001uh um teachers oh let's rise for the pledge please and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice strong thank you very much can you get a roll call please wonder john here hi borah here here guardian here palmer here here point here please note as a courtesy of the members of the audience and the board of education silence your cell phones um the public will be able to speak during the public comment is signed up i have three forms right now is there anyone else who'd like to submit a form before we receive it no all right all right we'll move on to our agenda can we get the approval of the agenda please yes opposed all right uh consent action agenda recommended board of education
002through the minutes of the april 18th 2022 regular board meeting support all in favor yes awesome moving right along um our regular action agenda our first item it is recommended the board of education approved the attached resolution expressing support for the kent intermediate school district's 2022-2023 general fund budget motion support and as you know section 624 the revised school code requires the kent intermediate school district to submit their general budget to us and heather's going to give you a brief overview of that so um by law local school boards only vote on the general fund however in the spirit of transparency kent isd has provided all three of their major operating funds which includes general fund the career and technical education fund which i'll refer to as cte and the special education fund budgets so
003i know there was quite a packet put together by the isd and i'm just going to focus on a couple of um pages that i thought were important to share and to show basically how the kent isd not only is providing services to granville public schools but also their stewardship of public dollars as well so the first thing i wanted to kind of highlight was kent isd is projecting to levy 5.5 157 mills on all county properties this coming year and they included graphs of where they land for their general fund millage and um well all four of these millages actually but against other isds in the state so the lowest out of those listed for their general fund when it comes to their special education they're right in the middle and i think it's
004important to note that the special education millage like 95 of those dollars are coming back to the local districts to help support special education programs again right in the middle with their vocational education village which again that's those are cte dollars and those are going to fund programs out at kent isd as well as some satellite campuses that all students within the county can attend [Applause] are you taking questions i i i can yeah i wondered about the millage the general fund village why is it low like okay um i i mean i guess i would have i can get you on that i don't know i mean i don't know i really don't know the answer to that i guess that is what where they fall and what they need to run their operations
005um so from their debt millage perspective that's really neat that's all they need this budget is also based on the governor's executive budget that was released in february so they are projecting a 10 percent increase in spoke ed funding from the state as well as a 5 increase in unrestricted state operational funding they are also projecting a um eight percent or increase from three to eight percent in the special ed allowable cost funding so we'll do forward on here scroll down here to page 20. so heather one of the things that i'm trying to get a handle on here is and i know some of this must be coveted funds but when you look at page 21 and it shows you know their budget over the last four years and how it leaked by it
006leaked by a significant amount where are they putting that funding so when you look at part of the significant increase in their general fund the largest grant they have is great start readiness so i saw that so that is where a big chunk of that additional funding is coming from because in the governor's proposal great start readiness would now be funded at the full foundation where it currently incrementally has gone up but it hasn't been funded at the full foundation right to this point gsrp also received a significant grant this year too yes equipment and capital so how does that flow down to the districts so what the districts do is they declare a number of slots and typically that is based on space in the facilities in granville we try to make sure that
007we have enough room to service kids that are in granville now we do tend to service additional that may not be grandville residents but the districts receive a per pupil or a per slot amount for those services ken isd though hires the teachers they're just renting basically facility space from us so we don't know what it was back in 2020 2019 we don't know what cause we're at 31 million i would i can go back and look and get you that number but i don't know about the time i'm curious to see what it was i mean they've always been great stewards i just want to understand it i'm just trying to tie all the numbers together i can i can look back and ask them for that information okay just tell ron it was
008for me okay um so they're looking at a 1.1 million dollar surplus their general fund which should bring their ending fund balance to just under 7.6 million which is 13.3 percent three 13.03 of their expenditures um i'm going to move on unless there's any more questions on their general phone i'm going to move on to their special headphones so just note that again that their special education fund is by far the largest of the three major operating funds the majority of their funds over 95 percent flows through to the local districts and those flow-through funds include item or funding like act 18 distributions payments for center and autism programs that are run by the locals medicaid funding idea grants and cooperative services like special ed transportation and itinerant staffing just a reminder that our itinerant
009staff they fall under our gea contract however they are on kent isd's payroll and that is done because it is a benefit to us we receive additional funding to have them out there on ken isds do all districts in kent county participate in the itinerant staff yes how many how many isds do that transfer very similar program yeah i don't know the answer to that okay just wondering you always got to get questions um if you scroll down to um or flip over to page 28 it again breaks down those different services that are provided through special ed and they are looking to end with a 7.2 percent fund balance percentage in their special education fund based on expenditures um i i do want to note i did talk with angie thornberg just because i
010i was anticipating a question that wasn't asked yet um but just note that it's been a couple years now since our center-based programs have moved from grand rapids public to the kent isd and um my next question go ahead so in talking with angie um she is um we're seeing improvement like they're not just gatekeepers anymore we're looking to do what is best for kids so if there are programming needs that the locals are struggling with the isd has been able to help additionally it does mean that our costs have gone up but that is a good thing because there were a lot of unfilled positions previously when it was housed by grps so we had a lot of long-term subs in positions now while there are still open positions and it is hard to
011find some special ed teachers for certain positions it has been an improvement and she said the communication with the special ed department at the isd has improved immensely so every you know from my standpoint when i look at it from a budget standpoint costs have gone up a little bit but it has not been significant and again we are providing the services that our kids need so so there are two outside of lincoln there's two facilities that most of students and that transitioned beyond high school went to either mayfield or straight they did a wonderful job of updating straight and i'm told they're closing straight next year and i'm wondering where they're going to house these students i don't know the answer to that i don't know if roger has anything back at kbo um
012i i'm not sure off the check i i they haven't they they've talked i mean i knew they were going to close down straight by i'm not sure where they're going okay last but certainly not least is their cte budget so they have 22 state approved programs that they offer at their center and satellite locations to serve over 2 000 students throughout the county the cte fund also supports 45 of the operating costs for kent transition center which offers career exploration and technical training for special needs students there they outline on page 40 the major programs and services that they offer from administrative to health careers technology services auto tech career readiness etc mechanics design labs there are a lot of opportunities that are would be quite costly to house in a local educational setting
013just because you might not have the number of students interested let alone the infrastructure to be able to support it and that is really that's pretty much all i had on that unless you have any other further questions on their budgets nice overview thank you yes all right yes okay so all right next item i love doing this one our 7-8 science resource purchase it has recommended the board of education approve the purchase of package of digital licensing and classroom text sets of bring science alive from tci publishing for a total purchase price of 84 662.50 the tci package includes complete digital resource access for each teacher and six-year digital platform licensing for students along with the class set text copies including spanish text versions can i get a motion support so we have some
014fabulous educators from our middle school here along with dr merkel and they're going to provide some information regarding this resource thank you i'd like to introduce melissa susan seventh grade science teacher i know uh most of you know melissa and lindsey lance uh eighth grade science teacher lindsay is new to us this this year um a catch community member and parent as well so uh just some background and i know i wrote a lot of background in the write-up for this because this is a process that goes back to 2019 um and was one of our main objectives for the 2019-2020 school year as you read it's been nearly 20 years since we've updated the middle school science resource partially there's some rationale there and and and and uh mostly we'll talk a little bit
015about that but um we were in the midst of our pilot right in the middle of switching when the pandemic hit and we just there was obviously no way to continue so when we came back to school in the fall of 2020 um we were still not ready to kick back that pilot we were figuring out what life would look like and so um we decided to reboot the pilot and went back and started almost all over again and there were a number of times they were just kind of ready to give up this was so hard but they persevered and bring this recommendation that i believe somebody may have cried when we finally but um i'll let melissa talk a little bit about the process and then lindsay will share a few things just
016about what they love about what they'll be getting for next year so so the adoption process itself probably started in 19 i can go back even to 2016 when we said hey there's this new ngss thing people are talking about they're fired up i'm going to conferences at different places and like this is a big thing so i'm diving in like it sounds exciting so i can take it back to 2016 and even before that we're like okay this is where we want to go with this um and finally we said okay if we're gonna do this adoption textbooks aren't ready for this like they're prepping they're changing the way they do things but they're not quite ready yet so let's make sure that we have what we need so we put together what we
017called some non-negotiables and as a science department we talked to the high school we were talking with the sixth grade and what are some things that like there can be some things missing like nothing's gonna be perfect but these non-negotiables really have to be met so we found a number of different resources that we said okay this one looks great well this one spiraled and asked so many questions but never actually gave enough answers that the kids by the time we got to a quiz they're like you just asked us a bunch of questions we don't even know what to study or how to do this and i was gone for three days and this was all just talked about so like okay that's really not where we need to go so many many different
018resources and then the pandemic came and then we said okay so now people are out for extensive periods of time so some of these online presence pieces are super important but some of them were just online we went through four different like whole-hearted extensive pirate pilot pilots um and one of them was so much online that the kids at home really troubled uh had trouble connecting with um and we didn't have a textbook to sit down because some kids just want to like i want to just read about it i don't want to talk i don't want to watch videos i want to just sit and and eat it up like i i read stuff so though all of those pieces were so important so finally we looked through and everyone looked good but had
019these gaps and we had been through ngsx training we had unpacked all the standards we knew what we wanted so when we came upon tci we said you know none of these are perfect everybody's coming at it from different ways but we have the skills to make this one what granville really needs this is how our state how our kids are coming up through the elementary grades this is what they need in the middle school to help them be ready for the high school um so we looked and said tci has really uh for what we need has has it all so what do we love first of all it is directly ngss aligned and we being experts at this kind of went back through it like is it really because it says it's a
020line okay like okay so we know the verbiage we're looking for we know that we need to teach concepts before we give out vocabulary so are you really doing that are you really following what ngss is really uh about at its core and um this one did so ngss check uh online presence did it have the online presence of having texts that that stood out to the kids but also infographics so important that they're not able to just you know take the understanding out of the words but look at a graphic look at a table and understand what it's trying to say again it's got that information where we can extrapolate and interpolate uh with from the information that's there uh simulations and animations um you know with with the adoption of online computers or
021online one-to-one computers also came us up being edutainers like this needs to be fun too right so this definitely had that piece up there's games there's simulations there's uh it's just things that are relatable um but in the end that we still had a hard copy you know when it came right down to it could we spend a day off from those devices those kids are on it all day at home and all day at school like let's get out some books and just look and um so this had a strong textbook that we could relate to um that we're just getting you know an uh in class sets uh not to check out and drag around every day necessarily but he could be there when we needed that time and then um you know
022at the middle school level we are jack of all trades we teach a little bit of everything so this had some really really good uh labs guided activities um ways to get outside and do different things and and just relate what we're doing to real life so um that was kind of where we started and i'll let when we continue where there's just so much more to it so i am new to granville and thank you for having me um but i'm not new to teaching middle school science i actually taught for 13 years in another local district but my heart's in granville my kids go here i actually have a middle schooler for the first time now and so we get to come to school together and interestingly enough where i worked before as
023well we ended up going through a very similar process and ended up deciding on tci as well so i have three years of teaching with tci and then this year going back to the drawing board and trying a couple of those pilots again and again with our department really deciding that this is the resource that we feel fits our needs the best here and that we're the most excited about so in addition to everything that melissa talked about we really like that tci seems to be fun and engaging and really relevant to teenagers or pre-teens kind of that era we know it's an interesting level to teach so you don't want to be too advanced but you also don't want to be too elementary that they feel like you know we're talking down to them
024like we said the assessments that we can build in tcr are really flexible they're both formative and summative we can sort questions based on kind of depth of knowledge we can sort them based on the standards that they cover and it just is very flexible so we can even create different assessments based on class needs during a given year the phenomenon that they have have some wow factor and some interesting factors a lot of times they come with you know watching a video and one that i give as an example recently is in the physics unit we're talking about well what causes motion how do we describe what motion is so we have you know a picture of a train and you know with a still image you really can't tell what's moving and we
025talk and then you kind of push play and the trains start moving and you realize there's actually a lot going on in this picture and so we we how do you describe what is motion and how do you describe that to someone of course this integrates with google classroom which we all love and use every day and again it's that online presence it's very easy to adapt that way and again the flexibility that teachers have to really put their own stamp on this program to make it our own use our expertise and our training has been really exciting and a great fit for us so we're excited to hopefully get this approved by you and to continue going forward the next few years with the resource that we are excited about so thank you one
026thing that um we haven't talked about yet is this package includes a six-year online license melissa mentioned classroom sets of texts including um 10 spanish copies for our el classrooms the online version also offers language options as well as reading level adjustments but what's missing here that i think one of the things that i'm most proud of their work is all the hands-on material that comes with it so for the last six years maybe more they've been developing their own lessons they know how to conduct a lab they've been through the ngsx training modeling training that that presents an inquiry base so tci has packages where they'll sell you um a lab kit for i believe it was 1049. per unit but it's a lot of the things that they've already been doing so we're
027gonna again invest in our people in uh doing some organization to building the kits that they've already done and work and utilize this just as an enhancement which is really really exciting and a credit to our teachers well i certainly have an appreciation for everything that you did to research and pilot lindsay your expertise is so appreciated welcome to granville it's exciting um i don't have a lot of questions about the actual curriculum because i trust our teachers that they're ready for this and it sounds like they did some great homework getting it going over a long period of time they talk about those ng ngss sessions it was so long ago that i went to them so they've been working towards this a long time and when i opened up the board packet this
028week and saw that there it was just like what a great um what a great thing to see i know you've been working so hard for this for so long so i appreciate all the work you put into vetting these pieces of content and doing thoughtful pilots that's very important even when we feel drawn towards one curriculum to stop and pause and say is there something better out there is there something that reaches our kids but i hear that you have done your homework and really found the best engaging opportunity and one question the digital license have you looked into what that cost after six years from now to re-up that because i'm assuming if we kept the last set for 20 years we're gonna have to maybe re-license this and does that include a
029refresh of any content along with it um yes so every uh it automatically through the six years um any refresh automatically is part of it so one of the things that the teachers really liked about tci uh it also is that they're they're very receptive to feedback um and making immediate changes and then those are live um in what you have um the exact cost of beyond that we'll need to reevaluate come year five because at that point it will be most prudent for us they'll sell you you know they'll sell you a one-year license but they'd rather sell you a three-year license for just a little bit more so we'll need to revisit that and see where we are and if we are where we expect to be then we'll probably refresh for another
030um multi-year fantastic i i can attest we looked at tci as like the second of our four major ones we looked at a few others but um i can tell you from when we were dabbling with it that first time uh to post covid huge changes i mean structural like the guide on the left how it works available things um you know labs that were available like it is in constant uh upgrade so we were thrilled to see there's there's more and i think that all of us have had to email the tech person with questions and they usually get back within the day not the hour that's fantastic very very receptive and again it's a it's a different product than even it was when i started three years ago it's more user-friendly because there's
031a lot there that you would have to sift through and they've just organized it i feel like and made it even more user-friendly in the last three years so i'm happy to see the integration too the more time it saves for you in terms of setting things up there's a lot of extra load on teachers today to add digital components gives you more time back to focus on students and learning so it's nice it's more of a procedural question but when we switch textbooks like this does it go through like the curriculum review board i don't i don't know exactly how it works isn't there like 30 people does this go through that yeah so multiple levels as a matter of fact so their department will start with a recommendation through their school improvement team
032and then once the school improvement team gives approval that goes through our district school improvement team which is the the curriculum review board with representation from across the district when you talk about tci and the different competitors in this space do you know what the saturation or the market percentage is for this is it you know do they have a good share of the market do i mean is it just something that you connected with and appreciated or you know i'm trying to look at longevity yeah that's that's a great question they've been around a long time the longevity um is there they also have this isn't just a science company they also offer some social studies resources in terms of science at the middle school level people are all over the board because the
033publishers are just catching up with the curricular updates that came a number of years ago so like lindsay said there are a number of our our area schools that utilize tci east grand rapids allendale and a few down in kalamazoo so it's kind of scattered and then the major publishers are trying to still get in there as well uh but they're just not as strong as a company like this so when you look at and i'm just trying to tie off the presentation if i miss an acronym sorry no problem i was a math guy um uh when you talk about the kits in 1049 right and you've developed your own do you happen to have like a punch list of what you may want to purchase their list they publish their list of this
034is what comes in a kit and a lot of the things are are they're just things we have they're beakers they're graduated cylinders they're oh so it's sort of like the hardware yeah that's exactly what it is and then there's there are some consumables that come with it right this unit you may need three rolls of paper towels and those are just things that for a couple hundred bucks we refresh every year um and we think we can save somewhere between fourteen and fifteen thousand dollars by building our own and they're not duplicating uh resources that we already have yeah these aren't like a lot of the things we're doing here aren't brand new things it's their spin on it but i've got like bags of bags of cornstarch that we've done for random things
035like okay we don't need any of that erlenmeyer flasks you know like we've we've over the years accumulated a lot of the things that you know like oh that's a cool way to do it we've always done that but they you know showing different ways so i feel confident we've got but it is a little bit of a newer publisher philosophy that they'll just share that with you and they're all willing to do that now some of them are outsourcing their kits to third-party companies um but either way here's our list if you can do it cheaper and we appreciate that that helps i appreciate it i just wonder if um the people who you went and shared with that committee that districtwide do they have any concerns or express anything that i don't know
036should be concerned about one concern that is what we are doing aligned with the high school um and 100 the great part about it is when we dug into it and thought it was really cool and started looking at it uh wendy vogel and actually our jen burns uh was part of of that department back in the day um we aligned it to this california model um that's what they called it but the high school was aligned with that also so what we did in aligned five six years ago is virtually exactly what we're doing now and so they were thrilled because it's completely seamless and it wasn't too long ago that adam and the high school science department came and presented their refresh all of this aligns with that questions nice job guys yes
037assuming that we vote yeah but let's do that um yes 13 yes yes yes underground yes hi borah yes hi yes congratulations well done thank you for being here all right our next item it is recommended that the board of education approve the following proposal for links for life a new elective course at granville middle school the elective trimester course is designed for students with and without disabilities to work collaboratively together to learn functional life and academic skills this course is an addition and supplement to our current links course where general education students support students with special needs in general education classes this course allows students to collaborate and develop relationships around specific life skills curriculum and topics if approved this course will be available to students for the 2022-2023 school year can i get
038a motion all right alternative thank you very much this is kind of a fun night who was another one of our middle school rock star teachers and she was here earlier this school year with some kids talking about links and some of the great things they're doing with links at the middle school and the links for life class is uh growth out of that um so let me talk a little bit about this class we piloted this links for life class and the life stands for learning incredible skills for everything yeah i would say that we have the traditional links you know they go into the general ed classrooms with their students but a lot of times i've noticed that there's missing relationship you know just they're there as like another teacher or another body
039like hey get to work you know but they're doing their own thing and just missing that friendship and then we also have the links for quite a while that have been going into the inclusion like excuse me the reverse inclusion into like the autism room and hanging out there and that's great but it feels like there's just missing something and so got thinking you know i want to build these these relationships with the kids seeing these kids sign up for links um we started this class this year and it's it's basically for every special ed student there's like two or three general ed peers in the class and they're learning skills together functional skills like cooking um like folding and you know doing different things right now we're building succulent planter boxes together just a
040lot of interaction going on where they're having fun together and they're building those relationships um and i would say last year we had about 200 maybe or so can sign up for links all together this year i think we're gonna probably double it so there's a there's a love is there the kids want to be involved and it's it's been paying off so yeah it's been i mean we piloted this year the behaviors you know they're improving the attendance is increasing um and again we see as you're walking through the hallways of the middle school you see high fives fist pumps you know just there's a bond you know and i i'm glad i heard a little bit of the budget i would love to see special ed grow even more so in brandon you
041know um bring in more because we there's kids that are going to love on them so yeah it's it's awesome i have so many stories i can tell i can be here all night but yeah questions for wendy thank you yeah you're always there i just want you to see the kids always like i didn't get links yeah it's just really fun to see our students yeah so excited about this it is it's i mean with understanding then they can respect more you know um you know they come into this class and at first they're like what are these kids doing they're like under the chair or they're walking all over the place going through the teacher's desk or whatever but now it's like that's my friend you know um i got their back and
042you know we're going to be together so yeah it seems like this will continue into high school that which i think becomes harder even and then if they know their friends are there yeah and i know like some of the high school staff they want to come down and watch see what kind of goes on and maybe do something similar similar yeah if it's possible [Music] so because we have trimesters that seven period day at the middle school it's the perfect spot to put that in with extra options but there are electives that are high school right i mean so it's it's absolutely something that's that's that's possible and well it's incredible too because some of the skills that we need to teach our special ed students everybody needs you know we're going to be
043mailing home mother's day cards and to find out how many kids can actually write their address is shocking that's what i liked about it right um my question besides praise for this i'm always excited when i see this program grow is um what kind of space do we have for students in these programs that have high functioning autism that might not be in the resource room it might blend in with the gen ed population but still need these kind of supports where do they fit in perfectly this class um i have a for example i have a higher functioning student with autism but he eats alone at lunch and lately he was and i told this story a couple weeks ago at the district level um getting bullied you know and so this came out
044in the class we talked about it a little bit and i brought this student his name is tyler down with another boy who he wants to be friends with who's in the class with him and brought him down to the cafeteria and this other boy said man tyler that's not right you should not be treated like that here this is where i sit at lunchtime and he pulled up a chair he said you're going to join us and all the kids that sit with me are they listed them all off and then he said no tyler show me where you sit so i can see who's been bugging you you know so i mean some of these kids like they fit in perfectly you know it's just they feel like i can be me um
045and i'd one student actually say man mrs harper i feel appreciated and loved in this class you know and it's just all you're doing is bringing it together so yeah glad to hear that thank you i don't know if i answer that question but they fit perfectly good any other questions comments oh just love you thank you thank you so much all right let's take a vote all in favor yes suppose awesome thank you thank you so much for everything you do all right next item new middle school security cameras it is recommended that the board of education approve the purchase and installation of 92 security cameras as part of the new middle school construction project at a price of one hundred thousand five hundred forty nine dollars eleven cents can i get a motion
046support as you know we have a new middle school on the horizon and we're very excited about that and walt is here to talk to you a little bit about the security cameras uh so uh exciting security cameras but still obviously critical um this will expand the district's security camera infrastructure obviously we have an existing security camera system throughout the district uh this installs a state-of-the-art high-definition security cameras covering all critical areas of the new middle school building i think it obviously is part of the critical security infrastructure of the district we went through a public rfp process had some really competitive bidding uh in the end of the process the the rfp was eroded awarded to rok which is a company that we've worked with successfully in the past so we're excited to get
047these ordered obviously ordering them quite far in advance but with everything going on these days supply chain issues we want to make sure that we get them in on time how big a group is are okay it's a big of a company um i'm not sure as far as like number of employees um they are a platinum level vendor for a milestone as a security system that we run in the district so they have quite a bit of experience with the system so because you talked about the alternative models right something they were going to be able to build on site or something like that yeah so actually again those supply chain issues um the cameras that we specified for the middle school one of those specific camera models they said um that's actually would
048be affected by a supply chain issue it wouldn't necessarily guarantee that they could meet our our timeline um so they proposed an alternate camera that actually has um saves us a little bit of money and also has some superior specifications so that you know substitute that in helps us meet our supply our timelines you feel you feel good about the longevity and the of this company right because that's one of the things right when you have someone building something special right hopefully it is reverse compatible with other you know uh cameras if we needed to right if something happened to our okay you know these are cameras that they build right is anyone else going to be able to so rok isn't necessarily the camera building company they're a vendor for the milestone security camera
049system right and then the camera models that are proposed in the system are actually manufactured by a company called axis and they're very very prevalent the majority of cameras that we have in the district and then other school districts have around the area gotcha i misunderstood that i thought they were doing something special no gotcha okay are there questions does this seem like the biggest uh difference between moss and rok is the understanding of needs is that just something because they're new or why is that so part of the scoring there was um you know district familiarity with the company and because we've worked with them in the past i scored them a little bit higher we scored them a little bit higher as far as understanding the exact needs and security concerns for the
050district in building a new building nice job yes yes motion carries on to our final item for the regular actual agenda the gessa agreement it is recommended that the board ratify and officially sign the master agreement between the granville education support staff association and granville public schools and we are very excited to bring this so good and we are very excited to bring this tentative agreement to you and mr follow we'll explain sorry is our group that covers our drivers custodians maintenance our bus mechanic our engineers that we have inside of our our district and much of what we accomplished this time was more in and around language particularly we previously had a a route selection process that was on a rotating seniority basis and so we had people that were passing over field trips
051things like that and then others that couldn't take them because it pushed them over some overtime limits and we've had we've got some we've got fewer drivers now than what we've had in the past and so we were ending up having to do more chartering than we were having our folks drive people around so a lot of the language changes based on that straight seniority piece so now anytime that there are new runs every week it goes on straight seniority our most senior drivers get their first pick with some limits so that we can try to create some equity in the way that those routes are pulled together and then in the second round again through straight seniority they can grab those so i know over the course of the last couple of weeks last
052month we've been able to do more driving with our with our folks with our buses for our after school activities and we really want to build that out the other part of that is we wanted to focus on not only retention but recruitment so the wage increase is the same percentage that we bargained with our teachers what our drivers did for each of their three years was to take the total amount and then apply it as a straight rate for each of their roles so then their newer drivers get a little bit more of an a bigger increase comparatively by percent than they do later on that was something that they felt was really important on the retention side um for the other groups it it retained at that four percent the other language we
053cleaned up we had cleaners in there from you know probably 12 years ago or more when we went to outsourcing a lot of our cleaning we had three different levels of custodian in there we had a level for payne's where we had a lot of level four grounds we had a level four and we don't have those employees any longer so we also cleaned up a lot of that language um simplified the pay scale so that they were easier for for everyone to follow more simple for our payroll as we as we have people that are kind of living in in different places and had there were some employees that had four different pay rates because of the way that we had built up that agreement so you know focusing on those pieces was really
054important and then for our drivers in particular we built in some retention bonuses the reason that december and april are specific um there are times during the middle of that school year where our drivers will miss out on pay for three and a half to four weeks based on the way that the payrolls run and time that they are not paid for because schools out and so as a part of retaining employees so we would have people that would work for us up until that point and then they'd go try to find additional work to meet their needs throughout the course of that and so just in again in terms of retention and recruitment we felt like that was something that we could do to build that out and then the retention and the august
055side of it um is tied to attendance so you know if they had five or fewer absences during the course of the previous year then there's a retention bonus that gets paid out again in august as well again just based on having people that are there frequently we because of the the way we built it last time we had our driving and then we also built in the lunch and playground piece and there were times when people would do the route and then they would take sick leave for their lunch and playground piece and then they would do their route and now that all ties together so that again we can have a little more predictability in those spaces and hopefully have fewer absences with our drivers so that really kind of boils down the
056the key components of what we did we focus most of most of the focus was on the drivers that we had and then building out just meaningful increases for our custodians our engineers and our mechanic so john yeah part of this is i knew it and part of it never knew it so several years ago when budgets were incredibly tight we outsourced a good deal of our custodial so that was going to be one of my questions but you started to explain it and i've never known this so and we had issues yeah all the time yep so we have done away with that and we have hired now we have all of our custodial our employees nothing contractual no we have we still have our contractual and how much of that compared to what
057what's what's the percentage of contract versus employee right understood our middle school is our employees every one of our other buildings is outsourced uh on the cleaning and custodial side of it not outsourced with the engineering and maintenance piece but on the custodial cleaning side of it every every building other than the middle school is outsourced okay and then you know it's not really tied to this but it is so when it comes to issues um are we with a different contractor or are we just able to retain good contractors because i know that was an issue in the past yeah yep so we actually have two different groups that are working with us enviro clean covers to high school because the high school is its own beast and then gca covers all of the
058other all of our elementary schools so in doing it and having that separation has been really helpful for us just because the volume of employees that gca was unable to get when we had them covering everything except the middle school we had real issues so we shifted to enviro clean at the high school and that has worked out really well for us okay and then on this summary you provided for the driver retention yep this is a one-time payable or which one the retention bonus drivers will receive and you give the amounts on these dates is this just for the current school year no it's for the next three that's oh it is for the next three so this is a recurring cycle correct yep is this part of the covet funds are we using
059anything for that we can okay so we're trying to do a like for like in providing a similar appreciation yep similarly it's it's been tough to hold on to drivers um that was gonna be my next question like like it is anywhere else it's been tough to hold on to drivers we've been pretty fortunate that our drivers have stayed but we're also looking ahead two to three years you know once our five six building gets online depending on when our five six students start we haven't made any of those determinations yet but it may expand the number of drivers that we need to have so under the recruitment side of it we felt it was really important comparable wages by our for us across the county are a little bit lower um so what this
060does is it says you know like you may accept a little bit lower rate here but there are payments through the middle on the retention and recruitment side that we're trying to hold hold for you so those are some of the things that we kind of worked with with them that they said they would really appreciate you know we can do a higher wage but it still doesn't help us over christmas spring break and even coming back in the fall so when they come back in the fall if we start driving uh august 24th they may not they won't receive that payment a full payment until september 23. so there's a full month of where they're working before their their hours catch up to a full pay so um that was something they said they'd
061really appreciate and that was in part of the bargaining why we landed there do you happen to know what our longevity percentages are compared to other districts i don't have it right off the top of my head how do you think we stack do you have it i actually i just need just i i actually from the hip was a request i requested similar information recently by another district and one of the questions was how many of your drivers live in granville and ours is just under half so i thought that was pretty huge i never really looked into that before but in terms of longevity um we are hiring drivers and we do have new drivers but the majority of them have been here for quite some time so you know dar is still
062around she was driving jeff how did those charters when he was two what we could do as far as i mean several times we would show up to any of our needs and had those charter buses and so without the i mean are we still going to have to rely on charters then yeah in some cases we will for sure yep um you know until we can build a driver pool in essence you've got to have you've got to have 10 to 12 additional sub drivers to be able to fill those routes because if i'm a regular route driver and a high school event leaves anywhere before 3 30 i'm not eligible for that trip because i'm driving my elementary students so you've got to have you've got to have a bigger pool of sub
063drivers that are able to pick those up to begin with and right now we just don't have that pool of sub drivers isn't there currently it's like a lot yeah yeah is uh probably the wage increase is an incentive for some sub drivers but would they be eligible for the retention bonus not until they get a regular route so they've got to be they've got to be bit out and on a regular route before they can receive that retention bonus any other yeah i was at a uh a graduation party last spring and i got an earful from a driver from another district about how awful it was and how much they you know get the shaft and everything else right because everything outsourced and they got to go with this other company with a
064completely different contract yada yada how many bus drivers they lost because of that um and so they come here yeah exactly right there's also a lot to say about keeping it in-house because when you honor the people who are taking your children from moment one that they leave your door until the moment they return they start their day and they end their day and they're as much part of the education system as any educator administrator or peer pro in our district food service person we all build the story of education learning safety and good character and when we outsource there's not as much connection and when you look at this 50 of the people or drivers right they're part of our community right they are taking care of our community is taking care of our
065kids and getting where they need something and since we um essentially finished with our negotiations and they've been able to start sharing hey just so you know this is this is where we're going to be um not that we're trying to steal drivers from other folk from other places but we've had drivers that have come to us and said hey we heard you guys had a great agreement what does it look like we want to come drive for you great so you know like again on the recruitment on the recruitment side we're not we're not chasing them down but when they come talk to us if that's that's the place where they want to be and it works for us the bus network sometimes at family fun yeah yep yeah and prior to our previous
066agreement we were losing them the other way yeah we were losing drivers to other other districts that had a better agreement so all right awesome let's take a vote all in favor yes yes opposed motion carries okay thank you yeah thanks john this moves us on to reports and discussion roger sure yes we want to talk a little bit about looking ahead in regards to library books and materials as you know we live in in very different times on occasion during my 33 years in education i've experienced a request from a parent to not let their child check out a book a certain title or a certain kind of book from a library i know in the schools i've been a part of you know we've gladly worked through that request with a given parent
067to make sure that that was honored and that also holds true here in granville currently i know our librarians work with parents and our principals do when there is such a request but as i mentioned times have changed over 33 years books that have been in libraries across america for years are now being brought up and and they're being questioned in addition books that have entered school libraries over the past decade or so through top list and reviewed and recommended list are also coming under scrutiny granville has a solid policy and procedure regarding current books in our libraries if a parent does not want their child to be exposed to a book we have a process that takes care of that if a parent wants to file a formal complaint that a book should not
068be in our library we also have a process that looks at that where we want to strengthen our system is in the selection of books that will enter our libraries in the future and again times have changed so we want to look at that we want to make sure that we are addressing that we believe we can help our librarians do this by strengthening the local process of choosing selections coordinating a district standard for books entering our libraries and determining a process for how additional books outside of that district standard are chosen it is very important that our students see themselves in the books that they read it is also important that their parents have a choice for students to select books that allow them to see themselves in those books it is also important
069that while currently we are transparent we have a software system in destiny that is very transparent in the books that are in our library gives a little synopsis of the books and so on but it is also important that we continue to ensure transparency for parents regarding our offerings for their children and the option to choose what books their child is or isn't experiencing from our libraries we'll be looking at this we'll have a revised system in place in the fall that strengthens our selection process boosts the transparency for our parents and yet allows students to see themselves in their reading and continue to allow all parents to choose books that they believe are right for their child so i wanted to give you a summary of looking ahead and what we're looking at doing
070we believe we had solid systems in place we believe times are different and because times are different there are some some areas that we want to strengthen even further and at this time i'd like to turn things over to dr merkel and he'll add a few things yeah just just a couple of things get over the microphone [Music] obviously that was well said um and i just two things that i would like to emphasize is that transparency we want to make sure that as questions come out we want to be proactive for how can we provide information to parents and community members ahead of questions so everybody knows exactly what goes into library selection how they can be a part of library selection and how we can even utilize our systems to better communicate with
071parents it's all on the website anybody can go look but it is a little bit cumbersome um and so how can we um uh recognize that there are some questions and just be a better partner um in creating those systems our our librarians right now our library staff has a solid system that they use it's it's pretty much the standard across the country for selecting books but there are some things that as we reflect back on questions that we get that we can do that we think we can work out at the district level and even come up with a better plan that's more transparent more proactive so we're excited to engage in that work and i would then also just like to reinforce what roger said about that individual work at any building level
072because any one of our library staff school staff school administration if anybody has a question about how they can be involved in the selection of library books for their children and and and and what the parameters they want to to set for their children or just be a partner in choosing um books we've always done that and we just want to reinforce that our our library staff is is there willing and eager to partner in in that area so so individualized kind of book list they would create for a student is that yourself if they could yeah they could if that would yeah yeah or yeah or they or they can provide certain topics um uh there are things that that we're working with our library system to to know that if if um a
073principal has a meeting with a parent or a teacher has a meeting with a parent and and they kind of set some parameters that when a child goes to check out a book information will show up to give some guidance but we've our teachers know our kids and families better than anybody and so they're always um willing to to work with with them to make sure that that selections um uh fit people's values and and and guidance that they would want from home so we'll bring back that system to you obviously we you know what once we're completed we'll be working on it uh from now over the summer and bring it back would the if individual teacher had books in their classroom would that would they be in the libraries need to be in
074the library system or were they could they be outside of that we will be working through that system as well we'll bring back something that addresses that so there's teachers have books yes and and then of course libraries books so you're going to look at those two ways i guess of books coming into the school yeah yeah now you see there's a listing on the website is that under what topic of that curriculum or um if you go to any one of the schools um and there is uh usually a media center tab i always find it looking at the high school so when i need to find it i hover over high school and then there's media center and i think it's called links resources and links i think and that'll take you to
075our destiny system and in that destiny system are all the books we have not just books that are recommended for high schoolers or just what we need no one no one you can sort by building oh yeah okay you can also just go to destinydiscover.com i believe and there you go i'm taking extra plays isn't that what they say two clicks or less because then it tells you what state it tells you what school yeah it's very easy thank you thank you thanks thank you moving on to our final portion of the evening which is public comment um each person coming up has five minutes um mr haybor will keep track of time and give a one minute warning um during that time please um ensure that we're being respectful to the folks who are
076speaking they're speaking to the board and give them the space that they deserve in order to speak and please make sure if you are speaking that your statements do not violate the rights of others under the laws of defamation or invasion of privacy if you're unsure of that and the legal ramifications please consult your legal advisor before speaking on an individual first up will be janine janzma followed by tessa jasmine speaking of the library my name is janine jansma and you have my address on file so it's time to wake up and understand what's really happening in this world the obvious and disturbing disregard for the innocence of our children is really a chilling thing to observe when did the sexualization of minors become a requirement in schools when did pornographic material in the libraries
077become approved and even essential viewing topics for kindergarten through 12th grade in researching what is being shelved in the school libraries a real concern emerges vast amounts of inappropriate unnecessary and highly questionable materials are being offered students of all ages the truth is going to come out surrounding the origins of the desecration of our children it's painful enough to know the dark and seamy underside of the powers that be in this world it's truly unimaginable how horrifying it will be to those who whether in ignorance or through denial went along in the perpetration of this very sick agenda the world is under siege by a despotic tyrannical freedom-hating and denying consciousness humanity is in a spiritual battle of epic proportions after school satan clubs are popping up all over the country and at the same
078time prayer and god are not allowed this world is inside out upside down and backwards good is called evil and evil good but not for long the light is shining brightly now the dark is being exposed in all its many horrid disguises truth is being brought forth and nothing can stop the revelations that are to come our founding fathers knew this time would come our constitution is a divinely inspired document and the adherence to its principles will see us through freedom and sovereignty come from god not government those who know this cannot and will not be imprisoned by psychopathic power-hungry and pedophilic lost souls belittling dismissing and ignoring those who are trying to bring the truth forward is not wise nor is it advisable a great revival has taken place upon the planet the revival
079of god in our hearts in our homes in our institutions and prayerfully and especially in our schools advocating for children's rights to be children is being on the right side of history common sense and simple human decency go a long way in the protection and the nurturance of the young sanity shall be restored in our world nothing can prevent it god is still on his throne and the truth shall be triumphant thank you thank you janine next up tessa jansma followed by alan traxler my book don't worry all right my name is tesla jasma i thought about bringing another book to read but we've been in contact and scott is the fastest email resp responder that i've ever dealt with thank you so no there's there's some good to it but the accountability that i
080feel has that has been missing throughout the process of removing the books that i read not even the ones i read last time but the ones that are rated adult we have books that are rated adult with nudity and i wouldn't even say soft porn and be just porn written out for an adult in our schools in the libraries and i understand the process to remove a book if it's say harry potter or you know something that just affects my morals but this this is adult content it says it right on it why do i need to go through the same process and for it to take a month to get the nudity and sexual contact contents out of our libraries i feel there are certain situations that should just be pushed forward such as
081adult books in our libraries that a 14 15 year old can just go and so let's see i feel from what we've seen in granville just the blatant one-sided political decision i hate to call it political but we are literally left and right here um you're choosing to follow the agenda i hear about the reviews you know everybody in the nation does the same thing and just like we were locked stepping coven there is a plan happening and sometimes morals should take precedence in this from blm to scl in the schools to the dress codes never enforced you know we we have those kind of books in our libraries and we're allowing girls to come to school and tube tap still it's amazing um yeah i won't i won't badger you guys too much tonight
082um you know i i still feel like we could all work together this doesn't you know have to always feel like us me against you um it's all coming coming out and realistically would be a good time to prepare your staff for when 2000 mules becomes more known to everyone um i just you have a lot of um activists i'd say per se we do have a lot of good teachers i don't want to feel like i'm always bashing the teachers you know i i do i don't i haven't done school of choice for eight years for nothing you know i i appreciate granville and lots of the programs that we've had are amazing our football art there's been a lot that's been great but now that our eyes are opened and we are actually
083looking and paying more attention and i think me along with all parents can agree that we just didn't pay attention to exactly what was going on with the schools and now that we see you know the push you know roger and kind of emphasize that all parents should be able to choose and all children should see themselves in books and i feel like that's emphasizing on the lgbtq plus a i feel like we're heading down a road that's just it's it's it's not good and sexualization of children in any kind heterosexual too none of it should be in children books so with that we'll talk more in person i'm sure scott about the libraries thank you tessa um and our final speaker for the evening alan traxler hello my name is alan traxler i'm a
084granville resident with two children in granville public schools so i actually have children i'm a representative uh speaking not necessarily on their behalf but on the behalf of transgendered people uh we're seeing a rise in the uh smears the lies by the reactionaries they are calling this sexualization of children when what they may really mean is just referencing that other people like transgendered people gay people exist uh they might call this kind of behavior or the mentioning that such communities exist pedophilic it's wrong i myself am a total layman when it comes to this kind of perspective just a guy on the street so i'll give you some basic terms sex is within the body that's what we call sex the physical parts gender is within the mind how you feel how you present yourself
085and it reflects how society will treat you in many ways when sex and gender align this is called cisgender so when your sex and your gender align cisgender i am cisgender and when there's a mismatch between those two this is called transgender a person's sex can be male it can be female but you also have to realize there are some people who are born with ambiguous or both and this is can be called intersex a person's gender which is different than sex can be him it can be her some people i have met do not feel like they belong to either these are called nine non-binary and maybe prefer to be called they there are even some others who are gender fluid feeling one way one day and one the other the next maybe you
086could reference the comm the comedian eddie izzard uh someone who might uh represent that that kind of gender fluidity i want to repeat myself that sex is within the body and gender is within the mind so when talking about these issues you don't have to make it about genitals the pieces you have it can be about how you feel you are how you represent yourself and we can do all of this in a safe way that doesn't threaten anybody that doesn't harm anybody and this can go for students this can go for teachers it's about how you are treated it can be done privately but when it comes to basic respect within the classroom and within the halls of the classroom and within the community these basic terms are useful and you don't have to
087be in any way explicit or harm what other people think there's there's really no harm there's no damage because you cannot get a person to switch their gender or their feelings of romance you can call it sexuality but it can also just be about romance who you are attracted to myself uh no one will ever be able to convince me that i am a female no one can ever convince me that i love men because i'm married to a woman i have a wife i am heterosexual so just know there's no way no spell no magic words no way to convince someone that they themselves are transgender or homosexual it's not something that is transmissible by bringing a topic up you cannot make someone change their identity in this way i want to speak on
088behalf of transgender and gay people because they are vulnerable and they deserve protecting they face bullying harassments and death threats not for what they have done but for who they are i'll say it again not for what they have done but for who they are acknowledging that people such as this exist can go a long way to protecting them just mentioning them oh these kind of people one minute that's all we have to say i'm just asking that we as a community realize that these people whether they are students or staff such as they are are not a threat they are not a danger they are just people trying to exist and live their lives if you on the board will join me in recognizing this and are willing to speak out when you hear
089angry reactionaries who are spreading lies and smears if you speak up on their behalf and say hey these people exist they aren't causing harm you're going to go a long way to protecting these vulnerable members in our community as a whole thank you thank you all right that was our final public comment for the evening for the audience know we are going to be moving into closed session we'll be taking about to do that in just a moment close sessions to discuss the superintendent's annual performance evaluation oma section 8 a at that time we'll take a five minute recess as well to give the board a chance to take a quick break and then we will resume just with the board and the superintendent in this room okay so um connection two one session support
090all right we'll do that right now in favor i'm sorry all in favor yes all right five minute recess you