saves could you know it depends it really depends we i'm just we're i'm just talking about some possible possible ways to work it out like the michigan state could coordinate the con matching the contractors with with customers and then they could also that now control the quality and collect the feedback from the contract from the customer and as michigan said they they are also providing the financing service so they know the cost of those those bids and so they could have served as a data collection point for us then we could work together to call you know the service provided by different contractors and there's a cost average cost per project no etc so that's all on the development thank you okay any anyone else okay thank you fun for your presentation and um we will now move on to the next agenda item and let's see where's my here we are the next is an update on the green rental housing program from zach all right good evening commissioners thanks for having me back good to see you all um i'm i've got some choppy internet and a whiny cat so give me a holler if you can't see anything or if i drop off but otherwise i'm gonna assume you can see um uh so i gave a presentation recently about what uh the proposed policy was for the green rental housing program and i just want to give you an update on what uh where things stand on that and the progress that has been made um and what has yet to be done um so quick review of the policy elements that i presented to you last time uh where these four items the first is that there is a requirement um that would be in place that as old appliances wear out and need to be replaced that they are replaced with energy efficient appliances that's the metric is energy star uh rated um the second is that the unit as a whole needs to meet a certain efficiency minimum so either through a prescriptive pathway or a performance pathway and there is an efficiency disclosure this isn't anything new or groundbreaking but it would just says that the um the results of the efficiency pathway element will be made public just as the certificate of compliance already is and then finally there is the um there's a component that allows tenants to do some basic weatherization in their own units so um since the last time i presented to you we launched a public comment period that included a survey that was both in we used both microsoft forms and a to open city hall and it was open for a month and we collected responses from that we also during that time gave two public presentations that one was recorded you can find a recording of that on the city website uh the url is at the bottom of the screen and we have had a few one-on-one meetings with landlords to discuss ideas and get some direct feedback about the policy as a whole digging in here to some of the responses um that we got um the overall this is kind of how the respondents broke down so about 60 of them were landlords of some sort either they owned a building or they managed a building um and then the other uh and then a quarter of them were tenants and then there was a handful of folks that either declined to respond or they were not one of those two um categories so for the tenants we had very few that were on campus tenants most of them were off campus so what did they have to say well um we asked questions about each of the different policy components and this here i am not intended intending for you to be able to read the fine print there but this is a response of the performance pathway and what i want to illustrate here are sort of um the range of the responses that we got this is a likert scale on the left is strongly disagree all the way on the right is strongly agree and so these each one of these bars you see is a response to a question specifically about the performance pathway these are the responses that we got from landlords and a couple of things that i want to point out are that first of all we every response is represented here um so they they were across the board in their responses but the other thing i want to point out is that the the heavier things are either strongly disagree on the far left or disagree which is that orange um there were a few uh i mean there's a notable amount of neutrals or i don't knows and that's the gray in the middle um that tells us that there's some clarity to be improved upon um but in looking at the disagreement with um uh some of these responses and just for example they some of these things here are saying this policy is applicable to all types of rentals in ann arbor this is an appropriate measurement of energy efficiency it's clear what action is required to comply with this policy um and so across the board landlords were gave every response um and and disagreed a little bit now contrasting to that are the responses that we got from tenants to the same question and if you look at that there are no strongly disagrees very few disagrees and a lot of agreement this suggests that the tenants see value in this it doesn't mean that it is the best value but it also you know there is that split incentive tenants have a different investment in their units that they live in than the owner of the property for for very clear reasons but um these are kind of this was a theme that we noticed across all responses and so i'll show you a couple of more examples here um here are the responses side by side these are both for the prescriptive checklist so this is the other efficiency component the bar chart on the left is the landlord's you can see a lot of that dark blue on the far left this again this is a likert scale so strongly disagree on the left and then towards the middle of the screen here is the strongly agree and you can see that property owners and managers don't want this or they have comments for improvement on this um and it's about the opposite for tenants we they um most of the tenants agreed that this is a policy that that should be implemented i'll just show you a couple others here this is one more this is for the appliance efficiency component that requires energy star rated appliances um this one is interesting um because again like all of them uh the landlords represented every response um type the tenants not so much um this is another example of the tenants not there was no tenant that responded strongly disagree on this one and that we saw that in a lot of different responses um landlords are across the board um so what does what does that mean well the primary things that we can pull from this is that that split incentive is very clear and that is going to require us to continue to do as much outreach as possible with landlords and tenants to really understand their standpoints because it's not saying that one is right and the other's wrong it's just saying that there are different interests at play here overall we saw that tenants are in favor of a green rental housing policy and landlords gave every response they were across the board but generally that's where we saw the most opposition to this was among the landlords there were those gray areas and i think that the gray areas and i do also believe that some of the opposition can be resolved through increased clarity and education outreach and making sure that everybody who is impacted by this policy has is very clear on what's expected of them and um what the reasoning for this policy is um overall i do uh conclude that there is a need for this green rental housing policy because the landlords were all over um again some some agreed and because the tenants do feel um in general generally in favor of it um i i think that there still is a need for the green rental housing program so um what has happened now um is we're continuing to digest some of the comments there were a lot of open fields for uh free text in the survey and so we are pulling themes from those responses there are suggestions in those comments there are some constructive criticisms in those comments and so we're we're piecing those together to identify commonalities among them and address those through any potential revisions that come forth and we will do that in conjunction with the comments that we get back from the city's legal department who currently has this policy in front of them and are reviewing it so once we get those those back we'll make any policy provisions uh needed there are also um some property managers and property owners right now who are doing a dry run of this policy so they are putting their units through the paces to give us direct feedback in terms of how well their units performed and you give us a metric by which to gauge if this policy is attainable um for landlords and so uh we're using as as much information from that as we can it's just that we're not going to record any of these results this is just for informational purposes for for the city so that we can make this policy better so all of those things together will make any revisions that we need we will represent that to the task force to get any final feedback from them before moving it along through this body uh in the form of a resolution and then on to counsel for their vote um we will uh i mentioned that we will reconvene the task force for that presentation and we are also going to uh address both that education and clarity um but also get more feedback through um further engagement with one-on-one uh partners so the washnut area apartment association we want to get in front of them and hear their direct feedback in case any of them were unable to take the survey we're going to get in front of the ann arbor tenants union there are a number of university partners the inter-cooperative council a lot of these bodies were represented in the task force and we just want to leverage those uh networks that were that were represented at the task force but that we may not have heard from directly and so we want to give them opportunities uh to give us as much feedback as possible so um so that's that's where things stand right now for the green rental housing um just a quick update but i am happy to answer any questions that you may have thanks zach um i think this was helpful um i don't think it's surprising that landlord some of the landlords might be against something that's going to cost them money to benefit tenants um i'm curious if you asked um the question in the survey if the person like if they were owning properties if they owned like a large number of properties or a small number of properties because based on some other housing work i've done in the city it seemed like there were differences between the response of small-scale landlords and large-scale landlords and a lot of that was driven by like their ability to to do things um so i'm curious if that was a question you asked or you know if not i think that's something i would consider when doing additional outreach to landlords yeah commissioner mccoy that's a good question and one that also came up during our analysis process which is still underway we did not ask that intentionally at the get-go because we didn't want landlords to feel like they would be outing themselves by providing that information um i if i were to do this again i think i would have asked that question and made it optional because i agree that that information could have been useful um but it was not gathered during this also breaks thanks um i was wondering i i don't think you said how many respondents there were for the surveys of the percentage but i was curious what the total response rate was yeah um between the two it was um just shy of a hundred thanks um yes i don't want to jump too far into to the implementation once again but one of the things that i always think when i come into the problem from the landlord's point of view this just has this feeling like there's there's always a carrot and a stick and this kind of feels to me like a stick i mean is there a perception of how this program might make this something that is more of a carrot for the people who are participating the people that are landlords that are that are trying to do the right thing and see the benefit from a business point of view of doing the right thing as opposed to just more costs or more inconvenience or more regulation or whatever it might be yeah uh fantastic um there are a couple of ways that we are exploring both options so there are some incentives that currently exist in in the current rental housing inspection process to incentivize early compliance among landlords and we are looking to pursue those similar avenues for the green rental housing program uh more specifically those entail uh it if a landlord is fully compliant upon their first recertification inspection then the uh the expiration date of their certificate is extended by 12 months so they get three and a half years instead of the two and a half years that means fewer inspections fewer interruptions and less expense on their behalf there is uh one of the engagements that i mentioned are the community i'm sorry the university partners and there are already ways that some off-campus landlords are highlighted through that and we are exploring ways to highlight those who are compliant with the green rental housing program we have met um part of that in pursuit of that we have met with a third party software um provider who would highlight those for us um it's part of a broader project that could if we do end up pursuing it could um offer a very easy user interface for tenants one of the things that we without getting too into the weeds on it one of the things that existed with the current program which we are transitioning away from is that it's difficult to find inspection history information and certification information and so this would create a much easier user interface so that prospective tenants could find information on their um on the units that they're looking at and that included in that with this third party we would highlight certain things like the green rental housing program so so we're try we are uh trying to find as many ways as possible to provide as carrots and um that's also part of the reason we want to meet more with the washington area apartment association and other landlords is to continue to hear as much feedback as possible from them yeah thanks i just wanted to pull up the um the percentage rates before i asked this follow-up question i was since there were i wonder if you've considered going back and just getting um pushing for a little bit more feedback um especially if there was since there was pretty low response rate from folks who are student renters um and overall considering the majority of folks who live in ann arbor are renters relatively low response rate from from tenants overall um i think they're supportive of this policy but i think there's a lot of conclusions being drawn out of this data that it would just be nice to see a few more tenants in there to make sure that that holds up as more kind of feedback is is secured if i don't i don't know this may be a hard one to you know i don't know how robust the outreach was if it was really robust and this is what you got that's great you know if it was um you know so i guess question if you're thinking about trying to secure any more feedback from folks absolutely um you're spot on that the tenant interaction is a tough nut to crack so to speak um um we are looking to do more engagement certainly before proceeding once we get some of these revisions dialed in as necessary we i think are leaning right now towards more quality over quantity and so that might involve more um in the likes of focus groups or um interviews um to understand truly how this is going to impact people's lives and and what it their motivations are um so i'm not saying that an abroad survey is off the table and in fact that might accompany a lot of the continued outreach that we are are going to do but i think right now we we want to understand a little bit more um so that we can make sure that this is as dialed as possible other questions or comments zach i have a few um the program is still envisioned as an effective mandatory program right you have to get certified in order to get your certificate of um whatever the right term is not occupancy but that that's it's not this is not voluntary correct that as proposed correct so it would be mandatory yes okay and then um in the last meeting we spent quite a bit of time looking at the prescriptive path and um the evaluation and the points and things like that um you know there was a group of us that had a side meeting with you is is that prescriptive path um being dramatically changed at all or being reviewed including like the threshold i think it was 65 points what's what's the status on on the prescriptive pathway or is that also sort of um in under reevaluation um it's under reevaluation i don't want to say too much too soon um we're still digesting some of this information um it's looking as though it will see some revisions um we some of those gray areas that we got back on those responses are reason to continue fine-tuning this tool i would rather see either strong opposition or strong support for this the the fact that there were was any gray area at all says that we need to do some more work on that so i think that there will be ultimately some changes made to that um that is also an opportunity where um where we can work more with the landlords perhaps uh one idea that we got from the feedback was to phase in uh the requirements that gives the landlords a little more flexibility in terms of the timelines by which they need to comply um so we'll we'll see how that pans out certainly any changes will be publicized and that they will be reviewed and that's what will be presented to the task force and beyond um but yeah at this time uh no changes have have been solidified but there probably will be some yes okay anyone else so i have a question about next steps for isu and missy we have on the agenda tonight um actually it's not the next point but i would make sense i think that we consider it now which is the second meeting of the green house rental housing resolution and i'm wondering with so many questions does osi plan on coming back and say after these additional rounds with legal with um different groups um this is now the final or the near final plan or do you want us to take a vote on the resolution with a lot of open questions in the air what's the intent with the agenda and with the resolution specifically yeah um sure i um i i guess i would have looked to you uh chairman mursky for for your advice um considering that there could be some changes um i would say that there likely will be some changes um i just don't know what to to what extent so they could be very minor um i i think i would look to your advice on um what should proceed i would love to see a resolution go through um but i i also would like like i said i would like strong support or opposition you know from this body as well and i think i would be more inclined to hold especially because we haven't seen legal final guidance on this and so while it may just modestly be tweaked based on public input and what we're hearing we all can do fundamental shifts when they look at something so it's probably if you love it and you're like just do whatever you can legally do and run we would gladly take a resolution of support but at the same time i think zach and i talked about it earlier and we plan to bring back whatever we get from legal in its final form so you can actually see the language of the ordinance so we can we can formally introduce the resolution with emotion again in a second or i don't how do people feel i have some thoughts but i'm wondering if others have strong opinions one way or the other go ahead commissioner i think i personally would have would prefer to wait to see like what the feedback is you know even if it ends up being minor just in the event that it is major or that legal has some you know serious concerns i think it would be proven for us to wait if there isn't a reason that we need to you know vote today anyone else so that that's my uh leaning as well um my sense is and maybe we can take sort of just a show of hands um about commissioners i mean does everybody on the commission still strongly support the idea of a green rental housing program with certain requirements in order that uh landlords get a certificate to be able to rent their properties i is is that have very very strong support among commissioners i mean i i very much support that does anybody have strong reservations so i think missy and zach you have uh full support from the commission to go full speed ahead um and um but we'd like i think this catch ball process i think is is appropriate you threw the ball out in the last meeting um there was some comments um you've been playing catch ball with landlords and tenants since that meeting and i'm going to be doing that with legal obviously um i think one more round of of catch ball so to speak um before we then issue um our support i think that's also more effective frankly um when it goes then to council um if other council members um find out that we voted on uh the resolution here in early may and there it goes up to a vote i'm just going to make up a date in august or september people will wonder well what changed in between and you know how did that potentially affect how energy commission um saw that so i think it's also going to better equip osi and our liaisons to to defend um the the uh approach when it comes up to a vote for for all accounts and i can imagine there will be some of those people that are in the strongly disagree camp that will probably be voicing concerns um through the process as it moves forward and so the the stronger position that we have and that's based on a good understanding of what the final or near final proposal is going to be is going to be more effective for for all of you anybody have see it differently i don't see anybody so um let's leave it that way and we we wish you all um godspeed put it that way okay so um the next on the agenda is a presentation on the intergovernmental panel on climate change and um edie and peck are going to lead us through that do you want to run slides or do you want to run them for you i don't mind that i think it'll be okay okay can everyone see that yes well thanks everyone um we had thought that it might be worth touching on this new report since this is the um updated ar6 that we'll be seeing later this year and it's been several years since the ipcc did such a full and comprehensive report so um since this is relevant to a lot of our those topics we talk about here i thought we would take a little bit of time to walk through this and i guess i'll actually turn it right over to peck to kind of give us a little bit of background on ipcc if he is feeling so inclined um so sure the ipcc has been around for quite a while since the 80s and it is a group of about 195 countries as it says here and that's the intergovernmental panel on climate change it's a bunch of policymakers and they actually asked scientists to periodically provide updates on the state of the science and that's what everyone usually calls the ipcc even though it's not technically the ipcc and so we write uh the scientists write these reports and they come out every six or seven years as i said and now they come out with four assessment reports each cycle the first one being the physical basis of climate change what's happening in the climate system thanks um the second one being what's going on with impacts vulnerability and adaptation science and the third focused on mitigation or stopping it um and then that's the third one and the fourth one is a synthesis of all of those and we've now seen for the sixth assessment we've seen uh three of those reports and the synthesis doc is going to come out later in the summer so we have a lot of new science and what's really remarkable in these um is the fact that well actually i'll take a step back um hundreds of authors uh scientists to work on climate science uh and reviewers uh most working um in a volunteer basis to produce these and they are heavily peer reviewed by other scientists as well as uh the governments of the policy makers and basically anyone who wants to you don't really need to have any credentials to peer review but the system tends to keep those folks out of the picture because it's very technical stuff and each of these reports has a summary for policy makers which tends to be the most accessible parts and then literally hundreds of pages of quite technical uh synthesis of what's come out in the last you know four or five years and climate science has really exploded so there's a lot of information um this time around actually i'll just be quiet because i think that's what you're after right idiots just sort of that background yeah that'd be great um and and then you know if you want to run through those first two you can grab groups we have a few of the headlines there as well yeah well with um working group one which is the physical basis um you know it's been back in the fourth assessment this is the sixth assessment in the fourth assessment um which i helped uh produce uh we were the first ones to say it was unequivocal um that humans have worn the planet um and with each successive report it's more unequivocal which is kind of uh crazy uh and uh it's also more unequivocal the range of impacts that we now can attribute to humans so we have as it says here just widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere the ocean the cryosphere it's all the ice and the biosphere so we really see climate change everywhere around the planet now very clearly it's also uh in terms of what's affecting people it's mostly these extreme climate events whether they're heat waves uh droughts um more extreme precipitation stronger storms and things like that uh very clear that climate change is now affecting all of those the only thing that is still kind of open to some debate that people talk about a lot actually i was just tweeting on it today are tornadoes it's still unclear some of the connections between climate change and tornadoes although i think last december we saw one effect that everyone agrees is happening which is we're getting more cold season um thunderstorms and tornadoes and at higher latitudes so you know iowa and minnesota getting tornadoes in december never happened before and that's thanks to climate change warming the planet um then if we think about a working group too um you know there's just so much more information about impacts and the reason for that is the impacts are really piling up and they're piling up faster this is to me is the biggest story in the new ipcc you know from comparing it to the previous cycle is that the impacts are piling up and coming faster at lower temperature than scientists thought they would uh you know the community uh thought they would uh this means the implication of that is we really do uh want to cap the total amount of global warming and all the change that comes with that at a lower temperature if all possible and in paris uh a few years ago nations agreed we would try and cap it at 1.5 degrees c and slowly um everybody has come around to let's see if we can do 2 degrees c 1.5 is is kind of impossible at this point it's not impossible but it's knowing humans it's impossible and so uh if we were all to meet our paris agreements now all the countries of the world meet our commitments we would warn the planet to 1.9 but most countries of the world including the united states are not meeting our commitments and for those of you who keep track what we really needed uh wyden blind was proposing the right thing that would have gotten us on the right track to meet those commitments but he needed to build back better bill to get past uh and that failed and so we are not going to meet our commitments unless that happens in you know the democrats get an increased majority or at least maintain a majority um [Music] in november in congress um one more sentence senator i guess um and then uh it is summarized some other really important things but i wanted to highlight that what we see in these reports now is a lot more confidence estimates that are in the very high to extremely high category that's really different from previous reports so it's really clear now that even 1.5 is going to cause serious threats is going to cause irreversible change in the in the planetary system uh you if you really the poster child for that is what's happening coral reefs right now yeah we are wiping out the coral reefs of the planet not all of them but you know it's just a matter of time they're going pretty fast uh and it's just because the oceans are absorbing most of the heat and therefore um really baking the corals uh so everything else you can kind of read here uh these positive feedback loops um are the reason i think things are changing faster than the scientists thought they would in other words the positive feedbacks the amplifying feedbacks are are more strong than we thought they would be um and the dampening feedbacks or negative feedbacks are harder to come by in the climate system so we don't see a lot of the negative feedbacks we see a lot of positive feedbacks the positive feedbacks are are amplifying things more than we thought they would how's that yeah thank you um so i guess just to give a little bit more background context too as peck mentioned um lots of people do contribute as peer reviewers and i was able to contribute as a peer reviewer on this draft and on this working group report in 2021 and this year um so that does not make me an expert on it it is a 3 000 page document spanning all of climate science but i you know have been uh hanging out with this document for a little while now so i wanted to give that background and i guess the other caveat i'd say today too is there's gonna be a lot of text on these slides i tried to just copy and paste directly from the report to avoid you know uh spinning what they're saying or what the findings are saying i'm also trying to summarize and apologies if you don't feel like you have adequate time to read all the texts you'll have access to the slides of course and it's all in the report itself so thank you um okay so some of the broad trends from this mitigation report that we are seeing emissions are continuing to rise and that has occurred in the last decade although it has been at a slightly slower rate than the decade before it and of course we also know that contributions have varied regionally um countries of different economic levels countries of different regions are not contributing at the same rate and obviously some of the highest emitting um emitting regions just it's a really disproportionate value that they're emitting emissions are also increasing across all sectors and we're seeing that in urban regions um they are increasingly responsible for these emissions and this kind of gives a picture of what the first relative contributions are so energy supply electricity and heat is the leader and then we have industry the agriculture forest and land use sector transport and lastly buildings is kind of the main contributors here um obviously as as we all know energy transition is going to be a huge in mitigation and we simply will not be able to limit to two degrees celsius above historical temperatures without rapid reductions in the energy system luckily we're seeing deployment that exceeded expectations and we're seeing costs of these technologies continuing to plummet and especially in the last decade some really substantial figures there of 85 for solar and 55 for wind but still this is only 10 of our combined market share at this time and the expectation by 2050 would be that low carbon electricity would be 100 of our markets um this image kind of shows in blue we have the fifth and 95th percent percentiles of um cost for these different uh energy generation types photovoltaic solar enter wind offshore wind and batteries and um those are in twenty twenty dollars per megawatt hour or kilowatt hour of battery storage capacity and the gray bar across the bottom is the cost of gas and um coal so you can see that as we're approaching 2020 these costs are comparable if not lower than the fossil fuel costs so good news there but if and you can see a corresponding increase of course in deployment and then an adoption we're seeing as those prices plummet adoption is really increasing so also pretty straightforward there um another finding from the report is that we will need to remove emissions um to compensate for those residual or hard to emit hard to abate emissions um from sectors where it's just going to be really really hard to decarbonize and this can be done in several ways there's biological sequestration of carbon through plants and soil organisms there's geochemical and chemical processes available so some of this is tech some of this is natural uh carbon removal but obviously the maturity levels and the impacts and the co-benefits that each of these present and just as ken alluded to at his public comment earlier the technical feasibility of these is all you know different depending on the type so lots to see how this unfolds here um forests and farms and all of our natural ecosystems blue carbon as well definitely can play a significant role but the report really emphasizes that this cannot make up for delays in other sectors so it's just not going to be an option to just plant a lot more trees and call it a day as we probably all suspected already more good news um we already have seen reductions in emissions that would have otherwise occurred because of the policies that have already been enacted but as peck alluded as well our current pledges are falling short so the national commitments that countries are making are not going to be enough to keep us to 1.5 c and even to get to the two that's going to require some some heavy lifting and then also as alluded the policies themselves that are enacted right now are not even living up to the standards of the commitment so we're falling short in two different ways here so it's really meaning to pick up on our mitigation another um kind of highlight finding was that there is no more room for unabated fossil fuel generation in other words if you don't have carbon capture on your fossil fuel we're going to overshoot um there is no more room in the carbon budget for increasing um in investment in this type of infrastructure because of the way it will lock us into higher emissions for decades to come and of course since this report has been released we have already seen um new fossil fuel tech uh applications and and things getting started so this is not necessarily being heard globally um in connection to ann arbor and the opportunities we have here i'd like to highlight that urban areas do have really unique opportunities um to address climate mitigation and the main three ways that the report highlights is through reducing or changing the ways we consume materials and energy through electrification and through enhancing the carbon uptake and storage in the city itself um but this is not limited to our direct emissions and and it's really necessary to think outside of our boundaries so uh you know we also have to consider our indirect emissions across the supply chain and the cascading effects that that would have if we were able to reduce some of our urban consumption or energy demand as well um another kind of new thing in this report and i think it's exciting in some ways as well is a focus on or an emphasis on demand focused intervention so this is not something that had been discussed in such depth before but this is really you know just thinking about the ways that um we can reduce some of the energy or material demand in the first place um some of the ways in urban areas this could be accomplished is you know changing our density or our land use mix or increasing inter and interest city public transit options and making a more supportive environment for active transport and it's definitely not only a big opportunity in terms of how much um how many admissions or how much we could avoid emitting but also how it can enhance quality of life for urban dwellers um especially in in regions um where there may be more um unplanned settlements and all sorts of things and just the way that urban development and energy emissions reduction can be synergistic the other big high level finding is that current funding really is falling short um we really need funding to increase by three to six times overall um and currently the focus is overwhelmingly on mitigation not adaptation and yet we know we're already seeing the effects of climate change especially in cities and i mean all over the world um specifically you know energy efficiency investments need to increase by two to seven times transport by a factor of seven to eight electricity by a factor of two to five and land sector and natural climate solutions actually need to increase the most by 10 to 29 so those are really underinvested in um as well at this time so just wanted to really briefly as well do a couple deep dives into three little topics so one is the social or demand side measures um you know again and for the first time this report really emphasized that individual choices can add up so you know we have the example of individual mobility as one as one option that could be changed um changing to walking cycling or using electric vehicles could save two tons of co2 equivalent per person per year um for a u.s resident that's about one eighth of our um total emissions and for the rest of the world for the average that's about half of their total emissions annually so a big deal there but you know of course the the really important caveat there is that the larger social political and cultural context is what sets the stage for that right this is not something that can just be on the individual to do on their own cities provide a lot of opportunities to to create this enabling environment and we know that you need both the motivation and the capacity to undertake these changes um another cool finding is that or i mean it's kind of obvious but that you know a lot of these things start off with pilot experiments or just kind of you know spread socially and naturally like wildfire um social equity reinforces our capacity and motivation to be able to undertake a lot of these changes right so equitable societies are going to be able to do more um and yeah just just really emphasizing that the structural environment that you're in and the ways that um that has an important effect on whether or not people are able to undertake some of those individual choices or to reduce their emissions um the second little deep dive we can do real quick is into energy systems more broadly so we know that there are a lot of different supply options available to reduce emissions um just like with our demand side measures we need that enabling environment and we need better integration into the grid to actually deploy these there's going to create opportunities of course there will be winners and losers like in everything but it's also clear that the economic outcomes of these transitions could actually be superior to if not at least on par with those of the traditional fossil fuel infrastructure uh you know another kind of important question is will these new energy systems be vulnerable themselves to climate change and we the report finds that climate change will indeed affect our local low carbon energy systems but in kind of uncertain ways and also you know kind of depending on the sector or the type of energy so there's more likely to be disruptions in perhaps hydropower or bio energy and it seems that wind and solar resources will really not be compromised in most instances as well so um important to think about but we also know as we saw last winter in texas that you know fossil fuel grids are also vulnerable to the effects of climate change um okay the last kind of deep dive is into just our urban areas of themselves so urban areas are rapidly expanding as global population grows um people are just increasingly moving to urban areas and we know that as we continue to build this infrastructure out it can also lock us into high emitting systems for decades to come or it could kind of do the opposite but another thing that's really clear in this report is because of the you know intensity and frequency of these climate events that we're seeing we really urgently need to integrate both mitigation to avoid and adaptation to adjust to climate change and withstand its effects and again this is just another place where there can be synergies between you know emissions reductions and and human well-being and even economic benefits so a lot of opportunities there but it is also a really big challenge um another comment on the urban piece um compact and resource efficient urban growth and kind of co-location of jobs and and houses um mixed land use creating again an environment that supports active transit um all of these things could reduce um ghg emissions in cities by a considerable amount compared to business as usual and just like in ar 5 the previous report there's evidence that suggests that population density helps to reduce emissions especially when it comes to commuting but again there's context there's you know broader social trends what are your your social economic status and what are your lifestyle preferences and all of this is going to play a role as well in determining the extent to which that's true for people and i guess i'll just kind of end on on a happy and ann arbor centric note which is that green spaces can also play a role in urban energy mitigation so um we know that they can have cooling effects that reduce the direct energy demand and they can help to you know mitigate water use or reduce storm water runoff and and help with water treatment costs so lots of ways that having these kind of uh integrated green blue and gray infrastructures in cities can can reduce our costs make our cities more resilient um and also have those other numerous health and co-benefits so um you can talk or or go through any of that and i'll stop sharing my screen and there's links to the report all the reports will be referenced at the end as well so thanks everyone thank you very much um i i especially want to recognize edie i know she put a lot of effort into um everything that she's done leading up to this presentation not just the presentation itself but all the work that she's done um with regards to the ipcc report so um do people have comments or questions concerns uh hope despair whatever feelings they want to share it's really remarkable go ahead go ahead go ahead i just want to say it's it's really remarkable that we have the solutions in hand to solve the problem and the costs are not you know they're less than the costs of letting climate change go unchecked this is really a problem with the fossil fuel industry and their power i think but it's really great that in michigan we have numerous uh communities and we have the state really moving forward on climate change and i think that'll make a big difference if we can show in a heartland uh purple state that we can do this it maybe will convince a lot of others that we can do this commissioner colin garcia thank you um thanks for presenting this uh commissioner juno and commissioner peck um it's super informative um and i appreciate the hope that you're presenting here um my just i just have a comment and it has to do with the um the willingness of utilities to really um you know they there's so much that rides on you know the the velocity of their responses to you know transition to electrification um you know not just at a single property level but just you know at it within a small region or a distribution area um and i'm just hoping that that we can we can create something for impacting this sooner rather than later member breaks thanks um i appreciate the sort of summary of this it's good to good to hear it's concise um and i guess it's reassuring to know that in some ways in a policy level that a lot of our policies in the city of ann arbor are pointing us in the right direction i mean we have a lot of issues with funding and different things like that i guess something that just dawned on me that just is relevant for this group um you may or may not know um i think we are likely to be updating our comprehensive land use plan um starting this coming year and certainly the um the elements in it all um currently direct us towards um uh mixed use we are pointing in the direction mixed-use development mini and increased density in some areas but um there's also some some conflict between different elements of our of our land use plans and a need for an update so just wanted to give a heads up to folks here and also folks who are listening to kind of the focus that that's coming um down the pipeline and there's going to be a need to be really thinking about um ensuring that our next plan is aligned land use plan is really aligned with our our climate action goals and so maybe thinking about how osi will help to promote that as well other comments and questions there's little doubt in michigan the bad actor is dt um you know you can talk about line five and enbridge and stuff but it's really dte and i and i think you hit the nail on the head there about the utilities um they're parked they're a big part of the problem and it would be wonderful to think of a way to get them to relent and be an agent of change but the problem with tt as far as i can tell is they're really uh plugged in you know they get a lot of money out of gas natural gas and they want to perpetuate that as long as they possibly can it would also be you know if you look at the governor's uh healthy uh climate plan she wants to get coal phased out faster than bt is presently doing it i think um and god we gotta get out of those cold points it's faster than dta wants to i don't know what we can do about that a quick comment to that uh i don't know if how many of you saw this um a group in detroit it actually is a group that is established to promote um women in management ranks in uh businesses in michigan in southeastern michigan um hosted co-hosted an event um with catherine hey ho and with the chairman and president of dte hailing him as a person who's making pushing dte to make great progress on climate action i actually wrote the president of nature conservancy here in michigan and she called me and we talked for about a half an hour but it's um as as we all know vested interests whether it's fossil fuel or whatever is really problematic in making this transition i had two quick questions i'm wondering if you would be able to comment on what i'm hearing reading seeing is that the likely path that we're on is gonna have us land somewhere between around 2.2 and 2.9 c does that sound right it's hard to say um but yeah i mean if uh things persist somewhere you know up to three degrees i would say yeah it's quite reasonable i mean if you think about what what the political situation is in the united states and the likelihood of getting some kind of climate policy in place that was included in buildback better and what might happen in 2022 and 2024 i mean that's that's really pretty gloomy for me um yeah and i think that's why we really have to focus more i mean i you know i share your gloom uh your your uh despair there but i also think if we could really focus on state-level action in our state and i think we have more to offer than any other state outside maybe of california in terms of showing the path forward california can do it because they have such a a great political majority and they are got a such a good head start and they're so big but we really need to demonstrate that states like ours these really you know essentially purple states um can do the job as well and get a better economy out of it and michigan has a really good advantage in the sense that mobility is our primary industry and that you know it could really could take off like a whole bunch of teslas if it's done right um in the sense that these cars will be marketable uh will be well sold all around the world and what worries me the most is that we'll go so slow that china you know who's making a lot of electric vehicles now will capture those markets you know anyone who's traveled in africa for example knows it's it's japanese cars you know and we need to get our electrified mobility into the marketplace and at an affordable price point so everybody can start to electrify really quickly and that will you know that's a big win for us and they're obviously we have to have renewable energy powering them uh so that's the second thing we have to do and those are both pretty easy to do now at a really affordable cost relative to fossil fuels um so you know there's a real chance for us um to make that move and let's see if we can do it and i think that's so we just need to mobilize somehow in michigan you know if we try and think about the national problem too much you know we end up sort of staring at headlamps and our headlights not getting enough done the states that are in the climate alliance u.s climate alliance have more than half the population of the country and more than half the gdp so you know we can we can we got to really figure out how to keep those projects going when you end up with a non-uh democratic governor say you know so that's a to me that's the number one thing to figure out and if we figure out in michigan again it's not just that we set an example we also maybe could figure out you know the secret sauce that gets introduces bipartisanship and climate action you know people start saying jesus that's the only way to really have a strong economy in the future and the only way to attract talent for industry you know um [Music] and we don't want the old-fashioned industry we want the new industry the things that you know want amazon you know we want those kinds of places in michigan and this could be a way to get that because their employees will want to be here where the cost of living is affordable unlike the east and west coast where um beautiful recreations nearby lots of water and what we have to solve are things like dte thanks and i think as everybody points out every tenth of a degree makes a difference so we shouldn't be giving up commissioner george thank you mr chairman um and thank you uh jonathan and edie for the presentation very informative um yeah i want to make a couple of quick points here um on my last meeting uh here and i appreciate my time here on the energy commission uh but uh you know firstly i agree you know we need to be looking at what are ways we can incentivize a quicker transition around energy i do hope those companies have greater social responsibility to their workers and to their local communities than some companies mention there um given their poor track record with workers uh both amazon and tesla there and it just as a reminder for folks that a lot of those jobs uh in the incumbent industries do pay their workers at a much higher rate than similar work in renewables too so it is important that a just transition does occur and that we do not have a repeat of the de-industrialization that largely happened in this country uh and that hollowed out the middle class um so just as a reminder on that as that conversation moves forward as i depart the commission but i would say of equal value i think it's very important and i've sensed this thread throughout this whole meeting of this climate defeatism uh that i think is very important that we avoid falling into i think you know mr chairman you mentioned just a second ago that every single tenth of a degree does matter i remember uh several years ago now uh four or five years ago uh doing my uh senior uh project on climate change and the projections and i remember the high end of the ipcc's projections uh being you know four and a half degrees so five degrees uh and now we're talking three degrees you know as uh you know three and a half is more of a possible higher end and i think that it is important that we remember that the progress that has been made there has been substantial and yes we have a lot of work left to do but it is important to recognize the progress that has been made so that we can continue to have hope and have the intent and the energy to continue to do the good work because that as it will get harder and the work will be more trying and so forth but it is important that we remain hopeful and optimistic and realize that every 10th degree as you just said does matter and that's uh the the worst case scenarios that were discussed 10 or 20 years ago largely seem hopefully off the table uh the way that things are moving so just i wanted to end on a hopeful note thanks we're going to have you come back and offer a public comment every so often and give us a good pep talk any other comments okay good so uh next point on the agenda is officer elections and liaison to the environmental commission so we have two officers one is chair and the other is vice chair and we also have to collect a liaison to the environmental commission those all take effect um essentially after this meeting but effectively you know next month's meeting so um first of all uh i'd like to open it up for nominations for chair of the commission commissioner garcia as i nominate john mursky you for chair the energy commission are there is there a second and then we'll ask for other nominations second from commissioner cumber and commissioner peck uh any other nominations my folks i make this a good good competition here we like you yeah okay you know you're you put a lot of time into it i do indeed that's really invaluable and you know what you're doing okay um so all those in favor of john bursky me being a chair for another one-year term uh please say i and raise your hand hi okay that looks unanimous other than me and i'll abstain so uh but i accept that outcome and i i appreciate the vote of confidence um so moving on to vice chair can i get a nomination for a vice chair i nominate commissioner calvin garcia as vice chair and i'll second that do we have any other nominations seeing none um all those in favor of commissioner calvin garcia as vice chair please raise your hand and say aye aye looks also unanimous carlene congratulations i look forward to being my partner going forward thanks and then uh liaison to the environmental commission um it's my understanding that you're gonna step down from that and don't want to serve again or are you open to being nominated again i'm open to being nominated again but i'm also interested to see if anybody else is interested so do we have anybody else that's interested in serving on the environmental commission or do we put this way do i have a nomination for the environmental commission liaison i nominate commissioner juno to continue to serve as the environmental liaison and now second seconds so um commissioner mccomber seconded by commissioner peck and commissioner george all those in favor say hi i again you have unanimous vote so it looks like you have the same slate of people representing you going forward in the next year thanks very much the dream team yeah good thing we're not playing basketball at least i'll speak for myself okay so um we might actually beat 8 30 here uh report from osi and news from commissioners yeah i'll share uh i could circulate after this we just sent out a newsletter yesterday so that's the easiest way to get the update for all the things that are happening so i'll make sure everyone has access to that and if you haven't received it it's because you are not subscribed to this sustainability list server at the city of ann arbor and we should probably fix that but i will make sure you will have it a few kind of just housekeeping things i wanted to share our zoom accounts are all being updated for security purposes today uh so you will have a new zoom link that comes forward after this meeting i wanted to get through this meeting and not confuse anyone just to let you know so i'm going to delete the calendar invitations and resend them nothing tragic is happening it's just with the zoo at new zoom link and then uh lastly i wanted to share as we're closing out the fiscal year which feels impossible that july 1 is right around the corner but it is uh we have some funding we have a little bit of funding left in the sustaining ann arbor together grant program and so we're encouraging people if you know of a project that wants to move forward it takes about six weeks to get through all of the paperwork and the review process but the application is really really simple and so it should just take an hour or so for someone to apply for the funding then we just have to go through our internal uh processes to make sure we do diligence on the grant so please let any organizations that you know that might be interested know that we have some funding available it's up to ten thousand dollars to do something in the public space so it can't be on private property um if that property is not open to everyone but it can be anything in the sustainability landscape so pretty creative opportunity uh lots of really good things there but help us we really appreciate if you could help us get the word out and i think i think for just sake of time i'll end by saying we're getting close to 2 000 comments on the seu so please do continue to let your networks know that we're seeking as much feedback as possible and that closes june 30th and then the last thing is save save the date y'all june uh 5th through 11th is 820 week and it is shaping up to be glorious i am really excited about all of the things that are coming from a dance party for the earth that we're happening on that's happening on main street we're working with earth and ales and traverse city and they're doing a climate brew which tastes like crap they tasted it yesterday they said it tastes like funk uh and that's intentional so that it mirrors what climate change is going to do to beer in the in our region we have a local farm to table dinner that's taking place on tuesday night there's all kinds of really fun and interactive ways to engage so i hope we see you and your neighbors out around town june 5th or 11th thanks john thank you i know a lot of people don't like the taste of any beer so hopefully this the taste of this beer is the same as the pure that doesn't appeal to other people but appeals to the rest of us that would not work if you're like this tastes great very good uh updates from commissioners oh i do have one question missy if you may what's um the status of uh all the different acronyms um h-e-s-t-o-m-h-e head head um what the time of market where where where does that stand yeah is it just had or were there others that you wanted to know about too just just just yeah yeah okay home energy disc uh home energy audit disclosure nope head heard home energy rating disclosure that's what it is now it has changed hence the acronym soup of this uh we are uh we're making really good progress on that we've got fabulous feedback from legal on uh the kind of tweaks that we need to go through zach's been working with some realtors to really test that process make sure that we we kind of have the support and i imagine you'll see it soon we we were focusing our outreach at the time on green rental housing just because of kind of uh saturation if you will from the public but we're we're really close that's kind of on its heels great question yeah you'll see it i would imagine sometime in the next few months okay two months uh updates from commissioners just news in general newsworthy items you know you have anything to share and then also work group updates um any update i guess um carlene that would be you if anyone i do have a very quick update uh of happenings with the transportation electrification committee uh the still the ongoing update to the electric vehicle readiness ordinance um the amendments are uh still in being made and and reviewed and modified this is actually all being done inside of amendments to the city's overall parking standards which are going to be significant and i'm not going to go into them at this time um i am it's fairly complicated and i'm probably not the best person to speak to it but inside of that are our changes to the ev readiness organism basically uh requirements for properties to have uh the necessary electrical infrastructure to support eb charging um so the next the current admiration is going to be being presented to the planning commission um later this month the other update is about uh the current project that we're the the transportation electrification committee is working on um and that's basically we are creating the electric vehicle charging chapter for the city standard specifications and our work is still in progress any comments from anyone else okay good we are back to public input so again this is an opportunity for members of the public speak for up to three minutes if you are watching on ctn please call 888.
what can we use that for is it pretty much i mean is it specified for anything in particular no it's not it goes into the general fund so it can be used for any type of expenses okay yeah and i you know again on the signage and that i i you know uh dr hall is as dr cara has has talked about i think this is all part of our our marketing plan um you know natalie and i have had a discussion and she's already begun developing a calendar of certain events that you know we as a district need to put on these signs and you know just an example black history month and celebrating black history month should be consistent um and i agree with you there's an art to using electronic science and so it's it's educating people on that that there is and again i mean just like i said it has to be monitored i mean we have a a beautiful sign at the high school that has had some of the same stuff up there for four or five years and or so they did okay see spring break is no longer um but two hundred eleven thousand you know what i would do with two hundred eleven thousand uh that no no we start that's not enough but we'll start putting it in the bank put it in stocks and building it building it up that was great marketing hey they have a beautiful football stadium okay there are there any other questions for ken on the signage okay number three ken uh the third one is a resolution of baiting the working cash fund uh money of the school district in the amount of six million three hundred and ninety six thousand six oh seven point nine one and this is if you recall a year ago we did the same thing where we abated that fund 3.1 million dollars and transited over to o m and other capital projects to pay for the life safety projects this is we're doing the same thing with this amount and transferring it from the working cash fund over to o m over to capital projects in over in order to pay for the life safety projects that we are doing this summer in my board report i have kind of uh i haven't kind of i've gone through kind of a an accounting of that fund to kind of wrap your head around it so you can kind of see the distribution of funds the fund balances and all of that in essence this money is coming out of the 17.5 million dollars in bonds that were sold in december of 2020.
for various number one we think that it will be more um effective early in the morning when teachers first arrive uh also we feel like it gives us students an opportunity to sleep a little bit in a little bit which we all know that they typically uh research says they perform better when they sleep more in the morning and i think one of the big reasons is one of the biggest problems we have in the afternoon is that student athletes are always hanging around here for almost three hours waiting for sports to start so then and some try to go home sometimes you see kids walking down river road they're trying to go home which is a dangerous situation uh so we just feel like it's in the best interest of the students as well as in the best interest i think of effective professional development so we moved it to the morning instead of the afternoon some it's about the same amount of time i i think we find that we believe that it's going to be better all around for everybody so that's why that changes in there um and so that we that ended up giving us five additional delay openings and then we also added uh to the calendar juneteenth uh day which uh falls on i think i believe june 19th that we haven't had in the last couple of years but that's in the new in the new calendar and then uh i think that was it uh oh columbus day we changed the name to indigenous day mrs fitzgerald yes i don't know who came up with that idea i think it's just awesome that like that a change uh so positive could be made on every level that john spoke of um first of all the teachers at the beginning of the day are probably going to feel a little more welcoming towards their um staff development uh the kids not hanging around for that time every single bit just like with the stamp of the fingers something so great can happen so give that person a bonus anything further go ahead john no that's it oh i'm sorry all those in favor anyone opposed thank you thank you very much okay principal's report principal zielinski please thank you um i did give you a handout of my presentation as well as you have a booklet here that i'm going to review it's the district curriculum accommodation plan so i want to start with that the district curriculum accommodation plan i'm proud to present this this is something that we've been working on this year um having an excuse me having a dcap is a requirement of chapter 71b um we had one but this year what we did is we took a look at this as part of our mtss work and we really kind of worked towards making it a living breathing document the uh it was started with the work of the administrative leadership team we included the faculty council to get some feedback they made a lot of recommendations we went back and looked at it and i think we made it a little bit more dense but it's it's represented and um it's something that um the superintendent and i are very proud of tomorrow is our professional development day and we will be giving the faculty um opportunities to look at this and interact with it and train them a little bit about it so every faculty and staff member will have this document as a guide just a little bit about what the decap is what it is it's for to make sure that all efforts are made for all student needs that are met in the general education setting it assists teachers in meeting the diverse needs of all learners what it's not is a checklist it's not something that anything that a student has to qualify and it's not a deficit model that blames students failure on students or anyone or parents it's really trying to support all teachers and all learners so we'll be going through this so i wanted you to have a copy of it just to see how it's broken down it really talks about udl it talks about the main objectives of a dcap which is resources assessing and accommodating learners and opportunities for teacher collaboration and i just want to point out and thank the superintendent for his support in changing the calendar one of the things that we did do in this calendar is we did add professional development delayed openings and those additional delayed openings are those opportunities for teachers to collaborate so we'll still be having our professional learning but we're also providing space and making time in the schedule for our teachers to be able to talk about students talk about data so we're really excited about that you can see and you can review this and i'll answer any questions at a later date or even later it's all about instructional supports that teachers have that can offer it also identifies behavioral supports as well as it identifies either like social emotional physical structural it's grouped a lot of the information is the same but just like we want for our learners in the classroom this document it depending on how you are as a learner as a teacher you might want to look at them by support you might want to look at them by udl you might even want to look at them by category um so this is our dcap again i'm super excited i'm excited to share it with our staff tomorrow this is something that will be on our website for all families to see and it's something that we'll be looking for all of our teachers to be using when they have students that are not succeeding in the general education classroom yes i do not know who all served on putting this together but this is a document to be proud of and it's sure on quick glance looks like it's totally usable this is wonderful thank you i'll let you know after tomorrow i also want to let everyone know that this is our school climate survey time tomorrow and we're also doing our panorama school climate survey this is a survey that we started back in 2018 we had two years of data and then when we went out on the pandemic we did use panorama but we used it for collecting data and feedback from parents and students on remote learning so we consider this year a baseline what we want this year to be as baseline data on all of our stakeholders in terms of school climate so we've been sending this out through social media we let parents know we let teachers know we let students know that tomorrow the survey is open there's three things categories that the school climate really focuses on and i think it's very timely right now especially when we talk about school safety it's all about the learning environment our school climate how safe do students and teachers and families feel with our students here at glts and it's also about how students teachers and families feel like they belong or connect to our school so students will be taking this brief survey i think it's 30 questions it's available in english and spanish they'll be taking that tomorrow period one teachers can start to take it tomorrow they have in one week to take it uh families will be emailed the survey and they have also one week so we'll be keeping the surveys open until the 18th and after that we'll be using this data as part of to look at moving forward with our sel work as well as our school improvement plan and finally i did want to highlight our accepted students day which was on last saturday and it was really exciting we hadn't done it in person for three years so again we kind of took a step back and had to remember how to do it but we had the pack was filled we had as i said 375 students and families there we had a parent information session we had assessment we had school tours we had a book fair for summer reading and many many students engaged in learning about activities in sports i got several emails from families that you know were impressed and excited to join the school and we'll be doing a follow-up session so that is what i have for this month uh i just want to speak to the items that uh sue spoke about today first the decap work that was been going on throughout the year which was led by susan and some of our administrative educational leaders a lot of effort went into because of how critical and how important this work is it's not only the document but the strategies and the work that's going to happen as a result of what they did to put this together we always had a decap but we didn't emphasize its importance as much as we have this year and the fact that this work happened in the quality of the the material that's in this document is exceptional and the thought of how each and every student would benefit from the quality of the work that was done with this is exceptional and the other piece i do want to recognize uh the work that cassandra did in helping uh work closely with the team to develop the layout and the design of this particular document just the quality of the document itself speaks to how important it is and makes people want to work with it just to hold it in your hands and look and go through it it's so it's so well laid out and designed makes it easy to follow and makes it easy to understand uh each aspect of the accommodation plan so that that piece is very important and just to highlight the work that was done there as well so a team effort uh that will make a difference for students not only students but teachers and helping them do their their work and then the impact they'll have on student learning i think is will be will be seen in the future and and also supports our mts s work at a very high level it just gives seriousness to all the hard work that's been done throughout the year with professional development with the leaders who have been doing it um and then our event that happened on saturday in all the years uh particularly since the last 12 years that i've been in in this row is by far was the most exceptional day for what we call accept accept student day by far and thank you to all the staff who gave up their saturday and and the hard work beforehand uh particularly from the leadership team and then teachers and others who uh played a role in and make and making it so successful and a great thank you to them vivian i to agree that this survey um is um essential i'm not sure do we do this every year um and if not i think that it would be great to have this done every year um and will we be able to get a copy of the results um from this survey um thank you so yes so we started the panorama surveys i want to say around so we started them we had one year of data that we had families surveyed then we went out with the pandemic and so when we were out with the pandemic we did use panorama but what we did was we surveyed students and families about remote learning so i consider this the superintendent i talked we consider this year kind of our baseline for school climate right so this is going to be our year one whatever the results are that tells us where we where we are and where we need to go so we would be sharing the results with all stakeholders so the results the um panorama is a you know a large company and what they do is they have norm reference results so we'll be able to compare and see what our results are can compared to um even say like whether what type of school it is and everything so um you know we will we'll be sharing that and it is a quick turnaround but what we want to do is we want to have these results for creating and developing our school improvement plan whatever they may be and i'm hoping to with the work with our sel team that they can also look at this and say where are we and we want to bring students and families into the work as well and i just also want to recognize jacqueline hunter she's our instructional technology person and she actually assisted with this document as well as the leadership team and faculty council also in terms of the survey i gave you a handout and that qr code that you saw any we sent this informational link to all families so it kind of explains because sometimes when you say the word school climate unless you're kind of in a school like it's a weird climate and culture not an education it's kind of a strange song so we kind of sent it out in english and spanish that really explains like what we mean when we ask for a school climate survey anything further you got set oh okay all right moving on uh oh i'm sorry francis thank you um yeah so the emails went out yesterday because i got one as a parent um for the thing and and you're right it is a funky dynamic between climate and culture um so one and once again kudos to everybody that put this together it is as we all know is working on the state level um but a lot of very few districts are looking at this and really putting this to practice so the doing the pd in the morning for the staff as compared to the evening and having those students that participate in sports will play a big role um for student success um i haven't had a chance to really look at dive into this but you know i'm going to be diving into this and we'll have a much deeper conversation later on but thank you for everybody to um that participate in putting all this together anything further ladies and gentlemen thank you for bringing it up um and as for the thing on saturday i saw and i was at a couple of places afterwards where parents were just coming back like oh um and some of this their younger children are not looking at what they do to get into the school based on coming into another tour i mean doing that tool for parents and getting back to that function plays a big success as for the kids and more inviting so i want to thank everybody that was also involved in that because it does play a big role when we have our staff buying in and feeling part of the process anything further ladies and gentlemen okay uh moving on to uh district committee priorities none policies so we'll need to vote uh you're gonna need a motion on accepting section b bba school committee members qualifications and section b b b b i think there's another b too school committee uh oath of office you have a motion on those please for a second i'm sorry i didn't hear you excuse me is there no attachment on it that's why i have said second for discussion it was uh to kind of verify if we're proving if we're um if the request to approve is to approve as um how it currently is stated um how the policy is currently stated or are there any changes being made um or have been made to which we you're requiring the approval for today so did you not get the documents in your packet okay so why don't we table it until next meeting sure and we'll put it in the next package next uh meetings packet who moved that uh maryland you take your take your militia off okay this time the chair will accept the motion to to table uh section b the second second discussion yes uh francis probably no changes but i can't say that mrs uh excuse me one second mrs fitzero yes going back maybe more than a year ago when we decided we would do these a section at a time that we would only get um things attached if there were changes and it would show what the old part was and therefore then what the new part was that is my recollection from at least a year ago so i'm i would then assume this there weren't any but i have no problems tabling it until the next meeting just to make sure that there are no changes in it john did you have something you wanted to say this one to save uh i didn't realize there weren't anything in the packet but i i do feel like there should be whether there's changes or not just so that you may want to respond to whatever the whatever the current uh policy is um so i think in the future we'll make sure there's whatever the current policy is to make sure you get it in your packet all right mrs fitzgerald yes um if we're through with that no we're not we're not through with it i had one more thing on the oh okay yeah we're not so anything further on this matter all those in favor anyone opposed mrs fischero yes um i know people make fun of me for all my proofreading and everything but under old business or at least something that happened a little earlier today in our report on the acceptances for application under the city of lawrence and please correct me if i'm wrong there are three schools that are listed that are not in lawrence one is the marsh grammar school which i believe is in methuen and then the other one is st michael school which i believe is in north andover and then saint monica school also in methuen so i think those two for methuen should be listed uh in methuen and the same thing with saint michael's from north andover and so it's not a big deal but it's me and my proofreading okay julie noted okay new business no table matters oh i'm sorry yes really you know me i don't know whether to address certain things on their new business or future agenda items so i'll just insert myself wherever i deem it's fixed um so in not this last meeting that we've had but the previous one i believe i had requested i've requested under future agenda items two to three things one of them was being the the minute to which the school committee had approved the the solution of the graphics program um and i you know this is already our second meeting since i have requested that to which i'm not seeing it under old business i'm not seeing it under new business i'm not even seeing it under table matters the second item i believe i had requested was regarding we were addressing the cte teachers and the ratio um kind of justifying the ratio of students and why we have a certain number of instructors in certain uh career technical programs as opposed to others where there's only two to three shop teachers and um i'm not you know i just wanted to know what the status of that you know that data um if we're if we're going to address that because i believe i really wanted to review those numbers before even approving the budget to which you know with the budget we're approving um a certain number of teachers that we are hiring and i would i wanted to have some clarity once again as to why is it that um some of these shops have four to five you know teachers versus others with potentially the same number of students have two to three um it was just for me to gain some understanding um and i can't quite remember what the third item that i had requested but going forward if any member is requesting that you know for something to be added to the agenda if there's somehow some way that we could leave it because i can't keep up with certain things that i ask unless i'm looking back at the minutes um and if i'm not looking at it then it just goes unaddressed okay we can make sure uh superintendent we can make sure that uh by the next meeting that uh vivian gets that uh that information or all of us get that information i'm not sure yeah go ahead john i can follow up with someone well first of all graphics wasn't brought to the committee for a vote because the committee doesn't decide when we close programs and when we open programs that's not a vote that the committee would typically take we did it by mistake once but in checking with the attorney um because we did not bring it to the committee for a vote and then the other thing is as far as the cte staff in your budget you got a copy of each department and how many teachers were in those departments in our last budget report you had requested a list of personnel i think maryland requested that so you got that in that in that report and many times there are different the criteria for how many teachers are in a particular program isn't always based on there are a lot of rationales or reasons why one program may have two instructors another program may have four instructors sometimes it's the number of students in a particular program sometimes it's because one year we may have a program that has really high numbers and the number may fluctuate and go down the following year but we don't cut it when the numbers may fluctuate up and down we don't cut and add instructors in that way all the time and then other reasons that you may have different instructions based on the number of students is the uh the type of content that's being taught may require to have more instructors if we're in an environment where there's a lot of equipment or machinery may require more instructors than another department where you may have a program where the students are in a confined classroom area without a lot of dangerous equipment where you can have higher numbers with less instructors and so you may have less instructors at times based on that and so we looked at we look at a lot of factors also we look at the projection for growth within a program sometimes newer programs take time to to grow and so you'll see those numbers are a lot smaller and then over time they start to grow a good example of that is when we started hvac the first three years there was two or three kids in the program today we have per you know taking the program today every year the program is filled to capacity uh so um that has an impact on the number of of uh instructors as well i can give you the numbers i can re-submit to you the numbers of each program but that decision is based on each program i have a meeting with each of the departments to take a look at when we're doing the budget to take a look at personnel and the need for whether there should be three or four instructors in a particular program and based on some of their recommendations and the trends that are going on within that department department will drive the amount of students i mean amount of instructors francis so two questions one um how is the breakdown between grades is one teacher teaching all four grades or is we have different instructors for each each shop grade we don't no one instructor doesn't typically teach one grade uh we do have more than one instructor in each shop sometimes you may have two instructors teaching four grades can we break it depends on how many students now we break some we may break the class all the juniors in one week all the seniors on the other and so then you need one instructor to teach uh in that case where you can have one instructors the same instructor teaches the juniors and also teaches a senior so instead of four we may have three instructors in that particular program uh where you have a full class uh sophomores we may split that half the sophomores in one week half the other week and then you have an instruct freshman instructor so in a case like that you may have three instructors you may have two instructors if in the case where you may end up with a freshman and then we may have in some cases you may have all sophomores in one week then you may have juniors and seniors in the other week so one instructor can teach 10th grade one week then the next week they can teach 11th and 12th grade if the numbers are smaller in together in one program depending on the program depending how the curriculum is broken up where it can be a two-year curriculum where they uh they rotate the curriculum uh it's a two-year curriculum so the 11th graders and the 12th graders have the same curriculum and then the following year they all get the next curriculum the same uh process of the continued uh content area uh curriculum uh so it's scaffolded over two years instead of one year uh and broken down that way so for various reasons so you in particular when you have a classroom situation you may have two grade levels in in one program uh at some at some points if you have low numbers uh an instructor can teach both grades okay that's not uncommon and has happened in the past francis okay and then the other thing he just brought up that you don't come to the committee when you're closing programs and because that's something that the committee should definitely know because one we if we deal with the community so when communities are coming up to us and saying this program was just closed and we're finding out third hand it makes us look incompetent because we weren't even aware of it and we should be those so those are things that especially because we also do the thing with making putting the budget together approving the budget for for everything so to me personally i would like to know when a program is on being closed or considered for being closed because we have the plan of course and i get it that that program might the numbers might have declined of student interest or the the um employer um market the job market might have also declined i get those things but those are the definite stuff that should be coming to us for we could be aware of it i don't think we did not have the committee vote on closing uh graphics but we've had number one this year we've had one instructor in the program uh and at in our advisory meetings and in other conversations i've had uh have stated that we've had particular issues with graphics in terms of the numbers and the the value in terms of job market has been a problem so we didn't feel as though the job market was strong and that was one of the reasons considering uh the closing of the program as well as the fact that we hadn't put any money in the budget at all particularly in this year's budget uh as you looked at the budget you would have saw that there was no money in h to fund hvac because we know we were not running hvac this upcoming year but we've had over the last three years conversations with the committee dealing with some of those problems i may not have specifically uh said that the program was actually closed as we can continue to consider whether to close or keep it open or keep moving it forward but a final decision was made when we built the budget to close the program i mean i'm sorry uh graphics yeah i'm sorry graphics graphics yeah that's that's a thriving program why are we trying why that graphics program was being closed to our students not of available haven't put any students in that they have seniors that's all they have this year seniors they have no juniors or sophomores we haven't transferred kids into that stu into that program i believe they have seven students in the program this year because i had a parent reach out to me about her senior that's supposed to be graduating that has doesn't have a shop attached to his diploma because some issues which i told her to make an appointment with yourself and um and the principal to see what what the issue um where the mishap happened so if hers and i was in at the time this morning i wasn't aware that graphic was being had been dissolved if if that student came into the program her junior year she would still be eligible for a certificate if she completed all her junior hours and her senior hours i don't know if she transferred in junior year or she transferred in sophomore year i'm not aware but nobody transferred in senior year no one transferred in this year mrs fitzgerald oh i thought that you raised your hand sorry vivian so just for clarity purposes in our budget i do see that we have a graphics instruction for this coming school year um is that accurate oh no it's not on sorry the graphics is in the budget are there instructions this is uh you know i believe this is what you mentioned regarding the breakdown they're showing an instructor fiscal year 2020 i think an instructor in that and the that's in the doc document that we put together for instructors you know that would have been in an error if we look in the actual budget you'll see that there isn't any funds for graphics in the actual budget that document i think was copied from the year before because we had so inadvertently they didn't remove that instructor okay in that particular document i think i think that all that information a lot of that was transferred from the year before that particular document and so um it might have not been removed from that particular document it could be my error because i am seeing uh to the far right a column where it says zero dollars but i'm looking that graphics instruction um i'm seeing the 98 000 so i'm wondering like who you know for dissolving the program was that the year before no it's under the 2023 but maybe like i said it's a far right column where it does say zero dollars but it's not like these columns have any subheading uh title to it i think that's 22 yeah that would have been 22 budget the one to the far right is the 23 budget that's the way i'm i'm not looking at the document you're looking at but okay yes it was my mistake um so just uh i guess to um make my my state my closing statement regarding this particular subject since i was the one who had brought up the whole graphics program and i heard what you said and i understand regarding the reasonings why when i had requested for this to be added to the agenda although you have your you know your answers in regards to the fact that you didn't need the the school committee's approval um just that alone had i had you reached out to me or addressed me letting me know you know this is the reason why um but i feel like sometimes i'm either ignored or i'm just left out not knowing why certain things are not being addressed uh the same thing goes for when i had requested regarding the breakdown of uh you know the the shop teachers and students and kind of getting an understanding as to the justification of why certain shops have a certain number of teachers again you had your reasonings but you know i i didn't i didn't know what that was uh hence the fact that i'm i'm bringing it up in this meeting excuse me anything further did you all sit down okay so do you still want those numbers vivian on the uh breakdowns i wanted a kind of like a justification regarding the breakdowns as to why some shops have a certain number well my suggestion is we you get you get the breakdown you pick out the shops that you're concerned with rather than go through all 19 uh career areas you get the ones that you're concerned with and then you can answer those particular four or five six or however many that's fair enough okay that's fair enough can we get her those numbers john okay all right uh moving on then uh for reason uh resignations i see none uh leave of absence i see none retirement so mr ross ross bennett custodian effective uh retiring effective june 30th 2012 he's not going to stay in maryland he's not going to stay but i would be remiss if i didn't speak about um being very happy that ross is able to retire but sad for us i i can't think of a custodian with more loyalty he's a rigid graduate for status he is exceptional in his detail to cleanliness pride everything he's exactly what you would want in a worker and i hope whoever is taking his place fills those very large shoes so congratulations to ross thank you and we're all going to miss his work ethic okay appointments i don't see any uh job postings uh we have plenty uh john we're going to do one at a time okay please first one is summer reggie's recovery some summer reggie's this is an annual position up to three i mean some are reggie recovery it's an annual position up to three english teachers up to three math teachers up to three science teachers up to three history teachers up to three special ed teachers to provide instruction for student credit recovery in academic courses one facilitator one nurse two pair of professionals teachers five thousand dollar stipend two pair of professionals two thousand seven hundred fifty dollar stipend this is grant funded it goes from july 11 to august fourth four hours of instruction monday through thursday 7 30 to 12 30 with an hour for prep can i have a motion on that please discussion all those in favor anyone opposed freshman 101 annual position freshman 101 annual position one facilitator up to two english teachers up to two math teachers up to one sel study skills instructor up to two paraprofessionals one from special education and one from ell teachers at five thousand dollar stipend paraprofessionals at two thousand seven hundred fifty dollars title one stipends uh goes from july 11th to august four fourth monday through thursday eight to twelve motion please yes discussion please all those in favor anyone opposed english learning transition support annual position please up to two pair professionals to coordinate incoming freshman records update current student records and work with families to ensure accurate student information in alleviation software up to ten hours each week per contract title three stipend uh summer 2022 motion please second okay any discussion all those in favor does anyone oppose english learning development curriculum development english language development curriculum development annual position review and revised english english language development curriculum mapping and developing a math science unit for eld up to five teachers up to 10 hours each hourly rate 35 dollars june through august 2022 title three stipend motion [Music] discussion all those in favor anyone opposed el summer program eel summer program annual position up to four teachers and four paraprofessionals to support el summer programming teachers five thousand dollar stipend paraprofessionals two thousand seven hundred and fifty dollar stipend july eleventh through august fourth so monday through thursday so move the second discussion all those a favor they want to pose a certified special education teacher uh and paraprofessional for summer school uh annual position up to five teachers one per week of summer school teachers may teach more than one week up to five paraprofessionals one week of summer school may provide support for more than one week stipend for teachers 1 250 per week 18 teaching hours 3 prep hours stipend for paraprofessionals 687.50 june 28th to july 29th uh 252 grant funded motion please mr uh hayden uh discussion all those in favor aye one opposed summer reading support annual position for local 1707 contract up to three teachers or paraprofessionals to support summer reading up to five hours each summer 2022.
so keep the momentum going love to hear that yeah absolutely and thank kate thank you for coming to graduation last week that was wonderful thank you for the invitation i mean it's phenomenal the work that you're doing to to make those connections and to build advocates in the community so i really appreciate that hopefully some of you can make it out on saturday as well yeah i'll be i should be clearing cleared by then so i'm very good hoping to get there myself i'll be back though yeah all right um well anything else all right um i'll entertain a motion to adjourn then don't move thank you al regards to mr meat i will tell him i will tell him um gladys i'm assuming you might be a second on that is that okay and all those in favor please hi i'm muted i'm sorry that's okay awesome thank you so much and thank you for taking notes this evening i appreciate it hey i'll check in with you tomorrow after i talk with kim that'd be great thank you dr selig talk to me dr silva
but it says that classroom modernization and front office will begin on month six but we said that the classroom modernization in front office will require dsa approval but but underground utilities will not require dsa approval so i'm just curious why why we are projecting that it will take 12 months to start underground utilities and and but that will take six months to start where did we come up with those those how do we come up with those numbers yes so underground utilities uh it's gonna take longer you can't have students around because you're gonna have to break up you're gonna have to wait another 12 months till next summer but that's what that represents so if we started today once you say hey go for it then we say okay next summer we can't break ground until next summer because you can't have students around when you're breaking ground for underground so that's what that just sorry just that i understand but i see that it spans 12 months but because it spans 12 months there there is work that is going to take place while there are students on campus anyhow yeah so that what they would do is they would basic the the construction where you would be out of the student area during school time and you would take care of those areas where you would have student traffic during the summer that make sense you'd have to phase that and plan it out but you're going to do most of your underground where students would be on the playground stuff like that during that summer those summer months and then everything else would be construction fencing you take care of the rest of the campus for president what we could do is once we have the awarded bids we can update this chart um from the date that the chart um the contract was awarded i gave you an actual start date that'd be super helpful yeah awesome no problem and then also as we as we now move forward assuming that there are no other questions in regards to prior commitments and we move forward for clarity we had said that we would discuss in great detail prior commitments and we said that we would discuss in great detail some of the azusa high school items we did not say that we would discuss in great detail now the safety related items is is there a is there a change in in mind on that is there is there a desire to look at the safety items or is there desire to move to the to the high school for recommendation i would like to start at azusa high school because i know that's a priority i mean safety is also priority also but so we can go in sequence okay any others okay so we'll go ahead we will move to azusa high school and we'll determine after that uh what else we'll look i hope that will be page 23.
788-0099 or 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id [Music] 937 six seven five one six eight one nine this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hands one by one using the last three digits of your phone number and in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone and you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area mute any background noises and finally state your name address at the beginning of your comments all our ending in five three four good evening this is tom stallberg calling from 1202 traverse street in lowertown in ann arbor uh i am a landlord and participated in the green rental housing task force uh so i want to throw a couple thoughts out there there were some good comments made about that i really look forward to the results of the dry run to see you know anything you put down on paper you got to test it out and see how it's working and there's always going to be some things that shake out after that so i'm looking forward to the results of that um in terms of the comments about uh this being mandatory and the ability for maybe carrot or versus sticks uh it is really interesting this this is gonna be mandatory we we do not have a right to rent our our property out so we have to meet the housing code uh and every two and a half years we have to get a new certificate of compliance uh otherwise we cannot rent that property out um so there's that's good in terms of uh we're gonna have to perform we're gonna it's definitely gonna make us work uh i do wanna throw on a couple things just for thought uh right now there are labor issues and this works on both sides the city is behind uninspecting property because again labor shortage uh and for us i'm a relatively small landlord my company manages less than 20 buildings and some duplexes so total units is maybe a couple dozen and there's just two of us we're a small company so we have to hire the labor so i know right now it's hard for us to get labor when we want to do something and and nobody's going to be surprised to hear that uh i don't want sympathy i'm not whining i'm running a business it's my job to figure it out it's my job to comply with the rules that's business but just from a practical standpoint we are looking at an interesting labor market let's say that so i hope that that's uh factored in when people figure out uh you know what the final rules are going to be that it is going to be mandatory uh just to throw something out there as an example we want to upgrade a gas dryer to an electric dryer well we gotta hire an electrician to do the electrical work um if we're upgrading say to uh from gas water gears to electric water heaters we might need to update the panel or at least put in a new sub-panel uh so just the backlog and getting the electrician to do that uh so i'm not against complaining just putting some practicalities out there i think it should be mandatory i think we need that push to make sure we get there but i hope that there's some leniency if it's not looking like uh that we're everybody's able to make it it's one thing to say that we should should do it and it's mandatory to do it but uh the penalty for us of not making that score is we don't get to rent our house out at all so it's an all or nothing a little tough on the penalty side so maybe that could be looked at thank you for your attention thank you for your insights caller ending in 134 ken garber come on in thank you dr staltz and chair mursky ken garber again i'm calling with a local building electrification update last thursday city council unanimously approved a 12-year tax abatement for the proposed sartorius research industrial building off ellsworth road this is a good project in many ways but it's going to burn gas for heat sartorius modeled its building energy use intensity at 250 kilobtus per square foot per year from that one can calculate greenhouse gas emissions which i calculate come to 4160 metric tons co2 equivalent emissions annually from burning natural gas for perspective the city's 3.2 megawatt solar city facilities initiative which will cost the city 6.6 million dollars will save seven hundred five metric tons from being emitted and the two plus megawatts installed so far through solarize will save another 1900 metric tons that's 4 600 tons annual emission savings total so at 4 160 tons the sartorius emissions this one building will almost completely wipe out the emissions gains from solar city facilities and solarize combined so faster than we're putting up solar panels we're destroying our gains by approving gas burning buildings sartorius says it had to go with gas because of the building type um and it is harder to do but i believe in the end it was a choice the planning commission just approved two more projects with gas the maple cove two apartments at miller and maple and condos at 212 miller the process has become ritualized a commissioner asks the developer to go all electric or at least install induction cooktops the developer says maybe they'll think about it staff states that the project complies with all laws and ordinances and it's then approved this is not planning commission's fault we have no policy that addresses gas in new construction the iecc zero code appendix even if it passes in michigan won't go into effect for at least two years doesn't exclude gas and doesn't apply to low-rise residential we badly need more housing in ann arbor but it has to be all-electric otherwise we're locking in greenhouse gas emissions for the rest of the century these buildings make initiatives like ev charging green rental housing energy concierge the seu solarize etc feel like exercises in futility next up is the village 564 homes town homes and apartments on 59 acres off duverin road if the village goes with gas i calculate it will generate 7 300 metric tons co2 equivalent emissions a year i don't think it's overstating things to say this would be fatal to our 820 goals the city should hold the line and insist the village put in heat bumps not furnaces this project needs rezoning which is discretionary that means the city has leverage will it use that leverage tune in when this project hits planning commission and then city council thanks thank you for your comments and i encourage you to keep on providing them and holding us holding our feet to the fire i might also just mention if i may um we're building a lot of tall buildings and building in in ann arbor there's all you need to do is go down around campus and go downtown and all those buildings that we're building including cannibal housing commission buildings are using concrete and structural steel and those have very high embodied energy and so each and every one of these decisions are decisions that are locking us in to emissions for many many years and even if the building is all electric uh and is powered by renewable energy the emissions in these tall buildings are going to the embodied emissions in these buildings is going to be greater than the operational emissions over the next 20 years so these are the the critical 20 years that we keep on talking about and one by one we are stuck into making decisions that are really making it more and more difficult for us to meet our a20 targets so thanks hello thank you for allowing me that editorial comment um also a public comment i guess you could say that takes us to the last point on our agenda which is items for the next agenda and our next meeting is on june 14th i believe it is and um missy and carlene i don't think we have a particularly packed agenda in fact i'm not even sure if we have anything other than maybe some updates on some of the things that we've been talking about possibly um so we are wide open uh we will certainly missy carlene and i will look at the list of topics that we established in january and uh see if we can arrange for some of those to be presented or discussed um but we are certainly appreciative of any ideas or suggestions any of you have so please raise them now um or if not then get with missy carlene and me after the meeting anytime and presumably preferably i should say sooner rather than later um so that we can get people on board and get their presentation ready and be ready and willing to go a month from now any anybody have any particular guidance for us or any suggestions on agenda items i'm going to assign you all homework then to scratch your heads and see if you can come up with something and um let us know okay so that is it um it is 8 19 p.m and um as chair i declare this meeting adjourned thank you for your time this evening and thank you for your service again um robert in particular i guess you're the only one that's present tonight we thank you very much again and best of luck you
um if you recall we have we were taking 6.1 million dollars and just living in there and then you'll see by my report we divided up the rest of that money um into either uh the purchase of the verville property the abatement or the transfer that we did last year the current transfer and then there's still going to be an additional 1 million dollars left in that fund for use of life safety projects because what i will be doing after this summer then is doing a assessment to make sure that we have all of our life safety projects done and if not we have additional money left that we can finish off the rest of them and everything you'll all you'll also see in my report the working cash fund balance i've worked that through since the end of so that after this transfer and i'm projecting at the end of this fiscal year there's still going to be a balance in that fund of almost 17 million dollars 16 million 888 251.09 so that money is still in there and that has been that will remain in there some of that is from the sale of bonds um some of that is disrupted from property taxes and some other things so so that is all in there so there's an accounting that took place there so i just wanted to share that with you but uh this money is being taken out in order to pay for some of the projects i don't know if anyone had any questions about that yeah so the 6.3 million we're talking about is just specifically for crete balmoral and csk's life safety it's part of our what we talked about yes yes okay okay okay next next uh the next five actually i i you know unless people have you know specific questions i'd be happy to answer them they're all the same they're actually certificates of payment for all the projects that are being done now um because every school is really except for l and dlc are put together but all the schools are separate projects so those are certificates of payments for all of the projects that are going on including number eight on this list is a certificate of payment in the amount of 931 185 to omega for the demolition of the sixth grade center in dome so that's part of the work that they have done already they of course are national police are um but that's for their part of the work that they're doing their total contract is a little over 1.2 million so there's still about 300 000 in work that still needs to be done there so um all of those payments are certificates of payments that have been certified by our architects so so items four five six and seven are basically summer 2022 work yes they are all summer 2022 where the csk crete and balmoral are the preparation for next year's ac and talala is the start of this year's ac right yes okay so ken on on the omega-3 payment yes um what do they have left to complete and does the monies remaining in the budget that haven't been paid out yet does that capture the work around the remediation around the oil tank i believe it does i believe in the budget um it's not included in the 1.2 million but we do have funds set aside when we budgeted and for contingency money so that money is already in the budget and we have it you know in the budget so so that is an issue the work that they still need to complete we were waiting for one other test sample of the underground storage tank not the oil tank but there was a gasoline tank under the maintenance um shop that had to be removed and um so we're waiting for those test results we've got some preliminary ones and you know when they when they kind of do this they did this and it looks like there was a little bit of seepage but it was minor so there'll have to be some excavation that's taking place but we feel uh confident that we've got the money in the budget to do that okay for the for this week's fyi could you kind of put together a punch list if you will what's left to be done there sure on that project okay yep that'd be helpful all right all right you finished uh nelson yep okay just kind of piggybacking somewhat off of nelson's question with remaining work at the sixth grade center in the dome site we were looking to do a final grade and put some grass out there so i haven't personally looked at the site and i don't know where we are with that so are we still going down that road or you know are we looking to do our rsvp okay and if so estimated costs and where are we going to get that money from if you have any searching out there go ahead you know all of the grading and everything mr brown is all included in the bid specifications that that's the responsibility of the contractor so all of that final grading um and seating is required by the contractor so there's no additional cost for that so that's in that 1.2 million yes yes sir yes well i think the the original contract that we approved was for 1.5 correct uh wasn't it something no i believe the original contract with the credit was only 1.2 million the budget itself is 1.5 because that includes all the fees and everything okay so okay so it's all within the 1.2 million contract that we approved yes the grading and the you know final grade and the seating for grass and all that is all included in the 1.2 million okay do we have an estimated date when the final grading and seating is going to be done because i would not like the seating to be done in the middle of summer and no we're not going to have sprinklers out yeah there can i can work with the contractor to postpone that i know the contractor has said to us his original plan was to be done around august first with all stuff but again i can hold up on this evening and uh ask them to come back and see it in the fall and probably do just you know not do they can do a rough grade now but then you know before they see they can always you know um you know rake it and all of that stuff and then do a final seed in the fall so it takes better there's more moisture okay sounds good thanks ken yep i hope you feel better thank you any other questions for ken okay next up old business is anyone have any old business yeah i had a question um i know i see mr wartell in the back here and he's waited very patiently all the way down to item number seven um i know that we had our last hearing and we all talked about it but i guess the question is we're supposed to vote on this next tuesday but would be really nice to see what a day looks like and what the plan is for mec and how that's going to function because i think a lot of us that were here struggled with how does that look and what's that going to pertain so and i don't know if you asked mr wartell to be part of that or not but well actually uh miss riley can kind of address that i think she kind of mentioned that in our fyi but uh want to make sure that you know she can address that now um earlier weeks ago months ago ms raleigh had met together with quite a few staff members administrators as well to map out what it would look like next year for some of our students ms riley uh if you can come to the microphone that way our our friends at home it's for some of the parents yeah the taxpayers the staff you know everybody let alone us i think everybody wants to know good evening everyone yes good evening can you hear me okay so yes um i have the opportunity to meet with uh administration from nbc as well as administration from cremoni high school including the counselors and we were trying to come up with a schedule as to what a day in the life would look like if we were to move nbc to the high school so basically the plan is we'll have three classes for next year if we make this move one would be for the general air population of nbc for the high school one would be for the middle school if we have middle schools students come over there and one would be for special education students who need to be moved there right now just to let you know it is may of course and the special education department they're still having meetings to determine where those students will be placed if they would be placed at mec or out placement so with those three classes that we have we developed a bell schedule that nbc students would start after the traditional high school students start and they would leave prior to the student start the students leaving during the day so as they have classes now part face to face as well as part of the day where they have online it would still be the same so they will have live face-to-face english and then the other courses as of now will be online with what's the name of the program plato with plato as they actually currently do right now they have two different periods in which they'll be able to actually have gym classes in the gym room when the high school is not there one has been i believe the hot the hero period and the other being the knife period so right now we're still playing around with the schedule but we want to make it so that they actually as much as possible have their day similar to what it is currently in the building at mec so will they have gym you said twice two opportunities two opportunities to have gym yes and they would eat lunch in the classroom much like how they do now at mec because they don't have a cafeteria correct but it's not functioning yes so that you okay so that's the question it's the lead in their classroom i guess the other question is i think it mec if there's somewhat of an issue and you have a cool down period do we have a place for that just because sometimes and especially moving forward um you know the mental stability of the students let alone step it's changing so we need to make sure that we're prepared for them right so in terms of a cool down period as we all know the high school space is very very limited but we are still trying to make adjustments so that we can have certain things in place like that they do have cool down spaces currently in the high school and perhaps we may be able to utilize that but again we're still not quite done with planning the complete program that we'll have if we choose to go there but we do have um like i said the day plan for what it would look like because we don't want to make it so it's so much different we want to make sure that we still have something similar to what they already have so it's not too many changes much like how they have the pbis program already at the school the the uh teacher the tier the tier one and tier two coach have already planned the maps for next year as to what the activities will be so we're trying to make sure that the adjustment is as the flow of the adjustment is as appropriate as possible and we want to make sure these kids don't feel like they're completely out of place we want to try to make sure that they'll adjust as well as they can okay i'm going to be blunt we're trying to do this we're thinking about this we hope to do that how are we supposed to vote on that next week and feel like we voted true to our kids and our educators i don't want to point to one person here but you didn't convince me anything is set for these students going over to mec we don't know if we can do this we don't know this we're trying for this you're not saying this is happening this is happening this is happening well we do have the bail schedule okay and we do have the space i i don't you're saying we're trying to get a cool down we're trying to do this i can't in in my heart vote on something that we don't have answers to and i'll tell you now the teachers are contacting me by the droves and i don't know if anybody else is getting this they're terribly concerned about all the discipline issues we're putting back in the classroom because all they're doing dealing with is discipline issues because we don't use mec for discipline issues anymore so they're in gen ed and they're spending more time dealing with that than they are being able to teach and now we're telling them we're giving these three special classes to mec there's a lot of issues going on here and i think they need to be addressed i don't feel comfortable right now that we have a plan a b and c put together and we need a b and c in order to make this move well to start with what you just said discipline starts in the classroom so some of the reasons why they may be actually spending more time with discipline is because we do have wall-to-wall pbis at this district but in order to make sure that that flows well teachers have to teach those plans now we've had reports from administrators in which teachers haven't even bothered to open up the email to see what those plans are so they can teach those expectations for the day so we really truly have been doing our best due diligence to partner and make sure that we are actually doing exactly what we say that we were going to do in a strategic plan by making sure that we collectively are doing our parts is not an administrative thing it's not a teacher think it's not a district office thing it's a partner thing and if everybody is not doing their part we will have problems well unfortunately i think the teachers see it totally different because they're seeing lots lots of issues and they say they talk to the administrators i have been going out to the schools i'm witnessing some of this um it's a tough tough draw out there right now for our teachers and i get it that's across the board but i think that you know this mec sounds like a great plan but already there's a lot of teachers who feel like all of a sudden now here we're going to get dumped on again we say only five kids are going to mec and why are only five kids going to be in three classrooms and it's not clear to me either and i think there are other board members who have the same questions but they won't speak up like i do i truly think that you know next week we're supposed to vote on this how are we supposed to vote on this when we really don't know what's going on and that you're saying the teachers are supposed to do discipline well if you give them four kids that have discipline issues in a class of 25 they spend all that time dealing with those kids and they never get their lessons planned they've notified administration we don't have aids we don't have this how are we addressing that when we say we've got three kids in one classroom and you've got 25 and five of them are discipline issues i guess i'm totally lost here and i know other board members are because they've talked we don't seem to be getting these answers and now and i'm not singling you out unfortunately you're at the podium this this whole deal with what we hope to do this and we're going to have us a separate gym period okay you got to get them to jim so we're going to make sure that i'm guessing that won't be during a passing period where there would be other kids and but that's not clear and that's not clear to the teachers and it's not clear to the community we have not done a good job of getting this information out and we're seven days away from a vote on this so i guess this is all coming to a head where it's the end of school people are frustrated it's been a rough year and now all of this is coming to a head and i've got to agree that i think that along the way here we're dropping the ball somewhere and i'm i am really worried about what we're doing unless i understand about the rest of the board um but i do know that there are people who have been talking to board members and we have to keep saying i don't know i don't know i don't know and you still are saying we're still trying to get this figured out and we're seven days away from making this decision right in terms of space because the space again is very limited right but we knew that when we wanted to make this decision and now we're we're at the finish line and we don't have answers not in terms of a cooldown no we do not so yeah it's about protection i mean the the students at mec um they just learn differently everybody learns differently one way or another and they you know they go over there and someone that has struggled in general population goes over there and they excel amazingly and well i just need to make sure that the kids that are going to be have the opportunity don't lose that amazing opportunity or i mean you know what i mean just i just want to make sure that when they're when they go to mec now uh they're flourishing they're graduating things are are happening i just don't want that to get lost in translation that's my only fear is making sure that we have the staff and the room for them again agreed seven days we're making a decision on what we're going to do and i just want to make sure that it it's clear that we're there for the kids and that's understandable i'm sorry i'm sorry one one thing i think the biggest thing for me and i've heard other people say is why can't we wait another year before we do this why do we have to like what's the rush to do it and i know you can't give us that answer so that's not directed towards you but i do have a question i think kiana can't answer which is you know and you know miss galbraith you know i i think expressed you know this a real concern about discipline okay and we heard it from the teachers but whether mec is left in the same building or not that's not going to address the discipline issues because it does not address this it that doesn't address the discipline that that's a different solution has to be found for that because we're not using mec too we're using but but that's but but just so we all understand that next year that that facility would not be used for these discipline issues that has to be addressed in a different way so we're mixing a little bit of apples and oranges when we get into that debate and i'm not for me i'm not looking at discipline i'm not looking i'm just looking at is are we able to delay it until we're ready to have a fresh start versus moving it out and then moving it out again and then right and then moving again and then it appears that we are kind of phasing those kids out only to what find another bunch of kids that can go in there i don't know but that's the way it appears because at the end of the end i guess we are switching the program from what the original intent was to um that was not the original antenna nbc though i i don't and i don't i can't claim to say i know what the original intent was i just know what for example at one point my son and daughter were at a private school i considered transferring my children to crete mondee high school and they said well if you transfer them to crete money high school they have to go to mec because that's why because that's just what we do when kids transfer why nobody had an answer so i can't when you came from yes when they yes and so i can't say what the original intent was all i can say is if you were late registering if you didn't register within the window of time you would then begin at mec yes that's what would happen this has 2011 one graduated high school in 2012 right and that was so that's why i said i can't say the original intent i know the various things that has been used for and how has evolved but again i go back to if why can't we just wait until everything is settled i do think that's where some of the confusion comes from though because like i said it has evolved through different you know it was a caps program which i was always under the understanding it was more for behavioral if teachers were having a hard time with difficult students you know that's where they would go and now it seems to evolved into a more like therapeutic is what they're saying but i almost feel like there's even some staff that is con you know they that's what they think like you were saying that you know we want to get these kids you know separate so that the kids here can learn so i just think there's some confusion because a lot of teachers are saying the discipline is really related to social social emotional and because they have that issue there's a discipline issue and so yeah you know we're splitting years here but i i think we need a whole lot more information and and i will say this too if um you just said that it's not for discipline then show me where it's written what it's for because obviously somebody re wrote what is what the purpose was for um over and over because it it has changed and has it changed that's because somebody said it's changed or has there have been meetings and things have been put in place and put in writing and policies have changed um and if policies have changed then were you all on the board to vote to change what the purpose of it of those policies were for um or if there is a policy so i guess there are there are a lot of ways to answer the question what is the purpose and it should be in writing whatever it is so it shouldn't be just what somebody says it should be for you know that might be a good segue for mr wartell to kind of address because there is a history here and some of it is far uh before any of us were here and uh the the program has changed yeah i think mr mortal i think it just comes down to miscommunication 2014 is when uh we stopped sending students from out of districts and and there was a thing that dr rogers used to have in place that you come in can you hear me okay and if you weren't registered in time you had to spend the rest of the semester at uh create money uh cap as they called it that's no longer there for last eight years we're talking about two different things and the same thing discipline the students are sent to us for discipline reasons okay every student that was sent to us has been sent to us for disciplined reasons but they have social emotional issues and that's what we focus on therapeutically so let's get that understanding right on board so um when teachers are saying that you know the students aren't getting sent over for um discipline that that's incorrect every student that has to go there has to be put a packet together that's sent to the central office central office looks at it then i review it and then we come up with a decision if it's a good fit now what i could tell you is what cap used to be was what the board used to use in lieu of expulsions so that's what students got now let's let's make sure this is clear they were sent over us because they were fighting um weapons knives things of that nature and some drugs and selling drugs and stuff like that that was the original thing in lieu of expulsion and so what we started doing over the years working in a therapeutic school an alternative school is very hard you can't keep stab there very long you know it's a burnout that you know happens after a couple years and so i started losing staff about you know six seven years ago you know we did a great job with the these students that were physically aggressive um we'd have the police over at our buildings a lot and all that and it just got to the point where it was really hard to maintain staff at that point and so over the time of the process we started looking at how can we be more therapeutic and working with the kids before they got physically aggressive and all that and so we did a better job as administrative levels looking for those kids with social emotional issues to send them over to us like that but it never was denying kids that we're not you know having discipline but we got to the point where it is hard to maintain kids that are physically aggressive at our school with our size and our staff i would say everything you said i think we pretty much understood the confusion comes in not from understanding that but from when we ask the questions of how nobody could really give us an answer it's uh well you know it's not that it's not right and so that's the confusion the way you explained it is the way we understood it to be but um and then it became well it's used differently it's for this it's for well we know is that there has never been a clear understanding now that being said um it still brings back my question why can't we wait another year to do this now they'll tell us well the numbers are low well the numbers are truly low because of a pandemic that's one you haven't had anybody just sitting over there but maybe you can maybe you can explain to us the questions that we're asking because we're asking the questions we're not really getting the answers well i i cannot answer that one but it was the perfect storm you know we had covet we we've always been at 40 45 students every year i was there but we had covet and then we had graduated 10 students last year another six this year and that just you know and the numbers just were low at this point and then when we started thinking about moving uh possibly to the high school that's when you know the the students you know were not at that point being referred to us uh at the greater number than we usually did and then let me and then we continue with that because i think we want to come back full circle why are we here and i think that's what you're at i want to send us back a little bit towards the fall we started an operations committee and the board had directed us to take a look at our finances to see you know how we were going to make sure that we were uh passing a positive budget uh balanced budget and so that's what we did we went through our all of our numbers in the district we looked at programs and you know through the school report card you know that's again we saw that you know the mec program was at that point about 66 000 dollars of students and i showed you the graph and so forth that is when we started taking a look at the program now the board had already made the decision that we were going to start uh closing down some of our facilities and made that direction to already do the wing at the high school so we knew that we were going to go there so out of due diligence we took a look at those numbers we took a look at the enrollment trends and we are making our recommendation to you for the financial reasons coupled with a decline enrollment to say to you it is up to you if we want to spend 1.2 million dollars a year to keep it open to one more year at the same time when we're seeing a decline of enrollment and at the same time we're saying we're going to need to revamp the program and have it a little bit different that also kind of matched you know some of the things that we were doing in the high school so that is what god is here we are not pushing you to to hurry and close the building we we are making a recommendation because we were asked to look at this as a financial piece coupled with what was good for kids let's go with enrollment eventually that is what you have to decide if you want to go ahead and you know looking at you know the costs and looking at the projections and where we're going if that's important to you to keep it open another year or if you take a look at this and say you know what you know that's not you know prudent with the money at this point so that's where the decision is i think i agree i agree with you 100 i want the real back it was the board to make the decision to build that addition to the high school to house our students from mec and other students and we dr cogwonis didn't have the whole program in place at the time we made that decision to build that and we knew that we was not going to move forward with mec with those facilities you know with the air conditioning and all of that our president brought a good option to us to say hey why spend all of this money and we can take advantage and build this new addition onto the high school you came to us with a program that was i think it was called a trauma called it the trauma and then i said oh that's a bad name for it but nonetheless i asked for where are we getting our return on investment then our business manager i don't know if he's still out there he gave us a dissertation and saw the other dynamics as far as academic return on the investments that's what you just alluded to as well so i think it's a little in my opinion it's a little not fair to the administrators to not have all of the answers in place right now when it was the board to say kind of move forward it was it was not part of the big plan at this stage in the game to add that building to the new building to the high school but we asked to move forward we approved to move forward take advantage of it with everything not been in place with the program and so on and so forth so it's a lot of moving parts me personally again that's why i'm kind of looking back i think our administrators are doing a good job trying to fill the pieces in and i know the board have questions we had questions at our last was it the form we had the community forum yeah the forum we had it was a friday friday afternoon we started asking questions maybe we should hold back what's the you know what's the consequences of holding back and kind of where we are janine i have not had teachers like they have been talking to you about it and you know i am not afraid to talk i'm not afraid no i don't think any of us yeah any of us if we got something to say we won't hesitate to say it so that's kind of where i stand i do commend the administrators for doing the best they could trying to make this happen i definitely commend the administrators for doing the best they can but let's not get it twisted or whatever we didn't say hey we want you to go build this addition and then move this was a recommendation and you know how it we know how it works we vote on the the superintendent and their people they come up with the plan we look at the plan we vote on the plan based off of their recommendations we just say hey build this and and move these kids and do this and that we didn't come up with that we are merely supporting the plan yes we asked for a plan we asked the questions but i think my ultimate question is again can we wait another year for it no we get we agreed to this vision that the superintendent had for this for 22 23.