001all right good evening everybody you can call this meeting to order 702 pm this is the october 25th regular meeting of the oak park board of education ms grier can you please call the roll club here alvin here good friend trustee good friend you'll need to unmute yourself present oda here klein here lunkens here yeah um tonight pursuant to the declaration of a state of emergency by the oak park council we are we do have three members that are participating remotely in conjunction with the open meetings act i'll ask each of those members to please state their city and state where they're located for the record and i'll start with trustee smith oak park michigan thank you trustee goodman oak park michigan thank you and trustee lumpkins oak park michigan okay we move on to
002our recitation of the district's mission vision and um and beliefs and i'm going to ask for unanimous consent for us to replace that tonight with a reading of our code of ethics the code of ethics is on the same sheet that we have with the mission of vision but on the back it has the code of ethics is there any objection from the board to reading the code of ethics tonight none all right seeing none why don't we start with trustee klein with number one i gotta find it trustee why don't you come back trustee why don't we start with trustee smith then number one yes as a member of the board i will promote the best interests of the school district as a whole and will adhere to the following ethical standards and principles
003i will represent all school districts constituents honestly and equally and to surrender my responsibilities to any partisan principle group or interest all right thank you trustee good friend can you please read number two i'll pass the lumpkins can you read number two please we're reading the briefs the brief statements we're reading the code of ethics the other side i don't have anything else i shall pass okay trustee klein can you please read number two of our photographics working on it all right trust the alvin can you please read number two of our code i will avoid any conflict of interest prohibited by law or appearance of such that could result from my position and will not use my membership on the board for personal gain or contrary to the interest of the school district thank
004you trustee corporal do you have number three no i do not okay i'll read number three i will recognize that a board member has no legal authority as an individual and that decisions can be made only by a majority voted a public meeting of the board um trustee trustee smith do you want to number four please i can do four five and six if you want me to let's go ahead with you okay i will take no private action that might compromise the board or administration and will respect the confidentiality of privileged okay did you want to do five and six as well sure sure i'll be glad to i will abide by majority decisions of the board while retaining the right to seek changes in such decisions through ethical and constructive channels number six
005i will encourage and respect the free expression of opinion by my fellow board members and will participate in board discussions in an open honest and respectful manner honoring differences of opinion or perspective thank you trustee alvin can you do 789 please i will therefore attend and actively participate in school board meetings i will become sufficiently informed about and prepare to act on the specific issues before the board i will respectfully listen to those who communicate with the board seeking to understand their views while recognizing my responsibility to represent the interests of the entire school okay and i'll do the balance then number 10 i will strive for a positive working relationship with the superintendent respecting the superintendent's authority to advise the board implement board policy and administer the school district number 11 i will model
006continuous learning and work to ensure good governance by taking advantage of board member development opportunities including those sponsored by state and national school board associations and encourage my fellow board members to do the same number 12 i will strive to keep the board focused on its primary work of clarifying the school district purpose directions and goals and monitoring district performance i think it's important for us to review these this code of ethics publicly both so that all of us on the board can be reminded um and those who who didn't have that ready please make sure you access those and review them and also so the community understands the code of ethics which with which we govern ourselves and which we've all committed to following um we have had in the past some incidents where
007we had to censor board members for not following this code of ethics we will continue to hold board members accountable to that and so we need to make sure that we keep that in the forefront of our mind as we continue to do our business on behalf of the community we'll move on now to our approval of agenda and order of business um is there any board member that wishes to change the agenda seeing none i'll ask for unanimous consent for the approval of the agenda all in favor say is there any anyone opposed to unanimous consent to approval of the agenda i actually wanted to um speak on the personal election report so is that an hourly that's later so no that so but we're going to keep do you have any changes to
008the agenda oh no changes okay so once again i'll ask for unanimous consent to approve the agenda seeing no no objection the there is unanimous consent to approve the agenda and we'll move to the consent agenda um we have three items on the consent agenda tonight one is the approval of minutes there's also approval of the personal actions and then the financial statements trustee corporate is asking to remove personnel actions from the consent agenda so that'll move to um action item 7c c the financial statement also i had a question on so will i move that as well okay that'll move to 7d so is there any objection to keeping the approval of minutes on the consent agenda all right so i'll ask for a voice vote on the consent agenda all in favor of
009approving the consent agenda say aye aye any opposed say no consent agenda is approved and we move on to our presentations and we start with a presentation from our assistant superintendent for teaching and learning ms baptiste mike can everybody hear me no all right look at the objective so we move the personnel action reports and the financial statement into action items because there was an objection but if you'd like we can go ahead with some of the reports before we come you got it how about now um i think maybe if you move the microphone closer [Music] okay i think this one works now all right awesome i'm ready good evening everyone good evening i'm going to be sharing my screen and putting this document into presentation mode all right so this evening what i'll
010be presenting is our oak park schools benchmark assessment data review and so what we have is our table of contents which will have the introduction or the context for our benchmark assessments um the overall presentation which will involve a review of our district-wide data and our response to the data and uh also our conclusion our next steps and beyond and of course an opportunity for questions so introduction as i said background context and considerations so in 2017 the district adopted the nwea and at that time up until last year the assessment provided detailed actionable data about where each student was on their unique learning path the platform what it does is it adapts to a student's responses as they take the test and so if they answer a question correctly and the test presents a
011more challenging item then the there will be more challenging question items if they miss a question then the assessment would offer a more simpler item what we found was we were in need of not only a benchmark assessment but a platform that also offered intervention strategies and tools for teachers and so this year we made the adaptation the adoption i should say to ireti and so what that platform does for us is it's a robust online platform that offers computer adaptive diagnostic personalized data-driven instruction on foundational skills it's based on its standards-based practice and it also offers a common core readiness screener so it's used nationwide like nwa as well it assesses an individual student's skills across multiple grade levels to pinpoint gaps and that's where there's a difference in this particular benchmark assessment we
012now get a lot more uh details on grade level data and information to better support our students it also gives teachers an action plan and automatically delivers differentiated online instruction to students the intervention platform is k-8 and why we went ahead and made that adoption was we found that even students in grades 9-12 with the nwa uh were performing at or below grade level and so we wanted to have intervention strategies and resources to best support teachers with their instruction and students with their academic development and so this year we're going to be assessing students three times this year one time in the fall k through 12 in the winter which will be around january february and then again in around april may so that will be the spring assessment we had district-wide participation at
01387 within the state of michigan when we report benchmark assessment data we are reporting k-8 data and for that reason we ask for our teachers to and we ask for everybody to engage in 95 participation um but we really need it for k-8 because that is what's reported to the state moving forward we will definitely be asking as many teachers as possible and students to please complete the platform even in grades 9-12 so that we increase our overall district participation rate to 95 not only for those in grades k-8 and so this is just showing you uh that across the board 4k 8 we met our participation at 95 percent or above and um nova was very close we do have to take into consideration student absences and there's a variety of reasons why we
014don't always have the participation rate where we want it to be but we did meet at k8 so i don't mean to go back to this slide but i do want you to take into consideration that when we're going to be discussing these data points we're talking about k-12 and so it is important to note those participation rates k-12 are not fully at 95 but it overall pulls our district data in different directions because we haven't had the participation rate where we would like it to be so take that into consideration as we do a deeper dive okay so uh the platform assesses students for english language arts and also math in grades k 12. so here we go what we see here is across the board in all of our schools where our students
015performed within each school the green represents on grade level or above the yellow represents one grade level below and the red represents two or more grade levels below what this data offered us was the opportunity to see the percentages of students at each school including nova our alternative education program and all of our elementary middle and high school programs but even more importantly what we really wanted to know and why we made the adoption for this platform was we need to know the overall number of students not just the percentage this gives us more detailed information about who those students are what class they're located in how many students are at grade level in every single school building we have the data and the information to pinpoint and strategize what we need to be doing
016for our students so you'll see that for the first round of assessments the number of students on or below on or at grade level um one level below and two levels below we also really appreciate and i'll get into more detail about this when we talk about mtss and our tiered intervention supports the triangle represents the dir the delivery of supports so the tier delivery of support so that triangle with the red is this means that our students are at risk tier two which is yellow our students it's 26 percent who are also at risk of being one grade level below and then tier one um are our students we have nine percent who are at grade level or above and then really thinking about the intervention strategies when we think about tier one that's
017whole group classroom instruction when we look at tier two that's targeted intervention that's small group instruction when we look at tier three that's one-on-one targeted support and intervention and um a lot more intensive interventions at tier three so think green tier one whole group yellow tier two small group intervention and then red tier three one-on-one support so that's for reading now we also wanted to know more information about um our district by placement by domain in reading and so the assessment assesses students in phonological awareness phonics high frequency words vocabulary comprehension in two forms literature but also informational text and this gives us more information where students are placed k-12 so it makes sense that phonological awareness we have 84 you should have phonological awareness by the time you're in high school by the time
018you're in middle school so that those numbers will be a lot higher um what we really want to focus on as we get into phonics of course um especially at the elementary level um high frequency words vocabulary the last three vocabulary and reading comprehension for either literature or informational text is when we really get into standards-based learning and writing not only for ela in terms of reading but also for writing now we have the same configuration for math we're able to see how what percentage of students are at grade level or above one grade level or below or two or more grade levels or below and what this then does so now what this uh revealed to me as looking at this is okay well what is it that we can do for math instruction
019to bring our both ela and math but we see that there's some reflection of student growth in ela across the board well what's happening for math and the domains oh again um we're able to better target our students we're better able to see okay there are 15 students who are at grade level at key elementary and there are 187 who are one grade level below what that tells us is there's an opportunity to move a significant number of students not just percentage of students but number of actual students to be at grade level and then when we look at that triangle well what are those targeted supports that we're going to be implementing for whole group instruction small group instruction and targeted supports and again we have the district-wide uh placement domain by domain in
020math and so in math the four areas are numbers and operations algebra and algebraic thinking measurement and data and geometry and we get to see who's who again who's at what level what supports do they need instructionally and across the board um i'll stay on this slide but across the board uh just the different strategies that we can be utilizing instructionally programmatically and pedagogically which again brings us to our response to our data and so utilizing the mtss framework and also accelerated learning though that is our primary response in addition to taking the moment to not shy away from the data but look at the data as a community and so before coming before you today we have met with building principles during their november second professional development each school has targeted supports in place
021to review their data to respond to their data to come up with action plans around their data we have a district-wide mtss team and that's restructuring and coming back for this fall what are we going to be doing for our mtss strategies and how are we implementing accelerated learning so here we go when i talked about mtss i just wanted to include i this is not in the original slide draft slide but i really thought it was important as i was reviewing i thought it was important to include more definition as to when we're talking about mtss what exactly are we talking about and so i'm hovering my mouse on this hit area here this triangle here the tiered delivery system is really where we're having a deep dive conversation about mtss we do have
022team-based leaders at the district level but also within each school building there is an mtss team where together we make continuous database decision making including through the mtss team making the decision to adopt i ready as a new assessment platform engaging in comprehensive screening and assessment systems and a review of that which is in part what helped us to bring about our social emotional learning screeners last year which we'll also be implementing for this year and then finally making a selection and implementation of instruction interventions and supports and so k-12 a lot of the work that they engaged in last year as the mtss team was really identifying what are going to be some of those instructional supports for tier one tier two and tier three and one of the responses to the data we'll
023also get into this in slides coming up is we don't have the capacity to have so many students who need tier three supports that's one-on-one instruction we don't have enough no no school community has that type of support to provide one-on-one instruction for for that many students what we really need are supports within whole group instruction what are our tier one supports and also thinking of when i talk about the selection and implementation of instruction and intervention with the number of students who we have at tier three we do have to leverage and consider what are some tier two supports that can actually be used in tier one whole group instruction to better support a wider array of students the other thing we talk about and and really need to consider when we're talking about
024mtss is one branch of mtss is academics but it's also attendance behavior and social emotional learning the use of our universal screeners the efficacy of how we're looking at our data and equity who's getting what the frequency of this why what resources are needed what training is needed for our staff and our students and families so when i'm talking about mtss these are the things that i'm referring to specifically so again the key focus for our conversation today is on our benchmark assessment data which allows us to take a deeper dive into what types of intervention delivery systems will need to be putting in place and in a typical school district where you have eighty percent of your students are receiving tier one or whole group instruction you'll have around approximately fifteen percent for receiving
025secondary um prevention or you know small group intervention and then you'll have three to five percent of students who are at the tertiary level or receiving those targeted supports and the triangle that's the little sliver that's right in the middle is students with disabilities english language learners and gifted and talented students because they're also a part of your student population and there's targeted supports that need to be in consideration for those students it's not on here but also our early learners would also need to be in consideration of the supports that we need to put in place by the time they get to kindergarten what are we doing to make sure that they are as on grade level and on track for development as possible and what are we doing for our teachers to train
026them so that's in a typical model this slide for me is really important because whether we're talking about reading or math or attendance or social emotional learning wherever we today we're talking about our academics and our benchmark assessments but we need to invert the triangle that's really our triangle right now looks like it's the upside down portion of the triangle is what we need to bring that to literally flip the triangle around at this time we have over 65 at 65 percent of students who are receiving um who are in need of receiving tier 3 support but the reality of all of that is is we don't have enough teachers to teach you know that many kids one-on-one supports so with our teaching staff what are those reading interventions that are tier two and tier
027one to better support even students who are tier three and then something else to consider is when we met with the principals um this got brought up with by dr hitchcock a point that she made was even at the very tip of this triangle there are students and this is what our buildings are engaging in looking at their data there are students who may be three or more grade levels below and so what the assessment is capturing um our students who are two or more grade levels below but we may have students due to the pandemic that are three or more grade levels below and that type of data and information is at the school building level to target even those students where yes you need tier three supports but you may need even more
028than tier three supports um and and that doesn't necessarily mean that you are a special needs student there's additional supports that you need to bring you up to speed that's in both reading and math and so one of the strategies that we just came right back into the school year with was accelerated learning it's a model that's being implemented throughout the state of michigan and what it does is it keeps students moving forward on their intended grade level trajectories by strategically preparing them for success within their grade level content so it doesn't mean that you're um choosing not to teach uh what they learned last you know from the last year what's upcoming it's what's at grade level that is most important and what can you pull from the previous year that's relevant that the
029skills that they need because they may not have gotten that uh dosage of instruction when needed due to the pandemic and so acceleration focuses on teaching um really primarily what must be learned at any given level instead of trying to teach everything that a student didn't learn in a previous grade because what ends up happening is if we only focus on what they didn't learn then what's needed for at grade level isn't addressed is there's not a focus on that and so one of the things that we did this year strategically was we had our content area leaders our grade area leaders who are teacher leaders alongside our instructional coaches our title one teachers and our early childhood literacy coaches or leo coaches come together and do curriculum planning for our first units our first
030semester of this year and then they turn key that curriculum planning to staff so that staff would come together and collaborate on what they were going to be doing to implement accelerated learning not only at the start of the school year but also for the remainder of the year this is a strategy that we're going to be engaging in and when i mention professional learning communities and the work that they're doing it's around this accelerated learning to support learn what what many are referring to as learning laws so it requires our teachers to identify crucial content that they need to teach and that students need to learn so that students can access current grade level material so that's really important when teachers come together to identify the gaps but not only that what exactly needs
031to be taught to help students progress as they move throughout the school year so in conclusion some of our next steps and beyond our teaching and learning department goals for 2021 are overarching and they're aligned to the strategic plan under academics we're focusing on the michigan continuous improvement process district-wide professional learning opportunities and offering viable curriculum for all reviewing and making sure that there is viable curriculum for all so i'll go to the next slide i just gave just a quick overview of my kit whole child develop data development and systems thinkings when i'm referring to my kit these are some of the processes that are set forth by the state of michigan where you're evaluating programs you're assessing student needs you're planning alongside building leaders and teachers you're doing the implementation process and seeking
032parent input you're monitoring what's happening with not only the data but thinking more than the data the kids when we look at whole child data whole child developmental data we're also considering health education physical education nutrition health services counseling services social emotional climate physical environment of the students classroom and overall school community the employee wellness of our staff family engagement and really thinking of our systems level thinking what are the processes and who are the people who are working together on common goals and desired results and so today what i spoke of primarily was the mtss process and what's happening within our school buildings especially well even before november 2nd our august pd this was the focus was on accelerated learning our october pda the focus was on formative assessments and now that we've adopted
033um the i-ready platform how to look at the data utilize the data access the data but also share this information with families and now our november second data now that we our november 2nd professional development day now that we have everybody has completed these assessments we've already gone through formative assessment and accelerated learning buildings let's take a deep dive and look at your building level data by grade level and so when we think about continuous improvement uh strategies we really want the way that these goals will become actionable is all right well let's take some next steps the my kit process requires that we submit goals to the state so the goal that we submitted last year was on social emotional learning and we implemented universal screeners and having students complete universal having students complete
034social emotional learning screeners the next step is implementing a district-wide academic goal so when we're doing that using the michigan continuous improvement process and the templates that they've provided to us by the state meetings with principals building level instructional coaches to support in the development of not only the district-like goal but making sure that it's aligned to the academic goal for the strategic plan we also want to continue to align as i said to the strategic plan but the next step with that is continuing to build coherence so what's happening with our mtss teams are we meeting when we come together what data are we looking at are we only looking at academic data we need to look at social emotional data we need to look at attendance data we need to look at behavioral
035data because it's not only just the academic state academic data there's more to the story for a student it's not just how they performed on ela and math there's a story behind that do we know our kids and the strategies to best support them and how they learn best our instructional leadership teams which are within our school buildings and then our teacher leaders who are fierce and just amazing our coaches our department leads our title one teachers our english language learner teachers and even teachers who are not necessarily with the title of being a teacher leader teachers who come together across a great band for professional learning communities when they get together and look at assessments together when they get together and and really talk about how their students are doing and what's happening with
036homework or even just checking in what's happening with your students what strategies are you using to best support them engaging in a curriculum review process really taking into consideration our data-based curriculum decisions for all resources that we purchase and the stakeholder engagement around that are we engaging our parents around the curriculum review process if we have a curriculum that's going to be expiring um our our teachers getting the opportunity to pilot resources have a conversation about the resources and juxtapose that with our student data so we're not just buying curriculum just to buy curriculum it's this is really going to help support tier 1 and tier 2 um intervention strategies that we need in our whole group instruction environment and then finally community engagement fostering opportunities as i said for families to participate in data
037decision making um decision making so the i ready assessment one of the great things that it offers is the parent there's a access for parents to be able to see how their students are doing but also for teachers when they meet with their um when they meet with parents in conferences or even when they meet with students to explain this is the domain this is where you know if you focus on phonics in this way it's going to help you in your high frequency words it's going to help you develop reading skills in this way so mom dad aunt grandma if you have your child read 15 to 20 minutes informational text this is an example of what informational text is you can actually share resources with families even through the platform so um downloading
038resources and sharing with families so when i'm talking about community engagement i'm referring to that as well like how we use the data that we have how we communicate about the resources that we have with our families and educating one another because families can let you know a great deal about this is how my child learns best but what's the common language that we have or common data that we can use to talk about that and that is pretty much it i just wanted to share our district-wide professional learning opportunities that there's a timeline and where we are now is november we offer four district-wide professional learning opportunities i already covered what the first three were we know that in march we're going to have data action and review planning and ideally end of year
039curriculum planning to gear up for the upcoming school year and then of course social emotional learning strategies because we know that our students will be engaging in testing and the end of the year around that time so what are some strategies that we'll be engaging in as a community to best support our students and i believe that that's the last slide and i i just i'm pitchy so i just saw a picture of the globe or not the globe but a map i said okay we're going places let's go to the right places it's oak park schools and it's the old park advantage thank you thank you any board members have questions yeah i have a question okay trustee uh klein then trustee smith and trustee alvin thank you sandra and thank you also for
040uh sending that run out to us in advance uh it was very uh it was great being able to go over myself and it was also even better hearing from you as you discussed each piece individually um it's pretty thorough i was just looking at the the bar graphs that you discussed a little earlier on and i noticed that the kids do much better in terms of like the standard spoken language and then when you get into vocabulary and reading comprehension i was wondering if those are causally correlated or just incidentally correlated so i believe there's cause in almost everything so i'm not gonna go with incidental but i will say that that is something that across the board that was also picked up last year um that there needs to be a focus on
041vocabulary so even at the high school every single day there was a word of the day staff members used that vocabulary word um at the middle school they got into etymology let's break down this word what's the meaning of this word now it helps you to better understand when you see the beginning of the word that has this or the end of the word that has that you can get into word study at the elementary level high frequency words like that was a targeted focus last year and i know it will continue into this year because whether it's causal or incidental it's happening so it's something that across the board these are goals that they're implementing and not just goals but like action steps that are being taken within school communities of how do we
042get students to i'm taking my mask off how do we get students to um engage in high high frequency words but also vocabulary and word studies so they can better increase their word usage and ability to make connections from um phonics phonemic awareness putting their words together writing the words defining the words using them in sentences do we have um like book contests that go on regularly reading we have some it's more at the classroom level and i know that we do have classes of teachers that get together and do competitions across grade level what's your favorite book of the month and also um i have heard through content area leaders um at the secondary level for ela engaging in book competitions and um reading competitions where students are able to um just showcase that
043they've increased how much they read or what book they're reading or if they're doing a book study together um yes thank you okay trustee smith yes mr baptist thank you thank you for the presentation you asked mom you actually addressed my question in regards to the impact the potential impact of the you know this covert era on our children in their progression and you know their math and reading um you know i i consider myself a stakeholder as should every member in our school district i believe i believe in you know the education of our children both internally and externally you know i i i delve into to to to social action and uplifting events that that are addressed and geared to our children um you know i believe i believe that that is the
044business of the school district that you know that children are our business you know at every level um this this this is this is my charge stat i would like for you to you and dr hitchcock to let me know where i can be of value add where i can be you know of of of of most of significant you know a value add and let me let me let me know what i need what i can do as a board member to help you know progress our children um you know i'm i'm not gonna bog anybody down with any unnecessary ass or requests because we have a job to to grow and develop our children and we'll get there and i know we're gonna have to win we're gonna go for the w we're
045gonna we're gonna make that win we're gonna we're gonna win you know i'm going for the w here so just let me know where you can utilize me at any place or any anywhere you know if you need me no boots on the ground jumping in getting in with parents you know door-to-door let me know whatever mr smith can do you know that's that's what this should be about you know and like i said i i'm just i'm just really totally engaged and i just want the best i want to success the overall success of our district as a team as a unit as an individual you know and um i just i just wanted to say that i'm passionate about this but i want our children to succeed you know just let me know
046where you need me at and i'm there thank you you got it all right thank you trust me alvin um thank you for the presentation to what extent or do we know does the accelerated learning have an impact on test scores and and more importantly like college entry exams to what extent does that have an impact on any of those so i'm not going to be able to give you a number impact statement but i will say this at least being able to focus on grade level standards within that grade level that grade level itself is really key and important and what has happened in the past without the pandemic even without the pandemic is oh well they didn't learn they're in the fourth grade better yet they're in the third grade and i'm not
047saying this is just a part just in general students are in the third grade they did not they i'm assessing them and i see that they're not at third grade level i need to focus on first grade and second grade and then third grade content doesn't even get covered but what does the child get tested in third grade so now you know at that particular grade level and they never received the exposure of what we're not we don't teach to the test we're teaching kids but they're not getting the exposure of what is developmentally appropriate and standards based appropriate for their grade level so what accelerated learning helps us to do is well listen we're not doing first grade second we need to cover first and second grade certain concepts but you can't not cover
048third grade concepts and skills that the students are going to be held responsible for by the end of the year when they do take that test or fast forward college and career readiness not being able to read write and do basic math functions um but perhaps you get a scholarship somewhere because you're an athlete you get that scholarship but you're not able to maintain the academic portion of what you need and now how do you continue so i don't have the numbers but i will say that what it does is it it keeps the eye on the prize of at this particular grade level we are responsible for covering that material how are we going to offer differentiation small group instruction and resources and exposure to our students for that grade level i hope that
049helps thank you trustee corporate yes i missed that piece thank you very much for sharing this data um with us um i had a few questions some of them were already answered but that one question of course is the participant the participation of the parents because of course that is you know very very important because when your child comes home you do want to read you know before bedtime or have them you know read a couple of books um you know associate it to what they're learning in school the question that i have is if if they are two to three or four grades behind and i'm speaking in the high school level would that impact the credit to what grade they're in now [Music] and if so um i mean i see what what
050what our strategy is i see um the benchmark but if we do not reach that benchmark by the appropriate time for graduation day um are these children gonna end up at nova because of credit recovery or because it just seems like a very slippery slope going going down so i was just wondering would that you know lead them to credit recovery more so than you know teaching um to getting them you know to their grade level like is that yeah so it's tough for i'm sorry it's kind of tough because you know education is very very important um [Music] to succeed you know in life you have to have it as you just spoke you know you can have the academics but if you don't have i mean you can have the athletic system but
051if you don't have the academics you won't even be able to do impromptu in college the first year so that's why i was just asking that question so this is a conversation that is literally being had now in real time i just want to make sure that the question that you have that i'm clear on the question which is that with students being many grade levels below three or more grade levels below how does that impact with their ability to gain um course credit and then does this then lead to more credit recovery for students so the answer to that is that's literally what the secondary mcss team for grades nine through twelve and really six through six through twelve that's a focus of okay if a student is three or more grade levels below
052they may show a significant amount of growth which if they move one grade level that is a significant amount of growth but it's still not at grade level and so those supports to help the student to the best of our ability knowing that we still will have to offer opportunities like credit recovery it's very much needed but when does that happen and what kinds of targeted counseling supports are in place and looking at those other data points that i mentioned not only academic data but what relationships do the students have with counselors social workers teachers who they value and respect you know to motivate them and to get the resources that they need differentiation and tutoring opportunities to help them so that they're not slipping behind knowing that they're behind so i do know that
053at the high school at nova tutoring is com is up and coming and same thing for k-8 k-8 has a little bit more targeted focus on um where they are with standards-based um coursework whereas at the high school you can see if the student is on track to receive credit or not and at what point to intervene so they don't slip you know behind the cracks and be a sophomore or i should say a senior with missing credits what is it that we can do now to target those students which i don't want to go on and on with this but that's i ready is not the answer it's a tool that's what helps us when we're able to see the number of students who where those kids are what classes they're in for us
054to know these are the kids we know who the kids are what are we doing to support them with the other intervention opportunities that we have great the last question that i did have is that i know we received um quite a few um out of district students and based on that in their transcripts are those students who we're speaking of i'm going to say when the student whether they're in district or out of district they're an oak park student and so we can look at cohorting data looking at those are some next steps for us but really when we're looking at our student data what regardless if they're in district they're oak park students the state isn't going to deliver a report and say oh these are the kids that are in residence we
055have to so that's from my perspective from teaching and learning thank you um i know trustee alvin has another question but are there any other trusty good friends thank you miss batiste it was an outstanding presentation and it was in clear uh clear thoughts and wording but the question and i appreciate what you've done to to show us where where the problems are when our our greatest hope i i believe will be when we have children in the elementary is to be bringing them along when we get into high score or uh 9 through 12 other than credit recovery how do we improve uh their abilities to be able to go out in this world not as a football player not as a basketball player to get a scholarship because the failure will come in
056the university that they go to if that's the only way they they got into it and they don't have the skills that's the worry that i have and the other concern is uh these these young people we we have little ones okay through say eight and we i i believe you have it on on records showing us we can do something with those youngsters uh because they're they're young their minds are are ready for to be developed with our our leadership and the family at home but we have to take into effect um that the families are having hardships too within their homes and so i think we have a burden our staff has a burden dr hitchcock has the burden uh and you of trying to uh develop something within the classroom for them
057so how are we going to um work with the young ones that we're getting now hoping to bring them along so that they don't end up with these the development that we see now i do know that covet had a lot to do with this past year it was a very difficult year for the students as well as the staff all of us but uh we ca we have to be able to do and work at this together to be able to bring them around because somebody that's three grades behind the level is a really discouraging for the individual child as well they know when they're having a problem what do we do you know i understand our staff is doing it but how can we develop a a another way a method if it's
058uh saturday schools if it's uh at night is very difficult but if you had some suggestions and dr hickscock had some suggestions of how we uh we as a board can uh develop uh tutoring for them as a not as a um a a problem that they have to go but because it's fun for them to learn and when they see success they'll go on for more yeah so this is a great question and these that's the biggest part of what the teaching and learning department is engaging in right now is really thinking about i mentioned instructionally pedagogically but now what you're speaking to this good friend is programmatically so thinking about the programs that we actually have for our students so this year and last year we had this at the high school and
059at the middle school level an organization called inside out literacy where students wrote and published writing and worked with published authors and and those published authors collaborated with their teachers and even over zoom what kind that was at the secondary level i brought it into elementary schools so it was a success for our fifth grade students this year it's third fourth and fifth also engaging in that they just got a grant that allows us to do that work um the oakland youth innovation lab was just one example of an opportunity where students came together over the course of the summer and engaged in design thinking and many of the students that were in that program not all but there were a few i wanted to make sure that the criteria criteria wasn't that you're you're
060a straight a student there were students in that program that were three or more grade levels below that flourished in that program so then that made you know the teaching and learning team and dr hitchcock really start to consider what type of academic offerings do we have for our students how are our classes set up to engage in different learning methodologies um and then not only thinking about tutoring but when we do tutoring there was a high interest last year from our teachers to do tutoring in a way that was fun how do we do tutoring where it's an after school club on poetry or even on um um creating um a blog where now you're writing or you're interested in gaming so that deals with algorithms and math so what type of programming do
061we offer during outside of school time that's still engaging for students so these are things that we're definitely considering and implementing from last year into this year as well thank you thank you for the report it was just so thorough and so easy to understand thank you so much thank you trustee lunkins i think you might be muted you'll need to unmute yourself we're still not hearing you oh there you go okay um i just wanted to say to carol mrs baptiste and japan uh pat actually brought me the um i think she said it was 100 page of uh of all of this year and i got a chance to sit down and read it so that when mrs baptiste was explaining it i had more insight as to what she was saying because
062i had it prior to her givingness to read and understand it and what i didn't understand she was able to help me understand and i just want to say thank you i appreciate that thank you all right thank you um mrs baptiste thank you for your presentation one of the numbers that stood out to me when i was looking at the report is that it seems to be we seem to be building on the problem so as students get older they're falling further behind do we understand that to what extent do we understand that to be a function of you know if they're behind in younger grades they continue to fall behind and they're not advancing to what extent is that speaking to the difference in our in retaining our students from elementary through middle
063to high school that's that's part of our some of our next steps in action research as a district is to really now that we know who the students are where they are really looking at okay what's the cohort of students k5 the cohort of students k-8 and then that cohort of students who were k-12 um what happened with those students knowing who they are the number of those students did they make a turnaround did they regress did we were we able to retain them within our district specifically from grade eight into grade nine did they stay with us within this district um and really taking into consideration of not playing a blame game of blaming the teachers or blaming the students and the families but really just taking into consideration looking at whole child data
064what are some of the implications like not only their attendance but what's happening with their families and those extra additional supports that are needed within a cohort of students we're better able to do that with the data that we have and i understand that iready is a new test is there data we can pull from the old tests that can inform that or is this are we really starting here from year one no so our previous amazing district data and um uh and assessment coordinators shaina holden murphy shayna murphy i should say principal murphy's the principal at key elementary and in her role previously she did engage in some of that work with nwea and she shared when we met with all building leaders um that that would be something we could do with um
065i ready data as well and be able to look at the cohort even the cohort of students who just completed with nwa last year that cohort of students that's still with us just being able to continue looking at that but using i-ready data so it's not the it's not um completely novel we just need to do it a little bit more with fidelity okay and then as we follow the strategy what's the outlook that we can look forward to are we talking about um you know what kind of impact can we see on flipping that triangle one year out five years out what what are we looking at well that is literally one again one of our next steps with using the my kip the very next step is to create an academic goal where
066we put together targeted you know okay within within one year we would like to see don't quote me on this because we're still unpacking data and really building our data narrative but looking to see and why i say don't quote me because i know teachers will be like we're all supposed to do what we're well we're still targeting this using the michigan continuous improvement process but um within a year students moving were being on grade level ending the school year and starting the school year on grade level that's a goal in and of itself within two years um moving students um again look reassessing the triangle how what percentage of students were moved out of tier three into tier two what percentage were moved out of tier two into into tier one and then within
067tier one what enrichment opportunities do we have so that those students that are in tier one are not regressing to now need tier two supports so building an academic goal around that sustaining making sure that our students are not only at grade level but able to go beyond so so my kip requires us to create plans to bring the students to grade level by next year's test so what my kip it doesn't have stringent requirements on districts but it replaces the school improvement plan and the district improvement plan the compliance issue that comes up that's not an issue but the compliance factor that comes up from my kip is if you're saying you're using title funds for this what's the efficacy of that what's the evidence-based practice what's the data that shows that this program
068that you invested in and you invested in more than one year that it actually helped you to move your students along or professional development program that you're investing in for your teachers that there was some type of support that it offered for teachers and we see that reflected in the student data but you're not it's not a punitive which i'm not saying that you're saying that but it's not a punitive like oh you didn't meet grade level you know you didn't do what you needed to do as a district it's more of systems level thinking what or capacity of what you're doing within your district how is that aligned to your strategic goals as a district and what you're doing with the resources that you have making adjustments based on the resources that you have
069so if you're not seeing that students are growing why would you use that same program again so as we move along that process if you can please keep the board updated and report back to us on what is the what is the strategy what are the results we're seeing so we can make sure we're paying close attention to that you got it and that's also part of that process as well so you got it okay um trustee alvin and then trustee lonkins thank you um so i believe i heard you mention some tutoring opportunity um for the students to so to what extent is that something we're implementing and and how soon uh is that something we're implementing uh as far as you know make sure you get our job i'm assuming there's some grant
070funding or whatever the case may be that may go with that um so what what how soon are we doing that who are we engaging others who aren't teachers what are we doing in that in that space yes so at the secondary level we're better able to see okay with that credit recovery piece we're really not trying to be doing credit recovery as much in june when we can target students now so that's up and running where post things are out and there's processes that we have to follow where we put a posting out for 10 days there's staff that have to apply same thing for nova they're ready to get this up and going and they've got the grant funding and the clearance to do that at the elementary and the middle school level
071it's a lot more targeted where they're also using their mtss um because there's so many students that may be in need that they're using mtss strategies across across grade bands to see who are those students who truly need tutoring and targeting those students first so that's what's happening where when do you expect to actually have people in front of children working with between now and before the christmas break okay um and then i believe you said they're tested three times is that right yes so when the next test is was that uh january february we don't have the kids all testing all at once so elementary's one week you know so between january and february um we'll have ano and also the first data presentation that i did uh for the board a couple of
072weeks ago it's at the february meeting that i come again before you with um data points with how our students are doing and then to what extent are is are our students and their parents more than so than the students willing to make sure these students take place in that can you please say that again so to what extent are their students and parents making sure that they are they take advantage of the extra enrichment so we had tutoring last year in the spring and we had approximately 500 almost 600 students participate in tutoring across our district it was virtual so i think that um there is an interest in that and it wasn't something that was like oh you're just mandated because you're failing it was teachers who identified students in need of tutoring
073and then students who could also sign themselves up so i do think that it is of interest um to our students and our families yes i'd be interested in seeing particularly also the data from that says these are the students who who are offering an accepted increased enrichment and then whether that moved the needle in any way finally also are we looking at what other districts are doing that are so you know whose students are a little bit more on grade level that we can maybe implement here so question or statement yeah it was just it was a question so have we looked at what others in other districts are doing with where their students are more on grade level that may be something we can implement here in oak park that is something that
074county-wide when i meet with the teaching and learning council across the county that we do collaborate and find out as much as what's happening in your district let's share data points with one another and um i recently made connection with the assistant superintendents at berkeley and also at ferndale to get a better sense of what they're doing k-12 but in particular at the high school at their high schools um and learned through that that um one of the programs that they're using we've implemented so read 180 is now available for our high school students and that's a tier 2 intervention support which we implemented this year thank you trustee lumpkins you need to unmute yourself mrs baptiste i guess my question would be how as we as peers can prepare our kindergartens for the upcoming
075years of what they're going to be placing with this program which you're writing what do we do as parents what do we do as neighbors so one of the things that's happening um that i know at the middle school and also at the elementary school and it's forthcoming at the high school but with our title one family and community engagement there's been um outreach for families you know to if you want to be a part of a pta that's something across our district we may not have in all of our school communities that's a goal that many of our school principals have of establishing ptas where parents are able to get better information about what they can do to support how they can be involved and that's one of the starts when we have district
076level meetings or different school-based meetings um the communication for parents that they get the communications in time so that they can participate um surveys that will help us to better understand what type of supports our parents want and need and then act from there okay i had another question but just okay i'll wait go ahead trust i just want i guess the the advantage the advantages of um teaching our kindergartners before they even start school as to what to expect but in a small group and their lives they can understand what it is that they're going to be doing and what we expected of them and what you're gonna have to do so my response to that is one i think that's a great question and that's homework also for me as well we do
077have an early childhood director and we do have a young fives kindergarten class that is open this year but really the homework is really there's a lot of focus at the secondary level what are we doing right out the gate for kindergarten by the end of the year where should a kindergartner be knowing that over the summer their summer slide so when they come back in the fall they're ready to go for first grade so that's that that in itself is collaborating with um kindergarten plc's or professional learning communities so the kindergarten teachers no matter if you're at key pepper or einstein there's coherence in what you're doing for those students so there's expectations by the end of the year this is what kindergarteners are expected to do what does that require of us during
078the year so they meet that threshold at the end of the year so that's homework that's the next step for me trustee lincoln's had to mute you there was background noise you can unmute yourself i'm sorry trustee lincoln's we can't hear you um wouldn't it help if our students in kindergarten let's say those who go to preschool know some of this before they even start kindergarten doesn't it help it does help and that is one of the reasons why in our gsrp program we really have been making sure to utilize the pro the curriculum that's been offered to us through oakland schools which is called high scope curriculum as one of the curriculum points to support our early childhood students before they even enter kindergarten and then same thing for our kindergarten teachers um we
079have instructional coaches but also one of our kindergarten teachers is a literacy coach um and so the supports through her literacy coaching in collaboration with the instructional coach for what to do for early childhood learners is something that is a targeted focus at the elementary school okay thank you all right any other questions from the board thank you miss baptiste we move on to reports we will start with a report from our superintendent dr hitchcock [Music] good evening for trustees um i would like to encourage you to review the written report that i gave on friday october 22nd and i will spend my time this evening sharing an update that was sent to us by the michigan department of education and reading a press release that quotes the state superintendent about one of our teachers
080so this afternoon we received a press release from the michigan department of education indicating that they were pleased to announce the release of the latest proud michigan educator video featuring 2021 michigan teacher of the year our own owen bondano the proud michigan educator campaign is one way to honor the hard work of dedicated educators like mr bandano said state superintendent dr michael rice we hope that his experiences and reflections will help other students understand the importance of or others understand the importance of diverse voices in our classrooms in schools and motivate people to consider a career in education mr bandano is michigan's first openly transgender teacher of the year and has been open about the hurdles he faced in the journey to become a teacher through his story he hopes to inspire others to join
081the teaching profession and create classrooms that are welcoming and accepting of students i am going to share uh a video that was also highlighted in the uh press release so let me pull that up because it consists of a couple of our teachers we want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to see it oh here we are oops let me turn on the sound i'm assuming you guys cannot hear that no and they were running around calling each other say that again jim would it be a problem that the the sound on the computer can you turn off my mic do you think that's part of it [Music] check mark don't see a check mark when you share oh awesome got it okay let's try and as as somebody who has a lesbian mother
082in my family being a teacher is a little bit of the family job there were elements of myself and my family that weren't welcome in school for example i remember a day when a couple little boys were on the playground and they were running around calling each other a lesbian they had no idea what the word meant but some adult in their life had used it as an insult so they were using it as an insult the way the kids do and as as somebody who has a lesbian mother i went up to them and i said do you know what that word means and they admitted they didn't and so i defined it the way my mother had divided to me which was it's when a girl loves other girls instead of loving boys
083and the little boy said okay and just went about their day but a teacher overheard it and i got in trouble for talking about inappropriate subjects at school when i was in college is actually when i came out as transgender and i began to transition when that happened i was also going to school to become a teacher of course and a few of my professors discouraged me from transitioning they told me that people weren't going to want a transgender person in front of their students so if i decided to transition i probably shouldn't continue pursuing education that those two things weren't compatible i was encouraged by some maybe to try a different career path others told me well if you're going to transition just do it really well so nobody can tell and just keep
084it a secret um but then i even had one who told me that i should really detransition back to being a girl because in their mind it would be better for me to live my whole life in the wrong gender than it would be for me to try and be a teacher who is transgender i think it's important for every teacher to be their authentic self when they're in a classroom or in a school because that's what the students gravitate towards students know immediately if their teacher is fake to make them feel welcome is to actually show them that you are happy to have them there right not just that they are some sort of you know token extra voice in the classroom and again this is not just something that applies to lgbtq students
085this is something that applies to any student of a historically marginalized community if you are in a classroom that is more diverse everyone has a better opportunity to learn i'm someone who had mixed experiences in school i had some really great educational experiences that taught me my potential and the possibilities for my life and i also had some experiences that limited me or made me doubt myself and i draw from both of those experiences as a teacher i had a english professor whose husband was a trans guy like me and so she literally brought him into class one day for me to meet this guy was queer transgender and he was a lawyer and he came into class with his suit and tie and his briefcase and looked like any other lawyer i'd ever seen
086on television and it was the first time where i looked at someone and thought i could do that i could have a career i could be just another person living a successful life with a family and i could be transgender that's possible and i think we we all need role models for what's possible in our lives he really thinks outside of the box when it comes to students his ability to differentiate and meet the needs of every single student in his class is so inspiring mr banan is a caring loving teacher and all so funny and he just he just makes it feel comfortable just being in that zone he motivates us to push ourselves harder things that mr bundano does to make me feel like he cares about me as well as my peers
087would be being understanding when it comes to our schedules and our grades and always continually asking us how we feel about certain things that include us so mandando has always found a way to include our diversity as far as gender and race and different things like that that makes us different i wish that my teachers had known that there is no such thing as being too young to talk about lgbtq plus issues and there is no such thing as not being able to talk about it because you don't have any kids like that in your room you never know what your kids may identify as later in life you never know who they may love who identifies that way and i wish they had known that we need explicit support not just a general sentiment
088of everyone being welcome but that we need explicit support we need to see ourselves in the curriculum we need teachers to address it directly especially moments of homophobia and transphobia that may occur in the classroom it's not enough to just say everyone's welcome here we have to explicitly welcome our lgbtq plus students and families my name is eric caldwell and i'm a proud michigan educator my name is pam bermiglio and i am a proud michigan educator my name is owen bondano and i'm a proud michigan educator [Music] okay great i would like to go on to say that mr bandano is the first openly transgender teacher of the year um and he is groundbreaking here in oak park we are pleased that he felt comfortable to share his story not only with the state but
089the country he was recently acknowledged at the white house for his contributions as an educator and we are very proud that he is a member of the oak park staff and community thank you are there any questions for the superintendent then we move to our chief financial and operations officer mrs jones yeah everyone hear me yeah um no no real report today no update other than at the last board meeting we walked through the current budget projections i think everybody's aware that jamie shared that presentation with everybody and we're continuing to update the numbers on a regular basis the latest numbers were around 3 600 for enrollment which is definitely a move in the right direction um as a reminder the budget was 3 900 so we are still far below where we want to
090be and we do think that um we'll land somewhere around that 3600 and some change for for enrollment um it doesn't really change the numbers in terms of what was presented i i mean it does change the the numbers in fact but it doesn't change the story in terms of where we're headed um the store is still the same we need to keep working on getting everyone up a little bit higher but that is some positive news as well as the fact that based on us sharing that information we did have a really good conversation today with opea and making some headway towards negotiations on the hazard pay versus the step and i think that's something that will hopefully uh get reconciled in in the coming weeks okay thank you any questions from the board
091i have one okay go ahead trust you on kids um miss jones how many students you say we had i'm sorry what's that how many students hey counts did you say we had around 3 600. we're still counting um we have until november 5th but the latest was 36.32 okay okay any other questions from the board i want to thank you and thank our administrators and our teachers who have worked really hard that's obviously not where we want to see enrollment but it's a lot better than where we were look at what we were looking at even two weeks ago and that really reflects hard work um from those who are making sure that our students are being counted properly and and um and getting in the classrooms so that's that's really encouraging thank you
092um and [Music] miss baptiste did you have a report no i don't have any other additional reports for this week okay thank you that brings us to public participation trustee lunkens can you please read the public participation okay members of the audience are invited to participate at board meetings prior to the business portion of the meeting following conclusion of reports and prior to the adjournment of each meeting you will be recognized by the board president and asked to give your name and address before making your statements comments please present a concise statement of your concerns the board president may choose to limit your presentations to 30 minutes in order that all who wants to speak may have the opportunity to do so thank you for your cooperation if any person with disability needs special accommodations
093at our board education meetings please contact superintendent's office at 248-336-7705 seven days a week prior to the meeting day thank you and so those who would like to address the board at this time you raise your hand in the participants tab or indicate in the chat that you'd like to speak if you're here in person you can also step up to the podium and you will be recognized i do want to remind the public that this is an opportunity to address the board as a whole please don't address any individual members of the board other members of the audience or the superintendent or other members of administration it's also going to be a one-way communication so we want to hear your comments but we do not respond to public comments in this forum if you
094have questions that you need answered please feel free to address those to building administrators or to central office administration and then of course we will not allow any behavior that is intemperate abusive defamatory discourteous or that otherwise interferes with the orderly conduct and timely completion of the board meeting people who violate that will be excluded from the meeting if it constitutes a breach of peace um kenneth sherman go ahead good evening superintendent and school board members um my name is kenneth german my address is two three eight four zero jerome and oak park i am an oak park resident and a product of the old park schools with a 2022 50th class reunion as you may or may not be aware of the city's library effective today is now closed to the public indefinitely between
095three to four pm due to coven 19 increased traffic and staffing issues the exception to this closure is by appointment only when i went to keep my scheduled appointment today i was greeted at the library's entrance way by approximately 50 students posing both safety and fire hazards my three questions are as follows where have the students been going prior to today's three to four pm library closure number two where should the students be going as of today's three to four pm library closure especially with changing weather conditions and the upcoming time change and three what roles and responsibilities does the school district and parents play in this issue thank you cheryl weiss thank you um my name is cheryl weiss 24101 norwood oak park um i i know pretty much all of you and i
096know all of you know me and i'm here for a couple reasons tonight one is to express my concern looking at this data listening tonight i'm so concerned that we are looking at a school district in crisis and i want to do my part to support and to help where i can and i'm hoping there are some things are going to be put in place i was really happy to hear that you have adopted the read 180 program that's something that i have discussed with some of you already that's effective in ferndale and hazel park so i'm thrilled to hear that i have a question i'm wondering if you have partnered with oakland schools in any way as far as academic support back when i was teaching there we had some consultants from oakland schools
097come out and work with the teachers in the classroom and work with students i don't know if that's something that is available now but i would encourage you to investigate and find out if it is i would also encourage you to take this situation as the crisis that it is i believe it should be at this point all hands on deck i believe we're at all possible school board members i love what mr smith said where can i be of value where can i help i would hope that any and all of you that are in any way possibly free during the day to please show up at the schools mentor the kids tutor the kids see what's going on with your eyes not just what you're hearing but you need to see it and
098i'd also encourage that of dr hitchcock and central office staff i think this is a very serious crisis and it needs to be addressed as so when there's one percent two percent ten percent of students meeting grade level expectations is a crisis on another note i want to share something positive in my role as oak park youth assistants that we are doing we are teaming up with the oak park library with recreation hopefully we're still working out the details but we are planning to offer group um group sessions for teens we are going to be hiring a professional therapist and we're going to offer sessions on conflict resolution self-esteem other assorted topics that will be running uh one group uh two groups at a time like one group on one day one group on another
099day six week program we are going to fund it through oak park youth assistance we are going to try to help these kids give them the skills that they need to improve as far as behavior so this is something we are going to be voting on officially on thursday at our board meeting i will be happy to report back i am here because i care deeply about this school district i care deeply about this city i will support you however i can but i'm asking for everyone to please join in if there are things the community can do that you want me to share with the community i'm here tell me help me i do intend to follow up with probably each of you on the school board within the next week to discuss this
100further thank you very much for your time thank you and seeing no other comment we will move forward with the agenda and our next item is our action items we start with action item 7a trustee trustee good friend do you have that trusty good friend you're muted thank you you want me to read the entire uh bid award just the action item the motion okay that's the recommendation correct i have started with resolve at the oak park school district i'll see that that i don't have it's not on here but all right let me see what i can do for do you have it and please take it mr klein trust me oh linda resolved at the oak park school district board of education in the best interest of the district awards the bid for
101construction management services to rockford construction in the amount of three million six hundred forty nine thousand nine hundred ten dollars and that the funds be expended from the 2021 bond program this recommendation came up for the board for information and discussion at the october 11 2021 regular board meeting and comes before the board tonight for approval support moved by trustee elvin supported by trustee good friend are there any questions from the board on the motion i have a question trustee corporate um does this this um bond fund this is for the for the um the furniture too as well right the merchandise that's going insiders this for the hvac for lessenger um this is the construction for the bond correct this is construct this is construction management okay because i the reason why i asked
102that question um i was watching the national news yesterday in regards to the containers that they lost on the ship and also the ship was also on fire with some containers which sparked my interest i hope any you know our furniture wasn't on there or any materials that we might need but i guess that would be you know we would have to know but i just wanted to just bring that to the the board's attention that i do know that there are some um issues with supplies out at sea for the the uh the logistics part of uh suppliers they have the ships that are not docked yet so i just wanted to bring that to everyone's attention okay thank you trustee alvin uh question and maybe um someone from rockford can answer that so
103the the uh i think i saw someone from rockford here so the people who are on the organization chart are those people that are going to be working with us directly good evening this is ed with rockford construction yes those are the individuals that will be there working and partnering with oak park schools thank you it's good to see a diverse group of individuals who would be doing that so i appreciate it trusty good friend um mr bloom i did read all all of the uh materials and and i too have to commend the the company and i feel really quite comfortable i do have a question once now that we can get started with construction etc will you be having a construction manager on site yes we will have a full-time superintendent we also
104have a field engineer and then we also have a project manager that will be uh stopping in time to time along with performing weekly meetings with the district so will uh the house these particular individuals in a trailer that's on on site that's the way it's been in the past i just wonder if that's the same as in in previous uh construction yes ma'am we will have a construction job site trailer for the personnel and we'll coordinate with uh steve on location etc okay thank you very much thank you any other questions from the board on the motion so the motion is to approve rockford construction as construction manager for the bond project um mr can you please call the roll smith yes klein yes oda yes good friend yes alvin yes yes move on
105to action item seven b miss trustee klein can you read that one please resolve the oak park board of education approved trustee don corporon and trustee maxine good friend attendance at the throne a law firm open meetings act webinar on november 3 2021 at a cost of 150 dollars per person is there a second second moved by trustee klein supported by trustee lunkins do any board members have questions on this motion all right miss where can you please call the role hoda yes coprin yes alvin yes lumpkins yes good friend yes klein yes smith oh we moved to 7c which is approval of the personnel actions is there a motion to approve the personal actions so move second move the trustee all been supportive i trust the lunkens or do any board members have questions
106on the personal action yes i had a question go ahead trust me um the question i had is um unfortunately we do have a few resignations and i once again wanted to ask in regards to the exit interviews the question is why did they leave or what was the reason um that they gave at the exit interview if they had it actually interviewed as previously mentioned uh the human resources department allows each individual to complete an exit interview some of these individuals have not actually left the district yet but they will be afforded the same opportunity for an exit interview so we will receive data from each of the individuals who've resigned if they are willing to share that information with us in the past have we had any uh anyone say why they left
107yes that information has been previously shared at a board meeting as well um there's a myriad of reasons uh why individuals have left the school district so saying that we have had um a fluctuating amount of teachers leaving our i guess the question is are there substitutes in place or um have we hired to replace those um resignated teachers as the board is aware our decline in the ability to retain our students has contributed to us needing to staff based on the number of students who are currently in the school district so in the positions where there's a cost savings we're able to restructure so we don't have to replace that individual we've moved forward with doing that in the cases where the position needs to be reposted as a result of the inability to
108restructure or the intricacy of the position we have reposted the position it really depends on each individual position the situation the number of students in that particular building classroom or school thank you any other questions from the board the motion is on approval of the personnel actions the spirit can you please call the role copri yes alvin yes good friend yes oda yes klein yes lunkins yes smith yes we move on to approval of the financial statements for september 2021 is there a motion to approve the financial statement move approval of the financial statements as presented is there a second support moved by trustee eleven supported by trustee corporen are there any questions on the motion to approve the financial statement so my question is um the statement that we're approving um oh man how
109am i gonna ask this question okay the statement that we are approving um i noticed that there was um a negative six thousand dollars and i just had a question is that how are we going to replace that amount you know where like where the funds are gonna come from for the uh annual uh i mean the re the revenue and access of expenditures right so the budget that was approved by the board in june includes a revenue and excess of expenditures that we partially because we've seen a decline in the retention of students and partially because we are working to um to spend down some of the [Music] fund balance that we have strategically so that we're meeting the needs of students so that is in line with the reports that have been previously
110provided to the board and approved by the board both so are we approving what's already paid or is this what we're proving so the financial statements are a reflection of the current financial status of the district so we're proving that this reflects the current financial status of the district and that status is shown in relation to the budget that we passed in june and and where where we stand in relation to that budget so the question is are we approving so you're saying we already approved this we approve the budget and then as with any organization we have financial statements that reflect the status the current financial status of the organization this month in relation to the budget that was passed the year-long budget that was passed so you're saying what we're approving right here
111in september's budget is from what we're approving is the september financial statement so it's a statement of the financial position of the district okay right so are these bills that have already been paid that we're approving or are we approving what we haven't seen yet i mean the bills that were already written already paid i'm sorry yeah i'm i'm sorry i can't understand she can't agree i i can't she's asking is i mean again we're not approving spent this is not about approval of spending it's a it's a financial statement it's a statement of just like every month you get an account statement from your bank that tells you how much money has come in and how much money has gone out you get a statement from your credit card that says how much money
112is owed how much money has been paid this is a statement of the financial position of the district so when you receive a statement it's something that you've already spent correct yeah in the expended and encumbered column those are our expenses through september 30th as well as any monies that have been committed like let's say you have a purchase order for a thousand dollars to a vendor but only 800 has been paid so you still owe them 200 so 800 would be expended and 200 would be encumbered but yes it's monies that have been spent or are committed uh through september 30th so i guess i haven't okay um all right i just don't want to get too far into it because i don't want to you know i mean i'm not afraid to speak
113on it but it's just that every time i go to speak in regards to the budgeting or approving is it something that was spent for the board to approve what was spent but you just explained it to me thank you very much and um the other question was um next time okay that's it that's it thank you any other questions from the board because we are proven all right mr the question is on approval of the september financial statements mr can you please call the role smith yes klein yes hoda yes good friend yes alvin yes yes man i voted yes i was muted again okay we move to information items and before we go to the information items on the agenda um i noticed that our representative from plant moran is here and i
114wonder i know the board asked for plant moran to be available once a month to answer questions do any board members have questions for kevin or our other representatives from plant moran yes i do trustee corporate yes the only question that i have is in regards to the supplies that you have ordered um have you seen that or i don't know if how you order them but have you seen that there is a hold or some type of delay on materials uh good evening this is kevin donnelly with uh with plant moran crust up we've seen over the past year 2021 in an unprecedented um market out there right now as far as volatility on material availability labor availability in all the above because of the covet and the pent-up demand that was released this
115year we're actually expecting a very similar year next year but with that being said the team is proactively putting plans in place to procure materials earlier than you would normally do to ensure that the trailers are on site on time and the team's going to be working closely with with rockford construction as well to mitigate those market risks but i i would say that we should definitely expect 2022 to be a very challenging year as far as uh procurement of materials thank you any other questions from the board all right thank you kevin we moved to information item a which is about the school of choice window [Music] annually the board of education is required to approve the schools of choice options for the subsequent school year for the second semester of the 21-22 school
116year the following is recommended section 105 which is oakland county and section 105 c which is contagious counties for oakland county pre-k through 5th grade options will be open as well as um 6th through 12th grade for virtual learning only and that limited application period will take place january 10th through january 21st of 2022 and the contagious counties uh will be the same thing students will have an opportunity to register through our oak park virtual program uh during that limited time from january 10th through january 21st so we have limited school of choice opportunities for the 21 22 school year in the winter term for the following school year and 22-23 for oakland county and contagious counties we have pre-k through 12 inclusive of oak park virtual it's unlimited it will be open to all
117students and open at all schools this will occur application dates and the window is monday june 13 2022 through friday september 30th if a pending approval from the mde waiver is provided typically we are supposed to stop school and choice enrollment the friday of the first week of school this will be the case for contagious counties as well unlimited school of choice window open monday june 13th through friday september 30th 2022 if uh an mde waiver is approved to keep the window open through june or through september 30th um and that is all i have to share thank you any questions from the board about the schools of choice i have a i'm actually just looking forward to the possibility that we will be able to have a waiver so that we won't fall into
118the same status that we did um this year and uh i'm just uh hoping that things pan out in a positive direction that's it all right any other questions from the board okay we move on to 8b which is about the superintendent contract several months back the board voted to instruct me to instruct our attorney to engage with the superintendent in negotiations for an extension of her contract which expires at the end of this school year um i've been informed by our attorney that he was able to um that he did receive a proposal from the superintendent's attorney last week and he'd like to present that to the board for a discussion in a closed session he gave me several dates that he's available so let me pull those up and ask the board what
119we would like to do so sorry my computer is here we go um he is available sorry november he is available the evenings of november 1st 3rd 8th or 10th we can do that meeting virtually since we are still under a um we are still under a state of emergency so is there any dates on that list that any board member is not available the first november 1st 3rd 8th or 10th november 10th november 10th is the um the leadership conference um here's so that's all okay how about november that's a travel day november 1st is good by me can we do that november 1st is good by me i'm fine i was asking what day is that that we meet with mr green dr green dr dr green that's the end of november okay
120so november 1st works for me november 1st works for me it works for me i'm fine all right so um does six o'clock on november 1st work for everyone perfect yep all right i will communicate that to mr sutton um and get back to the board on that thank you everyone sorry i said is his first name kevin kevin yes and um that brings us to communications and agenda so at this time we will open the floor again for public comment if there's members of the community that would like to address the board please raise your hand using the participants tab or indicate in the chat or step up to the microphone here in the auditorium see none i'll ask is there any communications or agenda from members of the board i am i saw
121a student in the hallway and i asked him who his favorite teacher was and he told me it was mr walker so congratulations mr walker i wanted to share that congratulations mr walker very good um and i i will report back to the board i attended the oakland county school board association annual meeting on wednesday night at um at west bloomfield high school and had the opportunity to speak with our colleagues in other districts in oakland county as well as superintendents and also to hear there was a presentation from dr wanda cliff robinson who's the superintendent of oakland schools she spoke about the um the my the mobile learning lab the mobile innovation learning lab and i was very proud in the video she showed because we were the pilot program here over the summer
122we had featured several oak park students and i was able to share with several of our colleagues in oakland county about what a great program that was and encourage them to bring it to their districts she did also share with us that her vision is to get several more so that it can be available to but it is very expensive but definitely a worthwhile tool we also heard a presentation from robert mccann i believe his name is the head of the k-12 learning alliance and also the [Music] school fund funding research collaborative um and he spoke about the study that was done several years ago on school funding and how it identified um that the cost of educating students in michigan being at about 90 400 i believe something like that um but also emphasize
123that in that people get caught up on that number but it's very important also to recognize that it advocated for a weighted funding formula that recognizes that the needs of students with english language learning needs as well as at-risk students makes it makes the cost very different and so that that report advocated for a weighted funding formula which has which has not been met in any of the funding proposals since so neither the governor's proposals nor the house nor the senate republicans nor democrats a lot of people have talked about being informed by the school funding research collaborative research but none of those proposals has ever really gone along with what that research found about what it actually takes to educate students the group that did the original study has come back and done an
124update to that study and has updated the cost of educating students the primary and and and that number has gone up to just over 10 000 students and the primary driver of that increase in cost is the cost of benefits the increased cost of benefits for staff which is a very large um expense for for school districts it was a very informative meeting he encouraged everyone to read the report that was that was done and i encourage that is available to anyone you can go to fundmyschools fundmischools.org so again that's fundmi schools fundmyschools.org and it really goes through in great detail exactly what it costs to educate students and why it is that as policy makers continue to fund districts in a way that we know is not going to work we see the results
125that some of which we saw tonight and so it's important for us to continue advocating with policymakers on that issue of the weighted funding formula on that issue of making sure that every district has what it takes to educate students has the funding that it takes to educate students and that we move in that direction and that we continue to look at other factors which are which were identified but not included in this report which are capital needs which is certainly something our district sees the discrepancy and capital needs being significant as well as transportation needs and special education needs which were not addressed in that report so i want to share that with the board and encourage everyone to go to fundmyschools.org and read that report did you have a question did you okay
126trustee elder um so yeah just one announcement so um well on saturday sept on saturday october 30th from 10 to 2 i'll be taking part in within another organization uh with which i belong in a vaccination clinic in partnership with the city of detroit and the midnight golf program anyone who wants to get their coveted vaccination or the booster shot or flu shot can come down and get vaccinated at 293 elliott street in detroit michigan 10 a.m to 2 p.m saturday i know it's during if you come early enough you won't hit the michigan michigan state game you can still have time to do that so uh go blue but at any time uh i'm putting that out there thank you good job alvin anything else from members of the board anything from members of
127the administration yes i have one announcement i just want to take this opportunity to recognize christine jones she is our cfo who will no longer be our cfo after tomorrow she joined the staff just in mid-september but has already proven to have an amazing skill set a skill set that is so amazing that her previous employer realized that it was a tremendous loss to their organization and wooed her back in ways that were unable to woo in public education um and she will certainly be missed she made a tremendous contribution in the short time that she was here but we absolutely wish you the best in your future endeavors thank you miss jones thank you everyone thank you very much thank you so much for for all your work appreciate it nice work miss jones
128i want to thank you personally for understanding my misunderstanding of finances but thank you for having the patients with me and and explaining to me um some of the things that i didn't know appreciate it okay if there's nothing else to come before the board i will ask for unanimous consent to adjourn meetings our next meeting will be november 8th okay thank you we do we do have a special meeting a closed session scheduled for november first no problem yet we don't know for sure yet we don't know we we as a board voted to did did state that we are going to meet november 1st are you able to join us miss lunkens yes but if the attorney can uh join us yeah so he he gave that he gave that as one of
129his dates so okay so so our next meeting will be november 1st and the next day the meeting will be november 8th all right um and if there is no objection i will adjourn the meeting at 907. thank you everyone