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he enjoys weightlifting snowboarding and basketball in his free time yes here we go ready i state your name aye norman white do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support that i will support the constitution of the united states the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey and the constitution of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith and i will bear true faith and allegiance and allegiance to the same to the same and to the government's establishment and to the government's established in the united states in the united states and in the state and in this state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people and that i will faithfully and though faithfully impartially and partially and justly and justly perform all the duties perform all the duties of the office of police officers of the office of police officer according to the best of my ability according to the best of my ability to help me so help me god congratulations [Applause] officer joseph arlata officer arlata grew up in voorhees new jersey officer arlata started his law enforcement career with the eshem township police department in 2019 as a special law enforcement class one officer prior to that officer arlotta was a member of the escham police explorers program officer olada served as a special law enforcement class one officer for two years while attending stockton university after meeting college requirements officer arlata was then promoted to the position of special law enforcement class ii officer while attending the police academy officerlada was promoted to the position of full-time police officer where he now serves the eve sham community officer aladdin enjoys working out hunting fishing and woodworking in his free time all right i state your name i joseph arlata do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support that i will support the constitution of the united states the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey and the constitution of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith and i will bear true faith and allegiance and allegiance to the same to the same and to the government's established and to the government's establishment in the united states and the united states and in this state and in this state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people and that i will faithfully faithfully impartially and partially and justly and justly perform all the duties perform all the duties of the office of police officers of the office of police officers according to the best of my ability according to the best of my abilities so help me god so help me god yes congratulations thank you special law enforcement officer ramon wright officer ramon wright is a resident of malta new jersey he grew up in newark new jersey and he graduated from irvington high school in 2014 where he played basketball officer wright attended the valley forge military academy where he earned an associate's degree in humanities officer wright then attended west chester university and rowan university where he earned a bachelor's degree in liberal studies officer wright played basketball for both universities and was a scholarship athlete at royal university he was named the njac player of the week selected as the conference division defensive player of the year and named to the njac second team as well as the d3 hoops all atlantic region third team officer wright graduated from the gloucester county special law enforcement academy class one program and is now serving the residents of eshem township officer wright appreciates his mentors rob lascala chris burrell who introduced him to the world of business of management officer right accredits most of his success to his parents raymond wright and jennifer smith his mentors failures early on his life and the city of newark [Applause] i state your name aye vermont right do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support that i will support the constitution of the united states the constitutional united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey and the constitution of state of new jersey and i will bear true faith and allegiance and allegiance to the same and to the government's established enter the government's establishment in the united states and the united states and in this state and the state under the authority of the people and the authority of the people and that i will faithfully and i will faithfully impartially and partially and justly and justly perform all the duties perform all the duties of the office of salia one of the offices according to the best of my ability to help me god so help me god [Applause] good evening special law enforcement officer matthew devito [Applause] officer matthew devito served almost 26 years with the evesham township police department before retiring in december 2021.
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there we go they were in use yes made it at the 11th Hour so good job good job bill so good job so I know I'm sorry no I know bill that you had mentioned the uh the security light that the band is needing was going to happen when the electrician that's what the dad went to the data meter yeah he's coming out with it because that's all right that's in that North Board of the room and everything else over the north boiler yeah that's where that data meter goes all right thank you thank you and we'll move right into our director of Business Services Mr James thank you Mr sues the first time to seek your approval for the donations that were included in your board packet so moved motion by Mr Marshall second second by Miss Kelly any discussion hearing no no in favor aye motion passes thank you and in your board packet I just included the timeline for adopting the 2023 budget um next board meeting which is the first meeting of September will be when I give the board our annual budget presentation we will then have a public hearing on the following meeting on the 19th and then scheduled to adopt at the single meeting that we have in October just a reminder is only one meeting in October this year so mark your calendars and that's that um and it's not on the agenda but the board had one point asked about the auction we had in July and since our last meeting we've kind of shored up we have shored up with Mr Niemeyer and this this year's auction which was held on July 21st brought in 3155 so that's a little bit lower than maybe we average maybe we average five six seven but there really weren't as many high value there this year so I like mentioned before I expect it to be lower so that money goes into our operation spun and then just helps support on the expenditures in there so any questions all right thank you all right so there are no public comments so we'll move right along to our board comments and consideration a future agenda items we'll start with Mr Marshall thank you um Labor Day is right around the corner it's coming we can't stop that but I wish everybody well and thank you for the efforts extended to get the start of a great school year stay safe Mrs Kelly yep just welcome back to everybody and hope you all have a great year Dr Malco I did sorry um yes I have to tell you something I had some Community people reach out to me and they were absolutely totally totally totally amazed at the experience they had at bibbage school with registration and I said oh that is so exciting and not only that but you know how we need to jump start kids and have them pre-experience schools so this parent these parents were able to pre have a pre-visit in the hallways and find out where the classroom was and everything because the teachers were so willing and and comfortable in doing that so you know we have those good things going on and it's important to share those and I also wanted to now that Aaron is here tonight I wanted to thank her for that handy dandy card that she put together for our students that includes uh trafficking and uh suicide awareness and um there's others on there too but I just don't remember all of them but it's quite the handy tool Aaron thank you it's very nice so if a student wanted one of those cards how would they go about getting those it's on their ID oh it's on their ID thank you on the back side of their ID okay thank you Dr Medlin no comment thank you my sentiments about starting of school but I do want to say that I had a staff member reach out to me via email saying that she was extremely pleased with starting on a Thursday and a Friday and then having the weekend to kind of regroup and come back on Monday and felt very relaxed and good about starting the school year with starting on a Thursday slash I know next year that was just the luck of the calendar so I looked and I said I have to go look at next year's calendar and we do start on a Friday so just uh to those that those calendars they really good things are here coming to that I'm hearing about so thank you for that but as long as you're going to talk about calendar though I will say that we will start the school year as late as we can thereby still ending the semester Before Christmas for our high school students especially who challenge themselves with all sorts of college level curriculum and rigor so I know it's a sore topic with some people both ways sure but we do believe it's in the best interest interests of our especially our high school students to get a true break at Christmas thank you sure thank you with that we'll move on to our Board calendar or future activities Dr Argo well I'd encourage everybody to watch the website as you're seeing calendars for all sorts of extracurricular activities pop up there and um I know some people made it out to the football scrimmage even last Friday so thank you for attending that our next meeting is not on a Monday it is on Tuesday because our next is scheduled for Labor Day so it would be Tuesday September 6th and we are going to start back rotating between this room and the k-trap room and we have a small crowd such as we have this evening we may meet in the small room if we have recognitions and things that require more seating we'll still be in here but there are times where meetings with a smaller agenda and no controversial topics and a business meeting the board if you will can take place in there just as well and we would schedule some of those beginning in September in those meetings if if the crowd size is expected to be small and Mr suicide one other item I believe that we have our dire Town Council Lake Central School Board liaison in the back row back there Alicia so thanks for coming out tonight Alicia with that do we have a motion to adjourn um second motion by Miss Kelly uh second by Mr Marshall all in favor aye
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during his career he was a dare instructor fatal accident investigator and canine handler handler trainer for the department in the last few years of his career he was a member of the community policing unit while not at work he enjoys spending time in the poconos and is the head coach for his boys soccer team all right here we go [Applause] i state your name hi matthew devito do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support and i will support the constitution of the united states the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the city of new jersey and the constitution of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith and i will bear true faith and allegiance and allegiance to the same to the same and to the government's established to the governments established in the united states in the united states and in this state and in this state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people and that i will faithfully and i will faithfully impartially and partially and justly and perform all the duties perform all the duties of the office of sleo2 of the office of leo 2 according to the best of my ability according to the best of my ability to help me god so help me god yes congratulations and welcome back special law enforcement officer paulino apstar [Applause] oh is a first generation filipino american who served 25 years of service with the eve sham township police before coming back as a special law enforcement officer class two during his time as a full-time officer he was assigned to various units with the agency he worked in the patrol bureau bike unit served as their instructor for 13 years and as an i.t officer for two years as a school resource officer at cherokee high school for eight years and at the vans elementary school for three years officer atstar finished his career in the community policing unit officer apistar is certified in methods of instruction defense tactics serves as an oc spray instructor and as a firearms instructor officer apistar enjoys building custom cars competitive shooting and photography officer apostolar also is self-employed with spin photography [Applause] do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey the constitution of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith that will bear true faith and allegiance and allegiance to the saints through the same and to the government's established and the government's established in the united states the united states and in this state and in this state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people and that i will faithfully i will faithfully and partially impartially and justly and justly perform all the duties perform all the duties of the office of celio ii of the office of celio 2 according to the best of my ability to help me god so i'll help you guys congratulations welcome back [Music] special enforcement enforcement officer greg gasparoon [Applause] officer gregory gasparone moved to marlton in 1972 when his father was hired as a police officer with the evesham township police department officer gasparone attended bieler elementary marlton middle and cherokee high school after he graduated from high school in 1985 he enlisted in the united states marine corps officer gasparone was stationed to the united states marine corps air station located in tustin california where he was a flight line aircraft mechanic inspector officer gascarone was honorably discharged in 1989 officer gasparone worked in the airline industry as an aircraft mechanic with pan am airways and trans world express officer gasparone then attended gloucester county college and earned an associate's degree in 1996 officer gasparone graduated the gloucester county police academy there he was the class leader and graduated in december 1996.
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in march of 97 officer gasparone was hired by the rutgers university police department and was promoted to sergeant in january two thousand two officer gasparine was assigned to the patrol division at the rutgers police department he was a supervising firearms instructor field training officer and was a member of the camden city critical incident team officer gasprone was awarded three distinguished unit citations three meritorious service awards and five commendations with rutgers university police department after 25 years of service he retired from rutgers police department in march of 2022 officer gasparone has been married to his wife donna since 1987 and they have three children nicholas gianna and all joseph i state your name i gregory gaspar do solemnly swear do you solemnly swear that i will support and i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey and the constitution of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith i will bear true faith and allegiance and allegiance to the same do the same and to the governments established and to the governments established in the united states in the united states and in the state and the city under the authority of the people under the authority of the people and that i will faithfully and i will faithfully impartially and partially and justly and justly perform all the duties perform all the duties of the office of celio ii of the officer slayer ii according to the best of my abilities according to the best of my ability so help me god so help me god yes congratulations and welcome thank you special law enforcement officer matthew luongo [Applause] officer matthew luongo began his career in law enforcement in 1993 with the delaware river port authority police department office officer luongo earned his bachelor's degree in criminal justice and public administration officer luongo moved through the ranks and held position of lieutenant when he retired in may of 2022 from the delaware river port authority police department officer luongo joins the east ham township police department on august 1st of this year and now serves in our agency's training bureau allowing him to share his knowledge and experience with a new generation of police officers all [Applause] i state your name i'm matthew luongo do solemnly swear please swear that i will support and i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey the constitution of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith i will bear true faith and allegiance and allegiance to the same to the same and to the government's established to the government's established in the united states in the united states and in this state and in this state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people and that i will faithfully faithfully impartially and partially and justly and justly perform all the duties perform all the duties of the office of sleep the office according to the best of my ability according to the best of my abilities so help me out yes congratulations [Applause] detective jared halpern [Applause] detective jared halpern has been a police officer with evesham township police department since 2005.
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detective halpern graduated with honors from rutgers university new brunswick where he majored in criminal justice during his tenure with the eve champ township police department detective halpern has been assigned as a field training officer drug recognition expert to the atv unit and was a member of the department's former special response tactical team detective halpern is part of the department's wellness committee and is a trained resiliency officer detective halpern resides in marlton with his wife and two children and in his spare time he enjoys vacationing with his family and supporting the multiple sports that his kids play all right i state your name hi jared halpern do solemnly swear do you solemnly swear that i will support that i will support the constitution of the united states constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey and the constitution and state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith and i will bear true faith and allegiance and allegiance to the same to the same and to the governments established and to the governments established in the united states in the united states and in this state and in this state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people and that i will faithfully and i will faithfully impartially and partially and justly and dressly perform all the duties perform all the duties of the office of detective of the office of detectives according to the best of my ability according to the best of my abilities so help me god so help me god congratulations detective dylan mahan began his law enforcement career with eve sham township in february 2017 prior to being an eve sham officer he graduated from gloucester county police academy and was an officer in the rowan university police department for one year detective mayhem attended rowan university where he earned bachelor's degree in criminal justice prior to moving into the investigative bureau detective mayhem served in the patrol bureau where he was a field training officer crime scene technician and firearms instructor all right i state your name i dylan mayhem do solemnly swear do solemnly swear that i will support that i will support the constitution of the united states the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of new jersey and the constitution of the state of new jersey and that i will bear true faith and that i will bear true faith and allegiance and allegiance to the same to the same and to the government's established and to the government's established in the united states in the united states and in this state and in this state under the authority of the people under the authority of the people and that i will faithfully and i will faithfully impartially impartially and justly and justly perform all the duties perform all the duties of the office of detectives of the office of detectives according to the best of my ability to help me god so help me god yes congratulations all right lieutenant burdette's going to come from one minute to just make some closing remarks before that i just want to congratulate everyone if you guys could stand [Applause] all right obviously this is a proud moment for our police department there's one person i'd like to point out that nick maddio if you could stay standing because he already said um i think it's important to understand the origin of any police department back in 1966 then chief han jansen hired six police officers nick was one of them so thanks for coming nick nick ended up becoming nick ended up becoming the third chief of police here and who would have thought back then nick this would be here tonight so i appreciate you coming to join us okay thanks chief so this concludes our ceremony thank you again for sharing with us the largest swearing-in ceremony in eve shane history please join us in the gym for a reception the food has been generously provided by roblox scala thank you for your support to our agency thanks again [Applause] he said he's never said this [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music]
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for being here tonight so we're going to start off with our land acknowledgement which i'm super excited that we're starting having this creighton school district understands that our community of schools is located on the ancestral land of the odom jude and akima odam people who descended from the hoku come and have inhabited these lands since time immemorial the odom whose name translates literally to people are a vibrant culture and community spanning countless generations into the past continuing to thrive in the present and carrying a powerful legacy of gen for generations into the future with this acknowledgement the crayton school district formally recognizes that the traditional care and keeping of these lands by indigenous people is an aspirational model of community stewardship that we are committed to honor with practices policy and human relations and with that being said ms mccaleb can you please lead us in the pledge of allegiance all right do we have miss ayers myself miss mccaleb and ms mcshaffery here we want to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting and remind the audience of the request to address the board cards must be completed and submitted to the board secretary if they wish to speak to an agenda item board policy provides for cards white cards to be submitted in order to speak to an agenda item and blue cards to be submitted in order to speak during public comments due to the open meeting law board members are not allowed to address items that are not on the agenda and that's reference policy bedh i also wanted to acknowledge that we have an interpreter so if anybody walks in or needs an interpreter we have alejandro back and i really appreciate i'm having an interpreter at our meeting so thank you so much for that i move the governing board approve the agenda as presented a second all those in favor aye aye aye perfect that leads us to public comments and it looks like we have one public comment today if i could please have for tim noor thank you yeah and you will have three minutes all right so madam president members of the board and executive cabinet my name is tim kenour and i'm an art teacher at papago school and i'm also going into my 13th season as a coach for the creighton school district 19 if you count lego robotics and i'm here tonight to kind of voice my concern over uh the perceived gender inequity that i see happening in our creighton athletic program and so this kind of stems back to 2018 when we made the decision to go in the direction of co-ed sports i believe that this was sort of a misinterpretation that we had on title ix thinking that if we offer girls volleyball and not boys volleyball that it had to be co-ed but looking at neighboring districts universities high schools i think it's just a misinterpretation of title ix and really title ix is to protect equal opportunity and equal access for female students in athletics and so my goal tonight is really to kind of voice the story behind the issue and hopefully the governing board can clarify its position so our district is really able to move forward in creating regulation and rules that protect our female athletes in our district so i'm going to use papago school as the example just it's an assumption based on previous experience but looking forward to the fall season we have soccer and we have volleyball soccer typically has about 22 students participating volleyball 16.
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okay i hereby call this meeting to order roll call please brown is here mrs galbraith here dr hall here mr sawalis here mrs walters vice president rooney here president and all we're here please stand and join me for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and ms roop would you please read our mission statement for sure our mission is to empower each student to positively impact the world for a bright new future okay next up is public comment we do have one in-person public comment mary bragg on safety concerns welcome good evening board of education administration and community and staff members on behalf of the cmea we are both excited and concerned about the start of this new school year we are excited to greet our students and work with them to become lifelong learners we are excited to connect with our families and friends we are excited for the opportunities afforded to all to grow there have been many different concerns voiced about safety in our buildings the clear backpacks helped to address that thank you the changes to the cell phone policy seven colon 190 not so much allowing students to use their phones at lunch and when approved by the teacher brings another challenge for the staff that takes away too much of our educational time in front of the students we have one-to-one computers for student use they don't need to use their phones the teacher wants to allow music they can play some school appropriate music for the classes background music students don't need their cell phones we all need to be consistent and follow the policies that are in place we need to teach those life skills of being polite to each other how to get along with each other being on time which is considered a sign of respect completing our work on time which is meeting deadlines being present in the moment by staying off of our phones we all need to be the role models to all of our students in all of our buildings in all of our classrooms these are life skills employment skills necessary to be successful in today's world if we are all consistent and are all accountable we will have a great school year we have to have pma positive mental attitudes we have to be the solution not part of the problem my coming in with positive mental attitudes let us not forget that each and every single one of us you and you and you and you and me every single one of us is the first person responsible for the safety and security in our buildings it starts with us we need to be the role models that our students need our children are listening our children are watching our every move and hearing our every comment we need to be positive we need to be excited and prepared for this new school year thank you we also have a couple of public comments that came in via email the first is from mary oller it says um dear school board members and doctor caracoglines good evening as we are approaching a new school year i hope nothing but the best for our students teachers and all district employees i'm writing this and concerned about the clear book bag policy that you're putting into effect this school year as i wrote you all on july 26th i asked questions that didn't get proper response instead i got a response from dr cara that stated please keep an eye out for our district newsletter early in august where we will share many updates from over the summer clearly i asked if students are required by the school district to use clear book bags then then what about the admins teachers support staff school board members and all visitors will they also be required required to carry clear bags as well into any of our district buildings i mean it's only fitting since we are requiring our students to give up their rights how will our district monitor the bags being used by employees for concealed weapons also why is this only mandatory for second through 12th grade are pre-k kindergarten and first grade students not capable of bringing weapons into a building since they aren't required to have a clear book bag are you going to require clear lunch bags clear chromebook cases clear purses clear sport bags clear instrument case i mean you get the point this is foolish will you will you be monitoring all sports bags that come into the building or from opposing teams for concealed weapons well where will the designated area be for the student bags that the district speaks of also i know you put a 20 replacement fee into the student handbook once since this is mandatory and if a child whose fees are waived will the district pay for the replacements if the bag is faulty breaks rips or is lost or stolen the main question i have is at the last committee of the whole meeting dr karis said that you looked into sister schools to see what they're doing but i have researched around the local area and no one has said they're implementing clear book bags i will like to know what studies were used to determine that clear book bags will make the school safer please cite their origin and where i can find them as of today august 15th the school district posted on their social media account that our clear plastic backpack requirements begin the very first day of school all pat all backpacks not meeting their criteria outlined above will be collected and kept in the school office where the students can retrieve the backpack at the end of the day now this contradicts that statement that was made at the committee of the whole meeting on august 9th i don't recall the lady that was speaking at the podium that night but she said that the backpacks will be handed out on the first day so you mean to tell me that you want all these students in grades 2 through 12 to come to school on the first day with no backpack i can tell you this my i can tell you this my child will come to school on the first day with his store-bought book bag that he picked out because he is a second grader and was super excited to have a cool book bag this year have you looked at the comments on on the thread if not i recommend you take the time to look at every comment made by every parent on that thread maybe even answer some of the comments and turns concerns let us know what you that let us know that you hear what we have to say just remember if you aren't searching these backpacks then you're you are really improving any of this just remember if you aren't searching these backpacks then are you really improving any of the safety concerns sincerely mario the next is from miranda wilkinson and it just says board meeting public comment here's a question what studies were used to determine that clear backpacks will make the school safer why is it not all grades and how bags used by employees be monitored for the concealment of weapons and how will sports bags be monitored for the concealment of weapons what are we supposed to tell our children as to why they can't have the backpack they want and watch them cry over it my plan was to tell them that so nobody feels left out by making everyone have the same bag but wait i can't use that because kindergarten and first grade will have different bags also the statement i made about the active shooting training being denied is from a very reliable source so i believe it is true clear backpacks will do nothing and something else needs to be done the kids backpacks are so heavy from having to carry it back and forth in their chromebooks every day on top of all the other stuff they have to bring back and forth they don't even do work anymore they're staring at a screen all day whatever happened or reading and writing the chromebook should be left at school and the teacher should have charging stations for the kids to charge them the only reason they can't do that is because they have to have all these fans plugged in so the kids don't pass out from the heat because they have no air we need to protect our kids and i know the parents i know other parents feel the same sincerely a very concerned mom okay so that's all we have for public comment tonight um next up is administrative our board updates so who's we have the money parades this coming saturday right um that's coming up the university park parade perhaps we can maybe just talk through a couple of the details as i think a few people were asking as you recall we've got the um university park parade that is coming up we're all very excited about that there's a lot of literature that's still kind of going out to alert to the various communities about that we have secured a district van that we're going to use and we have thought that if for those that you that are coming i think we've got four is that correct about four that are coming we'll start off mr brown were you coming yes no okay so i think one two three four and then myself so what we thought we'd probably just start off and park your cars over at the the district office we'll have the van there for us we'll pick it up we'll drive over the parade and get in line and follow the directions once we get there and then have it come back here so if that's agreeable um and then what time i have to re i'll have to go back to my chart i'll send an email out to you folks uh saturday seemed a little far away earlier in the week for me but it's almost here so i'll i'll follow up to give you those specifics but and then we've got to figure out candy and maybe cheryl you can help me figure out uh we usually will pass out candy you and i can work on that um and have that ready for us that other shirley yes i'm sorry cheryl heinlein um there is another parade that's coming up but that's the money parade so it seems to be a lot of village parades are going on right now that is scheduled for september 10th again that is a saturday um i just send some information out to you folks earlier so you can mark your calendars again just let me know if if and who can come so that mr cerma can arrange for a van again and we can duplicate our efforts that's probably what i would suggest it makes it kind of consistent okay we'll move on to administrative updates or any other board updates i have one it's now two weeks and i can't find anybody in my subdivision who received the newsletter i've spoken with this timeline she got hers the day after it was mailed out she has the same carrier she gets her mail early in the day i get my mail at seven o'clock at night i don't know where they are but i can't find one person in my area that received the newsletter the reason i'm bringing it up in front of the board is not only am i angry about it again but we paid a lot of money for it to be delivered to every house and it has not been delivered to every house now i can go and complain as a homeowner and he's just gonna say whatever i i'm asking that this is always always always always and this mail carrier unfortunately has a huge route i don't know if he runs out if he gets tired i don't know what's going on but my entire subdivision we canvassed it i had myself and a couple people walk around we couldn't find one person in my subdivision that received the newsletter i did send an email out to all the board members everyone but todd responded that they had gotten it and and nelson even told me his dad did did you get the newsletter at your home yes he did so that being said my subdivision there's definitely an issue with the delivery in my area and that was not cheap to mail out and you're talking about a lot of households businesses whatever in that area that appear to not have gotten it again so i'm asking that i i believe that the district i mean i'm going to go and file a complaint but to me i think the district when you went ahead and and didn't send it bulk mail for the very purpose that we haven't been getting it again we did not get it and it had first class priority on it with a permit number i'm i'm very angry about it so no one in my area again knows anything about the newsletter they didn't even know what i was talking about i had to take one around and show it to people so um again they don't know what's going on in the district so are you asking then maybe the district go and talk to the post office you can actually file a complaint and it will get passed on to kansas city or whatever you can actually go online on 1-800 usps or whatever it is too and and file a complaint i am going to go in and speak with them um just because it it's to the point where it's like seriously what's the deal what's the name of your neighborhood again what would boost creek goose creek and it's always it's always in and i'm thinking it's because he has such a huge route that by the time he gets to my house he either doesn't have mary can't even barely lift his arm to put mail in the mailbox i don't know i mean i got mail at 7 15 last night he's on the street at seven in the morning you know you know i i would just recommend before you go to the post office that prior to those every door direct mail come to the post office they have to come from the printing place whoever printed it right so they issue and sort those for the route for the postal service so you need to make sure they did their job first and then go to the post office if they did their job first they showed you every route that they did for our district including janine's area then you can go to the post office but it's every mailing that my area does not get every mailing we have never i mean you know this went out so this is just not this it's not this one and we just decided to do it this way so that we thought we would ensure that not only my area but everybody got it um did we ever complain before yes we did and i've complained each and every time to the post office that is correct i filed a complaint each and everything nothing has happened nothing has happened and now we do have another new postmaster i mean i guess when they get enough complaints they put somebody else in there but i mean she specifically did this and it cost us more money to do it this way and it didn't get delivered again so i'm just saying that i again that's another huge area and many of those people don't have kids in school they're they're retired they're older people their kids are out of school and that's why we did the news and that's why we did this and they're not getting it so i will look into uh how we go about filing a complaint and i guess we'll just say it's for the goose creek subdivision yep okay all right we'll follow up just to let you know maybe there's something wrong with the delivery of the email too because i don't have your email i know i i still the search and everything i don't i don't see it doc dr hall you just got busted out that's all just accept it like a man take it and just move on like let me respond but i did i don't know sometimes like he's asked me and um did you get the one this afternoon that i sent out regarding close session you know what i could have swore i did because i knew that we had a closed session but oh i promise i don't know what to say what's politically correct yes so miss heinlein can you just make sure that todd is when we send things to school board that mailing list that he's on that i hope to make sure it's you like a preset uh ailment email address so okay okay any other board updates the only other update i have obviously clear backpacks are a hot topic right and we have a new director of security and safety is there a plan in place so that we go to school in nine or ten days that if someone doesn't bring it or doesn't want to what are we gonna do so that everybody is on the same page yes in fact we talked with the building principles last last week about this and they have a written uh internal procedures of what they're going to do and again the the plan for the backpacks is you know if students do bring it there's a place inside the dean's office you know particularly or the assistant principal's office where those backpacks will be secured their names will be on it and they'll have their issued of their clear backpack for the day and at the end of the day that they will receive their backpack in return and i guess in regard to everything not just that it seems like everyone's excited about the new school year with mixed feelings and a lot of our emails seem to be from teachers who are worried about support from upper administration and i'm not trying to do a gotcha moment i didn't really plan anything but i just want to put it out there i just want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to build those relationships and make the connection so they don't feel like they're doing something and then they're not being supported at the administrative level and i think i think those are some of the conversations we have to have to understand how policy is put into place it comes from you know public act then it goes to press plus then it comes to central office for procedures then it goes out to the schools so we don't necessarily make the policies we follow the policies right and then but then when it gets followed and then goes back up i think that's that to me that's what i'm hearing from all the emails is that when something happens and then it goes back up that's where they're feeling a disconnect that's what i'm that's just what the feeling i'm getting from all the teacher emails and i think too that we talked about last week i think it is making sure we follow the policies that are implemented and then that there is follow-through i think that's what the teachers are asking they want to know that things will be enforced so that we if you establish that at the beginning the year is going to run much smoother so we do all have to be on the same page supporting the teachers and following through with you know making sure policies are upheld so yes and they came in may voicing their frustration with that so that is exactly what they're saying is that we need to make sure that administration is supporting the teachers they need it we agree and i think we've got to go back and review the system and i think you brought it up last week and that's one thing that we are looking at is when referrals are written what happens what are the list of potential disciplines that can take place are those being uh and at some point in the school year whether it's a week two weeks four weeks six weeks there's going to be an issue and sometimes they're going to have to go into the classroom or into the school and see what's going on and i think it was brought up too at the end of uh last year that um you know when there were tardies and stuff the follow-through didn't it happened but it was like a time frame that was like months later correct you know so we just have to make sure that we're staying on it punctually with all of that we've put some systems in place already this year to address that uh i had sent out i don't know if you could read my little flyer i sent out and that would be something i probably want to share in an open session we've actually put quite a few uh systems in place and then the systems have procedures that will help address that and specifically we were looking at these these tardy issues in both the high school and the middle school and addressing them and we've got some other systems that will be put into place and tracked and then also looking at some incentive programs for students in order to encourage them you know both specifically at the high school i've talked with administration about trying to put back some of the fun items to incentivize students they don't want to miss something so bringing in more of the fun activities and again last well at least this last year we were more limited about putting in the fun things because you know of covid there wasn't a lot of fun things that were going on this uh no one working with the high school specifically this year they're doing a lot of um changes for this coming year um for example they just had these passport days and i was just talking to them today they're doing so much of that ahead of time so when the school day starts they can start working right away and you don't have to be burdened with you know students that didn't get vaccinated they're not coming into school students that don't have their paperwork so there are a lot of changes that are coming we feel we're on a more positive footing i think you know as far as the teachers are concerned i think the teachers once we get into those faculty meetings at the beginning of the year and we can kind of share and even at my opening address i'm going to share some of the bigger pieces that we have worked on so that they know we did hear them and we this summer we have worked to address some of the i call them system flaws that were in the system of why things didn't work it wasn't necessarily the procedures of the policy it was how they got implemented and that and that we are looking into um again hiring more deans at the high school helped they had two last years now we have four so just some things like that we also need to make sure that we're consistent through our entire school district that the high school can't be treating something one way in the middle school another way a lot of what i hear is that oh well my sixth grader this is the what happens if they do something but the high school if they're tardy ten times it's no big deal my student is tardy twice and they get three detentions or something so i think we have to have some sort of consistency also because a lot of families have kids in three different levels of schools and they're getting three different disciplines three different stories three different experiences and i think part of it is frustrating because this child got this and the other two didn't and you know what happens then right so i think we really need to enforce consistency and sticking to what we've said we're going to do yeah i will say i do not i don't necessarily agree with that that's like the state telling every school in this district you have to be the exact same because even though it's the same district the age groups matter uh well maybe it gave a bad example but we're not consistent through middle school and high school i can tell you that and we should be because we're feeding into the high school you could be somewhat consistent and have some but it's still a age and maturity difference and they're still learning so i i think i know what you're trying to say i mean if you set expectations and that you say you can't be tardy in my class and you're tardy three times and there's been no anything done that's not doing anybody any favors because that child now has thought well they don't enforce it here why should i ever bother to listen to it we need to we're going to set expectations and we have to follow them and that to me involves consistency well i think it's easier to transition than from one school to the next two it's not like well we did it this way so why do we have to change i think it's i think i'm saying this correctly ms galbraith is saying again there has to be an expectation um a follow-through you know that message has to be sent that we're gonna do this and then when you get here maybe it is a little stricter maybe but it's similar so that the the carry through from one school to the next so it's not a surprise surprise well hey i used to do this why can't i do this if it kind of flows in a similar fashion i think it's just an easier transition i just don't think it should be the same because at the end of the day regard we talk about tardies and i say this all the time if if creep money solves the tardy issue problem then some she's about to make some big bucks in this world because and when i like i said my daughter who went to marist it was the same thing and when i woke up in april no the same thing no matter where i've gone and we're sitting talking about not that when you don't do anything about it but it's the same issue if you solve this tardy issue then i don't think we're going to have it much longer because everybody's going to become but i think we have to do the best we can to set them up for the real world too because when you have a giant teacher and that was the point i was going to make next was the real world right um nothing against teachers but teachers are human we're human everybody's here and i guarantee you that if there was a late teacher who's which i'm sure there are two though every teacher knows who's going to come late just like they're late stu it's it's perpetual it happens and i think the thing i get frustrated with is if somebody makes people make this huge deal like we have to do something but they know every teacher that comes in late and they're not having to do something about that teacher or that administrator or whoever it is that comes in late but when it comes to kids we've got to show them so when they get to the real world they're going to be late in the real world too regardless it still happens and i do think we have to do something i just kind of maybe it's just me on my soapbox but i just kind of i feel like we're rehashing the same conversation we had it it's committee yeah you're right you're right it is i think it just boils down to what the teachers are asking they want the support this year they want follow-through consistency so i think that's and i can agree with that yeah we do need consistency i just kind of get like when people are just so adamant about we have to do what's to say go ahead i'm sorry uh let's move on to administrative updates uh superintendent i just wanted to bring the board's attention uh to how we're getting ready to kick off the year on a positive note we are actually really excited about having our students back our buildings are getting fixed and repaired they are still kind of a mess right now but they are going to be opening on time and i was just out walking in a few of them today and it is exciting to see things that are changing um so we are moving forward in a lot of positive ways i think that we're going to have a better start this year than we even did last year in fact i was talking with some of the superintendents next door that have already started and they all both noted that the students were a lot calmer this year and we're getting into the structure much faster this year so i was happy to hear that so i will certainly pass that along to our administrators um because last year was a rough start i think we weren't sure what kind of you know what we were going to be seeing and you know we had some challenges last year but i think this year and moving forward so in thinking about our challenges uh we want to start focusing on the positives so we're coming up with our our school theme for next year which is proud to be part of the u and we're doing a lot with the sending the good messages out about all the things that we are doing well there are a lot that our teachers are doing that our departments are doing and certainly we want to get the message out so you know obviously our newsletter that you received or many of us received we are working to have at least one a quarter to get more information out and i did receive some good feedback from one community member that said to me wow we didn't realize there was so much going on in the district they hadn't seen anything written for quite some time so that was very encouraging to me to keep going with that we've also been trying to make sure that we're getting social more social media out of the district once our media our webmasters come back on board the hype at the schools we'll be getting some of those great pictures that are coming out as well but we're going to be doing a lot more and i'm going to introduce ken he's been working with uh tirelessly with me along with um some folks in our marketing department um about some of the things that you're going to be seeing for the first uh week of school so in carrying on our theme um in all of our marquees it's going to be celebrating being part of the u but we've also um got some signs that we'll be putting out so i'm gonna let you share some of our our fun stuff thanks dr good evening board and dr karen administrators in the public and also our community um one of the things that dr kerr came to me with was trying to advertise out there and get all of our kids all of our staff involved in being proud to be part of the youth so one of the things we're doing this year so every child is going to get a yard sign this for year school that they are a student at school so we've had these made up they're being delivered to all the schools so they'll be individualized with school that they can put in very often i think we've seen these in a lot of communities that are around and everything so uh that's one of the things we're doing so uh we did that to get the students about so far they have distributed them um they've distributed them at the high school as part of their passport night and they've been a huge hit with the kids uh they love the idea so we're distributing those now and then i think during family nights or curriculum nights they'll be distributing we're not going to give them the kids to take on the bus just we don't want to do that um because they also have the holders that you get also to put them in the ground and everything so uh we're going to distribute them probably at curriculum nights or open houses and that for all the parents every child will get one all the way down to elc we even have them for elc too so we're going to do that these are also these are also some signs the art signs that we've also had these are for our board members yeah uh those are for actually the board members and for other members of the community probably our village halls and um an area that people can put out in their yards and say that they're proud to be part of you any of our staff members that are in the community maybe they want one of those too and that so we have those available i brought enough actually for the board tonight uh so the board can take some the difference with these is these are just two-sided so you can put those in your lawn and that again i've got the holders for those so be happy to distribute those uh for you this evening too i was gonna have one made up you know proud to be a board member but i didn't so um the other thing we're doing is uh is sharing and having t-shirts made up for all of our staff when they come back including yourselves i've got them here for you also again proud to be part of the u um with our logo on it so that's our theme um i've learned in life through married life actually two marriages that you don't guess on women's sizes so i've brought the sizes here that you can choose and um and take with you in that um i've put a little goodie bag together for you because again we're going to be distributing some things out to staff and and just getting you know part of marketing is getting your logo out there and you know getting that theme out there so we've had like little water bottles made up with our logo on it i've got some pens in here a little portfolio some mole skins that say proud to be you know and all that so um i've got little goodie bags for each of you too that you could take along these are things are going to be distributed to the staff also when they come back into our building so we can start advertising and marketing our district out there okay so that's just going to kind of give you an idea of some of the things we're doing from a marketing standpoint okay okay thanks again and also we are continuing to work on our communication certainly out with the community but internally as well you know and we were monitoring uh our facebook pages to see some of the questions that were coming up the confusion we heard about backpacks so we have made up some signs that will look like this these will be going out in school reach uh on wednesday through the actually peach jar in school reach that basically just reminds uh students about the specifics about the backpacks so that you know we're well advertised we've included some of those in your packet as well if there are some neighborhood events or establishments that you could see if they would like to have posted there see if they can post that i'm also trying to get these out to you know our libraries uh village hall just as some handouts where people can see that question uh and i'm assuming that the answer is yes are these in english and spanish those are not okay so neither these nor the newsletter the newsletter was in spanish and that was sent out to our families you think thank you we sent it out through the no we sent it out through the uh our email and then also um and we'll talk about this a little later on the cell phones you know there's been a change to the cell phone policy that we're going to talk about this evening that talks about no cell phones uh during the day and i just encourage again i said that that that we try to do all of this in english and spanish no i mean i'm assuming you all thought of this but if as much as possible because i i must i know that population is growing yeah and if there's an area that you know specifically that would be helpful as we're just you know kind of distributing them in the community and like you said maybe have one of each we can do that so those will be coming out um we can talk a little bit later if you're able to distribute those we can let you know where so we don't have people crossing over but we're really trying to push some of these out some simple way to do it because chicago heights has a high hispanic population it's just back to back that way it's all on one yep that's a good suggestion i will follow up with that too today okay um that's all i have for updates for me okay uh next up is consent agenda excuse me um does a board member have an item on the consent agenda they'd like taken off for separate approval okay i would just like to talk about two that are on the consent agenda before people vote on them okay well let me get the motion first okay um can i get a motion to approve the consent agenda move second okay any questions or comments oh i just wanted to uh draw the attention for item three um approved board policy seven colon 190 for revisions um this was this came in late uh but it is a revision um and i'm going to read it aloud just to make sure that people at home can hear this is on our use of cell phone policy again remember we had to merge the policies together we had two this is the change that was suggested as we talk with building principles it says unless otherwise banned under the policy or by the building principle all electronic devices must be powered off and out of sight during the regular school day unless use in a student's iep program or it is during the student's lunch period if approved by the building administration or needed as an emergency threatened or the safety of students staff and other individuals so we did tighten up the policy to basically say powered off all day and it would be only if an administration for perhaps a special building event was to take place if they would use that as an incentive i do have a question after listening to mrs bragg um i i think if i understood it right there's a concern about who who's going to grant that special privilege who's going to know that privilege and why do we why are we even considering that i guess what's the thinking behind it so it would be it does sound like it it would be the building principle so they would be making an announcement for example what if every there were no tardies that week right there's the incentive then we can have monday will be so it would be all children not individual no it would be all children yeah okay so this would not be an individual yes okay i i didn't get that clearly when i read that so i thought it was going to be you you did really good you didn't talk in class today no that's too hard to monitor that's what i was trying to figure out okay i didn't get that it was across the board right our principles after speaking with them they wanted to be able to use it as an incentive for things like like the tardies you know if we can have no tardies by you know x number of days then you know you can have friday with a cell phone during lunch so something like that so they wanted to be able to have it uh and it would only be the principal that would have now set at the building and it would be kind of a one size fits all so what did we do with 7 colon 0.93 we we merged it with this one so so we got a new cell phone policy seven colon one nine zero it's it's just a revised one it was already there okay and how do we officially delete the old one yes um we can ask maybe our attorney for that one um so we have to so i'll rephrase it for you normally what you would do that's what i was thinking so all right so we could put that on first next that's kind of what i was thinking next month yeah to delete the old one okay do a formal deletion i will add that at the september meeting okay thank you for that thank you good catch moe any other questions or comments on the consent agenda okay roll call brown i mrs galbraith hi dr hall aye mrs walters aye mr suarez hi vice president rule hi president albert do we need to talk about that president albert did you know aye motion carries just i said you want got it thank you okay uh next up our action reports under business can i get a motion to establish a date for the 2021 shouldn't this be the 2022-2023 okay establish a date for the 2022-2023 tentative budget public hearing on september 13 2022.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay the chair accept the motion discussion all those in favor anyone opposed okay thank you very much um consolidated cash reconciliation report there's a handout evolving fund report is in your packet in the butt yes i'm sorry yes i had a question on the revolving fund i realized that at the top of the revolving fund it says fiscal year 2223 but it has never been reported as just a fiscal year because revolving fund is exactly that it's a cumulative thing and for instance i think the last time i checked the facilities rental had close to a half a million dollars in it the pool account had a hundred thousand and so on so it kind of looks like we're starting from scratch and i would like it to be reported in the future what the actual revolving balance is for each account john i didn't realize i think melissa might have done this i didn't realize she did it until just sorry so i'll talk to uh i'm sorry yeah i think that this melissa might have done this she's not here tonight because she had a an appointment but um and she probably didn't realize we didn't start over i think she i think that she did this i didn't realize she had done this so um i'll get it straightened out tomorrow so that we'll have it fixed for the next meeting thank you i can send you a report before that if you'd like once once we make the change before we go forward with that is everybody okay with that uh changing that keeping up the same format that we used to have no problem okay okay budget report is in your packet okay they're all for informational uh communications uh articles uh aff oaa and greater launch technical school concluded a product uh product uh development challenge to support ukraine public participation this evening i didn't see anything written down okay superintendent evaluation francis frank i mean you wanted to talk about this when we did the um put the summon um when some of the report was done we were supposed to have done having a meeting or a special meeting based on um what the circumstances were in virginia past it should have been a special meeting where the board members actually had to vote on the final composite of the evaluation making the valuation that was submitted to dc invalid because this board did not vote on the final vote okay i do have to disagree this committee put together the format that we wanted to do do you have any input from other members well my question is does the format should the format be consistent every year when an evaluation is done because it is slightly different from the procedure that was done the year prior they they have changed over the years they have to say that they've all been the same i i'd be lying to you they they do change they get tweaked they get changed so okay but um so to add an additional question to that is there although there are changes is there any um protocols that need to be consistent yes in terms of how an evaluation is done that is beyond our um decision like that's something that is required by the state in order for us to follow certain protocols that i'm aware of as far as doing the evaluation every member gives their evaluation the evaluation report gives it to one person who compiles it and takes the the compiled numbers puts them in an order and then it uh it is presented one second all right oh okay so and i took the re i really took the value the super 10 evaluation training over the weekend and i mean over the summer and it was we were told once again um step five at the end of the cycle the superintendent presents his self-assessment along with evidence to support work done to achieve goals and meet the standards agreed upon at the beginning of the cycle individual school committee members consider this information along where they own observation evaluate the superintendent most commonly the individual evaluators evaluation are compiled by a member of the school committee into a composite evaluation this composite evaluation is then discussed and voted upon as a final evaluation of the superintendent in massachusetts this is a public process conducted at the school committee meeting so we were he was supposed to come back here um and the members who had to vote on it before finally to finalize it and before submitting it um to the so that's it yeah i do have to disagree um like i said uh the way that the committee had uh you saw the minutes that i i think we i actually sent you amazing um the minutes and and to the the superintendent evaluation is the similar to the administrators and the teachers the only thing is his evaluation is done in in public and is just before the final the final one is voted on by the members of the school committee then submitted to dussey making the whatever we submitted to dusty invalid yeah i do i do have to disagree yes i i feel that it was a matter of miscommunication within the committee a few of us thought a certain date was the drop dead date for submitting it and we did others thought it was another date but then it was my understanding that once all of those were submitted it would be sent to us which it was and then submitted i did not believe that it was another vote because i really believed that once we submitted it we had our input so i'm going to make a suggestion that going forward we changed the timeline so that perhaps by april as early as april 1st maybe april 15th or whatever that we submit it so that then we would have time for discussion but i i felt like i had done what had been asked for the committee and um i you know i i see this submission that was done and everything so i just would go forward that we do it earlier you know this is my first time evaluating the superintendent officially but i understood the last meeting when we voted on it i'd even asked the superintendent if everything was done and ready to be posted and he said they were just waiting for the academy leaders and then they would be put all sent in to where we had to now if we were going to call a vote on it was that mean that somebody can disagree with my recommendation all the papers that we filled out to evaluate the superintendent that means that as a committee we vote on the process the final composite if comments are going to be added that's we vote on the comments to be added and so forth and then at the final once the document is completed we make a we vote on the final document then that document is submitted to desi the process we didn't do was vote on the final composite of the of the evaluation to submit to the department of ed um and like i said i retook the training i still have the papers i gave you a thing that also explains that process that it should have been evaluated now do i agree with everything on the evaluation i could have but at the end of the day we didn't vote on it so the process was tainted so that process should have been completed um now the only way that could be done by the chair just doing it and putting everything together is if the committee sat and voted on to do to do that process where once it's submitted it goes off and we didn't do that either so my suggestion moving forward is to having the massachusetts association school committee come back here and redo for the members a a training on the superintendent valuation because it is a different process although it's similar to the administrators and the teachers it is different because the superintendent valuation is the only evaluation that's done in public and just to be clear this is nothing against the superintendent i just want to make that clear because i think john and i have a good working relationship this is about the process that wasn't followed correctly i do have uh disagree again totally uh if you want to call for to have someone have a a um not a seven i guess we'd call it a seminar a seminar i mean if you make a motion and the committee agrees to uh to do it we'll we'll call somebody in uh we'll notify somebody and have another training session but it's up to you if you want to make a motion and you get a second because we also if next week we have to start setting his his goals and his to do evaluation so i think we should have another training and i would and if you want to have that in the form of emotion then so be it make a motion i'm all for trainings but we had one and not every committee member attended and um i just feel like sometimes we have these seminars and trainings again which i'm all for but if we're going to be inconsistent and forget that there is a process and procedure to do certain things and we're just going to bypass certain things that is required by deci and the committee is going to do their own way of evaluating the superintendent then i just find that the time that we're um taking out of our day to take these seminars and you know to take these trainings are going to be very inconsistent as to how we operate when we are doing these evaluations um and then from my understanding we did vote on submitting uh these evaluations um to to uh to leo to make the composite but that that is what we voted on was to submit those evaluations to him um so if there was any other um meeting that that was required after that that i don't remember us deciding or voting on submitting the evaluation to desi if that was required and then the third thing i would say is um i think we just need to do a better job if we're going to continue like we already know that the process is lengthy the amount of information that the superintendent provides us to read regarding the goals that he put together and how he accomplished those goals that takes time and from my understanding he didn't provide that information in a timely manner in order for me to submit my evaluation prior to the deadline that it's required by the state so if that's the case we just need to do a better job as a committee to require that these documents are provided in a timely manner our exploratory program so that it um is more it's fair and more equitable for all students have a fair opportunity to uh obtain their first choice so a lot of work and time went into it i think it's really excellent i think you'll be very impressed and i think you'll uh uh like the program we'll get it we'll get it out to you before the meeting so you can read it but then we'll present it to you at the meeting so we'll be covering all of that at the professional development the first three days with the teachers as well as we do our regular safety training building safety update all our safety drill alice drill all of those requirements state requirements deci requirements at the beginning of every year and then there are individual you'll see there's also individual programs for particularly for new staff members to learn how to use x2 and gradebook and some of the various systems that we use here at the school so that will it's a three-day program one of the things we're doing on the very last day which i think uh i i kind of call it an seo program the very last thing we do is we're having a cookout this year and doing some activities for staff to get together in uh one of the things you'll see there is called the cornhole tournament and some other outdoor activities to just to get more collaboration and more relationship building between all the staff members uh i think which will which would be great i think you know in all the years that i've been in education this upcoming year to me pretty excited about it because both the administrative team which we have new people i've worked really well this summer i'm very impressed with our new people and our many of our new staff members uh i'm highly impressed we've been very fortunate to get some really top-notch uh teachers and administrators this past year of which a high percentage of this year's new teachers are a minority and excited about that as well but we'll go through that next week when next meeting will be going through all our new staff members a list of all our new staff members so you get to see what that percentage breakout is but it is going to be a pretty exciting year this year for us it's going to be the vocational against academic in the corner administrators against teachers oh okay we'll let them win yes mr adam mr roy i noticed that there wasn't time for local 1707 to have a meeting on here did they request time i think it's important for them to get together and yeah it will be on there it it's still in draft form so yeah it's part of the contract so we have yeah the new contract that you'll be looking at tonight it's that's part of that contract so yeah it's just we just haven't added it yet okay any other questions for the superintendent okay moving on to school projects john so i wanted to just give you an update on the school projects there's a lengthy list here we've accomplished a lot but have a lot more to do um and i'll start off with the probably the project that we're really focusing and uh our greatest effort in because we want to make sure it's ready for when the students come in so that's that's the cosmetology uh shop so the cosmetic cosmetology shop which they started painting it today uh once it's painted we will which will take uh we're hoping the middle next week will be done at that point we'll uh install the flooring once the flooring's in the cabinets will go in and then the counter so we should be pretty close to on time uh almost the last minute in having that open uh it may not be a hundred percent completed but completed enough that we should be able to open up and uh start utilizing it i think it's going to be a pretty spectacular space so we're excited about that particular program reggie cafe is the next one it's moving as you know we close the reggie cafe and we're moving it to the front end of the more formal four winds restaurant that's on its way that the cafe itself won't open until october which is typically when we do open it and it won't be done because of um it should be done for october 1st but it won't be done when school opens mainly because the cabinets uh had an 18-week lead time and so those won't be here until the middle of september that's pretty much out of our that that's pretty much all of our control cabinetry flooring all of that we ordered the flooring way back in the middle of may and it just came in last week all the different flooring except for cosmetology is not here yet so makes me a little nervous but hopefully it'll come in this week but the reggie cafe all the the structural work will be done the dirty work will be done uh it'll be a matter of uh we're hoping to start painting that next week the reggie cafe uh and then start putting the flooring down after that but the cabinets we if we if for some reason we weren't if they were still delayed and weren't ready ready for uh october 1st what we would do is put some temporary cabinets in base cabinets just so we can put a counter across and still do open up and then when the new cabinets come in we'll put them in uh on a weekend it'll only take about two days to put them in not even two day day to put the cabinets in another day to put the counter in yes on all these areas that have flooring issues yes is it possible to be in the space without the specified flooring yes machine technology that project's completed where we put on a expanded machine technology that's completed and open ready to operate in september uh child care center uh the framing is all done the they finished the wiring today and they finished uh plumbing so we're scheduling a inspection on those two particular items for all three of those areas once that's done we can start sheet rocking that that won't that again won't be ready till hoping for october 1st because the cabinets aren't coming until the middle of uh september towards the end of september actually on that particular one and there are a lot of cabinets in that space because all the cubbies and shelving everything all matches and it's all it's all ordered but um that um had a 14-week lead time on it so this is the show yes uh their actual um children signed up and enrolled and you said october 1st and school starts before that so i'm thinking about teachers who had to provide for child care what is our actual situation on having staff on board ready to open yeah so um i sent out a message that it wasn't going to be ready uh until later in the year i didn't give any from the get-go i have not given any commitment to an opening date because i i know that the lead time is a problem for construction materials so therefore i wasn't able to give any lead times but now that we we've got everything ordered we have some sense when it'll be here um i i'm going to i'm not even going to say october 1st but sometime between october 1st in the middle of october we had we just hired the director for the program who's on the in the process of getting all the state licensures in place and doing a list of working on curriculum uh and looking at um and then once i would say two more weeks i would say by the end when by the time the staff gets here we'll have a more firm date that we can give them for when we would open so we're looking at that particular to open that as a early we're looking at or opening the program as an early childhood education program the following year gives us a year to do the do the approvals from chapter 74 which would then allow us to take in more students if we do that so we're looking at that uh in the process of doing the feasibility study for job opportunities and employment our understanding is that it's strong but we have to complete that and i'll get back to the committee on that uh at a in a future meeting right yeah marilyn took most of my question oh um but how many do you have a number of or a survey of how many um staff members will be being using these services and how we charging for the services um what is the capacity space that is supposed to be held for her caretaker to student so originally when we put out the survey there was about 18 staff members that were looking to have utilized the space well between 18 and 20 something if i remember right but there was no permanent commitment on their part or any permanent commitment on our part when it would be open so depending on how many staff member end up utilizing the space will determine how many uh people we have to how many certified uh caretakers we have to hire so right now we only have the director and we're not hiring any others until we know what the staff number will look how many staff are going to be utilizing the space and we'll know but we could we can take in probably somewhere close to children without a problem are we gonna be charging and we'll be charging we we haven't sat down i'm gonna be sitting down with uh the director of finance and meeting with some of the other schools to take a look at what they're charging us but we want to make we're going to try to keep it below market market costs so that it's affordable for staff members and cover our own costs so the goal is to try to cover all our personnel and any costs we have in the program via tuition for the students mr hayden mr lloyd this was originally told to us it was the daycare for the faculty and staff this is the first i've heard of chapter 74 and accepting students yeah so we haven't that's what i said with researching it now thinking about it uh to take a look we would still be taking staff children so we'll survey the staff as well to see if that would be uh would that make a difference to staff members so we haven't made any final decision on it the advantage to doing it that way doing that is um we would give we would be able to prepare our students for that industry and still provide the service for our staff and then we could probably reduce the cost even more if we do that this is an exception because we get funded by by tuition of student tuition this isn't accepted chapter 74.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay we are now streaming and recording i'll do a call adam grippo here stay tam here ann harrigan here andrew martelly here anthony peregini here sam rosenberg here timothy white okay mr chairman you have a quorum thank you heather i ask that we stand for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty so good evening everyone thank you for joining us jeffrey thank you for joining us this fine evening i know you're very good but uh so we'll look at some good information from you and for those that may be watching welcome uh there's a special meaning of the board of ed it is uh wednesday august 17th and we have essentially one agenda item and that's essentially to discuss um more or less the do's and don'ts to the school modernization referendum um advocacy non-advocacy rep towards the uh referendum date that will hopefully be set next week so uh but before we jump into that heather do you know if we have any questions via email or not receive any correspondence okay uh we may check it back later in case anybody sends anything into the covet address but that being said jeffrey welcome um thank you the floor is all yours or the camera i should say sure thanks folks nice to see you all tonight uh the the memo that was uh circulated in connection with tonight's meeting is a memo that i had written about four months ago to the town manager because there started to be questions regarding uh advocacy rules in connection with referenda and the advocacy rules come out of the connecticut state elections enforcement commission in other words a referendum is regulated as an election okay so the rules that apply are consistent with other election laws in terms of uh spending money and advocacy and when it comes to a referendum there's basically three general rules that interact with one another the first has to do with the fact that the rules don't apply until a referendum is pending and the referendum is pending once the date of the referendum is set so cheshire's got a town council as its legislative body and if the town council at its meeting next tuesday or some future meeting date uh calls a referendum sets a referendum for whatever date then once that happens then we are in the prohibition period in terms of expending public funds or property advocating for or against approval of a referendum so the first thing to know is that once the town council sets a referendum date then those rules are triggered the second thing to be aware of is the fact that we're talking about a prohibition on using public funds public resources and of course the policy decision behind the prohibition is that most municipalities have deeper pockets than most residents so it would be an unfair advantage if public taxpayer funds could be used to advocate for or against the referendum in comparison to the resources that are available to the average citizen so when we talk about public funds or public resources the sec state elections enforcement commission has uh construed public uh funds and public resources pretty broadly so it's you know it's not just town funds from any source it's not just board of ed funds from any source but its use of any resources which includes you know the computers whether it be the server the personal computer owned by the school district school facilities school supplies school equipment school postal permits teachers staff anybody that's being paid by taxpayer dollars on the town government or board of ed side is considered to be a public resource okay so that's the second thing to be aware of is that the prohibition applies to public resources which means town government or board of ed owned operated leased paid for and then the third issue is advocacy and the definition of advocacy comes from multiple state elections enforcement commission decisions and the commission has traditionally applied advocacy in a broad manner and the general interpretation of the advocacy ban means that any communication which urges a particular result either by express wording of advocacy or when considered as a whole would make the ordinary reasonable person believe that a particular result is urged constitutes advocacy so the emphasis by the sec decisions has always been on the entire communication you know they'll consider the style the tenor the timing and in the memo there's three decisions that i cited uh one decision involved a uh mailer that threatened program cuts if a referendum wasn't approved and that was in connection with the budget referendum and that was found to be advocacy another was using a public school one call system to disseminate automated messages and the concern was that the substance of the message included benefits of passage and negative impacts of failure of the proposed budget that once again is considered to be advocacy because a reasonable person would conclude that the negative impacts are in fact negative impacts and that the good thing is to keep the programs or ad programs depending upon what that particular budget sought to do so you know really the only exceptions to the use of public funds or public resources for advocacy purposes are explanatory text and there are specific rules that govern adoption of explanatory text and those rules are the legislative body of the town and this town the town council would have to authorize the creation of the explanatory text the town clerk would prepare the text i as the town attorney would have to approve the text the text has to be neutral it can identify the intent and purpose of the referendum but it can't advocate for or against the uh referendum in addition to explanatory text there can be uh a bona fide news conference at which public officials express their views on a pending referendum and you can also use public funds facilities and supplies to respond to a request for information from a constituent concerning the referendum including a public official's views on the referendum the exception to that exception is that if you respond to a citizen's request with knowledge that the response will be disseminated to others in the community then you lose that exception in other words if somebody sends an email saying hey i'd like to know if the referendum fails what the plans are for repairing or dealing with other challenges we have in the existing school facilities and once i get your response i'm going to put it up on facebook so the rest of the town can see it or i'm going to circulate it to the pto whatever so if you know that it's going to be disseminated and you express your views then you're advocating and you're doing an end run around the prohibition on using public resources to advocate for or against approval of the referendum there's been some questions that have been asked about political action committees which are known as political committees in connecticut there's a whole separate set of rules that deal with political committees and a political committee is basically an organization that gets registered with the town and with the state as a political committee and then can go out and raise money to be used in advocating for or against a referendum question and in terms of a public official's ability to participate in a political committee again you can't use public resources so if somebody who works for the school system wants to participate in the activities of the political committee he or she is free to do so without using public resources they can't use their work computer they can't use a copy machine in the principal's office uh they can't use a postal permit etc so individuals don't relinquish their first amendment rights when they decide to be elected or appointed officials of a municipality what they do is they subject themselves to the sec regulations and you know what that means is you can use your own money or you can contribute money to a political committee as long as you don't fall under one of the categories of banned individuals okay you just can't use public funds so individuals have rights and by virtue of being a board of ed member or any other town official you don't relinquish those first amendment rights you just are subject to the sec statutory and regulatory requirements in terms of spending your money and uh how you make contributions to a political committee is regulated by the sec and you're prohibited from using government resources except in those limited exceptions that i mentioned explanatory texts and uh a news conference also there there is some sec i was going to say case law there are some sec decisions that talk about you know if there's a regular newsletter that's put out by say the superintendent then you know there's nothing wrong with providing information about the referendum in that newsletter the only thing that you have to be careful about is making sure that you don't use kids as couriers and making sure that again you're not using public funds or public resources to advocate for or against the uh referendum you can certainly provide factual information it's just advocacy that's banned in other words you can provide information about the date and the time and the polling locations and what it is you're looking to build you know the subject of the of the referendum it's just advocacy that is prohibited if you do provide information using public funds or public resources okay so again the big the big three is once the referendum date is set the rules kick in and those rules involve advocacy and use of public funds and public resources andrew so if the superintendent put out a notice saying this is when the referendum is going to be this is the cost of school project i guess where it's we have to be here he has to be careful is he can't say as a result of increased enrollment this is necessary like would that be too much like giving reasons why we're doing it well i mean again it's all in the it's all in the presentation okay if you were to have a factual piece that set forth what the current capacity is for existing school facilities and what the projected enrollment was over the next five ten years whatever enrollment study you have and leave it at that that's not advocacy that's public that's public information got it okay if on the other hand you were to say if we don't build these new schools then we will not have capacity for your children and your children will be placed in trailers that's advocacy right because you're telling people their kids are going in trailers and most parents don't want their kids in trailers got it thanks uh ann and sam and adam and did you have a hand up earlier oh sorry uh go ahead samantha so i had a similar question to andrew but i just want to kind of um go back to delineate the role of the superintendent are you stating that he's not considered part of the board or a public entity or both i just he plays a dual role in a sense here the superintendent's a public official okay so separate from that i'm going to go to the board side now as an individual our limitations are what and i live with attorneys i get the legal lease jeff but you're going to have to simplify some of this stuff because it's almost seven o'clock do you have a board issued email account uh cheshire public schools account is our board issue email okay and that email is maintained on the cheshire board of ed server right yes so you should not use that email account to advocate for or against the referendum because that is a public resource so now i have a personal email account what can i do through that venue your your personal email account you can do whatever you want with so long as you're not sending emails as a board member you're not you know denoting it as you know of a board's videos individuals view correct that's pretty much the mindset right right and i mean i don't know if you have board issued ipads or laptops or anything but same thing if you do they can't be used in connection with advocating for or against the approval of a referendum and then we have postcards that we've been helping um dr solon distribute personally we can continue to do so what's on the postcard it just directs individuals to the website for school modernization and then obviously from that point on the information is disseminated through the website whatever factual information on that site as long as it's not advocating either on the postcard or on the website after the referendum is pending today i don't care what's on there you know have at it but once the referendum is pending and we go into the cone of silence then we have to be careful about having you hand out postcards if they're printed by the board of ed using board of ed resources then then once the referendum's pending if there's any advocacy on that postcard or a link on there whether it's a barcode an old-fashioned hypertext link whatever it is we have to be careful that there's no advocacy directly or indirectly okay got it thank you adam and then uh thank you um so in a couple of weeks we're going to be having a finance meeting where we're going to be talking about the cost of trailers if a referendum doesn't pass is that considered advocacy even though we're just speaking about factual information you're talking about in a finance committee of the board of ed meeting yes absolutely it's your job okay so we can just so it's it do so is it advocacy if we talk about it in the context of a failed referendum no it's planning okay great um and then secondly um if there is language um used in a in material that's not from the board of ed so like from a pack or something like that where let's say one of us is quoted or the superintendent is quoted is that considered aborted a use of board of ed property or anything like that or if a video clip is taken from a public hearing where we're talking about advocating for something um for and that another group uses is that of are we violating anything is the board or the town violating anything for letting that group use a publicly disseminated material so you're not who's who's in your hypothetical who's paying for the dissemination of the material um i would say the pack is they would just went out to youtube and grabbed the quote or whatever so they grab public information and they disseminated it with their funds or not there's no issue with that you know i mean any anything that's in the public domain on youtube you know if somebody if you if you for example does you're hypothetical there's no issue with it okay but i'll take it a step further if you have a budget committee meeting and in that budget committee meeting you talk about well we need to plan mr superintendent in the event that this referendum fails for how we're going to accommodate you know you'll talk about class size right and you'll talk about what your plan b is so those meeting minutes will be posted on the town of cheshire board of ed website i assume at some point if somebody goes and takes those minutes off the website and turns them into a mailer as long as it's not funded with public funds there's no prohibition on that in other words if if i go do it okay and i say you know what it's gonna cost me less than a thousand bucks i don't need to register as a political committee i'm gonna spend my own money i'm just going to do a targeted mailing of this of this one page from the meeting minutes to let people know this is real that's fine as long as it's not public funds again keep in mind what the what the purpose behind the rule is the purpose is to have a level playing field we don't want you know the government which like i said before typically has bigger deeper pockets than the average citizen to have superior access to communication channels because they have more resources we want everybody to have a level playing field so as long as it's not the board of vet or the town of cheshire that's paying to disseminate that information then there's no issue thank you thanks adam uh faith uh thanks tony um my question has to do is very similar to adams i was gonna ask about um about our upcoming meeting but i do want all right so we're i just want to um kind of preamp something if we need to if we're in this meeting and we're discussing actual facts figures this and that but then someone says one of our members says golly i hope these schools pass because we're up a creek without a paddle are we going to get in trouble because that is that's not really planning i mean i'm just so i guess i'm asking do we need to couch our ourselves no no no keep in mind what's regulated okay what's regulated are targeted communications communications that are being sent to electors to influence them on election day okay what you do in your meeting you you're nothing changes you do your you know you're elected to to be a board member i was a board of ed member for six years in trouble and i chaired the facilities committee and i and i get it okay i get it that this whole thing if you don't do this stuff every day as a lawyer some of this stuff may not make a lot of sense to you but by by no means should you uh be worried about saying something in a board meeting and having that be deemed some kind of a violation of the prohibition on advocacy now at the same time you know if there's a camera in the room and you pick up the microphone and make a speech and look into the camera and say ladies and gentlemen boys and girls those of you voting on november 8th i want you to listen to me loud and clear you better vote yes then sec may look at that and say hey you're kind of flaunting your role on the board by doing indirectly what you can't do directly so i wouldn't recommend any soliloquies or or any uh you know person debates with the microphone but at the same time if you're in the in the you know context of an agenda item talking about planning and asking questions about what'll happen if the agent if the referendum fails that's perfectly perfectly fine okay and then just a just a comment sam had asked about the cards and these are the cards um and they do say how new schools benefit everyone in cheshire so i assume after the referendum is set these do even with such a it's really kind of benign but they do become advocacy okay thank you yep if that's what it says on there absolutely okay thank you um so jeff thank you i'm sure any more questions i i'm pretty sure it has her hand up like i had let me go up next to and then the tim in the order we're using the raised hand feature but it's okay that's okay um so obviously board meetings we're not gonna pontificate the microphone why voters should vote for referendum you know that's not going to happen um because that will violate things and and i know no board member wants to advocate or try to sell anything what we do want to do is get the facts out you know namely you know i assume i'm just talking dr solon i'm sure he's working with you and vincent determined on the modernization site where information can stay up but can't ozzy things like the enrollment studies the facility master plan studies all the factual things that don't advocate for a particular thing is going to be a reference should be available um there might be a couple videos that jeff's done recently that might be more advocation i think he's going to take those down after next tuesday but during board meetings uh and even town council meetings any committee meetings we can expect members of the public to you know come up during public comment and ask questions about the project and you know we're going to answer with facts we're not going to try to advocate someone says hey why should i vote for this i i would say respectfully i can't tell you how but look at the facts make your own decision um so i can see where you know if we're not watching ourselves during public uh comment uh but the board is pretty good about that so it's a town council you mentioned advocacy what about town council and board members it might be against the plan i mean advocacy and non-advocacy i mean it covers both correct we can't be out there saying don't fall for it right well the definition of advocacy is urging a particular result it doesn't matter whether you're urging the approval of the rejection the same the same the same rule applies to both sides of the issue thanks and you know in terms of people asking i mean you know i've been involved in a lot of school construction projects and you know the taxpayer pays for certain deliverables and those deliverables should be available on the website and should be easy to find that's not advocacy right you know advocacy would be sending a mailer uh or a postcard in everybody's mailbox uh or putting up on the town or board of ed website text that says vote yes on november 8th click here to find out why you know then you're then you're using that deliverable as a backup for your advocacy yeah and uh before i'll turn this over to uh and next but quickly so you know as with anything in any town you know no matter how many of us and how often we try to point people to the website hey where can i find more information that's uh people still hard time finding information um i assume the pack whatever that is will probably help with that but uh can the school district for example use powers uh it's not power school anymore but uh power school communications to if jeff wanted to send a letter just letting folks know where to find information on school monetization that points them to the monetization website via the school email system but it's not advocating for anything i assume that's okay yeah it's fine it's it's just informational yeah um again i think that's where we'll keep a watchful eye is communicating where to find information uh we can never get that out there enough to the community so uh i'm gonna turn over to ann and then tim i'll go ahead and thanks tony um it sounds like as an individual i can give money to the pack would that be correct yes and as long as you're not not that dropped you but as long as you don't fall into one of those prohibited you know like if you're a state contractor for example i'll have to fill out the form exactly and uh my other question is we have lawn signs up in front of our schools right now that say please support new schools those will be taken down because they were bought i guess with public funds so as soon as referendum data is set those will be taken down can i as an individual buy them from the school and put them on my front lawn i'm to say no um because what you're doing i mean [Music] it's a it's a great question because it triggers two areas of the law number one does the board of ed have the authority to sell you the sign okay because it was bought with taxpayer money and there's no statute in title 10 of the general statutes that says one of the roles the board of ed has is to sell signs so there's a legal standing question about whether or not they have the ability to sell it and if they do have the ability to sell it they have to put them out to bid why does a board member get to buy the sign right so that's question number two and then number question number three is if a board member buys a sign and that sign constitutes advocacy does the board member reimbursing the board of ed for it you know take it out of the prohibition and my suggestion would be not to look to make new law on that topic that makes sense to me that makes sense um so those signs are going to have to go to go to the wayside i guess yeah i typically i tell everybody with any referendum don't throw any signs away because you may be using them again someday well there's other phases maybe uh hopefully down the road so uh but the other thing too jeff i think the other issue too is those signs um were bought and paid for at public funds so therefore even if we were able to sell them you're you're you're indirect as a board you're indirectly violating using publicly funded materials to so again it's a good idea i know an ann should probably make her own signs but no that's a good question thanks for asking that think of that thank you sure uh tim you had your hand up earlier thanks tony it's yours um let me see so uh you had mentioned uh you you mentioned that um like school employees just say teachers uh shouldn't be involved in it i'm just curious in general can teachers advocate on their own time outside of regular school hours again as long as they're not doing it while they're being paid by the district or anything or using you know a computer or a printer or a copier or any other school resource okay um am i so replying to just to clarify in this one circle back to uh using school email if if i am replying to questions people send to me on my my board email and i have no reasonable expectation that it'll be further disseminated i mean a lot of people send me emails and it's just tim what about this and it's not intended to be you know replicated in a mailer or newspaper or anything just based on if it's a regular communication can i reply using the school email or do i have to go over to my if somebody if somebody sends you a question on your board of vet email account yeah and you have no reason to believe okay that your response is going to be disseminated to others in the community you can respond on your board of vet account okay and that's gonna i i'm confident that will be the majority of the emails that i get just a normal one-on-one i mean you said you were on a board you know what i'm talking about oh yeah and the the my last question right now at least is um so i want to parse this a little bit more school mailers as a reminder to parents to vote not advocating for any sort of outcome but simply advocating voting i think people i think a reasonable person could conclude that if you're subset of voters you're reminding his parents it's leading a certain way has that ever been looked at i mean is it well no i mean the the sec has specifically held that although children can't be used as couriers of information that advocates a position a notice that's limited to time place and question can be sent home to parents via the kids okay all right yeah sorry i missed that if you had said no no worries all right yeah i'm done thanks tony no problem uh faith you had a question yeah yeah i just posted in the chat it um i just what are the consequences or um the penalties if we you're muted faith we lost we lost faith's audio uh yeah we lost your audio fate but in the chat uh while she's is checking her in um what are the consequences if there's an impression they're fine if so is it against whom and does that delay suspend or impact the referendum the sec has jurisdiction over violations of the statute and what happens is somebody files a complaint they do an investigation and if if if you don't resolve it voluntarily and they find there to be a violation the statute allows them to fine you twice the amount of the improper expenditure or a thousand dollars whichever is greater so you know let's say you had let's say you had a mailer that was sent out by the superintendent paid for with board of ed funds that advocated for approval or denial of the referendum and let's say that cost you know two thousand dollars then they could theoretically levy a fine for twice the amount of the improper expenditure um the official that authorizes the expenditure is personally liable cannot be reimbursed or indemnified by the town of the board of ed it's good to know thank you jeff sure any other questions for for jeff while we have him uh adam thank you i just wanted to verify this because uh this one's kind of blowing my mind um you're saying that the superintendent only the superintendent and or all of the principals i won't even want to make that clarification can use parent square to remind parents to vote on november 8th what's the vote what is parent square that would that would be the uh the app that we currently use to really primarily communicate with parents about things going on at school electronic school newsletters electronic yeah you could you can you can say in that school newsletter that on november 8th at your usual polling location from 6 a.m to 8 p.m i assume the polling hours there will be a [Music] question to be voted on regarding construction of new schools what do you know whatever the wording is yes yes you just can't advocate for a position on it you can't you can't say please get out and vote yes you can't do that just tell them just tell them the date the time and what it is so if this so can the superintendent do that can also the principal do that because usually sometimes they both send a message is it is it considered as they have to come from one location no no it doesn't have to come from one nope okay so that's not considered an in-kind contribution or any any kind of violation sec it's not advocacy okay in order for it to be a violation it has to be public funds or resources for advocacy and if it's not and if it's you know sec has specifically said that notices limited to time place and question to be voted upon are okay okay so if it says don't forget to vote that would be advocacy but if it's just a reminder that something is happening on november 8th a reminder to vote or no not even a reminder to vote just a reminder that there is an opportunity to vote that's not advocacy well i'll tell you i it's not advocacy and saying please don't forget to vote probably pushes the envelope a little bit but may or may not be considered advocacy you know what i'm saying i mean i okay i i guess the question is you know would a reasonable person construe please don't forget to vote as advocating for a yes vote maybe maybe you know people i know people do people do encourage people to get out and vote to vote no right i'm just asking because from uh from a political point of view a political party would pay a lot of money just to send that message out and so you're saying that the board of education can use their own system to say that something is happening on november 8th and that's not considered advocacy nope as long as it's limited to time place and question okay i think for me that's not much based on what jeff just said those three criteria time place in question it's no different than when the town sends out the mailer of the referendum questions that will be on the ballot november indicating what the questions are time place location i'm pretty sure it doesn't advocate the vote it's more of an informational thing i i can envision dr sullin doing that and maybe he'll say oh by then and oh by the way there's also a school modernization question on there or highlighted you know that might be pushing a little bit too but um right i mean usually what what most towns do you know whether it's charter revision whether it's election you know uh uh charter revision or other referendum questions school construction projects included is they'll say something like tuesday november 8th is election day the polls will be open from 6 a.m to 8pm you'll vote at your usual polling location on the ballot this year is a question as to whether the town should construct two new elementary schools that's not advocacy so that something like that is fine tim i think you had your hand up thanks tony yeah something something that i recall uh jeff mentioning was use of the town's for lack of a better phrase red alert system it's something i was so i was under council 20 years ago when we adopted this thing and i remember it being used into being described to us intentionally for like emergency situations there's nothing related to an emergency in terms of a referendum coming up would that be is there any law governing anything like that well again i mean it's there can't be it can't be used for advocacy no but even simply to remind people to vote it's a lot of people think it's different there's different schools of thought on it some people think it's not appropriate because of what you said which is it's supposed to be used for emergencies and some residents some electors get very annoyed and very frustrated when they get a call telling them to go vote when they already voted or when the emergency notification system is used for something that they don't regard as an emergency they think this isn't what we pay for this for other people don't mind so it's really more of a you know policy question about whether you want to use that resource to let people know it's election day okay thank you the interesting thing you know with all the polls that get done the interesting thing would be a poll in a town where that system was used asking to try to figure out how many people actually voted because they got that call so unless there's uh any other questions or comments i'm going to move to the journal meeting but before i do that uh jeff i'm certain um board members might think about this over the next few days next week it's any other questions uh what's the best way to get those two get them send them over to dr solon and sure andrew andrew knows how to reach me too well i know andrew knows where to find you he's got you on speed dial you can you can always email me or call me i'm always here you can always find me somehow and i'm happy to answer any questions for you yeah hopefully we won't pepper you too much with them no no worries at all that's what i'm here for right well that's pretty much the meeting thank you jeff it's very informational and i appreciate your time you put into this to educate us uh so thank you i just have white uh unfortunately sam had a drop uh to pick up something so she looked about two minutes ago for heather's notes about 7 14.
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well good evening everyone and welcome to this to the open session of the regularly scheduled board meeting for the azusa unified school district board of education on august 16th 2022 uh the time is now 7 p.m and we will begin with our flag salute and i do believe we have logan yeah i see logan from slauson middle school here logan how you doing this evening i'm doing good how are you doing well myself go ahead and take it away lead us all right please stand for the pledge of allegiance put your right hand over your heart ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all you may now be seated thanks so much logan you uh enjoy this this last day or so that you have of your summer vacation and we'll see you on thursday okay thanks all right moving on to 4.2 roll call uh board member rodriguez pena president board member beau here board member cruz gonzalez board member arianis president and i board member greer am also here we'll move to 4.3 approval of the agenda is there a motion to approve tonight's agenda question second move by board member ariana second by board member rodriguez pena any discussion hearing none will move to uh actually is uh student preference yes and we'll go ahead and move to a vote and it passes five to zero next we move to 5.0 report of action of closed session matters and there is nothing to report um which brings us to 6.0 recognition and awards and specifically 6.1 recognition of eddie acosta owner of acosta growers and so i will turn it over to you mrs small thank you for president at this time i would like to invite the infamous mr robert zamore our grounds supervisor john there it is good evening everybody um first of all thank you for allowing me to be here cabinet school board thank you for allowing me to come here recognize the whole front of mine that i had the pleasure of meeting 27 years ago when i began my employment here but i wanted to share some things about him if i can asking eddie to come stand up with me sir so what i wanted to share about eddie is when i first met him i came here 27 years ago not knowing much about nurseries and plants and vegetation and trees and shrubs and through my years of working there we built a relationship during that relationship he's taught me so much and gave me so much knowledge of the experience eddie uh has been in the business i'm gonna say nearly 60 years i might be wrong a little bit 60 years he established a custer growers in 1981 correct 1981 and from there he's uh been generous to our school district and i thought it was great that the school district wanted to recognize them for that for this many years of contributions with that i want to say that eddie uh for those who don't know is still happily married how many years now over 60 years all right i don't know eddie has three children are legislative graduates one of them or may not know his son adrian acosta is a principal current principal murray middle school little things that i've known about idiom his kids were at school and they were unbanned tree and he donated a lot of time volunteer work and put a lot of hours in over there for those who don't know he went at one time and bought a 18 foot 16 foot box trailer purchase that and turn it over and donate it to the highest so the band of banter tree could have a total trailer to tell their equipment and their instruments so eddie thank you for that little gift you gave to the district many years ago [Music] early years he's been getting given so much i mean we've asked him for so much for those you don't know i've been here for many graduations many board meetings many events countless because every principle is very demanding at times and they want plants and so i turned daddy and he's always been able to donate without hesitation okay i just wanted to wanted to make this understood that i do appreciate your friendship we've had many talks when some days i have bad days i drive into the nursery just to chill when i happen to come across better than he helps me bring out some things that i need to get straightened out sometimes so he's my mom of wisdom so i'm glad that he's there for me he's a great neighbor for those you'll know that across the nursery sits right adjacent to our property as well as down at some of the elementary schools eddie i just wanted to want to let you know that i and myself appreciate you for everything you've taught me and shared with me all right your knowledge your generous heart the continued love that you give as a unified school district thank you for your great friend to me a great neighbor to azuza and for all the dedication you've given to our children you don't know how much it's meant to so many schools for the events the graduations the awards ceremonies probably all our high school graduations i have been there for 27 of them and you've been there 27 years with me i had to do a little research because i want to know how how long has it been donating i talked to my old supervisor he told me he's been doing it for since early 80s so that's italian most 40 years of donating his heart to us is unified and i wanted you to know that the school district wishes to recognize you tonight and i wanted to say um be happy high school district thank you thank you eddie so much um hello mr eddie acosta i you know my name is gabriella arreyanes and i'm board member that's going to present the award but i want to say a few things mr eddie acosta thank you for your contribution support and support to the asus unified school district of your donation of plants and flowers for over 40 years 40 years correct did i get that right okay to decorate the state for our asus unified school graduation i've been part of that graduation i'm a recipient of those flowers as a student as an employee and now as a school board member and it really means a lot to me as they decorate the stage for our susan graduations your support goes a long way in helping us achieve our goals as a district we appreciate you tremendously and know that your beautiful plants and flowers that you spend a lot of time and your whole life in are in thousands of pictures with graduating smiles and families and the love that you feel in those pictures that have created a memory that will last forever and know that you are in every one of those pictures your spirit isn't everyone up tonight we recognize you on this day on the 16th of august 2022 at our souza school board meeting not only as a legendary but honor you for your thank you right moving on to item 7.0 which is items from a floor public comment a public comment so this is an opportunity for the public to address the board of education on agenda or non-agenda items individual speakers may be allowed up to three minutes to address the board of education on any agenda or non-agenda item when the public wishes to address the board of education on an agenda item they may fill out a blue card stand at the podium or raise their hand while in zoom attendance the board will take blue card requests first followed in order by speakers at the podium and then those in zoom attendant do we have any blue cards and anyone here to speak uh lika is there anyone with their hand raised on zoom attendance we have no hands raised on zoom okay then we will move on to 8.0 and 8.1 specifically comments reports and requests by the board of education and we'll begin with board member audience i'm just i would i i'm just so excited for school to be like in session already and i know for a fact that my own children are really excited um to come this you know this year i have a senior coming in um at gladstone high school and he couldn't be more excited and i'm sure all the students that are going to be going through all the uh you know experiencing all the new things that will be taking place are you probably speaking to this as well right all the new things that are coming their way are really exciting for our students and um i have not heard from teachers but actually i did hear from one teacher just right now um saying that they're really excited as well and so i want to wish all our students and all our teachers administration and all our staff a great first day of school and this is going to be a memorable one this whole year and i can't wait for all the activities that will be coming um from both from all of the schools and hopefully we get all the invites in our in our calendar and that we can make um a lot of the events and um i i heard about the the registration um that it was a success uh my daughter was there and he was able to express um all the students that were there and um that they're really excited about going to isuzu hi the ninth grader so way to go so thank you so much have a good [Music] remember cruz gonzalez um just very briefly i just wanna echo my fellow board member um i uh gabriella i really um i'm excited for the school year to start um we'll see hopefully it'll be a we'll get we can get back to routines i'm not gonna say go back to normal right because i think all of us think that then the old old numerals didn't work for everybody but they're super excited about going back can't believe that summer is already over with school starts in two few days but i hope everyone had a chance to get some rest and take some time for themselves so we know that that personal time and that personal self-care is so important so that you guys everyone can what they're well our students like i know you all will thank you board member bo thank you and good evening everyone i just want to give a shout out and accommodation to a couple members of our leadership team superintendent ortega uh assistant superintendent camacho and director jenny lee for their tremendous effort in expanding equity and access at our long fellow preschool site as an incoming long fellow parent i'm excited to know that longfellow tk students will now have access to both before and after school program programming through think together i think that's a tremendous support for families and i think if we learned many things during the pandemic but certainly one thing was the impact of child care the availability of child care or the unavailability of child care and the impact on on families and the local economy and the economy at large so i want to give that shout out to our leadership team for getting that in place and i'm excited also to start school with two district elementary students in two days thank you rodriguez pena i want to welcome the students and the staff back on the first day of school and um i also want to thank the nutrition services for our delicious dinner especially the dessert the chocolate covered strawberries thumbs up and um i wanted to also announce um azula high school i went to azusa high school the students from mizzou's in grafton high school link crew 9th grade class 2026 orientation it was a full house and it was beautiful to see the blue and red pom-poms together rather students joined together and cheered and everyone every time someone would come in they had a line and everyone was cheering for the kids so the parents and the students and the staff in the gym they had a great pep rally and i want to thank laurie madden the career center tech technician from glaston high school i swear she was a cheerleader before right she was really all over it she was great she had so much energy in the room and i want to thank also mr fernandez for continuing to try to gather our students together and make on a positive note and that's what we're all about to get these students together but also to make them feel welcome i also want to announce nutrition services iron chef comes to ausd i was a judge in the taste contest the ladies and i was thanking the ladies and someone brought up to me that there's a gentleman in the crew right so i'm sorry i'm like okay ladies and gentlemen from auc cafeteria uh azusa high glaston high and slauson middle school those three cafeterias made osolei and they decorated the room really nice they all bought the ingredients and mr ortega myself and natasha we were the judges and we had to taste on the taste contest and the decor what the decor look like and i was happy that they made this delicious mexican dish again like i said and i want to thank stella and her staff because i know they did a great job and worked very hard they wanted when we got there they wanted to be sure that we were ready to eat had all our stuff from the table all the ingredients and i'll tell you you can also count on me if you need a judge i'm here and uh unfortunately there's only one winner so the winner i want to congratulate glaston high school cafeteria it was all delicious but we only can pick one so you know how hard that is and and these ladies were very happy and gentlemen we're very happy to win i also went to the 14th annual kathy's cool cuts for kids approximately 275 and they're not necessarily students their children from this community even little little kids were there and um they were served with haircuts manicures backpacks and school supplies and it was nice to see all the children with a big smile they come in with their hair all along and they go like oh you're the same kid that just walked in you know it's really cute and i want to thank um mayor gonzalez for continuing this event this beautiful event that's been not in existence for two years so they were ready to go at first not too many kids showed it maybe because of the heat i'm not sure and he told us that okay we have all these hairdressers here and there's not too many kids here you guys are gonna might have to get a haircut right we're like oh man but at 11 45 it started at 12 all these people started coming seriously and they just kept coming you know over and over and it was really nice it's always a beautiful event memorial park i went to the river cutting ceremony for the youth and family center on tuesdays they'll have a workshop for youth from three to four on wednesdays they'll have oral health screening from one to five on thursdays you'll have youth sports 1035 and coming in september and october they will have the azusa renaissance art and music classes um bootcamp job bootcamp for youth and it's a really great pace i think i think azusa was really in need of a teen center a children's center where they can go and play and have a great time in a safe environment thank you and i also just want to echo the sentiment that was carried throughout each one of my colleagues comments and just welcome everyone back to uh the school year again hope that that uh summer was was restful and that you're you're returning prepared and uh ready ready to start the year strong and definitely looking forward to uh just the the many exciting things the new memories the the friendship the learning that's gonna take place uh this year so welcome welcome to everyone moving on to 9.0 and 9.1 specifically comments reports uh by superintendent cabinet and student board members um we'll go ahead and begin with our student board member good evening to begin azusa high school welcomed over 400 freshmen greeted by our lean crew leaders who were present for beginning of the year ling crew event last friday we would like to publicly thank ezra campbell's ball lori madden alfred zamora oscar fabian and i would personally like to thank mr fernandez for all their hard work azusa high school welcomed back teachers yesterday and the aztec staff spent time analyzing ell accusement data and discussing student engagement community building and school identity we would like to thank nutrition services for providing a delicious breakfast for aztec team this morning the aztec volleyball team is in competition this week away against averno and rosemead and hosting a tournament on thursday and saturday at home we hope you can come out and support our lady aspects this season aztec football begins their season this saturday against mountain view at citrus college at 7 p.m please come out and support aztec football on saturday night at super stadium it is a white out night so please wear white thank you thank you and then i do see carolina you're on with us this evening yes good evening everybody so gladstone high school staff and students continue to be excited for the first the start of the new school year this thursday and are planning to find are planning and setting up their classrooms to be ready for day one of school registration last week went smoothly and the counselors are working hard and making sure that all glaston high school students are placing their proper classes the school offices made a pancake breakfast for our teachers on monday august 15th and in addition to that chick-fil-a donated breakfast sandwiches for the breakfast a few ap results notable in the following pathway order is ap spanish lang and culture which is taught by ms mota english lit and composition which is taught by ms parmar and ap art 2d 3d which is top finders for domo and some sports reminder is that for our first varsity volleyball game is friday august 19th at home versus baldwin park at 5 p.m and our first football game is also friday august 19th at citrus versus sierra vista at seven o'clock p.m thank you thank you carolina and daphne can you share with us some updates from sierra high school hey everybody this past week has been a busy month for sierra the painters have been putting their final touches to sierra and the adult ed campuses it's looking great last week we had several parents attend the parent orientation meeting with the principal mr stout and counselor and mrs wyatt we had several questions from parents who have children attending sierra and they're excited for their student to attend on the first day of school students will participate in an orientation students will rotate through three activities social emotional learning to behavior to behavior and expectations meeting and have an opportunity to create their individual learning plan for the year finally on friday august 26th we will host our first coffee with the principal thank you so much and then we'll turn to superintendent and cabinet good evening i'd like to start off by saying happy new school year to everyone us in education are fortunate to have two new years to celebrate so happy new school year to you all i'm happy to report that the new orientation that took place last thursday went very well uh we've heard from new teachers at the event and some after the event expressing how extremely helpful and informative the event was so thank you to all those who participated i also want to thank all of our employees um that have worked tirelessly to prepare for the upcoming school year your efforts your hard work and your dedication to the district is appreciated and very noted and finally i wish everyone a very successful productive 2022-2023 school year thank you good evening everyone i would like to start off with first thanking stella and her nutrition services staff um it was great to be at the iron shelf competition but i think what i took away more is the energy in a room and how everyone just seemed excited about cooking from scratch and preparing meals so we're just excited of things to come from nutrition services i also want to thank our grounds and maintenance and operations team for helping with all the moves for school reorganization but lastly and more importantly well not lastly but more important i want to thank our custodial team we really took a deep dive in assessing how we can do a better job of our summer cleaning and actually um do power washing dusting and moving things around to actually clean up behind cabinets and this year they actually put their heart into it and i want to just thank anthony under his leadership and brian um allen as well as robert zamora and then my last comment is i want to um thank everyone in advance for coming tomorrow to our all-staff um luncheon that would take place from 11 to 1 at the district office so if you have time come by get some food we'll have raffles drinks and games thanks good evening i too am excited to welcome everybody back to a new school year i also want to thank staff and site administrators for their participation in our professional development day yesterday where they had an opportunity to focus on the english learners at their school sites they got to examine the different typologies of english learners that they have at their schools and look at their data also hoping and wishing for everybody to have a wonderful new school year good evening everyone i too had the pleasure of being at the iron chef competition and i'm on board member rodriguez pena's team if you ever need a judge especially around food sign me up one thing that we have failed to mention is that the winning team their posole that specific recipe is going to be featured in a future student menu and so congratulations to that team i also want to be thankful to the ed services team uh who put up a powerful day uh together uh for monday for our professional learning uh for our sites and our teachers um norma and i were able to visit almost every single site and uh every single site that we went to except foothill because we got there at lunch time every single site had their sleeves rolled up we're deep into the protocols and the uh the data and it was just great to to feel that energy and and be back in that regard um this thursday marks the beginning of the 22-23 school year and just want to be thankful there are so many moving parts to make a first day as special as possible and just want to be thankful for all of the different pieces of our organization that come together to make that day special and memorable for our students and our families thank you thank you then we'll we will move on to 10.0 general functions and we will begin with 10.1 approval of 2022 2023 board meeting calendar mr ortega uh thank you board president um we come back uh to you uh with uh the board calendar with a request to possibly move the october 4th board meeting to october 11th that week it is um golden days week and uh so on that particular day is the return of taste of the town and so we are looking to number one make this movement and then also looking for direction from the board if if this is something that we want to see in future uh years then we can put an articular file so that when we're calendaring the board meetings for the following year um we can already do that in that in advance of that i happened to be at the city council meeting yesterday to go share some highlights of our district um and just some important messages of some big things that are coming up and uh opportunities for the community to be involved um and they too were were doing a similar thing uh requesting uh staff to to move uh or to cancel a closed session to to be able to be part of that remember i guess i i really appreciate um you know us being able to be flexible to partake in the community events and vice versa and that shows you know unity and so i i would like to see um for our you know our board meetings in the future to not be that first week of october so that we we don't have to go through this each time so that that so you're making a motion i'm motioning that from now on that we do not have that first week of october uh that we do not have a meeting that first week second and uh any any discussion that we're able to go ahead and have it another day yeah and and so i would just do we have a sense of if do we need to are we taking action on what we do you know from here on out or is that more giving you direction i think the action is to accept the new or calendar that is correct um and so but but i would i would agree with that completely to say that not only with this event but also with national night out which i know that we also made made that adjustment as we look at some of those you know various community events yeah let's definitely set that up on a tickler somehow and use a new template to allow for there to be participation in those those things so um board member adianas would you are you willing to adjust your your uh motion to just to accept this year's calendar with moving the uh meeting from the fourth to october 11th uh yes so i will adjust my emotion to move to accept this year's calendar but to move october 4th meeting to october 11th and that is moving forward moving forward and then um okay all right then we are we had some discussion but is there anything else that anyone else has student preference yes okay let's go and vote and that motion passes five to zero moving on then to 10.2 presentation of school reorganization uh mr ronchio i believe that mr ortega is going to be starting us off yeah give me one second okay uh we are here tonight uh to provide uh an update on uh school reorganization um to uh to the board of education uh tonight uh we have five pieces uh i'll be speaking um then latasha will give an update for business services uh norma from educational services uh principal of azusa high school gabriel fernandez uh we'll give an update on the high school and then jorge will take us home in terms of human resources i want to start off by just uh stating that as a district we do have uh all department meetings uh regularly scheduled meetings uh to discuss plan ideate brainstorm problem solve think ahead anything and everything school reorganization those are planned on a regular schedule and again involves all of our departments in addition to the meeting we do have a shared truly shared google sheet we call it the punch list where we try to capture everything that needs to be done and we work off of that sheet to keep ourselves accountable to the things that we are doing this is a great space because many things related to school reorganization do not live in isolation in one on one person's desk or in one department they are [Music] multi-department and so having the space on a regular basis and having a shared punch list has served us well and we are continuing to do that throughout this school year as well school reorganization not that we have to but we can kind of parcel it out into three kind of pieces or buckets or stages if you will the first is uh the bucket was is around the decisions that were made around school reorganization the next one is the implementation and how those things happen and then the third one is uh what happens with the surplus property based on the decisions uh that we made uh regarding school reorganization let's talk a little bit about uh those buckets this is a friendly reminder uh and just to another opportunity to just communicate um based on uh a process that we went through with a school reorganization team that included many stakeholders uh and recommendations that came to the board of education and then a process at the board level as well uh here in this first box you will notice the sites that are going to remain open once school reorganization the whole entire school reorganization process uh is finalized and so those are the schools that will remain open um in the middle in that box you will see the schools that will be closed now again this is at the end of school reorganization that's not currently uh right now but once school reorganization is done those are the schools that will close that are listed there in the center and then part of our school reorganization decisions there was the decision that is a high school would remain named azusa high school that they would remain the aztecs that they would continue to have the school colors that they currently have but that the mascot that is currently in use had to change so moving on to implementation uh this school year 2223 ellington and powell the students that would have gone to ellington and pal who would have been in tk and k are now attending uh other schools in our district if we were to do this just based on new boundaries it it shakes down to ellington um um now goes to valley dale powell now goes to lee but what's up but something that we are extremely proud of in azusa is that we do offer our parents and the data supports that they take us up on this offer our parents the opportunity to attend any school that they want to attend to uh as long as there is space there and so when we break down all of our schools the data supports uh that are that our parents do move around uh within our district our ninth graders um will not be showing up to glaston high school on thursday uh they'll now be showing up to azusa high school so that's this school year uh by default that means that ellenton and powell yes foreign can i answer questions right now so my question was the tk and the k students from ellington and powell are they being blessed at this time thank you uh that is a great question i'm going to give you a quick answer and then we're going to preview that a little bit later but the answer is yes that's correct and the high school too uh-huh uh so by default that means that ellington and powell will be uh from first grade on and then by default that means glasgow high school will only be a 10th 11th and 12th grade school uh this year in 2324 all of our remaining open elementaries will convert to tk5 gladstone middle school will open as a sixth seventh and eighth grade school and azusa high school will be our one comprehensive high school uh in azusa that will serve 9 10 11 12 uh as the slide prior to this noted sierra high school will continue to be open as well in terms of the azusa high school mascot the board of education took action at our last board meeting on a consultant agreement with professor wong from apu her and i have been an email conversation and so i'm excited to have an initial meeting with her to plan out the mascot process that's going to involve a committee and ultimately they will be responsible for rendering a decision uh on that particular piece and so we look forward to moving rather quickly and getting that going for uh for azusa high school can you just clarify that's a decision or a recommendation to the board like who who ultimately makes that decision um per uh our understanding uh from the board level uh this committee will be making the decision and if that is incorrect then we can definitely pivot but my understanding from the board of education is that the committee facilitated by uh by my someone who had some expertise in this field i would be making the decision okay at our last board meeting we also the board approved a resolution that gave um direction to staff to begin the process of a 7 11 committee that was approved uh last at our last board meeting um we will now begin the process uh finalizing uh the application uh for the 7-eleven uh committee uh setting up dates initial dates for that committee and we are committed because the 711 and the surplus property goes beyond homeowners or residents of azusa that have children in our school district we are committed to communicate in a broader range including mailers but we are also looking at including uh communication at uh public service areas like the library senior center and those kinds of places uh yesterday i made a initial announcement at city hall as well the city council meeting as well and so we really want to make sure that we have a broad communication plan so that if you are not connected to a zoox unified school district you still have that information of what's to come and how to connect and how to apply if that's of interest to you and if it's not interest of you to become uh to be on the committee at least you know where to connect to see the meetings uh and to to attend if that is an interest of of of yours in addition to that the board of education uh gave direction uh that uh in order to hire a development consultant um that the board had interest that that would go through an rfq process so that is exactly what we did we were able to hold a um an interview of all of the firms that submitted a bid and so myself vice president board member beau and board member uh rodriguez pena along with uh our attorneys were able to uh interview uh the firms that submitted a proposal um and so we are looking forward to bringing that development consulting contract for consideration from the board of education at our meeting at board meeting next month with that we will turn it over to latasha to talk about business services thank you i will address facility modernization and enhancements so as agreed upon we successfully have completed all the moves that as a result of school reorganization all displaced teachers received boxes that were received um that received boxes and pre-printed labels the labels included their name i'm gonna include the site that they're currently at and the site they're going to go to as well as the room numbers all boxes have been i'm sorry all classrooms have been cleaned and ready to receive both the faculty and our lovely student all instructional related materials have been delivered and this includes the curriculum has been moved to a new location as a part of our commitment to our families we will offer transportation to those that were impacted by the school reorganization decision at this time of the posting of this agenda we had 23 requests for transportation from gladstone high school to azusa high school we received three requests from ellington elementary to valleydale elementary and two requests from power elementary ali as of this morning we have now received 31 a total of 31 requests from glaston to azusa and a total of four from ellington to valley the request from powell the lee still remains at 2.
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in the past there's not a lot of girls that try out for soccer so i'll be generous and say that the team will probably be about 20 boys two girls and the volleyball team we've had a lot of male interest it's it's continued to grow now that we're offering co-ed and we'll probably end up with a team at papago of eight boys and eight girls so thinking about the total number of athletes we have 28 males and 10 females and if we extrapolate that out across the district we're looking at about 200 male students to 70 female students and i think that really gets away from the mission of title ix and equal access for our female students not only is this a roster concern but also in in competition and playing we also see that males are kind of taking over some of those specialized sports roles especially in softball with those like key positions catcher pitcher first base and as it becomes more normalized with coed we're probably going to see more of those opportunities that females should have to play those positions going to their male peers and so really just with all of that said i hope that our board can give some guidance or clarity uh so that we can appropriately study this issue regulate it and ultimately resolve it and we can and must do better to protect our female athletes thank you thank you so much i appreciate your comment all right and that now brings us to superintendent report well good evening board members and community members thank you for being here tonight uh as we are in our seventh school day with children i just want to tell you uh it is my most greatest exhale to say the train is on the track and it after two years of of of chaos and derailment that is such a high standard right now that we're all truly enjoying so normal is good and and everybody is just happy i'm hearing from teachers as i walk around the campuses thank you for the support this last week was hard but everybody chipped in i'm so glad i'm in this district um i'm hearing children laugh uh and and giggle and get to know one another and build relationships uh jeff i am hearing about your joke of the day at the creighton virtual academy me just tremendous sweet support across the district monte vista boasted of enrolling 30 more kids this week alone so we're watching our enrollment very closely we're actually almost too close to being spot on to projected enrollment we did factor in some decline in enrollment so we're a little nervous in a great way that we may be getting more students and once again the teacher shortage continues to be the other deep exhale so we want to continue to nurture and find and beat the bushes so that we can find the talent that our children deserve we are just off by about four staff members across the board and we have some plan b's in place with a couple of staff members remember we hired an additional 130 people this year position wise so given the shortage nationwide we have nationwide 73 of the districts are saying they are not filled to capacity 73 percent and in arizona alone it's 3 000 unfilled positions across the state of arizona so with our openings and our backfills we're very solutions oriented and we're evolving i want to thank the principals assistant principals team members for finding a way to think about the way they group kids it's just been amazing i want to acknowledge our schools that were recognized at the rally thank you i just want to make sure i say the right titles because i know which two schools there but uh for the excellence in language development because we did honor our academic gains uh papago school was uh the achieving school there so well done papago and for academic growth it was excellencia amazing gains of excelencia thank you for that focus yes i see the the the what do we call the round of applause uh and then the academic improvement also went to papago so really great job and i just wanted to acknowledge that at the rally we had an amazing energy and an amazing sense of of reconnection at the at the gathering so uh i think that's all i have this evening we're going to be getting our committees moving and we're going to be getting that out and about we would like to look at vacancy savings uh in terms of things that we might be able to do together to help add stipends for staff but let me bring that to you later after we have a team work on that thank you uh miss mcsheffrey i do not have a board report tonight miss mccaleb um i'll just keep it brief and say welcome back and i know the energy is high and i know the kids are excited the teachers are excited lots of pictures of first day of school floating around on all the social media so welcome back and just thank you for being here and giving it your all and being a warm space for our kids as they start the new school year miss ayers good evening um i decided to be here tonight even though some of you may know that my wife did pass away on saturday evening i listened to a podcast that her sister had sent to me and it was all about resiliency so i know that she wants me to be resilient and she wants me to continue on and this is important work and so i felt i really needed to be here tonight um for our district and for our students um and i'd like to thank my board members for the beautiful flowers that were sent to the house and just all of your support thank you you're welcome just know that we are a bonding movie and with that we're always going to be here for you or any other board member in a situation that that is in and with that being said i would like to take a moment of silence to honor wendy's memory thank you guys for participating in that moment of silence and i do not have a board update today moving on to our next agenda item is move the governing board approve consent agenda items a through j in accordance with policy b e d b dash e a second okay all those in favor aye that brings us to item number nine eight and i would like to give the opportunity for jesse giambra to come and speak first before there is a presentation since we have a public comment for this yes please thank you good evening madam president members of the governing board executive team happy to be here i i personally am passionate about nutrition and so i thought i would come and share about this item because i feel one thing is that we have a really great opportunity with our garden program that we're rolling out to interweave our gardening education and the possibilities for nutrition education into our school day and i know that we are just at the beginning steps of even really rolling it out but i would love to see us really think about how we think about our nutrition for our students because i know right now what i've noticed anyway is that it's like if a food meets the minimum standard of what the state says then it's allowed to be sold in our cafeteria by our cafeteria maybe not this year yet but it previously was last year and i would love to think about nutrition density and how we could provide the most healthy and nutritious options um the snacks that were being sold not as part of lunch but separate from lunch last year included artificial food colorings and monosodium glutamate and i guess because of the portion size in one package they were they met the standard but i would love to think beyond just the minimum of the standard and also think about if that's still healthy or good for a student's brain development and learning because through observation there wasn't really any conversation with them around their snacks or if it was then the students asked well why are they selling it if it's not good for example packets of tahin which are meant to be eaten with a fruit but not sold with a fruit they were just sold by themselves and like ice cream that was like maybe sugar-free and then these like flavor-blasted chips so seeing all these things the students did get more hyper and also crash from it and we know that we can't really control what students eat outside of our time but we can control what our cafeteria is selling and that clearly had a negative impact they did begin to try to limit the amount of snacks the students were buying but at one point they were able to buy a 25 like whole grocery bags full so it was a little bit too much like a lot too much and uh you know we could be selling fruit personally i like buying like organic local produce and then supporting our local economies that way and so we have our garden where we can actually provide produce and education and i'd also love to see us all leading by example which to me is another good solution and like at our staff meeting this year they got like organic little breakfast bars they had bananas they had oranges and oat milk and i thought it was great so i feel like also the things that we provide you know during our work time can sustain our energy that we need as teachers to keep going throughout the day and i really appreciate it when that happens because even though a donut is like fun to eat it totally doesn't help me stay present when i'm teaching and so leading by example is like another great part of it so thank you very much i appreciate it thank you miss jamberry i have a question for you or a comment if you would like to ask them since it is an agenda item um do you think it would be more beneficial just to get rid of that stuff and substitute them with healthier snacks or should that be an option available still oh i don't think that they need to be there at all and healthy snacks would be a good option or none because they're already getting lunch thank you all right yeah go ahead just for clarification is this snack sold just to make money for some function at school it wasn't a school fundraiser it was from the cafeteria department i can't really speak to the money but it wasn't like a club fundraiser so it was part of like the cafeteria yeah i was from the cafeteria thank you okay thank you and i guess whoever's gonna present if we can have you thank you so much there we go thank you good evening madam president members of the board and cabinet it's a pleasure to be here tonight to give a brief update on the child nutrition and wellness department so a quick overview of what we're going to be looking at tonight is a quick review of our summer meal services as well as some federal program waiver updates and the remaining challenges that child nutrition departments continue to see as a result of the covid pandemic and a brief look into the head of what we're going to be looking at for this coming year for our department so summer meal services we just wrapped up summer meal feeding on july 29th that was our last service day we began on may 23rd so we were out there in the community from at the very beginning we were at 19 different locations throughout the community during the entire summer we were at all of our school sites not only during summer school activities but throughout the entire summer where breakfast and lunch was made available to our community for any child 18 years of age or younger additionally we partnered with our transportation department again this summer where we reached out to 11 of our mobile sites this has been a huge success for us as we've been able to capture a lot more of our students at apartment complex for popular bus stops where we know a lot of our students are are at in total we've served over 91 000 meals during the summer so a huge kudos goes out to the entire cafeteria department i'm thankful that they chose to continue to work during the summer and wanted to work during the summer and we're willing to get out there in the heat and keep our community fed and our students nourished and ready to learn this year so a huge thank you to them uh as as summer was still going on we were many of the child nutrition departments across the nation were anxiously waiting um to hear from congress what the outcome of the pandemic waivers would be we knew that they were set to expire on june 30th however there was the keep kids fed act being heard on the floor there was a glimmer of hope for a while that we would continue to see the free meals extended however at the very last minute this language was removed from this act and so that required that school lunch programs across the nation return back to normal operations so in order for children to continue to qualify for free meals they would have to go back to completing meal applications so as soon as we knew that we started our communications on july 1 and i think earlier this week you guys might have received an a board update a detailed list of all the communications and flyers and sample postcards and posters that were sent throughout the community and there was um great success with that um as of august 10th here's some data on where we stand with our school lunch applications um this is unheard of just just so you know in past years even with the rollover i'm getting 75 of our district to have completed an application by i think day three of the school year is just just wasn't ever seen so we are very proud with this number i pulled the numbers again this morning and we are sitting at 80 percent of our students having an application and completed so the numbers that you see here for the sites are um they changed daily so this is where they stood as of august uh 10th which is very good um just to add on to that i think this turnout is amazing and i think a lot of it had to do because i even got a personal phone call from somebody so the added on steps that you guys were doing to make sure that you were reaching families even though i had completed it already but i got that phone call so i thought that was really good and i'm sure that phone to phone contact is um easier because emails and stuff in backpacks or letters especially with all these mailers coming out it's easy just to toss things so i appreciate the personalized phone calls thank you i appreciate that yeah we've asked a lot of the cafeteria staff and our cafeteria managers we've asked them to personally reach out to the families that have yet to turn in an application just so we can try and capture as many as we could by day one so again some big kudos going out to our cafeteria staff there they're pretty amazing um so continued challenges that we see as a result of covid are some some significant supply chain challenges as i'm sure many of you know when you go grocery shopping you continue to see shorts and outages we see the exact same thing unfortunately when we're putting in orders and and whatnot a month or even two months in advance we're still seeing some of these shorts so that affects our menu obviously with having to make quick substitutions on the fly in some cases we are not even realizing what's being substituted until it lands on our dock so efforts that well another big challenge is the increased cost in all of our foods and supplies so we've seen anywhere between 10 and 20 percent increase in all of our foods and paper supplies so it's a pretty big budget hit but what we're looking at as efforts to offset some of these challenges is taking a look at the warehouse freezer as you know back in i think it was may and june or june we appreciate the approval of the remodel if you will of the district's warehouse freezer to expand its space this is going to help us in a couple of different ways first and foremost we're going to be able to get product directly from a manufacturer to us so we can hopefully start to count on materials being here and what we we know what is here we will skip the middle man of having to go from a manufacturer to a distributor to us so i'm looking forward to that as well as then saving some money on the cost of eliminating that middleman so we don't foresee these increased food costs coming down in any near future for us so any way that we can start to save for the future on bringing in mass product will will help us in the long run and looking ahead at the beginning of the year it was wonderful to finally after two years bring all of the staff back for our welcome back meeting we bring the entire department back and we provide them some professional development so we gave some back to basics trainings as well as brought in a keynote speaker to provide some motivation and excitement for the staff so hopefully they're ready for the start of the school year one of the other really exciting things that we have coming up for this school year is reestablishing the summer or the supper program with the current partnership with ymca so in the coming few weeks we should have that which is at all of our schools which is on all of our sites so supper will eventually be rolled out to all of the sites one of the things that we're always looking at is our meal participation we want to see every kid eat with us we want to see them eat breakfast and we want to see them eat lunch with us so we're always trying to be creative with what we're offering or how we're offering it and just trying to find ways to get these kids to come in and eat with us we know if they're fed that they're going to be ready to learn so and then lastly is the increased social media presence i think that did play a key factor in us getting a lot of the applications this year so we'll continue to push the social media presence continuing to build upon those personal relationships and their communication with our community and so with that i can do the presentation thank you i have a couple comments and questions first of all congratulations on your outreach because i know that is challenging to get those applications filled out um when you say increase meal participation like i know breakfast is a challenge if you show up late then you don't necessarily get it right like but what about lunch is that an issue [Music] it's always an issue if a kid's not eating with us we want to know why and we want to see what we can change or what will make them come want to eat with us you know not everyone loves school lunch some are picky eaters some parents prefer to pack a lunch which is perfectly acceptable but there's other avenues that we can still have them participate so if a mom or dad want to pack a lunch but they want to let their kids get a fresh fruit or a vegetable and a couple sides that is still driving in participation into our program so we'll try some different marketing techniques to bring in these kids okay and then i did want to follow up on the snacks because i did hear about that um last year um and even prior to that i think um what is the current situation with the snacks and i heard that that's a revenue generator for the district and that's why it was started i mean these are just some rumors that i heard um and that you know kids are buying 10 um things of chips at one point and these are kids that possibly qualify for free and reduced lunch and they're yet spending a chunk of change on chips for lunch so where do we stand with that we did put limitations on the snacks so yes in the beginning there were some kids i think buying extra snacks for their friends so we did quickly change some of the guidelines and those about coming in and buying all the card snacks when did those guidelines take place because as of summer school my son was still doing that and my son was one of the ones that was coming home with red fingers and that's all he was eating at school okay so when did those guidelines take place they took place last school year so during the summer we'll just provide more technical assistance to our staff and making sure they reiterate those guidelines and rules okay and was it implemented as a revenue generator for the district why are we doing that no it's it's simply just an all-a-car program so oftentimes we're hearing one of the biggest complaints our kids are still hungry after they get our meal and they want extras so all the carts are another way for them to get just an added items so they can always buy a second fruit they can always buy a second vegetable they can buy a second juice and then the a la carte items are also available the revenue that's brought in i can is is not it's minimal it does not make an impact on our budget at all okay and and then since we're back to um having to do an application and and it's um based on income you know we got that grant a couple years ago that gave free lunch for everyone even prior to kovid and that was eliminated the lunch shaming you know like what does a kid do if they don't have any money in their account and at one point i think they got a cheese sandwich what happens we are no longer doing emergency meals regardless of where their balance is all all children will receive a meal okay and they're not uh how do you if if i have forgotten or neglected to pay my um my lunch i assume you're reaching out like one-on-one to parents okay okay great um and so is there a plan to um you know try to make the some of the snacks a little healthier i mean i know if chips are there they're going to buy chips not an apple right i mean that's the problem yeah we always look at the the nutrition standards we are regulated by federal standards on what we can and cannot sell so we will always ensure that what's out there is is meeting these standards okay and and then just finally on the garden thing too um you know we're kind of getting up and going on a couple of partnerships but is there um if if gardens start producing um a harvest is there a plan and a setup to welcome that that food into the cafeteria absolutely we've always often times the gardens can't harvest enough to feed all of the kids at our sites so once gardens get going we usually try to partner with whoever is you know in charge of the garden programs and we say let us know when a harvest is about to to take place and we will bring in the product on our own and then we can serve that in the lines to supplement what they they about that might fit into our repurposing of facilities for farming teasing a little bit but bigger harvest we're always happy to supplement yeah great thank you um one question as well is there a reason why we even sell chips like do i mean just because we're allowed to is there a reason why we're even doing it it's just something kids obviously like um so we we offer everything we have you know fruit strips we have fruit vegetables so it's just a variety is there anything stopping us from continuing to sell that like if we said we shouldn't tell them and because i know that i'm city city council jesus student council and other organizations like when they have like you know the falls or the ptos or they meet the teachers those are available there and you know they get treats but during school hours is there a reason why we're offering these chips or stuff to the kids we could work with the student councils on and we have at papago when they were wanting to bring all the cart sales and we provide some nutrition education on here's the difference between a bag of chips and fresh fruit and fresh vegetables what do you guys want on your a la carte line and let's make it balanced so we try to have those conversations with the kids did you have something to say no it was already asked oh i did well i just had one other thing to follow up on i have also heard complaints about just the limited time kids have to eat that might not fall under your area but i mean like 15 minutes to eat lunch do you is it is there a district standard across the district or i will defer that question to dr dupin thank you madam president members of the board we're very fortunate to have ms bronner as a member of our team and she's been very collaborative at helping us to maximize the amount of available time that we have during the day the lunch periods typically there's typically a window of 45 minutes that is to include meal time and recess in the middle of the day so we have a variety of approaches at the schools that include you know sometimes they play first and then eat sometimes they eat first and then play really depending on the available space the supervision and the amount of time throughout the day that they have to to provide meals to students so it's it's tricky because oftentimes it's too much time for some kids and way not enough for others so we try to balance it out give the younger kids typically a little bit more time but that window that we have to work with is about 45 minutes long thank you i don't think we have any other questions thank you so much for your time thank you all right and that brings us to 11a future agenda items oh i'm sorry i don't know why i missed that 10a discussion in arizona school boards association aspa 2023 political agenda and approval of delegates to delegate assembly so um i don't know if anybody else would like to be a delegate we haven't really had a discussion i guess this is the time that we have the discussion right i don't know if anybody else is interested in doing it i've done it before so i've done it a couple times okay i was looking at my calendar i am attending the asb law conference for the days leading up to that so unless there's someone who wants to do the delegate on saturday i can you could totally be the delegate i already have other leadership roles in asba so um if somebody else i would love to open the opportunity for somebody else to experience that it's a pretty neat experience so i don't know and then yes i can do that okay and then if it's okay i could be the alternate since i'll be there already so just in case so um and for those who don't know what asbas we talk about them they're the arizona school board association and they have a delegate assembly every year basically all the school boards get together that are part of the asba and they talk about what their priorities will be for the lobbyists of asba to advocate for on behalf of the school districts and that's what it is we all come together only the delegate gets to vote on certain things that's why each board in different districts have so just for transparency and why we're doing this um so i'll make the recommendation now is move the governing board authorized lindsay mccaleb asba delegate or sofia carrillo doll as the alternative delegate to vote on behalf of the governing board on such aspa proposals which are in alignment with the district's vision mission and our goals at the delegate assembly to be held on september 10th 2022 a second all those in favor aye aye and i perfect and now that brings me to 11a which is future agenda items do we have any i have one so i would like to bring the title ix policy and any regulations regarding it um there does seem to be a perception that we require co-ed teams and i don't think that's actually is a requirement but i'd like just for the board to discuss it and kind of send a message uh of how we feel about it and i'd like to prioritize it like get it on next our next meeting so it can be resolved for fall sports which i know are coming up quickly we also are going to put together a team to to tighten up the handbook so i think that'll be helpful i don't know that we'll do it as fast as that but what are your thoughts just in terms of agenda development they both need to be done prior to the start of this fourth season so we're looking at it in the in the next two so maybe the second meeting in september we could have something sure is that soon enough for the when do fall sports start i don't know madam president i don't know the date off the top of my head exactly but we do we're getting ready to have the coaches meeting within about the next two weeks and then they'll have time to recruit athletes and so forth so within about a month well why don't we if we could get it on the next meeting at least to discuss our feelings about it and that could direct your handbook right two so we wouldn't need the handbook by the next meeting perfect okay that works yes okay awesome any other future agenda items okay all right i move the governing board adjourn a second all those in favor hi hi hi thank you so much for everybody thank you have a great night you
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second any questions or comments okay roll call when you're ready dr hall aye mr swann aye brown is an eye mrs galbraith aye mrs walters aye vice president rue aye president opera aye okay the next item for consideration is a parameter resolution for the issuance of of not to exceed 15 million dollars general obligation limited tax school bonds for the purpose of increasing the working cash fund of the district based on the advice of bond council the entire resolution does not have to be read aloud since it was posted as part part of tonight's agenda and in accordance with the open meetings act therefore mr brown as secretary of the board of education would you read aloud the title of the resolution that was the 15 million right yes title of the resolution is the resolution providing for the issue of not to exceed 15 million dollars general obligation limited tax school bonds of community units school district number 201u will county illinois for the purpose of increasing the working cash fund of sas school district providing for the levy of a direct annual tax to pay the principal and interest on sad bonds and authorizing the sale of sad bonds to the purchaser thereof okay may i have a motion to accept the parameter resolution declaring the issue of not to exceed 15 million general obligation limited tax school bonds for the purpose of increasing the working cash fund of the [Music] you district one second bill moved yeah i think we've moved at the same time so pick whoever you want i'll second it doesn't matter okay as a summary of the parameters included within the resolution the following pertinent terms are summarized the district is authorized to incur debt and issue bonds for the purpose of increasing the working cash fund the board has agreed that it is in the best interest of the districts that the funds the fund be increased proceeds of the bonds will be deposited into the working cash fund and will be used for projects stated in the short-term facility plan that include but are not limited to temporary cooling rooms at balmoral elementary school creed elementary school moani education center and coretta scott king magnet school demolition the sixth grade center demolition of the dome heating ventilation and air conditioning at balmoral elementary school creed elementary school career scott king magnet school talala elementary school in the early learning center electrical upgrades at the balmoral elementary school creed elementary school coretta scott king magnet school talala elementary school and the early learning center cosmetic improvements at balmoral elementary school creed elementary school and carotid coretta scott king magnet school kalala elementary school and the early learning center based on the preceding information do the parameters do any members have questions or discussion on the resolution being presented [Music] so ken in this list of items so i understand the proceeds of this are primarily for the build out of the addition on the high school yes which is part of the plan uh which is part of the short-term facility plan so that would be included in there yes okay are there any other questions or comments yes am i missing something here did we skip eight eight alpha one on the business the tentative budget we just voted on that and i missed it i missed it you took the role i did got it okay i got in on my cards okay all right any other wait i i just we're on two right okay okay with no further discussion or questions mr brown you take a roll call to approve the resolution as presented mrs galbraith aye dr hall aye brown is a present mr swanless hi mrs walters aye vice president ruth aye president at albert aye before we do this i'm going to grab a bottle of water okay the next item for consideration is a parameter resolution for the issuance of not to exceed eight million dollars general obligation school bonds for the purpose of paying claims against the district based on the advice of bond council the entire resolution does not have to be read aloud since it was posted as part of tonight's agenda in accordance with the open meetings act therefore mr brown as secretary of the board of education would you read aloud the title of the resolution yes the resolution is for providing for the issue of not to exceed 8 million dollars in general obligation school bonds of community unit school district number 201u will county illinois for the purpose of paying claims against that school district authorizing the execution of an escrow agreement in connection with the paying said claims providing for the levy of a direct annual tax sufficient to pay the principal and interest on said bonds and authorizing the sale of sad bonds to the purchaser thereof may i have a motion to accept the parameter resolution declaring the issue of not to exceed eight million dollars general obligation school bonds for the purpose of paying claims against the district second move second right as a summary of the parameters included within the resolution the following pertinent terms are summarized the district has current outstanding bonds in debt some of the current outstanding bonds in debt will be refunding to maintain the district's current annual debt payment and lower the annual debt payment in future years based on the preceding information do any members have questions or discussion on the resolution being presented so ken just so it's clear this issue is to refinance existing bonds yes it is okay any other questions or comments okay with no further discussion or questions mr brown will you take a roll call vote to approve the resolution as presented yes brown is an eye mrs galbraith aye dr hall aye mr swanless aye mrs walters aye vice president rue aye president albrecht aye motion carries next up can i have a motion to approve a certificate of payment in the amount of one million seven hundred forty one thousand ninety dollars and twelve cents to r l soho general contractor inc for the 2022 renovation work at talala elementary school in the early learning center doesn't matter any questions or comments okay roll call when you're ready mrs walters aye dr hall aye mr sewallis hi mrs galbraith aye vice president of rue aye president albright aye motion carries item five can i have a motion to approve a certificate of payment the amount of one million six hundred twenty eight thousand two hundred twenty eight dollars and seventy six cents to rl sohold general contractor inc for the twenty two twenty twenty two renovation work at karate coretta scott king magnet school moved second any questions or comments okay roll call sawani aye dr hall aye brown isn't i mrs galbraith hi mrs walters aye vice president rule aye president albright aye motion carries item number six can i get a motion to approve a certificate of payment in the amount of one million seven hundred and seventy three thousand six hundred ninety two dollars and thirty five cents to rl sohold general contractor inc for the 2022 renovation work at crete elementary school moved second can i ask the question could you read that again that number sounds different here item number six put in yes the number prove a certificate of payment in the amount of 1 million thousand 773 hundred ninety two dollars and thirty five cents okay i'm just hearing things i heard seventy six at the end there okay that was a great maybe i skipped up yes sorry all right okay any questions or comments okay roll call okay did we who um moved sandy sandy moved bill's second brown is and i dr hall hi mrs walters aye mr swanless hi mrs galbraith aye vice president rooney aye president albert aye motion carries um item seven can i get a motion to approve a certificate of payment the amount of one million six hundred ninety seven thousand thirty four dollars and thirty six cents to rl sohold general contractor inc for the 2022 renovation work at balmoral elementary school move so any questions or comments okay roll call when you're ready browns and i dr hall aye mrs walters aye mr sawalis aye mrs galbraith aye vice president rule aye president albrecht aye motion carries okay next up um can i have a motion to approve the hillwood development incentive agreement as presented [Music] second mr give us an update please this is the essentially the same agreement that has been before you before but i do want to highlight some of the changes that have evolved over the um last several weeks uh the major one major thing was uh actually the amount of the abatements they had asked for uh two-thirds of all the taxes each year we said okay but we need to comply with the statutory maximum of four million dollars over the course of the of the 10 years which under base under current estimates of the value we would hit that cap in probably about year seven um at first we were hearing that that that may not that may not make this economically workable for them and so we said um you know we can't go higher than the law allows uh they did come back to us recently said okay we'll we'll do it with four hundred thousand dollars a year um so instead of the two-thirds or any percentage it's four hundred thousand dollars per year each year for ten years going up to the four million dollar statutory maximum there were a few other minor uh changes that they asked for um which i made revisions to address uh the name of their op company they wanted the abatements to start in for the 2025 tax year rather than 2024.
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it's it's not uh such as barbering was what we couldn't get no it's a chapter 74 program thank you yep frank um if we're going through chapter 74 we're using we're going to open up a new program for students to um to learn the process and then and i know that lawrence partners with with the agency um i want to say as a community group but don't hold me to that um and um and i know northern essex already has a program for um early child care so are we looking to open up a brand new curriculum for early child care for our our student incoming students yes we would be that's what we're looking at whether we should start a chapter 74 early childhood program for secondary secondary students as far as i'm aware of there's no chapter 74 programs in the area i know the college uh does not offer chapter 74 nor am i aware of any programs in lawrence that offer that so uh i believe we would be the only program northern essex is doing theirs um in this in conjunction with partnerships with other or other um education programs yep um and lawrence public schools has a daycare program centered at a contract through so yeah we would be the only chapter 74 program in the area which is part of the nif i'm going to agree with tom it was never presented to us like that before before yeah yeah that well that's why i'm giving you a heads up now that we're looking at and doing a feasibility study on it um and the one of the reasons is um because our demand for students is so great it would just allow us to take in another 100 students if we convert that to a chapter 74 and i believe the demand for jobs is there and it would be also preparatory for college opportunity to teach early childhood education everything from kindergarten from preschool up to grade five anyone else one more mr lavoy i believe greater lowell tech either had one or still has one do you know anything about that program uh yes they do have one they still have one they've had one for many many years we had one many years ago ourselves we used to have an early childhood program as well back 35 years ago yeah uh we ended up closing the program not even sure why we did but uh we did close the program thank you okay john metal fabrication auto collision we're in the process now of doing the uh the ventilation project where we're doing north uh new vents for welding boots uh and we're putting brand new ones in auto collision that never had them before will now be able to do bench uh welding and and other kinds of welding uh projects uh that will allow to expand that curriculum and auto collision so that's that's being done as we speak now as well as all new uh ventilation uh boots for metal fabrication to bring it up to meat uh coat for uh qual air quality the weight room which is the room behind us we removed there was a the weight room was really too crowded for the amount of students that we had in there at times i thought it was a safety hazard as well if you if anyone had ever been here and saw how many kids are in there so we took the wall down there and we're expanding it's it's it's completed already we're just waiting for the new flooring to come in so now we can spread the equipment out further so kids aren't on top of each other making the space much safer and more usable for our phys ed program we we use it for our phys ed program and for weight training and we also rent it out uh as well uh so that's uh an improvement the robotics automation shop was moved from downstairs upstairs and expanding it that's completed uh we have a few pieces of new equipment that are coming that we've ordered are expected to come in sometime in september environmental science shop has been completed other than putting we have a small greenhouse that's going up up outside but we moved the engineering program across the hall in conjunction with the robotics program and the environmental science has its new lab uh put together and done with all its uh its um tanks fish tanks and whatever else they throw in the tank but that's all completed ready to open uh the library if you've walked by is in disarray still they're going to be putting in the flooring starting thursday they'll have half of it done by friday we'll move all the equipment to the other side do the other half and then put all the shelving back and we're just waiting for new furniture to come in after that so we'll be operational when school opens the library will be operational and back back put back together other than the new furniture the gym floor the gym floor we put two new coat two new coats finish on it because it's two years old after two years we buffed it and added two coats to get for more protection um it was recommended when we first did it that after a couple years we should do that and so we did uh just the upper just the main gym so we did that uh that was done last week the next time it should get done in a year but it should be an oil base instead of latex so that gives it a lot more protection so um that was done business tech we moved up up uh stairs here because we've expanded the program to add another year and another instructor so that and the space is larger because their program has been taking in more students so we moved it back upstairs up i mean not upstairs but on this wing back to its original space actually and that was all repainted and new [Music] television news televisions put in learning televisions and whiteboards that's just about ready for opening i think one of the tv still has to go in one of the spaces i've come back to the parking lot a science lab we took a wall down in one in the two small classrooms wasn't large enough for a science lab so we took that down a wall down and now it's large and it had a sink in it so now we have we needed another science lab so we did that uh el teachers resource room we had a space we were trying to find a place where our el teachers could work together in a in an area where they could collaborate better and prepare their lessons and so that room was we put all new uh not benches but tables um all around the room um counters i should say that's completed ready for that we did a new backup technology server room up in the in the um third floor uh in the mezzanine uh the reason for that twofold uh first and foremost uh because uh we had to re we've rewired the whole building we put new fiberglass wiring throughout the whole building because we weren't able to keep up with the bandwidth on technology so to keep up with our technology and keep it at the forefront of uh being the best it could be we've just they actually just completed pulling all thousands of feet of fiberglass wire and built a backup room up in the mezzanine so that that if something happens to our main server we always have backup we had a small backup room up near the cafeteria but was not capable of handling the increase bandwidth and so we moved that up as well as allowing us to move technology up there and open up the space where they are now for a new teacher resource area which is right off the library so that'll give the teachers access to the library resources as well as have a space to work and collaborate work as a team because we've been trying to promote more collaboration with teachers both not only in workspace but in a lot of the activities in our professional development we're encouraging more collaboration so this we felt was important if we're going to try to promote and uh ensure that they have opportunities for that that we should have space for them to do that so that allowed us to do that which is uh i think uh a big plus in terms of even retention of teachers it shows that we value that opportunity for them uh so that was um that will be done as soon as we get them moved uh the i.t people moved out of there up into their new space on the new excuse me yeah mr hayden mr lloyd with all this work being done on the computers the kids will have access to computers and the teachers the day they come in oh yeah absolutely yep we the uh the backup well actually the backup will be the existing one now the new uh server space will be the space up on the third floor that's where all the new wires going the new wiring the main the main server room is going to be up on the third floor and that's where we pulled all the wire that's why we had to redo the whole school with cable with fiberglass cable that's capable of serving servicing us hopefully for the next 20 years and but everyone be up and running because we're not uh no one's getting disconnected until that's completely finished and it's been tested yep um the in the nurse's air office we uh added some new petitions up there to give them more privacy when working with students uh and also we moved one of the um we gave the who's our partners up there um the lawrence family health center lawrence family health center we gave him a a new lab up there we moved some equipment into expanding a lab up there for them for uh doing work that they weren't able to do in the past so we made some adaptations and took down a small wall and expanded another space up there for them and then we had to move all the uh refrigeration and everything and put it on emergency electricity if the power goes down that they still have power so we took care of that the barn the students will finish the barn when they come back it's just finishing some siding and the wellness storage garage have put some siding on that and those two projects will be done that'll be a student project when they get back so then i have phase four field project which we have been haven't worked on it all summer one of the reasons we haven't worked on it all summer we have to do a small rfp because in order to complete it we have to put a 20-foot retaining wall the conservation would pro we could get away without it but it would shorten the field too much but to make the field large enough to play soccer and football we'd have to extend it another 20 yards so we need a retaining wall so we would need an rfp for that we're probably that's probably about a 50 000 job but we have to put an rfp out so i'll bring that to the committee next meeting because that's put out an rfp the committee would have to vote on that so i'll present that to you at the next meeting okay yes i i know you're going to talk about the parking lot so am i um are we missing the tennis court on here or is the tennis court done three years later yeah we didn't miss you when i was walking in here i realized i didn't have the tennis court on here yeah but uh the tennis court's all done other than painting it and i was out there today [Music] looking at we had lost our irrigation out in the phase three it's been not working all summer long we had it we found that we knew what the problem was we got hit by lightning way back in may and could not get the parts to repair it we just got the parts uh last week and so it was repaired yesterday but while i went out to look at that i noticed the tennis courts were still not painted but all the colors and everything are approved so i don't know what's going on with that i'll check on that in the morning to find out why that's not painted it is all done other than being painted mr halen mr lloyd we're missing automotive can you give us the update on what's happening oh yeah how did i miss automotive yes automotive they are um they started digging the foundation this week so we've had some bad we had some issues with some engineering issues so we had the architect redesign some stuff on the footings and everything and that finally got approved pulling the permit the air the um the contractor had some issues trying to get the permit pulled so we had um the architect and the engineers working with him we finally got the permit last week and so they started digging it uh this week do you have a timeline on when that might be enabled yeah we're looking for that to be uh january to be done it's not going to impact the program at all because we'll build a new structure once the new structure is built we'll get the lifts in there we'll get everything done then we'll take the wall down between the old uh the existing facility and the new edition yes still waiting on the parking lot report but this is a very comprehensive very ambitious maybe in hindsight a little too ambitious knowing that we still have to wait for so many things but um kudos to the um staff and probably robbie for handling this in the time frame that they did parking lot john of the parking lot so the parking lot rfp went out i think in june sometime i believe or maybe in july must have been in july and uh yeah middle winning beginning of july but by the time the process finished was more like the middle of july and um so the uh in the engineers who wrote the rfp uh estimated the project coming at between 1 million and 1.2 project came in at 1.8 million so we had allocated up to 1.2 million out of our e d account so we didn't have enough money really to move forward on it and it wasn't advised to move forward on it for a couple of reasons one because of oil costs is what was driving some of the costs way up there of the increase in oil because it's all petroleum and also because a shortage of workers we only um didn't have enough bidders on the project to make it competitive as well so we're going to put it back out there in the fall we're still waiting for the prices to come down a little bit more and then we'll rebid it then we'll put the rfp out again in the meantime um next week we're going to have a company come out and fill all the potholes we're being our insurance company is going to come out on uh august 31st to do an inspection of the whole which we they do every year but they do the building they do the outside facilities and everything so one of their concerns always is the potholes in the parking lot so we will fill those to make sure that safe and get the parking lot painted on all the lines painted on the parking lot next week that's all scheduled to get done so we're ready for inspection okay anything further okay update on hiring john so i would say we had a outstanding year in hiring this year uh as i said earlier i think we really have some exceptional people that we hired this year unfortunately we did take some staff members from other schools this year a lot of a lot of people from the area wanted to come over to great lawrence but in any case it was to our advantage but we still have um one two three four five openings we're working on so we made it i i t uh chapter 74 program i.t uh we made an offer we're still waiting to hear if the first individual will accept the offer we haven't heard back yet that was just made friday expect to hear back by wednesday which is tomorrow biotechnology is being interviewed tomorrow the bright coordinator is being interviewed tomorrow an el paraprofessional is being interviewed tomorrow and then the last one is uh we're looking for one more school security and um i think they are they've interviewed somebody or going to interview somebody they're just waiting for some paperwork to come back before they do the interview and then if all those are acceptable and they take the jobs we should be completed any questions on any of that oh yes i'm sorry vivian i missed you sorry no i just wanted to double check uh superintendent you um i believe in the beginning of the meeting you sounded so excited regarding the stats of your hiring is that something that you're able to provide um in the next meeting yes next meeting i'll give you a list of all the hires we did through the whole through this year since last may and i can give you the breakdown of all the different minorities not minorities technology i mean chapter 74 academic um uh guidance all of those will give you all those breakdowns okay if if it could follow the same format of what the previous uh um data that you had provided us with sure um in addition to when would be the staff like new staff orientation that we would normally have uh prior to the beginning of school beginning next week it's next week when monday monday yes which monday monday this coming monday mr lavoy you know i like to attend those so you have to be here for 8 o'clock i should have been notified we invite you last year yes you did we we all came okay so you're all invited what's that 22nd yeah came up on us so fast didn't even realize it was next week is not until uh august 30th well it's no it's separated there's always a new staff which is about a week week and a half before everybody else comes in and then it's the new and the season i think you were here for the regular staff last year yeah i don't think you were here for the next you were here for the regular staff yeah that's the regular staff so that's august 30th and you're certainly invited to that and first thing in the morning we have a breakfast with breakfast yeah so august 30th yes correct if you want to meet the new people if you're happy you can come and have breakfast with us then yes while we're on the um subject of staff and so on is you mentioned we have several new administrators could you provide us with a chart a flow chart of um you know starting with the school committee and so on down so that we can see i guess i would like it by position or name so that we have some idea who's responsible for who thank you yeah so we next meeting are we going to present you with the new um i think it's on here the organizational chart yeah which will show you who's reporting to who next meeting there's four items i have on here i think uh future on the future agenda i think yes yeah yeah there's four items four items for the next meeting that i'm going to present to you which includes the admissions update uh current recruitment process retention process strategies and new strategies and the organizational chart okay frank that's on the future that's on the future that's next week i mean uh in two weeks and this uh and for future gen um gender items are we adding the thing on mcas yeah when we get it when we get here we will adjust that okay john you're done with hiring uh yes okay mr hayden so we uh last year we had four um coordinators for cte coordinators this year we're going with three cte coordinators instead of four cte coordinators and um because i i feel like we can uh that that's sufficient everybody has an equal share now everybody well pretty close yeah everyone's pretty much balanced they're not overloaded uh i don't think they're overloaded no valuations take up a lot of time yep yep [Music] the cte director was going to fill in on some of the new people to take off take some of the burden off the coordinators will the faculty know who's evaluating them when they come back oh sure yes they'll know okay district committee recorded john can you update us on that position so we've got applica applications i don't believe we started interviewing uh for that position yet i guess my question would be last year i think i mean the last time we hired one we had vivian was did it with uh susan i don't know if viviane wants is interested in doing that again or you just want me to put a committee together or somebody a couple people to do it with susan i'm talking about susan lally i'm sorry yes susan lally yeah there is there is a few yeah okay so the superintendent will put together the committee and let that let this committee know what the committee let the committee know what the committee is yeah who's on the committee uh principal's report principal uh student handbook please yes so certainly next meeting i'll have a full principles report on the opening of school my principal's report this evening is just to check to see if you had questions on our student handbook changes for this year that were sent we are looking for approval of the student handbook with the changes just so we can have for the school year i can say just a little bit about the changes many of the changes and most of them were based on the fact that we changed our schedule so we had to like you know change the language and we also did update the uniform section after lots of discussion last year with students families and staff through the i was approved through the faculty the faculty sorry not the faculty council the school council and then we we wanted to make sure that it was here prior to the start of school so we can make sure all of our students have a copy of it and our staff has a copy of it i have a motion on the principal's recommendations of the uh i'll move the recommendation i have a question yep no we're gonna before we vote on it i promise we're good we're gonna do it do i have a second you you moved on it right okay do i have a second so we can put it into discussion have a second okay miss um zoila you have a question yeah i don't want microphone anyways my question is actually under the school uniform the first i mean first i didn't understand that that change the channel only has you added the footwear or whoever did this but i don't understand the whole thing about students are not to change article clothing for what that means what is that i mean i just don't understand what that means one question my other question is i know last year there was a lot of issues with people and students wearing pianos so i don't see that here it should be here that they are not to wear pajamas so yep thank you um so one of the things that we changed is before we had a big problem our students were in shop half our ninth and tenth grade students were in the shop half a day and then academics and so we had a lot of kids wanting to come out of shop and change we no longer have that problem because our schedule is going to be full academics or full shop but if you look at the second page what we did was the um suggestions that we got some from some parents on the um school council was to make it instead of having it be so wordy just to kind of call it out like in a chart so if you see prohibited apparel these are items that are not allowed either on academic or shop week and pajamas onesies or blankets are on there so they're not allowed at any time okay and how we're going to make sure we enforce these rules so one of the things that we did last year when we started to have some problems is i had um uh krista gillis and bill vogel create an actual visual um that actually had like for example like ripped jeans aren't allowed pictures of ripped jeans if if your jeans look like this they're not allowed we sent it out to students and we also sent it out to parents so we'll do that at the beginning of the year we'll make sure that those uh that the language as well as the visuals go home to parents and then in the first week of school when we have our return to school assemblies um we're going to call that out and not only just in words but visuals and then if they come with this type of clothes what are we doing um so what happens is we want to keep kids in school i've done it many times it's not popular but if someone comes in with ripped jeans i'll ask them if they have something to change into if not they have to call home and have something brought in in our discipline office we also have extra clothing in the event that uh you know parents couldn't come right away but we asked them to change yes thank you so remind me again because you just reiterated the fact that the schedule was so the students are either going to have a full shop date or a full academic okay um i'm looking at the prohibited apparel section and i'm seeing skirts and dresses i'm just trying to understand a little bit regarding that decision i could understand how uh it could get a little touchy regarding the length but is it considered a little excessive uh com you know making it a prohibited item especially in the summertime if it's at least knee length i think i think that part that you just said is the problem um trying to police that with 700 students and what is considered knee length to a student versus a teacher versus you know administrator it just became very challenging um there was some you know advocates you know in terms of even staff saying well you know what if someone wants to wear a dress um but it just becomes um very challenging because um you know my dress to my knees is one thing but we just want to make sure that um it's it's easier to police certainly we can make exceptions if there's anything for religious purposes or any other exceptions it would have to be approved but just the whole shirt we just put them all together shorts skirts dresses and we are fortunate enough to have for the most part we have temperature controlled in the you know it would be i think it would be very different if our if we weren't as fortunate to have air conditioning inside the building like we do um but this was um the recommendation was just to kind of it's either all or nothing kind of thing okay um is there gonna be an educational period to go over these hand like the changes um to the students kind of like in the beginning of the school year for those especially that are sophomores juniors and seniors where they've um they've probably had a history of where this isn't you know this is completely new to them as opposed to a freshman where um this is their first time so it'll go over easier uh for these roles so i'm just wondering are we do we have something in place to notify the students we actually think that um some of the students are like i think what happened last year is returning to the pandemic we were like we were happy to be back we didn't we weren't as strictly enforcing it and like anything else when when you don't start in the beginning of the year when you try to start enforcing it in march or april it becomes very challenging so with these handbook changes in our back to school assemblies that is where we're going to explicitly kind of teach this out and have expectations for of all of our students yes i just wanted to um compliment the group that worked on this it made it very easy between seeing the crossouts the add-ons the changes um whether we're far or not the format made it very easy and i hope the kids feel the same way thank you anything further okay uh all those in favor anyone opposed thank you further not this evening we're just really excited as superintendent lavoy said today was our first logistics day with the admin team um so today is almost like our first day of school because this is when we start to plan opening professional development for staff and prepare for the return of students so we're just really excited i think it's going to be a great year i'm sure it will be okay old business district committee priorities and policy section b bca school committee member ethics we need a motion on that i'll move the recommendation as submitted do we have a second okay you have a second discussion francis yeah okay all those in favor aye anyone opposed okay new business uh table matters i see none listed personnel considerations resignations of district recorder effect effective uh july 27th math instructor effective july 1st in school security uh effective august 5th no leave of absence no retirements no appointments um superintendent the job posters we're going to do these one at a time okay please so we're looking to hire looking to hire a new position in the business office come to a comptroller it was a discussion i had with our new director of finance um it would be someone that has some expertise in accounting particularly which is an area that no one in the office now has it's something that i had spoken several times to maria about most most schools have a controller it's a back up to the business manager but also has more knowledge with regards to areas of accounting which would be beneficial also if at some point we lose our business administrator business administrator again we would have a backup until we were able to hire another one so um i would make a recommendation that we fulfill this new position um lieutenant okay superintendent made a recommendation do i have a motion on that please okay let's one more time does anybody want to move on this uh this position of controller okay john continue on director of facilities and operations so director of facility operations so as you know rob chares is retiring and so i'd like to post his position for a replacement so that we can get someone on board before he retires he's retiring beginning of september he's willing to stay on to train a new whoever comes on board it'll be very difficult to bring someone on board all of a sudden and not have something to help training train them rob's willing to do that to come in a couple days a week to work with that individual and get them up to speed on all our total facilities all of our protocols and procedures and our documentation for safety and operation of all equipment in the building going through and helping him underst or her uh understand uh all the processes so but we we do need to get somebody on on board i have a recommendation on the superintendent have a motion please yes can i make a motion for purpose of discussion uh sure i move that we discuss this okay all those in favor aye anyone opposed this yeah must have a question then i presume oh i have a few um this is one of the very most important positions in our whole organization i am i guess a little blown away with the paltry education and experience that has looked far i see nothing in here about licensure i see nothing in here about education we have a building probably worth 200 million anyway um and while i everybody i can't speak for everybody i can speak for myself i certainly know the depth of experience the knowledge the licensure and so on that rob has to water it down versus bringing it up forward um i i just i really dislike the job description or position description but as a minimum when you are paying an administrator without um asking for any educational or licensure um certifications however you want to say it and i feel that the definition of the position is incredibly watered-down it makes it seem as if all he's doing is um supervising clearing walkways and um taking care of the custodians so i guess i would ask that this position description be in line with what other full building facility director of facilities and operations would look like including getting the input from rob we all know what his responsibilities are but i certainly know we can't keep him hanging it could take a year two years to have the right person trained and on board but i we just have to tighten this up i feel i need to have it tightened up i want the posit the position has to be filled but as it's printed i could not approve of this position as submitted anything further so yes so this is the job description that was on file i went rob took a look at it to take a look and see if it had the things that he is responsible for which he thought it did albeit just looking at managing the hvac system sounds like you know something small but that's a big big part of the job i mean no matter how you describe it it's overseeing the heat ventilation air conditioning system managing in that particular part of the each one of these items lists some aspect of the job that entails lots of responsibility and knowledge he requirement they need to have a a construction super it says building trade license here or certification is preferred or should say required actually so we'll change that to required a supervisor construction supervisor license is what we're looking for so we'll be we'll make it more detailed construction supervisor license is what's typically required in the position educationally um experience in uh in rob's case for instance he's a hvac his background is hvac his knowledge and his experiences hvac he has a construction a supervisor construction supervisor license is what he has which is what we recall which we would be requiring of the new person as well but if there are other licenses i mean you can you can require if you wanted someone a a bachelor's degree in facility management you could require that as well we had one of those before uh didn't work out too well and in fact rob was like demoted in order to hire someone in that role we ended up getting rid of that person and giving rob his job back so my point on that is experience is far more critical than than a degree would be not that that degree isn't worth something but i don't think it's required if they have the right experience mrs fischoe continue yes i i just am asking that this be tightened up cleaned up to more accurately reflect what we are hoping to do if the person did not have a degree i could live with that if they had the trade licenses the word preferred absolutely in my mind has to come out of there and if you could bring it back to us at the um next meeting with um a little tightening up again it is one of the most important positions we will be approving thank you mrs i'm sorry mr hayden i find it kind of strange we're talking about trying to find somebody to replace rob charest you're not going to find somebody to replace rob charest he knows every inch of this building he grew up here so my question is do we have anybody inside who is certified or certifiable that we can move up that knows this building well we have a couple people that have lots of experience that rob has worked very closely with particularly the last couple of years but i mean they would have yes they could apply not it doesn't mean that they would get the job that there wouldn't be someone better than them out there but they're you know so somebody like that could also support somebody who was never in the building so if we found someone with 20 years of experience working at a school in a school similar you know with similar systems as we have they might be a strong candidate for or stronger than anybody we have inside the building but the person inside the building uh could uh be an assistant that could help when rob's gonna will stay on as long as it takes to help that person become uh knowledgeable about what's critical in the building so it's not like he's going to just say see you later and never be available he'll be available and be here two days a week for as long as we need him he said so i think that's critical important given particularly what you said tom nobody has uh it's not just knowing the building but being um yeah well he's extremely intelligent and knowledgeable about the materi the equipment and uh every trade area he knows very knowledgeable about electrical plumbing you know all the career areas that we utilize that's what saved us lots of money being able to have some staff members so we have three maintenance people in the building that are extremely talented and you know may be capable of doing the job but they may not be the best candidate so i think we do want to take a look as you as you said marilyn i think we could add some more description on experiences that we're looking for beyond you know just what the duty of that they're going to be doing but some more description about what experience they bring to the job that we might be looking for vivian do you have a question necessarily a question but it's a statement sorry um so just to reiterate this is a replacement position correct yes okay um so i am 100 in agreeance with every concern that maryland just presented and i believe this is a prime example as to why uh the postings should come before the committee because of little the verbiage being used under education experience for example in this specific position which is an important position um just the fact that we have in many positions that have come before us the word preferred um i'm wondering because of how many positions have changed throughout the years how the duties and responsibilities there's you know there there's more being requested and added on to these positions um are we are we fixing the the postings are we um have have changes been made prior to uh putting them online in regards like are we reviewing these postings or these are just templates that just have been sitting there and whenever um someone resigns and we need a replacement position we're using these same template postings that have been on file for years on end it depends on the position you know the word building trade license certificate certificate is preferred i think one of the reasons it was is in there written that way not to eliminate anyone that might have some experience that may not have the license but are capable of getting the license but they've never gotten the license so i think that's the main reason why it was written as preferred as opposed to required so that's doesn't mean we would hire somebody without the license it means we want to try to get as many applicants it's up to certainly we i certainly wouldn't want to hire anyone that doesn't have the license or isn't qualified to get the license which you could require them to get the license if you if i was interested in a candidate didn't have the license i might say to him i need to go get the license before we could hire you we're interested in you but we but i'd have to know that he qualifies to get the license through his experience and his knowledge and his background once i see that i'll know if he qualifies for the license or not maybe he just needs to apply for the license like construction supervisor license that test that test is given almost monthly so they could apply if they didn't have it they could apply for it and have it within a month y'all said vivian yeah okay frank i think so i had a handle before me oh did she oh i'm sorry no sorry it's about the same i mean um asthma marilyn presented this the the reasons for this not to go through i mean it's very light so i mean she already said all that um the high school diploma i mean it's just there's a lot of room for just hiring anybody and that is the problem that we've been having all along for now i cannot even say a year we've been having these same situations with the posting since i've been here i think this three three years already i don't know um it's very it's room for problems so you just mentioned that it was changed from required to prefer or it was added as a preferred because if somebody comes with experience it doesn't have the license but the position will not be higher without the license so that makes no it makes sense but it doesn't make sense it's not right simple as that so it needs to be required and if it is required it needs to be required and if a person that that applies needs the license unfortunately that person doesn't qualify for the job at the moment but thank you for noticing that i wanted to speak mr cerillo thank you mr chair frank uh so and for a lot of these especially within facilities there a lot of people don't have degrees i know several that work in different school districts that came graduated out of here and are very successful in in in the field that i don't know if we see that they might be be interested in applying because of the school so i don't see the need to put in anything else than what it is already and the word prefer is to also eliminate any potential mishaps where you can have a good candidate that can give be given time to get something a requirement and it gives them the ability to apply there are some job postings that we do have that we have preferred and it definitely aren't preferred qualities that we are required but i do hear my fellow colleagues and we're going to willing to table this and bring it back with some of the changes i'm all for it anything further nope oh i'm sorry did you accept the most of the table this matter discussion uh did you uh would you do us a favor john when you uh work up this description beforehand the next week send it out to each member sure please okay all those in favor anyone opposed okay home tutor for uh school year 22-23 home 2 to 2 000 school year 2020 223 salary per contract september 22nd through june 20 june 2023 replacement position background providing home tutoring services academic support for students with extended absences or students who otherwise qualify for home tutoring shall accept a motion do you have a second discussion did you prank a question all those in favor anyone oppose frank john what is the set of requirements for the um and i'm sorry that to bring it up after we voted on on the director facility what is the requirement the salary oh salary salary uh well starting it's part of the administrative union okay so he would be starting that depending on their experience with the department what they where they fit in that schedule yeah okay future agenda items you see them listed there i'd also like to add one superintendent um addressing vivian's uh good point in maryland's point uh could we i'd like to have a timeline that we're gonna stick to uh next year as far as when your paperwork is going to be due when our paperwork is going to be due and when we expect to put it in i'd like to get it solid and um in dates i mean we'll vote on it the committee will vote on the dates but some sort of a timeline like maryland had said april 1st you have all your paperwork ready for us and then whatever it might be i'm not even saying april 1st is the right one well what whatever we'll discuss it next week i'm just saying that just but i'd like it on the agenda that we we have a timeline that we can we can stick to rather than two weeks before it's due i'll be looking for everything okay so you want timeline on goal setting and uh final evaluation report report and then yeah we end up with enough time with enough time for the committee to digest it uh not just sitting here you know take it home and i'll digest it and uh get you know give them enough time to get their report into our into the chair whoever you may be and then get the reporting okay frank um i just soiled i had it oh joya i'm sorry um on the future in the administ i've meets admission updates i do want to understand well i had a family that wants that call here and wanted to apply for the daughter they have an adopted daughter and the three daughters that have been grabbed i believe they graduated from here they've been coming to this um school now the the thing is that they were told not to even apply for the um this school year coming she will be 11th grade so i know we spoke about the admission that process that is um going on right now which is a rolling admission exactly but this this family just happened to call few weeks ago and they were told that they cannot apply that's one thing so i need to understand whether we made changes because we haven't approved any changes of the admission process why they were told not to apply because i mean the reason that they were told is because there's no there's a long waiting list but if we we haven't done any changes i believe they were allowed to apply because we have a rolling application um it would have been the guidelines would have fallen under what the committee approved for the last school year because it's worth dealing with the past admissions policy we ain't haven't voted on the new uh ones yet which will be coming to you possibly next school committee meeting as well the admissions policy for this next round of admissions processes um so 11th grade we don't typically take 11th graders unless they're being transferred from another school or they have some specific experience in a career area that that would fit so it's unusual that we take and this is uh usually we just laid into the school year not saying we can't take a student in but we haven't been taking we haven't taken any 11th graders in this year other than if they're transferred from another vocational school i can't i'd have to go back and look at the minutes to know if the committee voted not to take 11th graders or they voted to take 11th graders i'd have to go back and look i can't remember off the top of my head right now mr yes i believe at the last report that we saw on the admissions and how many 11th even 12th graders had applied and we discussed the fact that it that was it couldn't happen because they did not have the um technical vocational training to transfer because they weren't coming there was some ferment there was some from every high school in our area that wanted to come in some as sophomores juniors and i think there might have been six kids coming in a senior so we did discuss it but i don't believe it was discussed as part of the policy just our shock at seeing how many students wanted to transfer over [Music] no i i concur thank you to mr chair through you i concur with maryland we discussed it in length um but we didn't vote on it but in in just for my knowledge and and i think people they have to do two years of vocational on whatever shop they come in um certification for them to be eligible um and if they're coming in as a 11th grader that gives them the two years am i wrong or yes yes so i'm i'm happy to go back and look at what the vote was on that proposal if in fact the committee voted to allow 11th graders to come in uh happy to revisit the request of that parent and see if they qualify we get their grades it's the same process happy to look at that let me take a look at what was approved and then we can make a decision based on the committee's approval yeah if yeah if the committee um voted to make that possible then certainly we'll go back and revisit that with that's apparent just wondering i i believe we did have a deadline for application so this particular family mr mrs smith with their daughter they would have missed the deadline therefore some of the 12 other people that had applied ahead of them would i think automatically have to be looked at too but i just don't remember that we took a vote we in my mind we just discussed it but obviously worth looking into and just another means of we need to communicate communicate communicate of how you get to be in the school many many many people were not accepted frank now i agree with maryland and i think seniors is way too late for them to even apply if they're transferring as seniors and the other thing is the deadline we have to look at what the deadlines are and what the um cert extremely ancient um circumstances are for them to that they didn't meet the criteria those those are things that we take into play thank you vivian okay um what i believe zoyla's to soila's point is that yet what was that that although we do have a quote-unquote deadline based on um we had a meeting where we discussed admissions and we were advised that even after the deadline parents are still able to apply and the way i understood the process was that even after that student applied after the deadline if their point system was higher than those that applied on time would take over they could they would have a better chance of being accepted as opposed to those that applied on time but maybe had a lower point system um so i think that's what to zola's point she's trying to say is that even though their the deadline already had occurred that the parent should not have been told that they could not have applied when according to how the way we do the processes parents could still apply well after the deadline um i do agree that we need to as a committee um come together and discuss um improvements in the admissions process and if i'm not mistaken the last time we discussed it um superintendent you kind of asked for school committee members to provide you with ideas um and some of the ideas that were discussed that day um from from what i remember were potential potentially uh i can't speak potentially adding um like legacy students uh so students who have parents that have graduated from the school that that should be um you know there should be a point system where these students should get extra points um in part of the admission process we also discuss in eliminating um let me make sure i'm worried this properly we should stick by our deadlines so if we have a deadline whereas it says apr you know february then it should be february and any application after that should not be counted um i know there were other ideas that were thrown uh thrown out uh that day and i just can't quite remember but um a discussion oh we talked about how you know we are a technical school we should be using technology to our advantage um in terms of the appeal process why isn't there an electronic means of parents being able to i'm not going to get into detail but this is just kind of like to remind us as to what was discussed um and i'm wondering if that's something we could still provide you with uh considering that this is part of our future agenda items um and if that's something that you would want us to submit please let us know a deadline so the problem like your suggestion or idea about if a student had a parent that came here that would never pass the department of ed's guidelines they're they have very strict guidelines and there's very little leeway with regards to get like if we like also in the great athletes we'll give them an extra five points if they want to come here or something like that we can't do that's not allowable that would never doubt i believe it would never get approval it would never get through the dsc's school committee members need to come together to make sure we are uh updating what these admission process would look like going forward because there's definitely issues um and we're trying to make sure that we're trying to do this as the most effective and efficient way for not only for the school but for parents as well and it's a great concept we got to always remember that anything we put together even if we vote on it as a committee has to pass for department of ed and they have the final say um and they will say giving points for a legacy student definitely no no i'm just saying um it's something that that will be turned down um and our mission policy always has to be approved by the department of ed before anything um but i'm kind of curious as to why a student that i think we're still within time i'm not sure when the student applied i was told that they and i'm not sure it was this school or the ascending school told the student that they couldn't apply um because i've come across that a lot well i've come across from both i could no and and that's why i was asking not sure which one because i've come across both most scenarios where the ascendant school is saying no or somebody here is saying no and and it's and then they fell fall past the time they couldn't apply like superintendent lavoie said like the um the last district committee approved admissions policy from 9 14 21 it we have applicants for grade 10 and 11.
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that being said do i have a motion to adjourn so moved uh adam uh made the motion and seconded all those in favor raise your hands it looks to be unanimous thank you team the the meaning thank you jeff goodnight folks thank you good night all right everyone all right thank you heather and team hey tony welcome have a good night
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any family that is still currently interested in transportation can submit the request via our link that's on our front page of our district website now we will talk about some upgrades and enhancements to azusa high school particularly the gym and the classroom conversion so here's our lovely display of our new gym floor we upgraded and replaced the gem 4 that was originally installed in the 1960s um we have installed new wood panels new trellises hope i said that correctly and the paint the complete what is considered as phase one of the gym floor here is the image of our classroom conversion so we have converted the former mr lewis little theater is now being converted back to two instructional classrooms and this slide is showing the outcome doesn't it look gorgeous um so it's now two classrooms one with carpet one with vinyl four and this will be utilized um for the current upcoming school year is this his own little theater yes it looks big yes ma'am right compared to all the seats in there yes ma'am yeah yes and i do want to note that everything that was in the little theater has been removed and stored so that we when we have our new home for our theater it'll be ready to be installed and what's on the horizon we continue to complete the remaining classroom modernizations um at lee dalton and paramount lee's plans are still being are still in the design phase dalton plan are still awaiting dsa approval and as of last week we were informed that bsa has officially approved the paramount plans we have issued district-wide rfp for asphalt painting fencing and roofing and we are currently working to finalize the design for our elementary playground equipment as well as our district-wide surveillance and with that i will turn it over to miss norman camacho thank you um after summer school concluded um our director of educational services adriana garcia medina along with mr fernandez and our library techs from azusa high school and gladstone high school worked on organizing and transferring the ninth grade textbooks and with uh instructional materials from gladstone high school over to azusa high school the team also inventoried and identified items that would need replacement uh replacing to ensure that all students all ninth grade students had the books and instructional materials that they needed to begin school year digital subscriptions were updated to reflect a numbers needed at the sites that would be receiving students in tk kinder and ninth grade our director of ed services again worked with principals and resource teachers at ellington and powell to ensure the transfer of instructional materials and textbooks for our transitional kinder program and kindergarten program to the receiving site we are happy to share that thing together has launched a free before school care at all of our elementary sites for the 22-23 school year in addition to the after school program that has been long running in the district additionally the ed services team are excited to be able to highlight some of our programs at next month's study session miss norma can you just because uh we're doing this in public can you share um the before school care hours i think that's important yes so our before school care begins at 6 30 a.m so parents can sign students up and bring them to school as early as 6 30 a.m they will have some time for some a little bit of activity and then breakfast and they'll have care and it's all free so amazing that our community has this wonderful opportunity and just to to drive it home that's every single elementary school that is correct evening board of education [Music] next flight please so we've been uh quite busy over at azusa high school working with gladstone high school to execute this plan it's a lot of moving parts and a lot of people doing this to get it done i do want to give a huge shout out to mot for like this brian and latasha like the crew they just get it done with us and we're we're making magic happen bosses so thank you uh so we did complete the transfer of our staff uh certificated over to azusa high school you go into the band room at azusa high school during the summer you see aztecs and gladiators playing together and you can't even tell the difference i saw an image on the computer of what their band uniform will look like so they've taken a theme of unity up a notch so you just put something into the universe and see what our teams can do and there's something beautiful coming to this community with with the aztecs and the gladiators playing this uh fall they're doing a combined field show they'll be playing um the both bands will be playing together at halftime for the final two uh vladstone versus azusa games this year there are two football games due to the way our league did our competition schedule for this season um beyond the band camp and what they're doing this fall we also had late july our azusa and gladstone asbs combined and got some a workshop provided by kata she came out to the site they were the first kids on that new floor they did some bonding learned how to be good student leaders i think that energy carried over to the link crew and i'll talk more about that in a little bit but a phenomenal organization cata to really lead our kids and how to build campus culture and that's something i learned from another district when i was learning about how do we do reorganization how do we bring two sites together my advice from charter oak was focused on culture focus on rallies and i've been trying to rip off of that the way i see we can with our people so that was some good advice from somebody i talked to um we started small with our unity hype we wanted to bigger but we did get a group of kids our board member uh staff from azusa and gladstone showed up we sweated for a little bit luckily it wasn't too hot that morning we didn't get bit up by mosquitoes or anything but we're gonna do it again um we heard from one of our employees kevin nunes who would like to do a staff hike unity hike uh he's looking forward to plan that and that's in the working stages to keep the nature trail thing going for us and making it big for our teams of employees at azusa and gladstone um like i said august 10th and 11th we brought azusa and gladstone 11th and 12th graders together to be link crew mentor so that was the team that was given a shout out earlier they trained 50-something kids and then we got him on a bus and we did friday and i think you just got to see on instagram if you follow the school on instagram that it was loud in that gym and and i just was talking to employees at azusa high school who were like we haven't seen this before and i said yeah you haven't seen it before but we're going to do something special this year and talking to parents they as tech parents and like yeah this is good for kids so they're feeling something special for this year and that's a different feeling from what we were feeling last winter when things were and people were worried but i feel like momentum is on our side and people are starting to take ownership i was telling the superintendent that at the football game on october 28th that there is going to be a combined senior night again things coming into the future to again uh rip off the theme of unity i think we're we're our people are taking ownership over that theme and we're going to see different things with that this year and i just don't know what's in store because every day is a new idea and just working with people to see their specialness come out with these kids and then tomorrow we are doing a combined azusa gladstone faculty meeting we're doing some team building at eight o'clock we're working with our partners with a western justice center to do a first round of community circles um we're doing a do a math game even to see who's better at math but we'll see how that goes and then throughout the year we're going to have a couple more combined azusa and gladstone faculty meetings to start paving the way for for next year we have good stuff in store for this year and mr fernandez just just to be clear and for the record uh if we're doing this you said that the unity hike is coming back there will be i see this happening over and over and over and just with better planning more people yeah and it's it's a mile there and a mile back is that correct be sure we're going a mile i'll i'll count the steps better next time boss just just just want to be clear so i can get my other tiny shoes on sorry thank you i do want to take the time to uh commend mr fernandez i think one of the the things that's really starting to bubble up uh is that this is not one person saying this is what we're gonna do uh ideas are coming from staff ideas are coming from parents ideas are coming from students and and then just running running with that and and making it happen and and giving the space for those decisions and those ideas to take uh growth and so just want to say thank you to mr fernandez again to for cultivating that type of environment where where we can all take ownership of this new high school so uh thank you for that i just want to also just share that my daughter's in length crew and being part of this decision making and building the unity between those high schools it really is impacting um our children and um i'm so grateful to you and the whole team that is putting all this together as a parent and as a community member and my daughter's really and her friends everyone's so excited just to see that excitement gets me excited for them so i can't wait to see um also not part of this but just i think it's important to note that early data in terms of the 9th grade class at azusa high school is showing really positive signs in terms of registration picking up books data confirmations that early data is starting to look uh really good and so as we get better we'll make sure to show share with the board of education those particular numbers and uh so following the board of education's decision um we with regards to um school closures uh we started working with the aea negotiation team to agree on an mou that addressed the impacts and effects of school reorganization on aea unit members working condition the mou addressed uh aea unit members transfers extra hours and of course moving logistics as uh miss uh natasha um discussed earlier after the mou was settled we designated may 11 2022 as selection day which was the day that unit members impacted by the reorganization selected um from vacancies from the openings across the district for the uh 22-23 school year um that we're about to start once those selections were made site administrators along with their office staff were asked to submit workflows uh for transfers and extra hours and we learned from the previous time that we had school closures and we were very methodical and thoughtful in how we uh we went about this um it was a point that was reviewed in the regular meetings where we reviewed our punch list that mr ortega was speaking about earlier this information was also used by our mot department to coordinate moving logistics and looking ahead we will continue to work with our labor partners uh to address the impacts and effects of school reorganization throughout this school year and we have already started the work related to staffing for the 2023-2024 [Music] school year this is much earlier than we've ever done this in the past however with school closures uh we are taking a very proactive approach to staffing uh by starting this process in just a couple weeks i mean this is this is work that we're already engaging in uh so throughout this process we are committed to working with our labor partners and site leaders to encourage multiple voices from throughout the organization to speak into the plan thank you can i just ask the question regarding the um the memorand memorandum of understanding do you have also one with csea we do not we did not enter into an mou for with csca for this upcoming year uh because the uh the reorganization uh was uh was going to affect aea members this year and next year uh so and we saw that with the teachers from the school sites that are not going to be receiving students so so we needed to have a um a mou with our aea negotiations team for for the 2022 2023 school year for our csca um uh negotiation partners uh the the unit members for csa were going to stay in their positions uh for the 2022 school year 2023 school year and really their the impacts and the facts are going to really be for the 2023 2024 school year so we'll be negotiating an mou with csca this year understood thank you yes thank you great question okay with that uh we would like to say uh thank you and open it up if there are any further questions i i guess i just have one question um in terms of planning for the middle school right i can i can tell we've put a lot of effort into the high school um and we've got the ability to have gabriel be there for really a year now and so just really curious about in terms of what's the plan for how we build out the middle school that's going to appear next year uh yeah one thousand percent uh correct uh there has been the focus on the tkk uh and the ninth graders uh but beginning with our last school actually was that this morning that was this morning uh um at our uh school reorganization this morning uh we started to say obviously they're still we we have to start school uh but we are already shifting and we have been doing some things for the middle school but now really starting to shift uh to the glasgow middle school uh because that will be brand new opening up in 2324 and so there's a couple of things that we've already started to discuss from you know simple logistical things like getting a cds code to big things like joining a middle school sports league uh and so uh that that conversation has already started and so we're looking to kind of do uh the same things um having a head start you know with the beginning of the school year board member rodrigo spain so um when will you speak the selection of the principal at the middle school uh right now we have um we are aiming uh to have decisions made by october um and then my other question is in terms so i trickling back to um a study session that we had in the in the spring right and where we were going to be talking about programs right programmatically what our schools look like um i just want to get a sense of when that discussion a more serious in-depth discussion but not just sort of like a general overview of opportunities but really around like you know around decision making about those programs when that will happen um i think as a board member i hope that we'd start that conversation in april it didn't really happen so i want to know when that when we when we think that will happen uh right now we are slated to do that at our first study session which is next month okay any other questions no thank you moving on then to uh 11.0 consent calendar and specifically 11.1 which is approval of the consent calendar which includes all items listed under the consent calendar is there a motion uh to approve 11.
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they wanted this obligation to run with the land that that means it's binding on us even if the property is sold but we had use restrictions on it they thought that our language was uh too fuzzy they suggested that we tie that to the particular provision of the zoning classification in for the village of money he said fine uh so we tied it to that um particular zoning classification um and that's about it although i also wanted recognition of the fact that they haven't yet purchased the property so their language uh indicates that they own or will intend to uh acquire and that the the agreement is not binding if they do not acquire the property by january 1 of 2024 so those are really the only changes since the last time you looked at it again the main thing here is that we are not going over our statutory maximum but instead of doing it as uh two-thirds of the taxes each year until we hit the cap it's going to be four hundred thousand dollars each year until uh for ten years which will still be the four million dollars any other any questions john you say that there is verbiage in the in the contract that says that they are to acquire the land by january of next year the land 2024 2024 okay so another year plus what about actually building on the land um and have a building you know constructed or erected right um it's anticipated that they will they will construct it but if if not they still have to operate the va we're not guaranteeing anything about the value of the property um and you know if there's delay in them building the property that's all the better for us because there's the abatements will start before the property has the value of the building on the property so we would get the 400 000 even though the land in it of itself may be assessed that fifty thousand dollars no i i did put language that's four hundred thousand but uh but no more than the actual taxes on the property so there won't be uh you can only this is not a rebate or a payment it's an abatement of taxes so it can only go up to the the value of the taxes for that particular year okay so we're abating for 400 000 a year we're abating 400 000 a year of the taxes that they would otherwise owe so by stretching it forcing it to be stretched out over 10 years we get been more benefit early on in the in the deal because otherwise they could have had a larger abatement as a percentage of value early and they would have used it up sooner that's correct it's it's it's not being front loaded it's spread out equally over time but and i think they they asked for that i think uh they were looking at as you know you know is more dependable and more uh better for planning for their purposes but i think it makes sense for us theoretically we could get more tax revenue out of it in the early years than we otherwise would have that's true right okay okay any questions yeah just on just one more so just again you probably said it i'm sure you did so other than us abating taxes and for example if they are to pay us 400 000 a year are you saying that we will waive that from them paying us is that whatever whatever tax obligation they have to us right the county clerk the county treasurer will collect 400 000 less than whatever that obligation is but it won't go below zero i mean so if they're taxes and they'll be they'll be more than four hundred thousand but if if it is less than four hundred thousand dollars that they owe to us it'll be a hundred percent of whatever their taxes would be to the school district so at what point when we first see a benefit to us and what the year was as soon as they as soon as the property is built and assessed i mean as assuming that the that there are more than four hundred thousand dollars of uh worth of taxes on it but understand as soon as they build that building we know that when the abatements run out that's increasing our our tax revenues into the future and that abatement total is ten million dollars it's four million dollars four million four million it's both in the statute and it's both and in the agreement now if the if the statute gets amended to increase and that's happened before i remember several years ago the cap was three million for instance if if it's get gets lifted we have it in there that that we went back and forth with negotiating and i said well okay i'll give you whatever the statutory cap is so that language is there so if it goes up the problem for them i mean not the problem but the way it's written now they still will get more than four million because we only we we only abate four hundred thousand dollars a year maximum for ten years for ten years yeah and and once the building is is constructed and erected and get assessed and if it's 400 or the assessment comes back that they should be paying 700 000 we're going to abate 400 000 within that 10 years and we will get the 300 000 that's correct okay okay okay any other questions okay roll call please mrs galbraith aye dr hall president mr sawalis aye mrs walters aye brown is an eye vice president roo hi president awkward hi did you get ms galbraith okay okay motion carries thank you uh next up is personnel and culture can i get a motion to approve the personnel report including approved certified staff employment leave of absence reassignment and educational support staff employment leave of absence return from leave of absence reassignment and resignation and dismissal second any questions on the personnel report yes um i was looking at it and i need clarification on the director of safety and district a d my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong my understanding was that there was not going to be a pay increase for these positions that they would get that would be more of a lateral move and not a pay increase and um and i see one with a seven thousand dollar increase and then another one with the ten thousand dollar increase plus we have another vote in here for something else mr neal would you like to address that turn it on that helps the the pay increase because they're getting a new contract that they increase that would be voted on next for administrative employees is factored into the agreements and because the athletic director position became a district position and was covering both middle school and high school there was an increase in salary i was not aware there was any discussion with the board that there wouldn't be any change in salary for that position but that was i discussed that with the superintendent and that's the contract that was put forward so just to be clear the pay increase that's in here is based up is already agreed upon with what we may vote on tonight their contracts if you vote if we approve the personnel report their contracts will receive uh that increase prior to the others so it's not going to be this plus that right they they will not get an additional increase when you vote on the next item no okay and this nothing against them i just want to understand that you want to be clear what you're what you're approving right and you so you said the the other one the district 80 that that makes sense if it's going to be district they're going to get it it'll be a new base salary but he will not get another increase with uh the next item that i was just trying to get clear okay any other questions okay roll call brown isn't i dr hall hi mr sowalis hi mrs walters aye mrs galbert aye vice president rooney hi president alfred aye motion carries next up can i have a motion for the approval of salary for assistant superintendent of teaching and learning retroactive to july 1 2022 so move second any questions or comments okay roll call please dr hall aye mr wallace no mrs walters hi mrs galbraith present vice brown brown is an eye vice president root aye president albrecht aye motion carries next up can i have a motion to approve a five percent increase in the salary of non-union non-administrative employees employed in working in their current position prior to july 1st 2022 with the salaries to be retroactive to july 1st 2022.
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again 11th graders it's not going to be for every program because certain programs you're not going to get that amount there's a separate um there's something separate in the admissions policy as superintendent lavoy says if someone that's in a chapter 74 approved program say perhaps maybe they go to whittier and then they move into our district that's like a separate thing because they're coming from a chapter 74 program but there um there isn't anything that i'm aware of that says someone that is entering their junior year can't apply it all depends on what we have as openings um in terms of that but you know i guess it would be unfortunate if that was what they were told i just don't know the whole reference but um there's two different things someone that's transferring or wants to transfer because they're already in uh you know in a cte program a chapter 74 program and they move into our area um as well as transfer students in 10th and 11th so the admissions uh process um policy is brought to them will be brought to the school committee has to be brought every single year now that's a dsc requirement and uh that will happen probably the next meeting or if not the following meeting will be early this school year and there's a committee that's put together to look at at our process on our policy and process and can we is there better ways to do it that are more equitable and fair to all kids and i'm very more than happy to take any recommendations that you have just email me or call me love to hear any other ideas in terms even of a point system that might be more effective or easier to process than the one we have it's uh tough the department of ed's very strict about what you can and can't have in that admissions like we could do um interviews if the committee thought oh i think that's a good idea most schools have done interviews tell us that has very little effect on who ends up in your school and it's extremely time consuming and difficult particularly when you're talking about 15 1600 students that you'd have to interview it's not we had interviews many years ago and we stopped it because we found it wasn't very effective and it was very extremely time consuming but i mean that's just one example of something that you could do um but so i'm open to you know any recommendations suggestions that you may have we'd love to hear them um bring them to the bring them to the committee and if you know if we if the committee feels we'll find out if we think that it could pass the you know department of ed's guidelines and if it can that would be up to the committee if they wanted to move that forward anything further so if you have some suggestions that you'd like to get uh get them off to the uh to sue and uh superintendent's office and uh try to compile them all together and we'll sort this out at uh one or two meetings i don't know if it'll be one meeting but we'll sort it out at one or two meetings anything further yeah frank um i got a couple of things and and one is and i've talked discussions with john earlier in it and we assume earlier today um with the increase in the point system for and passing the mcas for graduation uh can you put something together for our next meeting um as to strategies as what what we're going to do to support our kids moving forward um and i know that the map might be going yeah um and see where we were we have a gauge of where we were in ela um last year in math um that way we could put a better strategy together to make sure that our kids are supported moving forward um one of the biggest things um communities like lawrence and are going to have a real hard deficit with with these new um mcat scores coming out i want to make sure we're supporting our kids to the best of our abilities yeah we'll definitely do that those just those new regulations just came out so we'll get the administrative team and probably some faculty members together put a committee together to take a look at uh what we might you know what those changes are are and the impact we feel have on us and what we need to do and differently or to fill the gaps that we see macy principal zielinski and i was just wanted to add um from our discussion today um in our administrative team we um as part of our work we adapted a local benchmark assessment the star renaissance it gives local data for math and ela it has a predictive mcas part so it actually correlates whatever the local score is just to just say you know with this score it's predicted that the student would be you know proficient or need improvement so we actually gave this assessment to all of our students in the spring and we are actually awaiting our mcas results from last year so we can actually see how close that measure is and we plan to use that data and we're not going to over test students because we don't want to do that but we're going to use that data also to carefully inform interventions that might be needed using our win block so if we see some students that the predictive data looks like for freshmen and sophomore students that it's looking that it's aligning to um needs improvement um then we can actually you know put them in some you know kind of proactive support prior to it so we are actually looking forward to this new data all of our staff that's something that we went through today with the superintendent all of our staff both academic and cte um will be trained and informed on what the measure is and why like why we're doing it it's not only to look at like predictive for mcas but it's also for instruction so um i think it's that the timing of us implementing this testing um and these new changes will be helpful frank yeah and thank you for that i'm sue let me correct um not for next meeting already our first meeting in september okay that gives you enough time and to bring that that data in because it's gonna be very crucial moving forward okay for us um yeah my point is i just we may not resolve it all in one meeting that's all that was my point well i agree with you and to compile that data from next meeting it might be just forcing it so it might be either the first meeting in september or maybe the second one but definitely have to start compiling it and see where we are yep anything further there's need for an executive yeah mr hayden just to get back to admissions um i think if we're going to have another meeting on it maybe the head of admissions should come brenda is very well worse versed on what we can do and what we can't do and it might save us a lot of time uh sure imagine we can i wouldn't i i suggest that she doesn't come until you know that we're ready to compile it you know she'll present the uh new ideas and recommendations to the committee yep anything further yeah frank we're going to be discussing the super 10 evaluations our next meeting correct we're going to be going the timeline the super times the time and setting up the goals and everything yes yeah when things are due like when the superintendent information is due to us how often you know even how often he meets he has to no no i get that i'm saying that goal setting an hour apart for him the standard yes so what i wrote down frank was a set timeline for goal settings evaluation report as outlined by the uh deci guidelines um we're done no we have an executive session we're going to be okay um okay okay uh one other thing before we go in i don't know if you all got this i'm presuming you did uh this friday evening there's a dedication uh for sergeant johanni of lawrence stadium at six o'clock if you'd like to attend i'm sure it's going to be a a very moving very moving ceremony so um i presume i don't know if you all got one but uh yeah yeah so okay this time that you accept the motion go into executive session for the purpose of collective bargaining yeah could you call the uh the royal police when you have a minute no we're going to 10 34.
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i make a motion to approve 11.1 through 11.16 seconds any well there will be no discussion so we'll go ahead and take student preference yeah and that motion passes five to zero moving on to 13.0 curriculum and instruction and 13.1 approval of service agreement between azusa unified school district and royal management group llc is there a motion on the floor motion to approve 13.1 second any discussion and that was moved by board member audience second by board member rodriguez pena and we'll go ahead student preference yes and we'll go ahead and move to a vote and that item pass is five to zero moving on to 13.2 approval of memorandum of understanding between azusa unified school district and san gabriel valley habitat for humanity is there a motion on the floor motion to approve 13.2 second move by board member arianis seconded by board member rodriguez pena is there any discussion yes i have a question regarding um it talks about the the high wage and high demand and career do you have any idea what careers they will be discussing with students and this internship yes internships so in this internship opportunity they will have you know variety of um positions that they can intern from um you know from the construction aspect to planning and so there's a variety of opportunities that the students will have with uh this internship opportunity okay thank you any additional questions student preference yes go ahead and vote that motion passes five to zero moving on to 13.3 approval of service services agreement between azusa unified school district and ncs pearson incorporated is there a motion on the floor make a motion to approve 13.3 second any discussion student preference yes and we will go ahead and vote and that motion passes five to zero bringing us to 14.0 adjournment and specifically 14.1 in german is there a motion to adjourn make a motion to approve 14.1 second move by board member rodriguez spanish second by board member adianas any discussion actually uh wow student preference what would you prefer no yes all right then we'll go ahead and vote and the motion passes five to zero which means that we are officially adjourned at 804 pm again have a great evening and we wish everyone a great first day back at school on thursday
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
moved second one two any questions or comments i just do have a more of a yeah i guess it would be a question can is there any way you know we all can attest on the level and rate of inflation and how these families and businesses have been negatively impacted by such inflationary increase in rate and rise and given that we can only seek taxpayers for revenues in the ballpark of cpi or five percent whichever one is less right yes yes so it looks like we're going to go after five percent or cpi i will probably i will probably recommend five percent to the board and it'll be their decision uh to do that uh cpi i believe in uh january for the previous year came in at close to seven or eight percent um it's still going up now so um you know i expect it's going to be another five percent coming up you know the following year too now you know i i will say there there is some possible relief money out there grant money out there that we may get but i i can i'll save that when i talk about the levy but my recommendation is probably going to be five percent to the board okay so we have a five percent uh increase for our non-union non-administrative employees on this particular action item is there any way we possibly could garnish the money somewhere down the path in the future i'm sorry that if we do have a surplus in some manner that we can dish out some type of stipend additional money to just help relieve these employees in any manner i i think you would have to do that across the board you know on this matter but i'm just throwing that out because i'm sure you know everybody got the email from one employee and you know i took heart to that yeah i i think you do mr brown uh you you can do that i just think though that you know again this is not a commitment i'm just throwing it out there yeah i i you know i i haven't seen it before i'll be honest with you i haven't seen it i've seen merit raises before but i haven't seen something like that you know based on your financials and all that so you know that's a difficult one to be honest with you for me to answer it really it just is i i don't know put it like this if you and and dr cogniti can see any opportunities to you know help help with some funds for our employees in any manner being not just this group right here but across the board sure that's all i'm asking okay christmas bonus anything that we can add for this year all right i think one of the things to just to share with you mr brown one of the things we did for our summer school teachers is we provided them an additional 600 stipend uh for their work during summer school and we were able to take that out of someone that was uh did we take that lesser we took that out of our some of our essar funds too so we did we did do that for all of our summer school staff anyone who works in the school whether it's clerical or certified administrative events excellent and that's kind of what i'm inspirating and kind of looking at okay i'm trying to nail you in and you know here i'm looking we're looking to vote on this and i'm probably probably not sure how we're going to vote here but sure that's right you know we pretty much at the limit as you see it elsie would have probably recommended more your staff so i just want to throw it out there that this board we do care we do care about our employees and given this been a very difficult financial year for pretty much everybody and whatever we can do we have limited funds and whatever we can do we're going to try to do it that's all okay roll call please okay brown is an eye mrs galbraith aye dr hall i wanted to be the tiebreaker hi mr sawalich hi mrs walters aye vice president rule aye president albrecht aye motion carries next up can i have a motion to prove a five percent increase in the salary of administrative employees employed and working in their current position prior to july 1st 2022 with the salaries to be retroactive to july 1st 2022 moved second any comments or discussion that speech that i said prior to this i didn't mean that it's not meant for the administrators no i'm just kidding says kitty kid any any other useful comments okay uh roll call mrs galbraith aye mr swanless [Laughter] [Music] i tried to set you up bill come i'm gonna be honest with myself i'm gonna vote no because of percentage i'm sorry say that again i'm voting all cause of the percentage oh you want it higher let's keep going mrs walters aye dr hall aye brown is an eye vice president roop aye president albrecht aye motion carries number five can i get a motion to prove guest employee rates effective august 17 moved second since this was a late add to the agenda while can you just give us a little color yes the many of our guest employee rates are subject to minimum wage and the minimum wage will be increasing by one dollar in january so those rates we are just recommending to go ahead and increase them now um most of the other rates are tied to uh what the regular employees would get in their agreements so we're just adjusting those rates to to match up with what they with what the with what those rates would be and for the remaining rates we just recommended another five percent added to those rates to continue to remain competitive uh last year we did a pretty significant adjustment in these rates and we just we don't want to have to make a significant adjustment again we just want to kind of stay in that ballpark so this includes uh substitute teachers yes this is all of our guest employees all of our summer worker rates all of the rates that would not be included in a collective bargaining agreement the non-union employees or the administrative employees so these are all our temporary employees all the people who kind of do the the odd jobs the odd odd categories uh that aren't included in those other areas okay so so lyle can you explain that are you saying you only gave that oops are you saying that you gave one dollar an hour increase was that what i understood the minimum wage would be one the ones that were impacted by a minimum wage would have a one dollar an hour increase in their rate yes because that minimum wage will increase by that i guess what i'm asking is and we've had this um conversation and we've been emailed a lot about substitute teachers so that being said can you explain to me how that works for them they're not at minimum wage is that correct no they're not they're at a higher rate okay so i they don't get the dollar now but they're gonna get a five percent they're getting a five percent increase if they are doing a day-to-day sub assignment so example you're filling in for a math teacher today and an english teacher tomorrow you're going to get an increase in that rate the rate for a long-term the rates for substitute teachers vary depending on the type of assignment and so if they're doing a longer term assignment in one in one classroom they're going to get a higher rate of pay and some of those rates are tied to what the teacher contract would pay a beginning teacher yeah you know so that so that we're competitive and we can get people willing to take a long-term assignment and and provide that service for us okay so i guess my question here is thank you for explaining there's different type of guest teachers but we received an email i don't remember how long ago i think it was when we we upped the rates after the contract was signed for uh acme okay and there were people who were saying that we were paying more for a food service worker than a substitute teacher and i guess my concern is now are we competitive with what we're paying substitute teachers so we get substitutes we we are competitive with our neighboring districts for substitute teachers we did do a survey on that uh january february and our rates are competitive we increased them even though our rates remain competitive we decided to recommend the five percent increase just to keep them competitive in case other districts increase theirs after we do this we i do not know off the top of my head what the exact hourly rate for a day-to-day guest teacher would be i do know that it is uh i i i couldn't speak to whether it's higher than what the food service workers would have in the new acme agreement i would have to look into that and get back to you on that one okay i guess i'm just concerned about you know what we're doing here to make sure that we are competitive and that we are treating everyone oh i don't know how to even explain it but it when i saw that email and i'm not downing food service at all because they work very hard but it's hard to get teachers and if we're not competitive and we're not paying them a good salary we're not going to get them well i want to be clear this is not teacher-sized teachers these are guest teachers which are not tied to the cmea agreement right which which is a separately negotiated agreement so what i can do is i can go in and pull all the hourly rates and i can give you that in the next fyi you know and and then you can see how they compare and if we want to make some other adjustments we can certainly discuss that okay i just wanted to make sure because that was brought to our attention and um i think that i talked to dr karen she said it had it was in the process of being addressed i just want to make sure that we're all on the same page with how we're addressing that because we are putting them in the classroom and we do look especially with our guest rates we do verify that we're the market rate in our area every year okay thank you any other questions or comments okay roll call dr hall aye brown is an eye mrs galbraith aye mrs walters aye mr sualish hi vice president ru aye president albert aye motion carries next up teaching and learning can i get a motion to approve the e-learning resolution moved second any questions or comments hearing none roll call please brown is and i dr hall aye mrs walters aye mr smallish hi mrs galbraith aye vice president rule aye president alford aye motion carries okay that's all the action items for tonight is there any old business any new business i have one um um as we know it's time for our children to get registered and it's a hot topic on social media about registration so i was just wondering if we could get an update on how things are going please would you like me to have that in the fyi or better if if we can just kind of put out because there again i i sent you um information today that there was a lot of chatter about calls not being returned paperwork turned in that had you know we didn't receive that type of thing so i'm just i'm just wondering where we are in that state like are we are we in good shape are we really experiencing a bunch of problems i mean just kind of let the public know because they're the ones out there saying that stuff and i just want to make sure we're on on track here sure mr cerma why don't you address that since you're already standing there sure i figured you'd want me to so i will do that um i will tell you that it is uh we are we're behind i will tell you that and here's the reason why i looked today in our queue and there is approximately i'm just going to give you some approximate numbers about 300 applications sitting there of those 300 207 came in since august 1st so between august 1st and today there were 207 applications that came in besides that there were additional about 30 applications that came in the last week of july so overall we've had 230 applications come in now with national investigations we have streamlined the system and so we're responding faster what we are asking our parents to do because here's what really the process is for new students right now the application will come in we'll make sure that it is completed and then it is sent over into a date we we put it into a database and send it over to national investigation within 72 hours we usually get a response on whether they are a resident or not and then at the same time we have asked parents to upload a birth certificate and a photo id state issue photo id there are times that they don't do that they can still go through the application and not do that but then in order to process the application we have to have that information and that because we have to verify the student's age and everything and then we also want to know we want a picture of the parent so we know it's the parent and so there are some delays there i have right now four individuals working registration and um going through things um is it enough uh probably not right now i you know we're looking and with the personnel agenda we just hired a new registrar so we've been sure to registrar actually so we've hired that so i'm going to be getting her going on on this process that's karina pasada the the other thing i will share is that there are instances where cases are escalated to me and i know mrs galbraith you had one that you sent in that you heard about and so that was escalating me i personally contacted the parent personally went through and got through and got her documents reviewed her residency status and she is set and ready to go so there are going to be times where those cases are escalated to us and it's a district's right to determine residency as someone i'm not relying totally on national investigations i do that i will tell you their first round produced about 250 students that were non-residents here in this district um and um i i figured that's what it would produce um i will tell you that the high school the next day when they got the letters the next day the parents were in here withdrawing their students they were coming in and they were doing the same thing at the elementary so again there is a process where they can appeal that decision and so they can contact national investigations and appeal that decision national investigations really looks at the same document side of it give us your lease give us your utility bills and we will we will go through that okay okay thanks i just wanted to make sure sure out there for the public too because we all know social media and um i personally have i just flirted the one that the board got sure last year's you know i think i gave you about a hundred people who were contacting me personally i've not had any personal but i just want to make sure that everybody stood what the process was and what happens during that process you know sent back and my final question is national investigations are what i guess some people are told to contact them well here's here's yes and here so here's what the process is when they determine that someone is a non-resident there sent a letter and saying if you want to appeal this decision contact us at this phone number and there's an extension on their 113.
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oh what are they down [Music] is there a room across the world yeah we okay oh i'm sorry we're going we're going right across the hall um yes we'll be coming back here to adjourn we did go around back one day and it was when they had to feed the crew they had a catering company and everything it's pretty cool um companies that are interested in hiring our students who should like what should be the contact person that i reckon his name is uh um and what he does is he'll meet with them and then he'll connect them to like whatever shows contact information that way um um we go out and do a site visit um and then we connect him hill bravo connection with the teachers so yeah that's great all right oh you need to have someone come yeah um [Music] okay we're back into regular session ladies and gentlemen okay i think we have one final matter to vote on i believe right just the one just the contract jail accept a motion on approving the uh contract with 1707 from a three-year agreement of a motion so move second second discussion would you call the role it's an important vote would you call the roll please well i'm sorry let me know sorry yes yes shall accept the motion to adjourn all those in favor anyone opposed thank you very much ladies and gentlemen uh what's the next what's the date of the next meeting i'm sorry two weeks from tonight is it the second the 30th the 30th okay you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above