Grandville Board Meeting - 8.15.2022

001rise for the pledge i pledge 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 here please note as a courtesy to members of the audience and the board of education to silence your cell phones the public will only be able to speak during public comment if signed up i have several public comment cards up here tonight are there any more all right looking forward to hearing from you in a bit uh first item is the approval of the agenda can i get a motion support all in favor yes opposed all right next on to the reports agenda we're gonna do board member reports and won't we start down here with amy tonight um okay so from

002parks and recreation we have um secured funds to do things like pickleball courts and working on some of our improvements that need to happen which is great um there's a desire by our board to start working with granville public schools to make make sure that we have the tree canopy and we're working with the trees tree city initiatives and all that stuff but also we had um we had a very senior member say that he'd really like to start working with gardens and i know that when we did that tour of the middle school we talked a little bit about working on gardens for the side space and how ideal that would be for um for the schools to work then with the parks department and get parent involvement and um the garden itself is

003really really really going well we have we have it in place where i don't have anything to do with it anymore but we're finding ways to make sure that we have parent involvement and it's actually getting paid through a grant so it's been really great to see that police in the park went up by 37 percent from last summer so all of our students here in granville y and you know some kids going to granville public schools some not but all of them at 37 increase was through police in the park um it was cool because the cheerleaders had their first practices and photos and i say that because my son went to cheerleading practice because he's a dog boy which is something i never ever in 100 years would have seen that kid doing

004so um from the kid who when we moved here didn't talk to now he's a dog boy at the cheer section so that's kind of kind of cool he also started cross country so um they had their top eight go out with coach leonardo and with uh coach cline um successor actually i get a client excellent client sister always like that but it's klein sasser and he takes them out to the dunes out on lake michigan and they run which is super cool the seniors registered today which was really awesome i have a senior oh hey um and i want to give a super special shout out to john philo because he did he's not just working awesome stuff in this school district he also helped with school supply santa yesterday where he went and

005helped this is his fourth year doing it but he went and distributed bean bags and school supplies and backpacks and all different kinds of things to all these different schools and even washed cars of teachers and i'm just really proud to have him as a part of our staff so special shout out to john thanks thank you hi yeah i just wanted to um thank you all for your well wishes during my recovery and i just appreciate the flowers they made everything a lot easier to get through just appreciate all of your thoughts and prayers i am looking forward to the fall activities we'll be back hopefully every time not missing again that's all right take care of ourselves as well thank you um brent oh just spend a lot of time around the high

006school and it's good to do that again be around mainly with the football team but see all the other the students that are back and tomorrow night will be the dog card blitz so all the football football practice will end early and they'll be coming out into the neighborhoods of granville to try and sell dog cards that's the one fundraiser that they do for the year so that's great that's it thank you nothing jason um yeah freshman orientation day as well at the high school so that went up great um so that was fun to see it's my last one going through the high school so that's fun um and then with that band camp wrapped up here a couple a week or so ago um they had a new venue down at western michigan

007it was very well received and it was really nice to have you a little closer to home um in central yeah compared to central yeah yeah so that went really well and they're hoping to do that again western doesn't typically i guess do the band camp so we're hoping they can uh book that again it was nice for some of the uh band uh um directors because that's kind of an on the water as well so it's kind of fun for them to get down there and be around um tennis going already had the first boys scrimmage today so i got to play hooky from work and worked remotely um and uh so that was fun what a gorgeous day it was today for it too i mean after the last uh bunch of rain

008we had this weekend it was nice to get out there and uh see a little let's see a little bit going on and then uh the vintage trailer just wanted to say shout out to that what a cool event that was here this past weekend um trying to have a new school but you know for the city i put on and then even the food trucks that few that showed and stayed up on saturday we went down in there and visited them so it's trying to get more business even though it was a rain out on saturday so yeah a lot of good stuff um just some good news on i was contacted by a reporter to do a piece on a great school that does a lot for back to school initiatives and so

009i'm aware that um be nice meets throughout the summer prepping for that first day of that first week of school so i connected them with lori koza and sarah pepper so i think they'll be featuring some of the great things that do happen at granville for the start of school and one being they have a breakfast for new students transferring in and they present them with a granville shirt which is super nice to have that as part of your first t-shirt to have when you enter into a school a lot of times you feel left out because you don't even know where your shirt other than meyer but um so that's going to be a nice piece though i'll let you know when that happens but roger will know too so i connected roger although

010so just good stuff it's impressive that um people do work throughout the summer and oftentimes people assume that folks don't especially when you're teaching but everybody is doing a good job and i know i'm seeing cars in the parking lot at the middle school and so all good stuff awesome thank you um well i just want to acknowledge that this is an important week our schools are back in session our staff is coming together for their first official day on thursday encourage support if you can pop in there on thursday morning and participate with that start of the year address it means a lot to be seen there and to know that they are supported and honestly you could walk almost into any building right now and be able to say that to staff too

011because as you walk drive around town you see them there working on their own dime their own time giving up the last few days of summer to prep their rooms for our students so really a lot of appreciation to every member of our staff that gets things ready for this school year coaches bus drivers food service teachers peer pros everyone um it's just a great start to the year i also want to acknowledge the marching band went and saw their performance when they came back it's so strong just for you know being gone for one week they've pre-camped the week before that it's really impressive what our music department does and i'm always really proud to see them looking forward to a great year on their their theme is the giving tree so if you

012know that um story that poem by shel silverstein the book it's based on that there's some fun familiar music in in the program as well so that's fun to see yeah um i also got noticed that robotics is kicking off i know that's a really a cornerstone piece of our our community and education program so i'm excited to see what they're doing this year expanding their programs always and and winning they are they're quite quite the program um i want to thank members on our team for participating in things like our parks and rec um committee that's a lot of extra time and i appreciate what you do for that amy um and bryan i really appreciate what you do with coaching your students that's a lot of extra time to spend out there and

013it's not just what they learn in terms of skills on the field it's what they learn in being servants like we have as our leaders here and also being kind and productive community members and learning how to be you know good good citizens in our community and i've been able to witness that myself i was just actually talking to coach tully here before practice my my son left today for the navy and he was one of the people on his list this week that was like what do you want to do i don't know do you want to see your friends no what do you want to do i want to see coach tully so that that means a lot that says a lot about the kind of community we have and the um support

014they provide our kids not just in academics and in sports but into growing into good people so i appreciate that very much um and that's all i have to say because man i'm going to cry i got my final text from him being dropped off to boot camp on the way here so um excuse me if you see a teardrop um it's a big deal okay um love pulling up here and seeing the kids and the parents out front i mean that that is always a a significant uh symbol of uh a new year so just just so good to see people out there had new teacher orientation today and had a fabulous day john designs that and it was just a wonderful day we have some ext i mean they're exceptional people and and

015we're really fired up about the teachers that we've hired and yes i know you watch the news and there are a lot of people out there that haven't filled jobs and we have so we feel very good about that and we're raring to go for the beginning of the year uh thursday as mentioned back-to-school breakfast kickoff in the morning very excited to to get our staff back and have a wonderful message taking place at that time orientations open houses taking place this week as uh were mentioned so good to see kids back in our buildings uh the energy that's there i even the energy that i saw today from our principals because kids were back uh in the buildings it's just so neat to see so looking forward to a great school year we're we're

016we're getting ready here we have a short amount of time but feel very good about the kickoff next monday and just again looking forward to seeing kids and families uh in our schools so too thank you so much for the report all right moving on we have some old business we left off with which was the masb delegate and alternate so to remind ourselves it is recommended the board of education select a delegate and an alternate to represent the granville board of education at the masb 2022 delegate assembly thank you um let's talk about it anyone able i don't know i'm actually i know you're not here that's that's bootcamp weekend for me okay awesome thank you and he want to put down as an alternate no i told you i am unable to nope

017um i love attending the event it's a really great opportunity um we do have a couple times a year where they do have other smaller events as well if you're interested in going for ce credit at all it's a great opportunity i think we can put me down for an alternate because it's on a thursday night and i don't have to be somewhere until friday so um i'll i'll be your back up on that okay all right let's approve jason can i go sorry i'm still thinking about other things all in favor of jason representing us yes yes opposed all right thank you jason so much for stepping up for that all right can i get a motion to approve the consent action agenda so support all in favor yes yes opposed all right that

018carries on to regular action in regular action we are at um the new 7 8 weight room equipment it is recommended that the board of education authorized the purchase of equipment for the new 7 8 building weight room from samsung equipment incorporated in the amount of one hundred sixteen thousand four hundred seventy seven dollars forty four cents can i get a motion and as you know this is an integral part of a weight room the equipment that you're going to to place in there and uh we have we have an expert to help us with that and we had a good team effort on that piece heather anything you want to add starting up um yeah i think first of all i would just like to thank tully and the team for their hard work

019on this um like roger said in this field um sorry um so we he did he looked at various layouts from various companies when it came right down to it um samsung had a state national contract with omnia partners and so they provided the best pricing there so regarding structurally how it looks you have a couple pictures here that were included and i would just open up any questions regarding that side of things [Music] well what do you want to know so this was a fun process i am i don't know if any of you know i'm the state director for the high school strength coaches association which gives me the ability to get a hold of just about anybody i want in the industry and uh these companies love to wine and dine people

020when these facilities are coming in so we reached out to pretty much everybody um there was one company who's essentially the lamborghini of equipment and they were actually not a good customer service experience so we cut that relationship and then we pursued eight different companies with what they were going to lay out and almost everybody came back with pretty much the exact same thing based on the dimensions of the room and um the equipment that we were looking to get for safety reasons we could only fit what you see um there as well as you know talking with mike lapchuck pe teacher there at the middle school and you know just from my own personal experience and talking to our other teachers at the high school and be we opted for more open space and

021clean sight lines than we did filling the space with equipment so uh we kind of took a compromised approach to having we want the facility to potentially be open to um community usage in the future probably what we had discussed was most likely like uh like classes through community ed some sort of lab classes but in order for it to be a great classroom it needed to be equipment that had lots of space as well as you know we'd be able to teach on it something that a lot of weight rooms have done in the past is just fill it with machines or you just throw a kid on it they can kind of lift but there's not as much of that teaching component so um yes i'm wondering if there's a difference between a

022fitness room and a weight room yes because it seems like at the high school we went with a fitness room kind of approach and i'm wondering at the middle school is there going to be a weight and a fitness room or is it just going to be weights yes so this room is it's just going to be what you see there it's a pretty small space comparatively the high school weight room fitness center is 10 000 square feet this one is just under 2 500. so we had to make some compromises with if for instance if you put a treadmill in the footprint for a treadmill is bigger than one of those racks that we put in and so that was just for the safety reasons and code uh it requires a ton of space

023to put those kinds of things in and for the usage for mostly middle schoolers we had to weigh the community option with hopefully you know our goal is that it's filled with middle schoolers from you know 7 30 a.m or when's the middle school start time summer around 7 50 until hopefully like four or five o'clock um and so that was uh the idea but um yeah i think a lot of the fitness uh component is with the beautiful new gyms that we have at the middle school um is you know that's right across the hall so that's what from discussions with especially mike laptop that's how they'll handle that component of the fitness and the weightlifting as well as right out you can kind of see on the bottom edge there there's a little

024door that goes out into an outdoor area that has a little turf area outside of it and so there's a lot of usable running space and open space uh as far as that space goes yes we did just opt for weightlifting equipment so and then like i said everybody pretty much had the same equipment same layouts the gauges of steel the plates like all that stuff pretty much everybody does the same so then it really came down to customer service and samson went out of their way to uh you know meet with us follow up send us resources that that i could forward on to the team that was doing the project and um you know they've just been incredible to work with through the entire process so i'm really excited that that partnership will

025hopefully last for 30 40 50 years however long it takes for that equipment to get beat up so coach is there anything different that you do in setting up a middle school weight room versus a high school room or is it all pretty much the same type of exercises uh yeah so the exercise will be the same the difference between a middle school weightlifter and a high school weightlifter it can sometimes be a ton and sometimes not very much because we'll have kids come in as seniors that have never looked at a weight before in their life whereas i'll get freshmen that have come in that have lifted with me for already two full years so we attack everything the same way we actually worked this summer with mike and john tuscan and cara doyle

026and we vertically aligned our program middle school through high school so whatever they do at the middle school level will immediately translate and hopefully we can work with our guidance counselors as well to ease that process because if a kid does two years of weightlifting in middle school hopefully that translates to them being accelerated when they get to the high school as well but the only thing we did different is we we got some weights for instance normally we would get just two and a half pound plates but for a 70 pound middle schooler when you add two and a half to each side that can be a huge jump so we actually got 1.25 pound plates um and we got bars that are we have a 15 pound bar a 35 and a 45

027at each rack to accommodate for any size so here's here's my one question that i have here so i understand that we did everything i don't know who wants to answer you both can if you want i know we're going off a contract but pricing but you know it says in the background that you got various quotes so outside of the standard of you know you really like their customer service from a point of view of oversight can you give me a little background as to what the other uh estimates were i mean how comparable was this there were like he said there was the rule right the rolls royce yeah so that one was automatically knocked out but like i said two the other the other two um quotes were comparable except for the

028fact that we would have had to go out and gone out for a bid whereas this company had the national contract available which eliminates that um timeline too so you because you have to put it out for ten days two weeks and then and i completely understand it so maybe you're missing my question my question is baseline pricing where did this end up versus what you think the quotes were less okay all right yeah did i miss that in here it just says it just says in best value so best value to me is price customer service huge right but i just from an oversight perspective just wanted to get it i can answer that question almost all of the quotes except one came in at about 160 000 and not a good customer service

029experience uh we had three more that were right around the exact same price that didn't have the national contract and then we had one that came in really really low that was a poor product got it got it great that answers the question perfect thank you heather we normally no that's good a lot of times we see that information you know what those bits come in so maybe that's you know correct where we're looking for it because i know we've seen this similar before yeah so that is the thing with strength and conditioning equipment anything that's going to last a long time all the companies that do it right are going to be almost the exact same price and they do that on purpose they know what each other is is charging and so they

030can it's a tight market yeah everybody's i mean you would laugh if you looked at all the other quotes and all the other designs you're just essentially seeing the same thing over and over and over got it thanks you don't need to that was a good enough answer do you think you'll be expanding the powerlifting extracurricular program into the middle school it's hard to say um the power lifting program is going to go through a renovation this year um in order to keep costs much lower it's going to move to a club sport and it's not going to be then i can do the final forms thing we're gonna run it as a club and they're going to sign themselves up for me so that's what we'll have to look at if the mhspla doesn't

031really support middle school um there are middle schoolers that will come from generally really small communities you know class d schools will have middle schoolers participate but in general i mean we had over 80 kids participate next year or that last year and this year girls won the state championship last year i would anticipate our numbers are over 100 kids on top of the other 500 plus that already have to lift weights during the day so that's what it's just a matter of numbers of getting the kids in and being able to accommodate them it's a good good problem to have yeah to be out of room in one of the biggest weight rooms on the planet right well it's a good testament to the program that you run that i appreciate that a lot

032of really great support from school board and admin and our teachers and coaches so um i have not done it by myself at all thank you for giving them credit all right any other questions all right all in favor i just want to let everyone know that this there are other middle schools that have middle school weight rooms school districts but the way we're doing this in combination with the way we're already doing at the high school i would put i would wager we're in the top 50 of all high schools in the entire united states with how strong our strength and conditioning program is and numbers wise we are already one of the biggest in the entire country top 100 i don't have the exact ranking anymore shuffles every year but we've been in

033the top 100 for the past three years as far as enrollment and participation in our strength and conditions congratulations thank you and again it doesn't happen without especially support from our administrators at the high school and our guidance counselors getting in kids in classes and our coaches encouraging kids and then again our teachers beyond me making them enjoyable classes and programs for kids to be involved in awesome well thank you so much for everything you do we appreciate you being here tonight nice job good thank you and for the record motion carried um our next action item is the library book appeal it has recommended the board of education approve the recommendation of the book complaint review committee for the selection crank as part of the appeal process brought forth can i get a motion

034okay as you know uh per board policy 9130 letters fng a [Music] decision by a committee may be appealed to you the board of education within 30 days and uh dr merkel i know you have the summary of the committee's uh decision dr marshall is here i didn't put you together a presentation this evening our process uh was the same uh seven committee members four staff members high school administration uh an english department teacher and non-english department teacher a non-instructional staff member there was a guidance counselor uh and then four i'm sorry three randomly selected parents um they had conversation they all again submitted their they read the entire book as part of the process they're required to do that uh submitted their pros and cons um about the book had discussion about the book

035and waited what they viewed as the uh most significant uh merits and uh challenges of the book and and then voted um uh the book um as you know you saw in in all your paperwork uh the book was challenged as um uh glamorizing drug use the committee uh one of their big concerns was the the use of drugs in the book uh but they also felt that the opposite side that it it didn't glamorize the drug use in fact it went the other way um and so in the end uh they voted to keep the book uh two people on the committee uh voted to keep the book with potential restrictions could we put um something that requires parent permission to check the book out uh was one recommendation and then the other one

036didn't want a restriction on the book but just wanted more information about the book this person happened to be a substance abuse counselor that dealt with those things and and felt like the information on the book uh wasn't enough for somebody who has maybe experienced that so they felt like they weren't in favor of necessarily removing it but just worried about the information that was presented is this a different review committee entirely different people so i have nothing for scott um we're one of the one of the reasons we're here the top two reasons i think that we're here is to ensure safety and security for our students and that's just not physical it also involves emotional curriculum and we're going down i think a very slippery slope especially since this is number two so

037it's a little slippery right now and we're supposed to be creating a safe zone and something that came to me is if this book were to be downloaded through one of our books chromebooks tablets i have a feeling the filter would stop it i'm almost certain it would and it's interesting that we have loopholes in our process as to how we're maintaining safety and security because it's in our libraries it's in our system you know it's like a virus you get a virus it's got potential to grow and spread so from that perspective i think you know there's one thing that's eating at me that i feel terrible about and these books came in under my watch and there's multiple school board members that also they came in under their watch unknowingly yeah and the

038the charity level for this for this material is much higher than it needs to be for this district and again i will continue to say it as long as these things come to us books of this nature should be in a they're in the public library you can go to a bookstore you can go to amazon you can go to a universities library and find it because of its availability at that but it should not be within our doors that's all i have did you uh did you have an opportunity to read this one i did no care to read it i just wanted to comment on on the process right because that's what we're here to talk about um is the process and i do appreciate the administrators and on the staff and the

039three uh parents right that were willing to take their time and read the book and and give their feedback right because that's what we're looking for we're looking for that feedback uh from the community on these things when these things do get challenged um i think you know it's a it's a strong process is there opportunities for improvement always right nothing's ever perfect always opportunities for improvement but i do appreciate uh the community uh the three parents three sets of parents that were willing to read it and to go through the process with it so yeah i think hey yeah if there's a better process out there love to hear about it so maybe we will at some point so one quick one quick note to respond to what you said the book review committee

040notes that we get they're substantial enough for me to understand the content of this book i did not need to read it from that perspective so that's where the committee does a very good job in presenting this to us so what i'm thinking about this book the thing that you know comes to my mind and i've talked about it with roger is you know say we had a parent that wanted to pass out a copy to all the incoming students and would the school allow something like that like every student it's not part of our policy as a district anyhow to allow parents to distribute material to our students as part of our curriculum it's not curriculum this isn't this is the library book of optional choice so the question in front of this is

041this book our question as a board is is this book process and the recommendation of the committee was to keep it in the format that it's at in our library are we going to approve their decision on that process and it is not a curriculum it is an optional read and it is not a question of parents distributing items because that's not part of our policy as a district to allow that to occur the question is about the policy and the committee and our approval of that that's just the way that i think about it when in terms of should it be in the library or not without parent and parental restriction we do have that option and the that wasn't chosen yeah that wasn't selected by the committee right we do have visibility into

042what's there and i believe you're going to talk next about options for parents to have more visibility and understanding of what their students have so we can support them if they're selecting a book that is only in place in age groups anyhow this is only at the high school library if they make that selection that if a parent wants oversight on that that they can have that oversight yeah that's coming it's coming but it's not there today i thought there was a list that you could get your kids name on if they can't see this parents always have an option to say i don't want my kid reading that book or or a certain kind what we're talking about here yes i think that's what you're talking about they've they've always had that um but

043the next part we'll we'll talk about since they're aware of what we're putting in place right sorry yeah i hear ya so that would be something like one you didn't so that would again be that clarity you're talking about or transparency we're talking about but they can know right isn't there the the national database that we use that that's the books that we have so they can't know right they it's it's not a secret i mean it's out there if they if they're if they're interested in knowing whether it books in the library they can simply look it up in the database so what i hear this is a good conversation and maybe we as a district need to work on parent education of our processes with the library and making sure that we have

044you know everything very transparent on what parents can and cannot access do see and how we can support what we feel as values for our children in their personally selected reading i mean part of the discussion that'll be after this is won't that be more automatic where they can sign up to get a notification yeah i think we should we should loop back to the question at hand which is in just to reread here it's our question is to approve the recommendation of the book complaint review committee for this election and then we'll talk about those parent education and improving of the process and such after this so do we have any more comments and questions about the review process or the text in question i can tell you that i remember the first time

045our parent came up and spoke the passage of this book and i was like what and i was like yeah that oh my gosh i would never let my kids read that that's whatever and then i went and read the entirety of the book um i think it's an interesting concept that like if this was downloaded it would it would get stopped in our system you're absolutely right but our computers also don't understand context so i think that it's important to understand that we had a friend um who her son was doing um a report and it was on i don't know if it was on gun violence or whatever and it it flagged him he got pulled into the administration so um i think that you have to think about context in this and

046i think you also have to talk about the freedom of you to choose for your children what is appropriate and what other people find appropriate because in this book at the very end there is a beautiful afterward by the mother who wrote this book specifically citing all of the different things that her daughter went through when she became addicted to meth and it's all the stuff that's in here and actually it's interesting because on the radio yesterday there was a whole thing about go ask alice that was published in 1971 and the same exact arguments were happening at school boards then and in 1981 they said school boards could not limit that kind of material because it was an actual there were parents that wanted to be able to have that as a cautionary tale

047so it's interesting because about a third of the way through i was like this is horrible stuff that's happening to her because her own father introduced her to meth and i started like i started dog-earing the bottom sorry i dog-eared your book but i started dog-earing the bottom about a third of the way in and had at least 42 horrific things that happened to this girl because she made terrible choices and throughout the whole thing she's like this is awful i can understand this is terrible i don't even like my best friend anymore i don't like my family i'm making choices these are all things that have been around and it's 1971 that book came out it's the exact same thing a woman gets addicted to drugs prostitutes herself has all kinds of terrible situations

048so i think it's i think that it's important that we remember that yes i absolutely am very protective of my kids and i absolutely would not want my 13 year old to read this but the truth is i have taught in several different schools where drug use starts in sixth grade and this is not this is not fiction for many many many people this is an actual cautionary tale saying don't do crank this is not glorifying anything she even goes into talking about having a baby and she can't stop herself and she's afraid that her baby's gonna have all these deformities so the argument that this is for glorification of drugs and sex and whatever else is absolutely untrue so that's what i have to say and do i think that this is important for

049some kids i absolutely do absolutely any more comments or questions all right so we're going to take a roll call on the recommendation to approve the recommendation of the committee wonder john no homer yes high yes the committee's a recommendation is approved all right we have uh discussion items to discuss which we've already we've already uh gave everyone a sneak peek too yes so as mentioned some time ago we you know some of these books been around a while some of them not too long bottom line is we we do live in different times um we have some parents who are saying they want to know more about the books that their kids are checking out and we need to look at that and we believe we need to honor that and because of that

050there are some things that we are looking at doing to ensure that if a parent so chooses and they will have a choice um that they can know if if there are books such as this that they want to know about before their kid checks out we will have a system in place that does that and uh scott and adam i believe yeah in the corner scott and adam will talk a little bit about the process in particular at the high school yeah so i obviously we we want to start at the high school this is uh uh the biggest issue of concern and and um uh one thing i i don't know that we can state enough and and um roger shared it that that we have uh tried to be clear that that

051we want to engage and walk beside parents and making sure that those library selections are uh appropriate for their children and and fit their values um we live in a diverse community and those values vary so we've encouraged parents to reach out and talk about how to be engaged in that process in addition to knowing what your children are reading so in in doing so we've had further conversation about how do we make that more specific and and create uh something that can be even a little more proactive where parents can [Music] sign up to be a part of something where their children would need permission before checking out specific titles and that's the process because it's new it's something we're creating on our own the library system does not do that for us but

052it's something that we certainly value in being transparent and working beside our parents so our goal is that within the next couple of weeks that we have something out to high school parents to talk about library specific selection and how they can opt in for some specific uh permissions for their children and and they can set that up and um it's a little broad right now because we're still putting a lot of structures to it um but it is something that that we're committed to and and making sure that parents can be a part of uh to your question um about that notification then that's another piece that we're working on and looking into whether it's an automated notice our system can send out automated notices for overdue books um so uh in my mind

053there must be a way to send out an automated notice of all books right here know what know what your child is has checked out just again as an added layer um i've had some conversations with parents who who are concerned that uh that maybe they would check out a book and and they wouldn't know about her they would hide it from them or something else and and that's not again um we want to be transparent with all of that um and engage people in that conversation um and information so so that's our plan in the next couple of weeks that we'll get that information out at our administrative retreat uh this last week we had conversation with all of our principals about getting information out for all schools in the newsletters again encouraging library

054is important books are important we know that um and getting information out about the encouragement for them to be involved in that library book selection so we're going to have some language going out in all of our newsletters just about how they can partner and communicate with their schools uh to be informed and then again we will roll out more things as we have them so we also have hired correct a library library science master's in library science she's um going to be our what's her official title our district library supervisor district library we throw media in there sometimes but um and is she also on this committee helping organize best practices and making sure that you know that's a slippery slope as well i mean this whole idea of and i you know i

055completely understand that i would not let my 13 year old read this but i do wonder on best practices what that's going to look like and if she's involved in that whole yeah yep yep so uh we'll be very engaged in that and she and i met last week to talk about priorities and and and how that works one of our big tasks for this year is to talk about uh library book selection and how to be more transparent uh with that as well put your timeline in your head scott to roll it out to the middle school and then elementary because you know we're looking at you know adult material right in our media center but parents have concerns about elementary as well so um [Music] in my head this goes really well and

056we can scale it quickly um uh we're going to learn some lessons just because it's something we haven't done before and and and we will want to then not repeat those lessons but i would hope that um i would hope we can roll it out to all schools within the first quarter and again as part of that library communication uh jason brought up a good point all of our library catalogs are online and those are completely accessible to parents and and and we will continue to encourage parents that if they have questions or concerns to reach out to to those building principals and classroom teachers because we want again we want to work out we can work out individual systems from the beginning of the year do you see that work being internal where you

057would develop software or no more of a process just through some signups and then we'll keep some lists and processes like that okay so will this fall on to so i guess my other question is on a staffing issue is that going to then fall onto librarians to be like policing this or is there a better system that's it's part of the system we're working out because it has to be manageable and it has to work um so uh some of those details that we just don't know yet are are how do we how do we manage that checkout and we're going to have to engage some people in that conversation as well and that's probably something that's going to have to evolve just as some of the other pieces are evolving and changing as

058well i think there are several you know there's several pieces to this there are i mean starting right from the get-go if a parent knows the books they books they don't want their kid checking out or kinds of books all they have to do is say so that's always been but we're trying to create that system where um you know if if they're you know looking at books and if there are books such as this that parents say look i i want to know know if my kid is looking at checking that out or if that comes up or you know i don't want my kid checking that out and so on we'll be we'll certainly be looking at systems that help do that also what we want to do again is find different ways

059various ways elementary middle school high school to encourage parents to be a part of their kids book selection choice one thing i know one elementary elementary's looking at doing is having some after school hours where parents can come in check out books with their kid if they want to do that so we're looking at a variety of options not just you know we'll have a system and look at a system but we want to hit it from multiple areas to provide some some choices for parents should they they wish to partake in those one of the interesting things from yesterday i was listening to that piece on the radio one of the questions i would love to understand and consider is where does that end one of the examples they said is suppose you have

060a remarkably conservative or liberal board and a parent comes and complains that they don't want anything from the republican party they don't want any trump books they don't want any obama books whatever um i'm wondering how much of that then that's so sometimes some of the stuff might be a slippery slope there as well so i'm just wondering about like um also our job is safety but it's also education and so sometimes i'm just i just want to make sure that when we talk about what we are limiting within our libraries it doesn't become this taxing burden on librarians or teachers or our staff to fight culture wars at the book level right so i think an automatic notification to the parent of each book that they sign out or something would yeah i think

061your argument on the political side i think where you're going and hopefully what roger's going to achieve with his transparency goal is um parents are aware right we want parent notification that's this whole point of transparency and they should be the one that has the final say in what their child is going to see outside of a defined curriculum so what's in the media center and parents still gets to control that from my perspective the one thing that i asked raj is as you begin to roll this out just give us quick up updates you know so that we know what's going on and then the other piece of that i think in again you can't say transparency enough that um [Music] you do some kind of survey for parents or ask them is this

062sufficient enough i mean we're i truly believe one of the this board's biggest goals is to bring trust back for the parents right our trust is do they trust us i don't know some of it's fractured some of it's broken so that's there so we need to build it back up that's why we have people coming to these meetings right for 20 years nobody came now two years we got we got everybody here so providing that peace is gonna lower that lover a bit amy did you get your question answered i know what we kind of went into another item you were asking a question to roger selection i think you were just saying be cognizant be cognizant of [Music] of uh of the fact that uh yeah i mean there's also there's also it

063could become a slippery slope yes okay more of a statement yes on both i mean i'm you know we're talking about slippery slopes and there are other scenarios that are not quite as um easily stated right like if i had i had a student in my class and their parents didn't want them to read anything about you know harriet tubman or something you know so i think you know those are you know i think those are more instructional uh curricular materials i think i think what this is is still more free choice yeah so i and those things i mean we would be very transparent with parents in our curriculum anyway so they would know and if there was something they objected to we would be having discussion about um i see how that would

064come yeah would that ever make it to the school board if again a curricular curriculum book was uh could but we have processes in place that really but we're talking free choice versus creating so within curriculum yeah we we have processes um within that as a matter of fact we're we're doing more and transparency with that too as we move forward i mean parents can look at curriculum at any time but we're even looking at new stuff in the future of having maybe a period of time for people to view and check it out kind of like they do with our our sex ed materials and so on how we we have a time period where they can do those so yeah that'll be forthcoming sorry no you're good no it's it's it's all very

065exciting and and hopefully it accomplishes that building that trust and included in that is added transparency for library book selection so let me i'm excited about it let me end my part of this discussion with an analogy i haven't had a good one in a while okay lay it on me bob okay we're a boat in the middle of the sea and it's rough seas so when we talk about slippery slopes it goes both ways right what do we want column c's balance column c's why do we have all these audience members i would say and i would say we're a microcosm of society and society is not calm right now therefore we we are experiencing very similar so my attempt is to not amplify it but to subdue it to drop it any questions

066comments anything from you thanks raj thank you all right well now we're moving on to our public comment section of the meeting as individuals who've already submitted their forms for public comment are called up you will receive five minutes to speak mr hagar will keep track of that time and we'll give a one minute warning please remember when you're providing public public comment um that you are speaking to the board audience also please respect that we're here to hear what they have to say so please do not disrupt their comments so that we can hear them fully also when you're giving your statements please remember that if your statements violate the rights of other under the law of defamation or invasion of privacy you may be held legally responsible if you're not sure of where

067your comments lie in that you might want to consider consultation with a legal advisor before defaming someone's character all right so we have 14 um submissions tonight anyone need a stretch for a moment okay our first individual up is mr steven moss after mr moss will be randy borman well good evening before i've got a couple things i want to talk about i just have to say that when jason talked about band camp i had flashbacks it's been like 50 years but um some things haven't changed i mean maybe the venue's changed cyrus was at central michigan now it's at western but it's always the hottest week of the summer so if anybody ever wants to know when's going to be good beach weather call roger find out when band camp is going to be

068and that will be great weather anyway as the mayor as a father of seven kids as a homeowner and as a resident of granville thank you very much for your service people appreciate what you do you're doing a fantastic job you make this community um strong and and i appreciate it so thank you very much also want to thank you amy and all of you for your uh help with the parks and rec on board some very exciting things are happening there the city of granville city council and strategic planning has made a commitment for green infrastructure and also uh enhanced parks and we have uh received and will receive some more arpa money and we're looking heavily at parks and recreation um also just kind of wanted to give you a quick update on

069what's uh some things that are happening in granville that are pertinent especially to schools you've seen a lot of dirt being moved in a couple places in greenville one is south of target uh there's going to be about 500 apartments there and so it's going to be a big complex all in the granville school district and i know you've got a lot of things happening in the school district but for granville this is a big deal so more students on the way and also those are all going to be apartments there and then also on uh the east side of ivan rust just south of buck creek there's a development going there there's 80 owner occupied homes some are going to be condos some will be site condos some will be detached homes so more

070kids come in there so again thank you very much for everything that you do for your service um it's it's important work that you're doing appreciate it thank you thank you next up randy gorman followed by lynn jansen all right just a few things first the the library book thing i would like to just think that if there's if it's not good wholesome and safe for everybody it has no place in the in a school library again you can go to the public library you can probably go online you can you can find books wherever you want um it just doesn't seem like if it's in question at all that that there would this whole thing where we have to have a list and it just seems totally unnecessary um number two as the new

071school season starts i guess i just want to encourage you guys to make sure that everybody as far as our our teachers and administration whatever is staying in their lanes when it comes to things that don't need to be talked about in the classroom we had issues with banners flags i guess hopefully there's policies that we're kind of keeping an eye on what teachers are doing inside their classrooms so we don't find out things that we have to find out through you know online classes we don't have online classes right now but again like to make sure that we have appropriate stuff in the classrooms and then the last one is a business situation for my family and families in my neighborhood and i think there's some other people here are going to talk about

072it too we kind of got the sheep pulled out from underneath us we found out today well and not even through anybody in particular but we found out to a neighbor that we are not going to have busing to our elementary school which is grandview because of where we live and i don't know i know it's all being worked out and this is maybe not the best place to talk about it but that this just so happened we found out today and uh um so i would like to have somebody contact me so that we can address that situation and again i think there's some other people are going to address that too thank you mr gorman would you please add your phone number to this page and so someone can contact you it's okay

073you got it okay you got it okay thank you thank you um next up lynn jansen followed by janine janzma hello board lynn janssen address is on file i'd first like to address this process this process is dynamically flawed the process for reviewing books calling staff members shareholders and my children or stakeholders with my children is as absurd as saying the architect of my house or the drywaller is a stakeholder in my house um their employees i'm grateful for the work that they do but they will do with my child for a year four years or two years and they move on so does my child there are only two stakeholders in my children's lives that is my wife and myself um second i'd like to address mrs garadine at this point um i disagree

074with your reading of this book um more so than the consequences of her actions i read the book i did not read the afterward um she there is not a page where she doesn't talk about how great these drugs make her feel that was a 500 word advertisement for methamphetamine and how it's appropriate for for 13 year olds you don't want your 13 year old to read it but you're okay putting it in front of my 13 year old i can't believe that you guys have reached a discussion this decision [Applause] this book was disgusting because of the drug use it is criminal because of the child rape involved it is criminal to distribute that to my child i'll let you know that i did file a police report today um i will be following

075up with both the police department and the prosecuting attorney's office and i appreciate that your votes are public and on record um i hope that there are no personal consequences for any of you thank you [Applause] you have my address on file so this board's vote to keep the contested pornographic books in the school library books that are themselves labeled adult only or 18 and over this is a high school situation not many adults attending as students i presume but it reveals the lack of moral fiber and responsible discernment that is on display in every institution in this country a sincere evaluation of the educational medical and governmental systems shows us that liars thieves cheaters and law breakers have gained dominance from the top to the bottom and vice versa yet this very exposure has

076awakened the sleeping giant in god-loving individuals all across the land the indoctrination attempt to sexualize demoralize contaminate and abuse our children stops right here parents grandparents and citizens with a moral compass have been galvanized by the witnessing and experiencing the insidious agenda that's being exposed the two-tiered injustice system run by tyrannical dictators is on full view every area of our lives are being infiltrated infected by the infiltration remaining asleep or oblivious to what is happening is no longer an option for those who don't want to see the demise of america into a third world country speaking on this to the school board members is not only appropriate it's essential you are in a position to help preserve and protect the sanctity and safety of our children while they are in school abdicating responsibility of your

077roles as the adults accountable for the care of students would be nothing less than an abomination the slippery slope trajectory towards communistic oppression and depravity has become an avalanche any belief that going along to get along is relevant at this time in history is not only foolish but dangerous my appeal to this board is to rethink your allegiances and your strategies moving forward into the new school year deep clean your libraries of the adult and x-rated materials that unfortunately are now too numerous my prayer is that you do a deep dive into your soul and ask yourselves honestly are you doing what is right and truly in the best interest of the children or are there competing and conflicting goals and aspirations that influence your decision-making process honesty is the only genuine way forward and

078that honesty needs to begin within us all to side with and protect or promote an ideology that infringes upon the innocence and integrity of our youth is irresponsible and quite frankly reprehensible do the right thing protect the children thank you next stop jacqueline coleman followed by tessa jansman i'm sorry i don't address the audience thank you i just want to express my appreciation to the board for the due diligence that was done to review this book and the other books um i actually disagree with the other people here i think that that book probably is appropriate because i was not i was one of those people who didn't have those books given to me when i was in high school and what happened was i got out in the real world and i realized that

079there were a ton of people who were not like me and i was behind the eight balls so i would rather our educators work on educating even if it is not things that people agree with that's all next up tessa jasma followed by kevin weiss oh man this is turning into a show it's fun all right my name is jasma my address is on file kind of knew you guys were going to vote like that seem to just ride the wave of whatever authority is above you just like with the masks and all that whole thing it was always well it's not us they they said it's good for you so we'll go with it kind of like these books scott spoke of a opt-out list that parents could potentially or something that's in the

080works for parents to be able to sign their kids up for is that list gonna be public or are you really gonna publicly put all of the sexual books you guys have um out there i mean we're in the works of doing it ourselves for you but are you guys gonna do it i mean that'd be great you could just show us you know everything that you're giving our kids there will be people who don't think like us and that's fine there's amazon there's the other public library this is a school library it's public public school library so yes absolutely public but the school part is right after it granville public library is a completely different that's a completely different story it is this is the school library where children go yes children we're not

081going to do sorry we're not going to have comment from board or audience we're just going to listen to tessa finish her time thank you thank you so it's becoming way more apparent why the whole teachers union and everybody that follows that is fighting really hard to get rid of these school choice vouchers because if parents really did have a choice to go wherever to a charter to anywhere and let their money follow them completely public schools would be over because like granville like like i've said before i was a walking advocate for this school for years i've gone almost a decade without bus service i've i've praised this this school district for so long until i got a chance to see just how dare i say left this school has has become you speak

082of like what if we had a board that was left or right we do we absolutely do right now at the state level too but that's going to change soon too so it'll be fun um yeah it's it it is amazing that you guys are sticking with us but yet very predictable so i guess maybe we'll just bring you more books and just get all of your votes just on record and you know like you said amy you wouldn't want your kid to read this book we have there's freshmen that are 13. there's freshmen that are 13 and that book is available whether they check it out and their parent gets notified or if they're just in the library browsing through it we have so many books that are graphic novels like the watchmen or

083you know they look like comic like comic books and we have sex scenes in them if you guys think that's okay you do you do you think that's okay you don't believe me i'm sure there'll be another appeal we'll talk about it next for the next one so it's just very disappointing because it's just very disappointing thank you bob and brent for speaking up about it you know i don't want to be against the rest of you i hope you don't take it personal against anything it's just this is getting ridiculous and you guys all have kids too like if you want that for your kids buy that on your own time but for everybody's kids if we need a book or a list for the offensive content why is that even in our school

084maybe just rethink that whole crack part of that followed by heather vernon my name is kevin weiss and you have my name address phone number all on file first foremost thank you every single one of you you know i've been to a lot of these meetings and i've seen the ups and downs of all the behaviors for and against each and every one of you and you've all stuck to and i appreciate it while i've not always agreed with you i have always been supportive of you i'm the proud dad of three kids in the granville system i'm here tonight not to fight with anybody but just offer a potential solution we've been rounding around with these books there are adult content books in our library plain and simple it's not my place to tell

085any parent how to raise their children nor the morals and mores they introduce their kids that's theirs they bring up their kids all i'm going to propose is no dramatic verbose nothing fancy i don't want books banned i'm not going to host a big dramatic book burning party how about something this simple put the adult content books in an area where only the children i call them kids because i'm old the students of the age of majority or with parental consent can access plain and simple we're not going to have extensive programs it's a restricted book it's outside their realm of expertise and put it in parents hands the parents know the maturity level of their kids if they don't they dang well should okay i myself in coaching and being around the high school

086i've seen some of the high school upperclassmen behave at lower maturity rates than some of the middle school kids is it wrong no but kid we're not making widgets here okay we've got kids they all develop at different stages they've all experienced different trauma in their life they've all had great support groups or not so much we're not turning out car parts we're trying to educate kids by putting that one level of protection with our kids we can make progress on this we got bigger fish to fry than fighting about books okay so nothing left makes me more proud than to see the successes of our students especially my own i'm kind of biased knowing we have great leadership a great leadership group willing to look out for the best chances of our kids let's

087make that the norm okay i stand here before you as a father and supportive parent of all three of my kids i'm here to protect them i hope you are too and i will tell you that i will not stand idly and allow anyone to do any potential harm to them you all hear about mama bear papa bear's in the house okay i'm not making any threats or anything it's just the best thing i can say is do your due diligence look take time digest and then make an intelligent informed decision and move forward thank you thank you next up heather vernon followed by alan traxler hello thank you um so i am going to talk about the business situation um i am a parent of three students my oldest is in high school my

088middle is in middle school and we're talking about my youngest who's at grandview he's in sixth grade um about seven years ago we moved and where we moved primarily the students go to century park but we do have a lot of grand view students in our neighborhood and when we moved to be inquired about switching schools and a lot of those classrooms were at capacity and we could not switch schools even if we wanted to and that's what we were told um today i looked my son is not on a bus list and we both work and we have no way to get him home from school and we were not notified that there was no longer going to be busing service to our neighborhood from grandview we live off of kanawha and a number

089of the buses that do go to grandview have to drive right past our road going to the bus garage and so i'm just hoping that we can try to find a resolution last year um i did not have a great experience with the transportation my son also was supposed to ride the bus an hour to school in an hour home from school every day so he was supposed to be on the bus for two hours so i just i'm hoping for some resolution so we can get my son at least home from school because he has band and choir in the morning so thank you thank you pause for just a second yeah ma'am is that the same thing okay thank you we'll uh get in touch with you about that thank you for bringing

090it to light alan jackson thank you um you're up after allen thank you my name is alan trexler my address is on file i have two girls in the school system and i'm here today to just bring up something that's been on my mind for quite some time it's an actual danger it's a real threat it's gun violence um unlike a book that's on a shelf to be checked out at a high school i am terrified that whenever i see a shooting in the news i can't help but think about my own two girls we had a shooting here in michigan oxford student was gifted a handgun which was not secured properly and uh you may be familiar with details of the story counselor did what they were supposed to do called student in but

091then the student was making concerning statements drawings written words regarding violence regarding gun violence then the student was allowed to finish the rest of the day and unbeknownst to the parents the gun's counselor had the gun with him so i'm just asking that a similar situation not happen here in our school such as the oxford shooting should counselors uh call in a student and the parents be called in also um perhaps at best the student go home for the day um or or something like i'm just concerned that this could happen again i don't know what the solution is going to be with these kind of problems it's just on my mind an awful lot whenever something in the news is there's a shooting at a mall there's shooting here shooting there um there's solutions

092i out of out of pocket project which is arming teachers i think that's actually bringing a gun into the classroom automatically so there's many things i could object to but i'm just asking uh another look at what could be done to protect our students uh and of course my heart was just broken for days after you've all day shooting um because it's another element where it's out of your control due to police response um in uvalde the the the small town had a lot of resources and a swat team to go into the school to actually prepare for such an event they actually practiced this and stayed back i recognize the board does not have power police i recognize the city and the mayor only has influence not exact power but i'm wondering if our

093own schools have had walk-through scenarios where the police know what to do in the response and should an active shooter develop will they um have such a plan if they don't will they actually execute such a plan and not stay in the hallway for an hour so i just want to speak speak to my concerns and it is i also feel it is unlikely that something would happen here but again it's just a numbers game i'm not a gambler i don't gamble when there are chances of something terrible something tragic that could happen i want to reduce that and i'm just asking for your consideration for something that actually actually poses a threat not a book but a gun thank you [Applause] next up maria gallagher followed by carolyn frederick sorry sorry well a couple

094things number one i'm glad my kids don't like reading books because they don't have to go for that um they just like sports but um but he just said um i know that there was a training that happened not too long ago with wyoming police and granville police my question is for the parents how are we going to know that that's enough you know what i mean you guys are not going to know if something you know if no one knows if a is shooting's gonna happen right but as a parent i wanna know that no matter what if that were to happen at our school that we have everything in place and possible to keep them safe so i'd like to know if um you guys have that and if you do please let

095us parents know um second thing is so i have a child and i am gonna say seo i am thankful for it um does that surprise you christy um i'm thankful for it because i do have a son who is socially emotionally challenged sorry i'm gonna cry cause i love my kids um when it it took years for me to ask teachers ask the principals hey my kid needs help they always tell me no he doesn't wait till he you know he'll be a little bit older he's fine and like no he needs help like in school because he doesn't understand a lot it goes through his head he doesn't get it um and then my i finally spoke to my pediatrician sorry i finally spoke to my pediatrician and he had told me what

096i needed to say to the school in order to get any of the attention brought to my child to get him help we did get i cannot remember her name but she was amazing at grandview who um helped my son with the emotional part um and then when i had that meeting with all these different people um they said well his scores are great they're not great they're average cool but if they're average then why is his grades not reflecting that and you know they're all multiple choice so i mean that can that can be just that but um and then i told people in that room that we are getting him tested for a lot of things rigorous testing um and the principal said well look she perked up when i told her that

097was happening but she said even if he is qualified doesn't mean he's going to get someone to help him that cannot happen because my child deserves like any other child deserves to have there um sorry i'm so just nervous he should he's like any other child like we're giving all this stuff to everybody my child needs and when it comes to that he does need it he needs to get help i am not going to accept we're not going to help your child thank you i'm not going to accept that so i will be the one who i am the mama bear a lot of you guys know that already i am the mama bear and i will take this as far as i need to take it for my child to get help thanks

098thank you just trying to make eye contact over there everyone's taking notes um next up carolyn frederick and followed by cameron zabowski sipkowski sorry good evening um first of all i too would like to thank the school board members are dedicated i may not agree with some of you i may disagree violently with some of you in the sense of verbalizing but you're trying to do your best for what's good for the school district mr wundergen earlier made a comment relative to your responsible for the safety and welfare of your children he left out one important word all the children whether i agree with a book or not it's my responsibility to deal with my child if i had one as to whether he or she should read it could read it read it with

099me it's not my responsibility to tell you your child can't read it because i find it objectionable that is not what we do in a public school the whole concept of a public school is to allow everybody to share and i will tell you right now sitting here tonight i warped back 65 years i think it's probably more than most of you are alive granville public schools banned a book in the 50s and i'll tell you right now the first thing i did when i got out of college is i made damn sure i got that book and i read it because i couldn't figure out why the whole world did not believe that i should read that book i'm grateful for my parents who raised me to read they taught me that that's your

100education how you read and i don't know i can't deal with other families i don't know what they were like my parents knew what i read my mother did i was a voracious reader in elementary school but every time i brought home the books and by the way just so that you're aware the school changed their policy for loaning loaning books to children in the grade schools because of me for me because i was limited to two books a week i was reading two books a night so they agreed i was an exceptional reader so i was allowed to take out books i think i read every book in the library before i ever got out of it in fourth grade that's back in the days where all of granville was this little quad here

101i went to the old elementary school they built west elementary i went to west for fifth and sixth grade but i hearkened back it brought me back 65 years ago because the same type of discussion went on we had a particular church member that stood up and said i find that content to be reprehensible another church member stood up and said i don't like it well i didn't like the john birch society bringing in stuff either that was when i was in high school i heard somebody say well parents can't do that well they did back in the 50s trust me because every one of us got a pamphlet we got a gideon bible those are not the things that parents should be allowed to be doing they shouldn't be allowed to tell me how

102to raise my child your responsibility is for all children not just a particular group of people i look in the round and you know to be brutally honest i see more minorities in your audience here than i saw in my entire school district i was still able to read about the civil war i was still able to read about the underground railroad they were too if you start banning books you start censorship one minute it is a slippery slope and before long you're going to have more people like me the minute they get out of school they're not going to pay attention to their parents anymore they're going to go find out thank you carolyn next up cameron zapkowski followed by michelle thomas cameron zurkowski address is on record um keep this short and sweet

103uh kim uh congratulations on your as a navy veteran uh congratulations on your son uh going to boot camp i'm sure he's going to have a fun eight weeks ahead of him so um i i wanted to take a moment to uh thank the board for the amazing work you're doing collectively to make decisions that are in the best interest of our school district i'd also like to uh just finish with thanking our men and women in uniform who are here keeping us safe and our communities safe so thank you for all that you do and god bless next up michelle thomas followed by dennis krebs michelle thomas my address is on record although i have two children in the district i am one of those parents i have a third will have a 13

104year old starting high school i think when you look at books being appropriate or maybe the review committee they're viewing it through the eyes or the lens of an adult not a 13 year old what's appropriate for an 18 year old is not the same thing that's inappropriate for a 13 year old how many times have you started a book you get 50 pages in you don't finish it so a lot of these books that you talk about oh well the ending they came out of it you know we learned so much who's to say that that kid is actually going to finish that book to get to the message some of the books that are on review have pictures in them who's to say that they just don't go in there and look at

105the photos they aren't always getting the meaning they're not getting the whole story and i'm not saying these books don't have a purpose i think we've talked about maybe counselors have access to maybe if they're working with students and think wow somebody would really benefit from this book look at promoting them to them i love kevin's idea of we have a section for books that are rated for adults that maybe a 13 year old doesn't have access to i'm not sure that just controlling who checks out a book that's great they can't check it out but they can go in there every day on their lunch hour or before school go grab that book off the shelf and sit there and read for 30 minutes kids are resourceful if they want to read it they'll

106find a way to read it checking out a book isn't necessarily going to stop kids parents from knowing what their child is reading it's only going to control them knowing what they're bringing home that that library is open from the time they get to school until the time they leave school it's open i don't disagree if you ban a book that my child when she graduates or when she's 18 and can go read that would probably run right out and read that i don't have a problem with that because she'd be 18 and not 13. books are appropriate at certain age levels but we have to remember that our high school has very young children in it still um roger you made a comment that well it's a very tumultuous or it's a rocky world

107out there well then shouldn't the school be the place of calm that's a cop-out that's an excuse that while it's like that in societies that we should just let's just perpetuate the problem and keep it in our school i think that having a section if you really feel the need for these books in there i think the personal solution is easier to control if the books are in a restricted section and parents or the children have to be 18 or they have to have a letter from their parents saying you know i give my child permission to read those books but if they don't have that permission slip they shouldn't have access to those books and not just to not check them out if a parent thinks that's appropriate because maybe they have a very

108mature responsible freshman or sophomore great let them in there but not all kids have that capability and not all kids are going to bring that book home they're going to just keep it in the library um so i feel like there's a lot of wiggle room in making a compromise that would maybe work for everyone but ultimately i do agree if we really have to have these serious conversations over a book does it really need to be there there's the library is a mile up the street children can still get a hold of these books if they want to if it shouldn't if it couldn't pass the filter on their chromebook or their laptop what what's the point why do we have these safeguards um if tully were still here on a completely separate topic

109he is doing a fantastic job i have a middle school daughter that has fallen in love with weightlifting through that program this summer she shows up at that gym at 6 50 every tuesday and thursday morning i would wonder if having this in the middle school i know my son who is now a sophomore he couldn't get intro to peak in the fall so he had to wait and get it in the spring which means he actually lost a whole year of high school weight lifting would there be something in the middle school with the gym where they could maybe complete an introductory course so when they get to high school they maybe could start right in with the weightlifting and not potentially lose a year of that program because it's it's a fantastic program

110so thank you thank you for the suggestion final speaker for the evening dennis kreps good evening thanks for the opportunity to speak i'm a member of the michigan library association and i'm a long time librarian professional librarian and um so one thing that occurs to me and actually is deeply embedded in in my professional experience in life is that any any library has a unique opportunity to to reach to reach people to be a marketplace of ideas provides opportunities for well in this case for children to both have access to materials of all shapes and sizes helps can help them identify with the world and themselves and so i i firmly believe that libraries have a unique opportunity no matter what is heading and having said that i really commend you for the work that

111you have done i commend the committee also as a professional librarian the term that we use for materials selection is collection development and and i know after 30 plus years of being a librarian that can collection development is a very very diligent process and and i think um well and i commend the representation of this committee i think you have done a really good job of incorporating um voices from different communities per se and so i think you should be commended for that too um one of the things that also strikes me about about the opportunities they say libraries in particular have and make available when we think about education and we think about what is education so we look at curriculum we look at at what we might consider the basics but i also

112think that that incorporating development of the whole person is is also a part of what you think of education i see back on the wall here about lifelong learning and and how how do we foster that how do we foster critical thinking how do we how do we encourage um in this case students abilities to to think to think for themselves to think outside the box and so having well i i've come to think of libraries as both socioeconomic and intellectual equalizers and so again i think there's a real opportunity there and and again i do appreciate your your diligence and and providing a process that is thoughtful in my opinion is thoughtful um and um i hope that that that that will continue and so also as as i've heard several people talk about

113um i've heard them talk about parental engagement i think that is a critical piece i encourage you to continue to think of ways that that parental engagement in what their children are reading have encouraging the parents to participate in the process is essential because again a library i think of any um of any ilk to be that kind of equalizer um has to have the underlying process that one minute that um that supports again this um the marketplace of ideas the ability to to have access to both materials um and literature that encourages thinking outside the box that kind of critical thinking so again i commend what you all are doing thank you the next board meeting of the grandville board of education will be monday september 19th 2022 at 7 pm right here at

114the admin building the meeting is adjourned you