February Regular Board Meeting 022123

001February 21st if you could all rise for the pledge thank you very much could we please have roll call Barbara Garcia here Randall here message here Morris here Nichols here they do here white here thank you welcome to all of you just a reminder to board members please make sure that you can hear yourself through the speakers so that we know that the voices are recorded clearly same thing if you're here for public comment please make sure that you can hear yourself coming through the speakers otherwise we just will not be able to pick it up on the recording um if you are here for public comment we do ask that you fill out a card so that we can follow up as appropriate with your name and information on there you do have three

002minutes to speak we ask that you address the the board as a full this is not a place to dress uh Personnel issues specific student issues of individual students if you need help with any of that please get with us after the meeting and we can help you figure out who you need to speak with at this time we will move to four which is our consent agenda we have the January 16 2023 minutes January 24th 2023 minutes February 2023 Personnel report in January 2023 payables I move that the Board of Education approved the consent agenda as presented second were there any questions Corrections anything on that that needs to be noted all right can we please have roll call Barbara Garcia yes Randall yes he said yes Morris yes Nichols thank you yes why

003yes motion carries thank you we will move to five reports and information our student representative it's good to have you back thank you hi I'm Emerson geik and I'm the senior representative from Caledonia student council I did this for a while last year but this year I could not just because of my sports schedule but I'm glad to be back so I'm just going to talk about the main things that have been going on at the high school and the things that we've been planning so before holiday break we let a can drive and we donated 2 500 food items to the community basket to the Caledonia located on 68th Street and that was a huge success we were very happy with the numbers for that also two weeks ago we hosted the Winterfest stance

004and Winterfest spirit week was another success to to promote school spirit those that had the best outfits were posted on our Instagram and given free tickets to help promote school spirit and we held the dance in the north building cafeteria in years past we had held it in the south building but we think that the north is probably just a better option from now on and we used a blow up screen in the ox gym to play a muse to play a movie we played um Hercules because our theme was ancient Greece and that was a huge success a lot of people enjoyed that because it was something other than the dance so that was a good thing to try something new a couple of chaperones were also in charge of making popcorn for kids

005that wanted it and another huge success with our cow slams cancer basketball game on Friday February 10th the day before the dance this event was prepared by by our Winterfest committee and there were shirts that were made and there were games that were designed to help raise money and awareness for cancer and we all partnered with the American Cancer Society in three thousand twenty four dollars was donated donated to the American Cancer Society from the shirt sales and also the halftime events of the basketball game so that was also a huge success and we're very proud of how that went but also we had a kindness vending machine go up by the entrance of the South and that was something that we saw GVS you do and we ordered one because we thought that would

006be a great way to encourage kids to get out there more and better mental health in our school so that project debuted last week and the vending machine was purchased by our student council and our be nice leadership group so this is the first time we ever used this machine last week and it was filled two different times we filled it with our random acts of Caledonia kindness bags which are just filled with Trinkets and toys and candy all that sorts of fun stuff and also inspirational quotes to help um like better our students and get an uplifting quote and some have um also have inspirational bracelets and also some of the be nice merch and we also did envelopes in there called kindness challenges so just to invite other kids to be more involved

007in the school so we also did that and both of those were gone at the end of the day so it was a huge success everyone loved it and we also had the be nice and student council fill this machine for March but the goal is to get other groups and clubs to fill every time so it's not the same which I think is a great idea to get all the clubs involved in the school and the links program will be filling it this next coming month March and it's already a huge hit was super successful also I'm a part of the lynx leadership team and we planned a basketball game designed for links and their peers to be together which was really awesome and we also hosted Bingo during our seminar and whoever won

008would get a free ticket to the dance so I think we had a lot of really good participation 700 students attended the dance so I would say that's pretty successful and that is pretty much all I have for you if you have any questions any questions thank you so much thank you yes you were of course as always welcome to stay we love to have you stay but we do know that if you have homework or other things that you're welcome to leave too so well you are busy aren't you we'll talk to you later thanks hun all right on to 5B we have the 98b student achievement goals progress with Dr Diaz Dr trober good evening superintendent Martin president white board of education and a wonderful group of community members it might make me

009a little nervous and I guess it might because you're all behind me but I spoke to 707th and 8th graders last week so this is nothing they're scary um no it was great I had a great time with it um so I am pleased to be here this evening to share our 98 uh B student achievement update and um as Dr Trevor and I had two presentations tonight we decided to kind of divide and conquer for clarity so I am going to present the 98b information and then Josh is going to provide the teaching and learning update when we do the Strategic Plan update a little bit later in the agenda so um as you are aware Caledonia schools overall have done very well on our state exams and even shown improvements while other districts

010have struggled to either maintain or improve scores particularly over the past several years this is a real point of Pride for us it's important to note that the assessment reporting in this particular presentation represents aggregate scores so they are averages of all students across the district by grade level and subgroup no individual school or student level data with a group size of less than 30 is reported out so this is a little bit different for our new board member and members and a reminder for those of you who have seen this uh presentation previously not the exact same presentation but this was a required component last school year as well um 98b legislation was established postcovid to ensure that systems were in place within our K-12 districts to monitor student progress in both English language

011arts and Mathematics districts could select to Monitor and Report using either growth scores or proficiency scores and in Caledonia we selected proficiency as our foundation for reporting districts also had the option to choose from four different Benchmark assessment tools the nwea map test the i-Ready assessment group data recognition core benchmarks or the Renaissance Learning which you may have heard of referred to as star s has been previously reported we did anticipate a dip in our assessment outcomes during 2020-21 due to several factors some of which are obvious for all of us but also things such as not all of our students tested we had many students who were participating in schooling online and certainly we would not have said that the beginning of 2020 2021 was a typical reflection of what we all imagine as

012school however we did not end up seeing the drop in 2020 in the fall that we had initially anticipated after the 2020-2021 school year we continue to experience disruptions to learning either due to Extended illnesses or by choice and we saw a slight decrease in ela and math scores with our fall of 2021 assessments however after a full year of what we would consider getting back into the swing of things and some typical instructional delivery and we saw a lot of our students coming back to fully in-person learning we saw a little bit of a rebounding in math scores back to fall of 2020 levels and although we saw upward movement in ela we were not yet back we are not yet back to pre-covered levels so much has been done since 2021 to focus

013on moving students forward again and getting kind of back into the swing of things and some of that work includes the initiation of a teaching and learning framework for the district as a whole seeking feedback from staff across the district at multiple levels creating and aligning our teaching and learning priorities to the Strategic plan directly and intentionally we reviewed and approved several y5 to 12 tiered curricular resources and then we began the implementation of the established priorities some of the things that we're excited to share are that our data teams are meeting regularly to look at student achievement data we added an mtss position that is really leading that work across the the school's K-12 and um we're working at the high school level to develop the plan to address our TSI rating as you

014all are aware and what we're looking at as we do that work is how do we improve systems district-wide so that instead of just saying well it's a high school problem or it's a subgroup problem with students with IEPs we're looking at our entire system and saying how do we make sure that we build something that will support all students to find success in our district foreign in order to take the best snapshot of student performance across the grades here in Caledonia we selected the NWA map of those four that I shared earlier this is one of multiple measures that we use in the district to look at our own internal data as compared to the performance of other students across the state and across the country the nwea map assessment is an Adaptive achievement

015and growth test so it moves as the student moves so the more correct answers that a student is able to provide on the assessment the more questions are provided so it really gives an individualized assessment of where a student is and their capacity for growth the nwea map also assesses both Ela and Mathematics across K-8 so as we analyze the scores of our students we notice that mass scores demonstrated higher percentages than in previous years this may be due to the fact that we've now adopted a solid Tier 1 curricular resource in mathematics across K-8 that correlates directly with nwea so there's a there's a direct tie there and we are now using something consistent across all those grade levels in Reading although there is an upward Trend over the past six years we are

016absolutely still not where we would like to be so moving now into some data charts this slide represents the district aggregate of students who met the Benchmark for their grade level Now The Benchmark with nwea is students who scored at the 41st percentile or higher so looking at the fall of 2017 and then the scores in the resulting years each fall up until this past fall of 2020 you can see the aggregate percentage of students who met that 21st percentile Benchmark cut score so we've gone up and down a little bit overall we have a six percent growth across reading and a seven percent growth across math certainly not what we would like to see we have established some pretty solid scores with 70s and 80 percentiles however eighty percent of our students reaching that

01741st percentile however we absolutely believe we can do better this slide represents the winter scores so it's the same format looking again at the students who met that 41st percentile Benchmark cut score across the years 2018 to 2023 and again now we're looking at winter scores so those are the ones that they took after the first of the year in January and here we see that there was a drop one percent between 2018 and 2023 and then again a modest growth from 2018 into 2023 in mathematics the next two slides show the percent of students who scored above the 50th percentile from 2017-18 through 2022-2023 this is above the Benchmark cut score of the 41st percentile but we wanted to raise the bar a bit to reflect the population of our students that are exceeding

018expectations so we just raised it a little bit so we could take a look at these groups so if you're looking at the chart you have for 2017-18 on the left fall reading to Winter reading and then the change in percentile so 62 percent of our students met that 50th percentile or above in the fall and then 66 percent of our students met 50 50th percentile or above in the winter and then for math the same thing so 2017-18 1819 1920 you see pretty consistent uh change numbers there um nothing dramatically up or down again not what we're wanting to see but fairly consistent across the board moving to 2020 2021 and through 22 23 again looking at those changes in the percent of students that are meeting that 50th percentile or above so although

019we selected for 98b reporting to look at our student proficiency scores we also know that student growth is really important and on the NWA map we get both results for students we get both proficiency levels as well as growth rates and so we wanted to share this particular information with you because no matter what our scores start uh where our scores start in the fall what's most important is that all of our students are growing no matter where they start growing at an expected rate and so this slide represents the number of students or the percent excuse me of students that met the expected growth rate on nwea map in both um reading and Mathematics so just to try to restate that to for clarity a little bit I know it's a lot of numbers

020percentiles and percentages but what this score represents is for example if I start at the 75th percentile I have an expected amount of growth even though I'm already at the 75th percentile and if I start at the 35th percentile I also have an expected level of growth so there's kind of that expected level and then there's stretch growth so there are things that we think about if a student is significantly behind where they need to be they don't need to just grow one year in one year's time they need to grow more than that so this represents the number of our students did I do that okay um that met that expected growth no matter what their starting score was that makes sense uh the last um well I guess just to finish up on

021that what looking at the data in both of these ways allows us to do is to look at both that proficiency level and that growth performance it really allows us to dig into our strengths and weaknesses where are we hitting the mark and where are we missing the mark and how do we then build out stronger systems so that we can support all of our students in meeting not only proficiency but growth along the way ultimately getting all students to proficiency proficiency the last four slides when we get those back up and running and I think you board members you have those in front of you but um these last four slides break down the data by subgroups and this again is a requirement of 98b legislation to not only report in the aggregate of

022all students but an aggregate of all of our subgroups that have 30 students or more foreign success thank you all right so this first slide here again we're looking at aggregate scores of students who met the Benchmark or exceeded the Benchmark which is the 41st percentile on the nwea map Benchmark assessment so this is all students K-8 who qualify for free or reduced lunch and what their aggregate scores are fall to winter 2022-23 so this year and then across the bottom is the percent of change so we have free and reduced lunch students we have our students with IEPs where we see a real struggle in um in Reading our English Learners where we also see a significant struggle in Reading looking at males and females we have very similar changes and similar scoring between

023the two subgroups are females a little bit higher in reading our males a little bit higher in mathematics looking at Asian African-American and Hispanic subgroups we have some significant concerns with the performance of our Asian students from fall to winter in both reading and Mathematics so digging deeper into those those scores and the students assessed looking at our African-American subgroup they made higher gains than any other subgroup between fall and winter in both reading and Mathematics our Spanish student population had a significant drop in Reading as well as a small drop in mathematics our white students had a drop in reading and a static no change for Math and then our multiracial students or students who did not select an identifying category in the system those students make up that last category of multi-slash unknown

024and we had a decrease in Reading there and a slight increase in math and I think that um you know although this data is not what we want to see what we do know is that we do have some bright spots in our data and that we are not where we need to be but we have a road map for what needs to change and what subgroups in particular we need to focus on and um we continue to work on building out the systems in order to provide tiered supports across the grades for students in both Ela reading and Mathematics and we certainly look forward to sharing the fruits of that labor with you in June when we come back together thank you and what questions might you have him I know this is a

025broad question and how do you address the obviously going to be Talk Amongst the staff but what do you see as the things that we can change to be able to turn this around so in my short tenure here um what I am excited to see is a real investment on the part of our staff in making changes to core instructional practices so for many of our staff members um differentiating for lots of different levels and styles of Learners it hasn't been something that's been a part of their ongoing training or even their initial education background and so there's a real desire to make some changes they're not happy with their data and I think that's where it starts kind of the owning of that data I think about the work that the high school

026team did as they looked at how to build out new courses and what made the most sense as they looked at adopting curricular materials for students is we recognize that we have holes that we're missing things so how do we start building a better boat so that we're getting where we want to go with students we've also invested a significant amount in interventionists through the Esser funding and that just started this year so we're hoping to really start to see the fruits of our labor as we move through this year when we analyze the data in the spring we'll be looking to see did what we put in place really have an impact it is not unusual to see dips in Winter scores we kind of grab a benchmark or a baseline in the fall

027we typically see either steady or a little bit of a decline in the winter and then we typically see much higher growth in the spring so we're hoping that we'll see kind of what's been our typical growth from Fall to Spring as well as additional growth based on some of the systems that we're working to put in place additional questions thank you very much we'll look forward to the follow-up thank you at this time we're going to move to 5C which is the 2020 Bond update good evening everyone and what I'm going to take you through is a quick update of where we're at with all of the technology projects that are completed and are yet to be completed come on she's got the computer there so all right Christy I'll just let you forward

028them for me all right so starting with the ones that are completed already we have replaced our servers in storage at the district level uh that's the storage and the central brains of the network for the entire District uh at Cal L we upgraded the PA system so it's now a network-based system instead of analog speakers and there was construction related work that took place here at craft metals and at Duncan lake with various classroom expansions front office remodels Etc and then in 2022 the wireless network throughout the district was upgraded and replaced uh we replaced UPS devices in each of the wiring closets those provide surge protection and some extended battery run time in the event of a power outage but not as long as the power outage as we saw last week takes

029a lot of batteries to last that long then we did a similar PA system upgrade at both Paris Ridge and craft Meadows along with AV upgrades in the south campus in the learning Commons all three music rooms and the wood shop so they have new projectors bigger screens brighter projectors in those learning spaces and then right now we have a network infrastructure upgrade going that is another big forklift upgrade throughout the district in each of the buildings and several watering closets in every building typically that's something we like to do in the summer time but product constraints and supply chain issues landed that stuff on our our door just before Christmas so we're doing that now in the vendor we've chosen is doing an excellent job installing that at night with very little disruption to

030anything going on in the buildings and right now we are down to just two elementary schools left uh Cal L tomorrow night and Paris Ridge next week and then that project will be complete and we also have fiber optic expansion going with the two construction projects the fiber to the Cal Center and then um to the new Dutton location as well that fiber has been pulled to that site and is now spooled up on the pole and protected their uh waiting for the building to come up and be ready to receive that and future projects that are part of this bond issue will include technology going into the community center upgraded servers for our security cameras and our telephone system once those servers reach their end of life and we will do a PA system

031upgrade similar to the ones that were previously mentioned at Emmons Lake and north campus and then that will bring everything up to the same level throughout the district and as our copiers age we've got plans to replace those as needed those were all purchased as part of the previous Bond so those still have a few years left in them so we'll make those last as long as we can and then we'll have upgrades at Cal L when classrooms are added there we'll equip those with technology and lastly we have a data center air conditioning unit at Duncan Lake which will be in need of replacement during this this bond issue and that's what we have for technology any questions from board members all right I think we're good thank you all right we're going to

032move on to 5D which is our strategic Plan update with Dr Martin whoever else is participating along with him foreign good evening President White and Board of Education this is the time of year where we do our annual strategic plan at a glance update so we are happy to once again kind of provide an overview of our strategic plan and of course I left the sheet over there but if you recall we had a number of open uh Community meetings as we were developing our strategic plan and I can't remember the exact number but I think we had over 200 people in the community come out to participate we also had opportunities for high school students and we received about 1800 surveys on different components that people wanted to see in our five-year strategic plan

033that occurred in the spring of 2019 and we began to implement the Strategic plan in the fall of 2019. some things we we took a jump start on on as we were heading into the summer but the Strategic plan was supposed to be run for the duration of 2019 all the way through the 2024 school year one of the things that we are happy to report on tonight is our progress that we have made as we are in year four of a five-year strategic plan the plan was subdivided into four primary areas and myself and the administrative team we have all broken this down into the areas of teaching and learning which kind of go along with one of our committee structures whole childhood community so those two are together and we will have a

034couple different people report on just kind of the key changes over the last year instead of going over uh all 118 individual tasks next we will do the uh fiscals sustainability and then finally we will end with the organizational coherence what we have been able to accomplish is an improvement overall in our performance so if you want to scroll up to page three um essentially when you look at the number of items that were completed or ongoing so sometimes it's it's a task that we do and it has a definite end date so for example when we talked about reorganizing to k45678 changing our transportation zones that had a specific end date other things are ongoing so when we talked about revamping our communication protocols updating our website creating a district app so some of

035those things we do and then it will be identified as a light green as it's completed and it's ongoing not to say that it's always perfect but it's something that we continue to work on so when you look at this particular slide what it shows you is that overall we have completed or ongoing status for 87 percent of of the projects in this area for whole childhood community that has improved to 78 in the completed 19 initiated in three percent uh either not started or eliminated this is how we look at that for fiscal sustainability 89 of the items are completed with four percent initiated and seven percent either not started or eliminated and for organizational coherence and systemic Improvement 92 percent of the projects are completed or ongoing with eight percent initiated so if

036you go to the next slide please uh looking at that how did that change over the course of just one year since we do this update every year you'll see a positive three percent Improvement uh in the completed area you will see that the items that were not started has reduced from 16 percent then down to 13 percent so that was a positive change a change of three percent in that area uh when you look at the other areas we've improved by six percent um in six percent ten percent in the next two categories as it related to things that were initiated we improved by three percent in one uh area uh we pers we improved by ten percent in fiscal sustainability in another four percent um in organizational coherence and so if we quickly

037go to the next slide before I turn it over to the team um this slide just kind of breaks down that individual section so without going through every single one you'll see for teaching and learning there are subsections within that and so goal a student achievement goal B academic options and opportunities and then goal C curriculum and program alignment for the completed we have 94 50 and 50. I think what's important for the board to understand when you see goal B two of the four objectives listed in this area were eliminated meaning that at the if I can recall correctly one of them was like Project based learning and we made a conscious decision sometimes as we were making the transition and coming out of covet that that was not congruent to the direction that

038we were heading and so we eliminated a project-based learning so when you look at this particular one in goal B it will never get higher than 50 because those two items that were eliminated and you can see in the long document those items will not come back so I wanted to point that out same thing with Goal C there was one item eliminated and so the other shows 90 because there was 10 individual things in this section and so that is how you would view the next slide when you look at whole childhood Community you can see we're up to 85 percent 100 percent 80 percent and then 33 percent with another 66 percent initiated in this particular area going to fiscal sustainability um almost 100 across the board until you get down to goal

039e and we are at fifty percent Seventeen and thirty three percent and then last but not least organizational coherence the first three goal items a B and C are all at a hundred percent with gold D being at 72 percent and 28 um so all of that is to just give a high level overview um for the sake of the board again you should have the full packet which I can't remember is I think it's only about 30 pages and again we won't go line by line but each Cabinet member will come and give kind of the the key changes within that section that they want to speak to and for each person if you have questions for them or me at the end of that portion please ask before we go over to the

040next one so with all that being said and before I call up the next person are there any questions regarding this high level overview okay good so at this point I'm going to call up Dr trober I believe and he's going to start us out with the teaching and learning uh overview of progress good evening everyone and thank you Dr Martin uh so what I hope to do is to scaffold what Dr Diaz presents it a bit earlier knowing that there's a whole lot of connection to what she presented and what I'm going to talk about as well and you have received a lot of specific Communications regarding all the different goals and Sub sub goals if you will and so again this would just be a high level uh generalization as to some of

041the additions or updates uh to what you may have seen or heard about in the past as it relates to teaching and learning you will never see above 50 in goal b or above 90 in goalsy as referenced by Dr Martin that sads me because I always love shooting for that 100 nonetheless we are doing some really great things as it relates to teaching and learning our numbers as indicated by Dr Diaz are not where we want them quite yet but we are certainly coming out of a space that has taught us a few things relative to covet and how to facilitate instruction to our uh to our Learners and all of young fives through 12. um so that being said as it relates to goal a student achievement uh just a couple of quick

042uh points here um we have set out to strengthen or Implement um specific aspects of the learning hierarchy if you will or the learning umbrella that we believe are going to create the changes which we want to see from our young fives through through 12th graders specifically as it relates to ELA we break down instruction and so let me revert back before I dive into Ela we break down instruction within a tier one two and three format um and so we know that as most of us probably in this uh in this space in this room learned um Global tier one instruction is where we believe 80 percent of students should achieve the learning process but there's also going to be Learners beyond the 80 that just need more remediation more instruction and that comes

043by way of what we would articulate or suggest is tier two and or tier 3 instruction and so knowing that we had some really good things in pla in place last year and in the the recent past we really wanted to focus our concentration on tier 2 and tier three knowing that those subgroups of students that Dr Diaz referenced earlier would really be captured in that tier two in tier three space uh and so we we double down on some of the tier one resources that we had previously put in place making small tweaks or changes especially as it relates to students in grades 9 through 12 or instruction at the high school level um and then acquiring PD um that would we believed would help facilitate stronger instruction in grades k through eight and

044then again using 11t or Asser funding specifically hiring for interventionists in the um in the ELA and or math space again helping to focus or deliver specific instruction in in that tier 2 and tier three space and so that gives you somewhat of an understanding as to what we believed we've done recently that has been strong but then also how it might be further emboldened or strengthened through just small tweaks if we then scale down to goal B and specifically as it relates to stem or accelerated learning that's an area we believe that we can further strengthen over time stem is something we delved into just before covet we said we're going to do really great things as it relates to stem in the planning aspect of how that then draws in our community or

045makes connections to our community but we also realize that there are some shifting dynamics that that are requiring us to take a step back and and take a look at what we're what we're doing with stem and and how it connects to pbl and so we've kind of redesigned some of the some of the features of what we're doing relative to stem and championed design thinking as opposed to pbl knowing that design thinking is probably more of a realistic approach to where we want to go with our 912 instruction but probably scaling even further back beyond that to the Middle grades and then eventually Elementary grades it's just a an approach to learning by which we believe is going to be flexible or fluid enough to help support our Learners as they engage in a

046world that is continuously changing and then dropping down to goal C curriculum and program alignment um really with uh in in that area we have um set out to really focus on our assessment processes and procedures I think I came to you earlier in this school year maybe just in the uh at the end of the summer to talk about some of the assessment practices we have taken on and I think at that point there was some concern about how much assessments we had actually had in place so we are continuously looking at what we are doing there through our benchmark assessments which was part of Dr Diaz's presentation earlier as well as our state level assessment processes or practices and then also our formative which is the ongoing aspect or feature of classroom instruction

047we're taking a look at that and really want to make sure that we not only support our students with what they are required to learn whether with the teachers to help them gain in information that's relevant to tweaking their practices in tier one tier two and tier three um but then also helping to ensure that we have good Benchmark data or three times a year data that's going to help support that intermittent process if you will so formative most assessment processes captured within classroom instruction Benchmark instruction which helps to facilitate some changes in how we grouped here tier two and tier 3 students and then with the end goal of making sure that we wrap instruction up it's the best way we can so that we show really the great things that are going on

048in Caledonia with their state level performance so that's it's again a good overview where I believe that we've changed some things or emboldened some practices to help us gain further um performance success for our K-12 or young 5 through 12 learners with all that said any thoughts questions comments or concerns right Ed um so just a question about the um kind of alignment of when we adopted the new ckla curriculum I'm sorry you know I was gonna ask it's okay I like so in in 2019 right we were in we've been educated by you and Dr Martin about when to expect the like how that looks in terms of what when we should expect to start seeing some changes in scores and things like that and we did it looks like right in in 2020

049and 21 right and then we're seeing a little bit like we talked like Dr Diaz talked about earlier a little bit of regression I'm curious do we think that there's been um changes to like how we're teaching that because it seems like it was kind of working do we think that there's been a change in our approach do we think we need to re-educate in that approach and I guess my other question is I also heard Dr Diaz talk about I don't mean to you to I've been like sitting here formulating since I heard her speak I'm sorry so I don't mean to ask you all the questions um so and I was also curious about how well she had mentioned that the iready curriculum like corresponds well with nwea testing and so I'm curious

050if the ckla does the same or not or like just like correlates well with what's going to be asked of them on the assessments I have so many questions I'm sorry all those are really good questions and I could probably Splinter off in five thousand different directions sorry um as I as I think about um how to respond to that there is a reality um with how we instruct Learners pre-covet and post covid I think most of us have probably seen reports and or information that would suggest that there is just a different need that exists so that's certainly a part of how we support or facilitate instruction to our our elementary audience for the most part which is the ckla portion of of the ELA tier one instruction and so we want to make

051sure to support and I think that um Miss dubison is going to speak to this in just a little bit how we support the the whole child knowing that there is a lot of how we take in information and are able to process it from just being a whole learner we're not just an academic learner we're not just a social learner we are Learners in all breaths of of what it means to exist in this in this in this world and so they are just a different level of needs there's different attendance by students which obviously affects their performance we want students to be in our classrooms as much as possible but the attendance data that we have on file suggested we just don't attend as well as we used to and so that means

052we interact differently than how we once did that might mean that you know there are students that are learning on screens differently than what they once did um or take in information in a in-person environment and so there are lots of different features and aspects to the questions that you post and it's really good um but uh in short order I would just say that we are continually understanding or processing what it means to be um the best learning organization to all Learners that we are responsible to provide instruction to certainly ckla is a strong program but we realize we need to scaffold that instruction differently now than we once did and so that's uh somewhat of a of an answer to the questions you posed um but uh but there's a lot of different

053nuances and layers of that that we are again continually processing and trying to sort our way through it certainly means that we provide PD or professional development uh to our um to our teachers and staff differently than what we once did and so we're trying to engage in that layer of conversation as well so great question part of an answer mortico look forward to the ongoing conversation thank you additional questions for Dr trober thank you we look forward to hearing the ongoing work good evening I'm privileged to report our progress in the area of whole childhood Community recognizing that many of the tasks in this area are truly outside of special programs and represent in fact efforts of our entire team or whole team to use that word while the percentage of completed and or

054ongoing tasks that have been identified to help us build a positive School culture May remain at 85 percent we have certainly made significant investments in this area since our last report during the summer of 2020 to 75 or maybe more than that um at later numbers um of our District staff including administrators bus drivers custodians food service maintenance office staff paraprofessionals teachers technology staff attended capturing kids Hearts training participants excuse me participants in the training are empowered with understanding skills and tools to implement transformational processes focused on social emotional well-being that cultivate connectedness to create a relational culture and affected the high school this afternoon I noticed uh in the upper level there was a hallway with stools different types of stools outside of the doorways and although I haven't been in that particular Hall

055at the beginning of the day I can assume that that is uh designed to help them be outside of their classroom doors greeting students so I know that it's happening I've seen it in other places that I've been particularly in the morning in addition the district has been implementing a tiered system of instruction and interventions in this area for several years with annual Fidelity reviews and obviously responsive enhancements based on those reviews the teaching and learning department is currently considering new tier one instructional resources through the curriculum review process relative to tiers 2 and 3 the district has designated significant Esser funds to increase building wide support team with a full-time specialist student support specialist from either the social work and or counseling disciplines at each Elementary we have two and a half staff at

056the intermediate and middle schools to meet student needs and now five full and one part-time staff at the high school to serve our students their services consist of activities to address early warning signs that impede school Success including attendance as we've mentioned a typical behavior and other social emotional concerns related to academic achievement huh specific to our comprehensive student supports and services as mentioned previously we've increased our staffing to support student needs these individuals continue to enhance their use of data to help identify students for intervention and then to measure that student progress in terms of those interventions we've continued our partnership with Alliance Counseling group and have actually initiated a new partnership this year with Arbor Circle establishing a full-time mental health professional at Caledonia High School the partnership was made possible through a

057Cooperative Grant expanding enhancing emotional health through the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services we continue to address student health and wellness through the work of the wellness committee the continued efforts of our two District nurses allow us to provide training to staff and resources for parents of and students with medical conditions attending our schools as you can imagine where 5000 are gathered there will be medical concerns It's been a very welcomed added benefit to our families and to our staff and students as a district we continue to partner with our community and seek new ways to partner to support academic and not an academic goals at the Early Childhood level we are hoping to expand opportunities for our early Learners through collaboration with the great start Readiness program or gsrp we're also committed to

058working with Kent ISD and Grand Valley State University to grow our own students and staff who might be interested in pursuing degrees or higher degrees in the area of Education do you have any questions for me Tim so um the Strategic plan how has it been modified to better address the students mental health wellness and how are we measuring that success I don't believe we've changed the Strategic plan but we've certainly increased our efforts in the area of uh the whole childhood Community as I mentioned we invested significant uh as her funds to increase our staffing to support student needs in the area of social emotional Wellness we've also instituted the capturing kits Hearts training for all of our staff to again create that connectedness that awareness of student needs and and again to give

059them tools to address those needs so through increased training through increased Staffing I think we've enhanced some of the the tasks that we had identified did that answer your question maybe you could speak to how the success of the changes has been measured sure so we are collecting data as I referenced as well um each of our student support Specialists or counselors is not only tracking uh the students that they serve at tier two which might be a small group and at tier three where it's usually an individual plan of care they identify a goal for the for their work with that student and then measure that obviously collaboration with not only School administration and support teams in a broader sense but also with our families recognizing that our families play a huge part in

060addressing our students needs in the area of social emotional Wellness did that battery answer your question I don't know I don't know I don't know that we have a a good good plan and how we measure maybe it can be improved it just sounds like it's a little vague but we are tracking the number of students that each of our student support Specialists is serving they're also tracking the plans of care and whether or not their intervention with those students has been successful or not so I do think we're increasing we're always looking for ways to improve our data collection and our measuring thank you if I can add one of the things that we used to do a few years ago and we've kind of abandoned after covet but we are going to look

061at the possibility of bringing back there was kind of a county-wide student survey particularly at the secondary level they kind of tried to speak to the the culture and climate of the building and how the students particularly at the secondary level are filling and perceiving school and for a number of reasons that was kind of abandoned by us for the last two years that's something that we're going to explore and possibly bring back because the problem with abandon it is uh we missed some of that uh comparison uh comparative analysis of how is our students feeling overall about the supports and the services that we put in place for them to help them uh from a social emotional adjustment standpoint we can see what's going on academically but without that data to cross-reference we have

062a lot of question marks there so that's something else that we're going to look at bringing back I know a lot of districts continue to do it we elected not to but we want to kind of revisit that again as well in addition to the things that Ms dubison mentioned when does the survey information come out from kisd um typically it's more of a spring survey that we Implement so I think in some of the recent memos to the board I kind of just shared some insightful stuff that we were hearing from kids all throughout the county um and it really just brought uh to my eyes maybe that you know in some ways we're in about two or three things we missed a lot of other very rich data that would answer the question

063that trustee Morris is bringing up you know how do we evaluate and look at this year compared to others and how our students are feeling so I think we got some work in that area and we looked too forward to making some progress here additional questions Jason yeah just a real quick I just wondering if is there a relationship between um your area and what we heard from a student representative on sort of like the kindness vending machine and be nice and the links and all of that just in terms of um you know that vending machine was geared towards a mental health kind of thing so just curious if there was a relationship between those or is this kind of like a separate thing those particular activities were facilitated at the high school we

064do have be nice um overseers um whether it's a building administrator sometimes a counselor in each of our Intermediate Middle School and and high school obviously we have our administrators and our student support specialist teams working together in each of the buildings so yes there is a collaborative effort among those for sure additional questions um yeah I have a question um you indicated that the Esser funds from covid were really the thing that allowed us to put in place these social social workers and that sort of thing what is the long-term outlook for those positions um I know they're listed as one to two year positions are we seeking additional grant funding what do you anticipate the future of those looking like that's a great question so in the long term Scope when the user

065funds dry up we're going to have to make some tough decisions about what we're going to keep and what we don't want to keep or what we cannot afford to keep so ideally we believe that we need all those positions and more realistically I'm not sure that that is in the cards because that was a significant amount of Esser funds so it allowed us to maybe Fast Track what might have taken eight to nine years in a typical sense to get there uh very quickly I'm not aware of ongoing uh sustainable grants um so I will say that when we reach that point um in about two years we do believe that we will be able to keep some positions I'm pretty um I do not believe that we'll be able to keep all those

066positions if I'm being quite Frank because it's going to take a number of of things to happen over time if there are some grants that come down the pike that appear to be more than just an initial hey get this started and it's going to disappear then we're we're interested in that if it's a lot of times what we see these startup grants like hey we want you to hire all these people to do this and then it disappears in a year we probably won't pursue that if it doesn't have a guarantee or if it's not highly likely that it's going to be reoccurring because we don't just want to set up our students and our staff for something that's that's uh unrealistic covet was just a different animal we needed that staff in place

067over time with you know enrollment slowly moving back up with the Esser funds being in place assuming that we will receive more money from the state that will give us the opportunity to keep some of those positions but it won't give us the opportunity to keep all of those positions and we're just not aware at this point of Grants that's going to help us keep all those positions so sadly we're going to lose some of that support yes I did want to add that we were intentional with utilizing funds not only to enhance our tier 2 tier three supports but also to grow our sustainability for um understanding of of students as a whole child through our capturing kids Hearts training so recognizing that that's not going to completely meet every student's needs but we

068were intentional to to grow something that is sustainable among our tier one everyone all hands on deck so yeah thank you additional questions all right thank you okay so now I'll be sharing a little bit from the fiscal sustainability section with the first goal within this section is all about reinvestment so when we started with this strategic plan there were many areas in our budget where we had reduced in Prior years in the economic downturns and did not put things back in place in the budget so over the years we have been able to do some really good reinvestments for this year alone and as you've heard in other presentations with the funds of Esser we have added 20 positions with Esser and when I give my budget amendment update there's also going to be

069an Esser update as well that will give a little bit more when it comes to that we also added 9.7 teaching positions with the general fund dollars and we transitioned nine of our building and health building health and safety Paras which we had received with Esser funds last year we maintained those positions and transferred them into utility pairs at each of the buildings with general fund in the next area of operations we signed an agreement with grbs for custodial services at Duncan Lake and craft Meadows with the staff shortages that we were seeing we were having a hard time keeping up with keeping all our facilities cleaned and that was in this area of the of the um strategic plan um so yes so far we've had some um growth with this model but um

070things are improving and we're able to at least kind of have Staffing levels at each of our buildings now in the next area is a needs-based budgeting process so we are entering close to starting that 23 24 budget look and pleased to say that we will be implementing and moving forward with a new budget process so that's exciting um the next section is in multi-year operations and capital needs planning that's in that continuous mode we do have our plans in place it's we've been working on this especially with these bonds and um so these plans have thoroughly been looked at it's in the ongoing stage so that's that's continuing and then the final section in improving fiscal accountability and best practices this area we did put a hold for this year due to the staff

071shortages that we've had in our business office the intent with this is to do random audits just internally ourselves with the business office going out looking at each of our different departments buildings programs and just randomly auditing things not to Aha got you but just more RR process is being followed are there things that we really need to clean up just to keep that fiscal accountability and best practice on but this year we had to put a hold on that but on a positive side with the addition of the business support secretary we are really looking at and doing an audit of our staff and staff costing so really aligning does each of our hourly staff that were hired and teachers at FTE does all that match and align to the positions that they were

072hired for also with leave time it's that being monitored and requested approved appropriately and tracked so we are really looking at that so that's a benefit so that's kind of this a nutshell for this year any questions had a lot going on we know so any questions how are we doing what with our with the whole thing at craft and that is that I mean is that relationship proving to be what we hoped it would as a whole with the custodial um there's been some they also were having some um challenges with keeping staff as well but I believe um that has seen thank you I'll step in for a moment both of the schools that grbs is operating in right now are fully staffed fully operational uh we're getting very positive reports from both

073principles so it as predicted takes a solid six months to get it really stabilized but both accounts are working very well right now okay perfect thank you questions all right we're good thank you good evening everyone and I can attest that Mr Hess did say six months because I rode him pretty hard for about 5.9 months to to make sure that was working because you that's one thing we want to work and part of really our um organizational coherence in systemic Improvement it's always getting better at what we do we were told it would take some time I wasn't patient enough but we're getting there but we always want to do better at what we do and one of the things is working smarter not harder because there is always a ton of work one

074thing goes and another thing comes so when we look at organizational coherence and systemic Improvement really everything is ongoing and I'm going to go back and just kind of review some of the things that we've done in the past because if not I don't have a lot to say so but uh but just one of the big lifts we had student information system that's really the the brain of our operation like our server you know I remember the days and I see mrsos Mrs us back here attendance by hand grade books clip it on the door we don't have to do that anymore so we've progressed a lot over time so but those are the things that our our families don't see but those are things that are critical that we do every day we

075always look at getting better how can we make those systems work more efficiently how can we save time from our staff because we want them to be teaching not clipping the attendance on the door and putting their grades in a little green book that says great book on it so so that was a big lift for us um communication process you know I think we've done a great job in improving that the addition of Kelly Clark our Communications coordinator has been a big help just bringing one common theme to our district in our messaging the way we present ourselves via the Internet emails and just uh The Branding that she has created I think has really given us a big boost it gives us an identity we can be proud of where before you know

076what color purple is it well we really don't know but so we have three different variations but now we all are on the same page and our superintendent received a very prestigious award in being a communicator superintendent Communicator of the year so we've really worked hard on this area and I think I'd be remiss by not reminding all the things that we've done for that Transportation efficiency um a few years ago if you remember we changed the way we run our buses and I think it was at our last board meeting the the thousands a hundreds of thousands of miles we have saved by doing that because our goal wasn't just to save money it was to get our kids home at a decent time so they weren't riding that bus for over an hour

077which it did so we're very excited about that um that's just one of the things in different software things associated with net with Transportation as well so so there's some of the things that we want to look at our internal systems you know I'll mention eye observation you have no clue what that is but it's something we use with our staff to evaluate we want to make that better we're part of a Consortium we had little control over that we want to take control back and we're finally getting a chance this summer to do that so those are the big things that we want to make sure we can do is always work smarter because there's always going to be more work waiting for us and I still want to miss anything Mr Mr book

078Devine all right any questions so the uh I see we've got the shared time coordinator in here where does the shared time program show up in the in the Strategic plan the coordinator was only part of that we actually created the Strategic plan right but the the program itself where does that fall based on I don't think we specifically listed it at the time we created the plan that's something we're always working at and I think we've mentioned in our committee meetings is working at that school of financial services to partner with but uh yeah that's something that's always ongoing we're always trying to get better at as well this is a big part of what we do for those that don't know shared time we are able to employ teachers that work in our

079local Christian schools and we get to claim part of those ftes as our budget so we've had great relationships with Dutton Christian Byron Center Christian Byron Center Christian Schools Dutton Christian so it's been great great program so in fact I was just texting one of the principals here about snow day tomorrow so from our shared school so we work very well together sorry any anything else nope I think we're good just stay on Mr Hess if something says six months he can make it happen in less than that that's good so thank you all right thanks everyone that really uh concludes um our update as you can see it's a lot of uh positive things there and you know I will say that uh Mr Kingsbury has also been doing an outstanding job as it

080relates to continually uh updating our district-wide uh school safety plans operations Emergency Operations and so that is an ongoing piece there and uh to to the question of Mr Morris um when we created this I think our our big plan at that point was just to get a coordinator for shared time Services because we had uh two different administrators leaving their jobs here to go evaluate in private schools the Dynamics have rapidly changed within the last 12 months so that wasn't something that was put into our strategic plan is something that we can update because uh because of those changing Dynamics we have to be a little bit more Nimble so but that's just another example of things that may be outside of our strategic plan and whether we like it or not is a

081reality that we have to deal with so unless there are questions for me somebody's got to do it so I'm gonna do it as we approach the end of this one where when are we going to start sort of the next strategic planning process yes great question um I think we probably would look at uh sometime in the um either late fall or spring of uh late fall of 23 or spring of 24. there are still some things that I think we have to make a decision on are we going to do it or will we be able to do it between now and next school year or is this something that's going to have to be captured in a subsequent strategic plan and how do we want to engage the community in a process

082because I think now that we are getting closer to the end than towards the the beginning of the Strategic plan like a thousand people want to like do this and do this and do that and at some point we want to try to stay true to the hundreds of people who participated the first time in the 1800 surveys and the things that made this up uh and we want to try to do that and finish that to the best of our ability with Fidelity but also too we still have a lot of things that's initiated that we need to go back and put some effort to make it more refined to make it more systemic to to you know just to introduce it and then run off and say what's next what's next what's next

083we get to some organizational fatigue and and and we start to not do maybe some key things with quality so I'm thinking uh in the best case scenario it'll probably be late 23 to early 24. before we start the process additional questions all right thank you all right at this point in time we're going to move on to six which are discussion items we have 6A budget amendments with Mr Reese okay so we're looking at our first set of budget amendments for this fiscal year as well as looking at an Sr update um we did review this with our finance and operations committee um this past week and also the detailed documents are in your board packets but just at a big level this slide shows in the First Column is our actual audited numbers

084from this past fiscal year 2122 and that shows where we ended I'm pulling 1.1 million from our fund balance leaving us with 9 million at a 14.8 percent of expenditures so then the second column that's the current budget that we've been working from that the board adopted this past June so that we were estimating to pull two point just about 2.4 million from fund balance which would have left us at 10 percent of expenditures so with this updated amended budget that's the third column there we are trending and going in the right direction that has us looking now to pull about 630 000 from fund balance which would leave us 12.3 percent of expenditures at that level so our fund balance kind of board goal so to speak is to try to maintain a 13

085fund balance so you'll see that we're getting a little bit closer to that compared to how we started the year with this so the last column is the change the change from where our adopted budget to what we're looking at to implement after tonight's meeting so the revenues section so that asterisk by that 67 million 481 000 if you happen to print or your from your board packet prior to late this afternoon there is a change at the bottom so it says that right now it says this includes 4.5 almost 4.6 million in one-time funds the earlier version said 2.8 so as I was going through things I needed to make that correction so anyway if you printed a prior version it's updated now this is the actual version and we'll talk about that in

086the next coming slides but I thought it was important you spoke to this earlier with your question as well what about like these are one-time funds and we've invested a lot of money with these one-time funds and it is important that we look at that so I wanted to highlight how much is in our budget currently with one-time funds um then on the expenditure side what our first set of budget amendments typically does back in June when we adopt the budget we look at our existing staff what are the increases Etc look like when we've added the positions that we've added many of these positions we didn't know so we're estimating what the costs were Etc so this is really aligning the budget to what our actual costs are with the staff that we have

087in place now um as well as any other changes that have happened additional grants that have come so one thing when we started the budget we really didn't have the sr11t grant built in the budget yet things were still unknown so those are all factored in this budget here as well so the overall net difference in the revenues that 3.8 million swing in the right direction that encompasses changes with retirement the Esser and other Grant funds property taxes the property sale when we sold the piece of our property which is also one-time funds not included in that 4.5 that's additional and then we had a prior year expense refund that was a little bit more substantial and that's a one-time fund so we made improvements so we are looking to end the year a little

088bit better we will do one more budget amendment in June that will get us even hopefully a little bit closer where we think we'll end the year so this slide I was hoping to just kind of highlight what are those recurring grants that we can expect year over year and the one-time funding so on the left side those recurring grants these are more predictable we've had them year over year they're the title one the title two three and four are at risk funds and our idea special education funds these have been ongoing as long as like I can remember these are more predictable the variations that the amounts vary slightly depending on our student population but we can pretty much count on on these dollars on the right side are truly one-time funding and with

089the pandemic and these coveted funds we've seen some astronomical you know grants with these funds so in all we've been allocated 10 million dollars to use over four years and it started back in March of 2020 and funds must be spent by September of 2024. so in this 22-23 budget and and fiscal year sr2 we are planning to spend just about 000 with sr3 1.6 million and in sr11t 2 million so if we kind of look at each of those funding sources that we are going to be spending yet answer 2 is that first bucket and we spent about half of it last fiscal year and we're looking to spend the remainder of those funds in this fiscal year and then these are the categories and areas where we've spent in our planning to spend

090and finish those up this year it's in the areas of health and wellness and mental health supports professional development and that is that capturing kids hearts that Ms duberson spoke to earlier um air quality and HVAC upgrades as well as the bus fleet camera system that we put on our buses so the amount in here and the categories are over the two-year period so in all this is how we have spent and planned to finish spending these as are two dollars um at the end of this fiscal year then we had the sr3 Grant and the total allocation for the sr3 grant was 1 664 plus thousand dollars we spent just a portion of that in last fiscal year of 45 000 and the bulk of the remainder of this grant we're looking to expend

091that this year the remainder of 1.6 million and completing that Grant I am predicting by this year so this grant we um were able to hire our middle school and high school teacher interventionists provide tier one curriculum resources summer and after school programming a data warehouse system which that is enables us to disaggregate our student data to a broader and more deeper scope that we can actually make decisions moving forward with some of our subgroups mental health support Partnerships and then additional student support specialists at each building then the other Grant is with 11t and this total allocation was 3.8 million and with 11t the if you remember this is the grant that we can only spend on those allowable sub-populations so we're looking in this first year of spending about 2 million and then

092next year finishing it up with 1.8 million and with this grant we are um so this year we're funding our elementary teacher interventionists that we added then looking at next year as many of those positions that we're able to maintain will also be included next year um our Elementary classroom teachers we are looking to offset some of our general fund expenditures in this area because they are doing mtss in the classroom so we're looking to offsets a little bit of their costs which will help our general fund we are mandated to provide a certain level of Summer and after school programming so that's also built in here English language learner teacher resources translation services student support specialists at each building as many as we can um because in this year they're all being funded with

093sr3 so hoping next year we can maintain some more of those positions yet for year two and then looking at a psych intern speech pathologist and social worker then we have one more Grant coming so we have been approved but we do not have our allocation yet um and that the funds have to be spent by the end of this year so we have an estimated from what we've heard based on a per pupil funding so I'm estimating I put it in the budget of 242 000 but it does have to be spent by the end of this year we presented to the board earlier and our plan is to utilize this to also offset some of our elementary General Ed classroom teachers as they're doing mtss support So This truly then would be just

094to help to offset our general fund but it is built in the budget and that is it so what questions can I answer will you just remind me um you had mentioned that we were estimating about 10 million total in Esser funding was if I'm doing just some real basic math here not your math real basic math here it's looking like you have like about seven million ish accounted for on these sites is that three million that was spent before then okay and we thank you so on the website we do have like a one-page Esser document so it lists what we actually spent in 1920 and what grants we received that year also 2021 um and so we're going to look to update that and provide additional like gnome we had estimates for 2122

095but we know what that is now so we're going to update that document and put all of this on the website awesome thank you is the date that you have up there is that a hard stop date or do you expect that there will be extensions on any of those dollars we are hearing that there's an effort um across the country to push the feds to extending that uh We There are some districts that have way more money than what we have and I mean I realize 10 million sounds like a lot but I mean if you're talking about somebody who got some 70 80 million dollars so trying to spend that responsibly um in a way that is cognizant that it will disappear is the challenge so you'll see on one of the slides

096and whenever possible we had to stay within the bounds of what the what the grant would allow but you see where we did some things for air conditioning uh HVAC systems uh bus fleet cameras professional development anywhere that we could uh pay for some big one-time expenses uh that was allowable we did because we did want to set our stuff up for a huge Cliff of people hired with no hope of being able to keep some of these positions so there were some positions like I'll pick on let's say the School nurses we knew that that was in our plan moving forward that we wanted to uh add some support in that area and so those are maybe like priority positions that we keep even when Esser goes away some of these other positions we

097you know long term we want to do that too so very similar to if you recall when I first started we had about 10 custodial positions short starting the 2018 year in the fall we had several other positions that were cut in in lean years and we didn't reinvest so we kind of had a formula of a little bit of student growth a little bit of money from the uh the per pupil allowance going up each year a little bit of conservative spending and we can add some reinvest in some areas in the district so that was kind of the formula and we hope to replicate that to pick up some of these Esser funded positions but again I think it would be improper for me to say today that I feel comfortable that we

098will be able to absorb all of that I just don't see that in the cards and hopefully they do extend it but if they don't extend it I think we will have given it the old College try that we're trying to spend all of ours within the time allotted sorry I didn't mean to take up Jason I'm not sure if this is a question for you or Dr Martin or whomever um just looking back at the sr2 slide um it is a little jarring to see 14 000 for mental health supports versus you know hundreds of thousands for others so I'm going to guess that that's not the entirety that we spend on Mental Health supports just the portion that come from here so I just wanted to make sure you had a chance to

099somebody had a chance to sort of clarify and talk more about that because otherwise looking at this in black and white it seems awfully jarring yes no this is just specific to sr2 and it's specific to the sr2 portion that was the per pupil Equalization Grant um I recently saw a presentation um that a cohort from actually Lowell had done and put together and I forgot what they called the graph and if I can figure out and replicate it she did a phenomenal job um presenting this but it shows all the different grants since the start of covid the times that they're the length of them the amounts it's a phenomenal graph but um there were many grants and we covered so mental health supports in other areas this specific portion with the sr2 this

100the equalization portion of the grant we only used 14 000 from the specific Grant yeah and and I think that's an important point I know when I got here there was an issue where we had unfortunately a few uh kids who attempted or actually committed suicide and so we had already started down the path of putting some mental health supports in place we were calling it our SEL our social emotional learning program so we were already investing down that path which is another reason why you don't see that number as big because we already started Staffing to address some of those needs there and and this is just one bucket of that support okay so I think this is a big shock to our budget losing this money losing the support that it's brought to

101the district I think as much as we have to have the budget discussion we should also be talking about how we're going to modify our practices and still be able to support our kids so I just want to bring that up as a it's on my mind and I'm sure it's on many of the board members mind with this impact will result in absolutely and we've been discussing that as well and and the first slide when we looked at the recurring grants what does that look like how can we utilize we have seen over the last couple few years increases that have been made to the 31a at risk section as well as our special education with the what we are reimbursed from the state with that area has also increased so as we look

102holistically and that's one of the things in our strategic plan as looking at all of our different Grant sources what is our structure systematically across the board and and we're continuing to look at that and even more so how can we use existing monies that we know we can count on to support the system that we're building and we know that we can't necessarily keep every position but while we have them here really focusing on building that system and and the capacity in our staff and so then when we do have to reduce some that we're able to like really not lose a lot of ground well I know it's not good with our state funding as far as when we find out what we're actually going to get as you know as we all

103sit in limbo and start the year and wait to find out um certainly not ideal from a from a Financial persons aspect of finding this out are the grants the reoccurring grants that we get is What's the timing of those compared to is that lumped in all with that same state funding number or do you find those out at a specific time different always so the federal portion of the grants we find out um at different times it doesn't necessarily correlate with the same time we find out with state aid are at risk amount we will find out um when the state passes its budget as well as what they're going to the state will be reimbursing on the special education side but the idea portion is the federal side that comes a little bit

104later and and it varies like sometimes we get that it trying to thank special ed we usually get the idea allocation in June so we do get that one typically in time and title those amounts come we actually have seen some drops in those allocations based on our population so that has decreased a little bit okay thank you additional questions about full-time equivalent students we talked a bit about the shared teacher program and that there are some serious concerns about that decreasing our funding but can you speak to the School of Choice as far as how many School of Choice students do we have now versus in previous years or pre-covered and what do we project our School of Choice numbers to be over the next year so I'd have to come back to like

105be able to look up what those numbers are and we have like in some years past um done some presentations on that we haven't recently but we can ease I can easily get together what the numbers of our schools of choice are um and what we're projecting at at that we do every year do enrollment projections where we contract and work with an outside agency to cut who does this work for a living to look to see what does our enrollment look like and they factor in our schools of choice they factor in and really look at by grade level like what are we increasing or what are we losing and what's the birth rate and so all that's factored in as well so I have even my notes from when we just recently did

106that enrollment projection so I can follow up and get that information out for the board anything else thank you all right we're going to move on to 6B which is technology and internet service there we go uh the matter before you now is our internet connection we have uh two contracts that are expiring at the end of June um and we actually have three connections to the internet presently um that's a little atypical for a school district typically there's two one you know a Fail-Safe and redundant um resilient connections and the third one that we have in addition to at T and Spectrum which expire in June is one to Kent ISD and that's the most recent one that was established with the county-wide effort to connect all the districts back to Kent ISD to

107provide internet service among other things so we'll be looking to keep that connection and then um just one of the other two and the bids that came back Spectrum Charter is the low bid for for that connection so we'll be looking to renew a contract with them for three years and we would have that one along with the ISD connection and you can see the dollar amount there it's sixty three thousand dollars uh over the three-year term and um yeah that would be renewed then and that contract is eligible for e-rate reimbursement so we would on the back side see a 50 percent reimbursement of that sixty three thousand dollars um each year any questions regarding that a question about the reliability of the spectrum I think everyone in town knows that excuse me they're

108not reliable I think we all got the text message that they're expecting to be out tomorrow and obviously with our curriculum being very heavily based on the internet and all of our systems um if we're to eliminate the at T as a Fail-Safe how reliable is the Ken intermediate do they run on a completely separate system from Spectrum what is their plan for outages as we know they're going to be common yes um they are they are completely separate uh the connection back to the ISD goes to another service provider and the Spectrum one would be separate from that the current Spectrum line and service we have is very reliable it does travel over different infrastructure than what you get out to your house um so it is much more reliable that's 98 99 uptime

109we don't see any difference in the service from Spectrum or at T they're both very solid services has e-rate always been a 50 rebate uh e-rate is based on our free and reduced lunch percentage um so I don't know over time what our average is here Sarah but okay yes additional questions right we're good thank you got our high school weight training equipment okay good evening the uh the the bond 2020 moves forward uh the high school has been uh embarking on a list of improvements that they're looking to make and they're building using uh some of the funding that we're providing them through Furniture fixtures equipment flooring in a number of other areas this particular um the item we're bringing to you tonight is one that they have brought to us they would like

110to upgrade the weight training equipment at the high school weight training center this is a benefit not only to our athletic teams all of them use it but it's also a benefit to all of the physical education classes and this combined with a number of other improvements that they're making in that area definitely is a nice solicit large area Improvement to the building and the school this equipment was brought to us by coach Pennington and principal Martin and I will be very honest with you in reading this I have no idea what most of this equipment on this page is but I do trust both of them they're both very knowledgeable they brought it to us through a company named sorenex saurinex has provided weightlifting and equipment in weight rooms in quite a number of

111high schools throughout Michigan and in a couple of programs that coach Pennington and Bill Martin have been both involved in so we have that as a very high recommendation pricing for this came through a Consortium that we belong to one of a number of consortiums that we belong to so the pricing is definitely been bid and it's uh it actually lowered once we identified the Consortium that we we were in with them so we are recommending this and uh this did just went to the committee uh last week and we're definitely recommending this and we're looking to vote on it later any questions about the system or that I could look at this and say yeah that's a full arch with custom logo plate for I don't know Tim's got some questions and you're probably

112hoping yeah I just mainly a comment I did do some research on the company and as the equipment is a very good use of space it's very modular very safe I think that was a very they have a lot of safety features the it was impressive it was impressive as weight equipment can be [Laughter] I did the same actually all the reviews everything I had I'd saw on it as well it seemed like there was uh and they've been very very Cooperative with the process so it's been a good good experience all around great thank you before we move on to our board and superintendent reports I'd like to give a reminder at this moment that if you are planning on doing public comment we do ask that you fill out a card and get

113that to us back in the back of the room I think there's somebody back there to take your card for you um so that we have those before we start we're going to move on to 7A which is teaching and learning committee all right the teaching and learning committee uh meeting was a week and a half ago on Thursday and we opened at 7 32 a.m We started with Dr Diaz and Dr trober by sharing some information about the upcoming mid-year data report that will include the legislative requirements of 98b as well as general information regarding the mid-year progress of our students K-8 next we discussed the current progress of planning for summer programs across K-12 these opportunities are funded right now through a lesser 11 T funds which requires students participating to qualify under

114federally specified categories although the programming is not quite yet solidified the offerings will closely mirror those provided during summer 2022 and we plan to continue our partnership with the YMCA at the lower grade levels and provide opportunities for credit recovery for our secondary students our intermediate and Middle grades will also be offered summer learning opportunities Miss dubison provided information on esy which is extended school year which is different than summer learning for students with IEPs our IEP teams determine if a student would benefit from additional Educational Services during the summer to maintain skills learned or provide continuity of learning for students and again this is entirely separate from the district district-wide summer school offerings the possibility of applying for the state cahip Grant was considered this grant would provide for a health facility to be

115placed into one of our schools to support Health Care access for students and families and due to several reasons at this time we will not be pursuing that Grant Dr Diaz provided an update on the progress of planning at the high school in response to the TSI rating from the state of Michigan discussions and data review have been ongoing at the high school and a meeting to finalize the draft plan will take place or did take place on February 13. our ISD consultant will review the plan and support by applying for a small amount of grant funding if we believe the need is there to complete the present work the special education office has already completed and communicated a revision of the procedures for ensuring students taking alternate assessments have their scores accurately reflected in

116the state secure site which is the oea there was also a discussion around existing procedures for supporting students who have supported other students in dealing with trauma many reports are made anonymously through the okay to say platform but some students also report concerns directly for their peers to someone at the school and they may need help processing those challenges of their peers themselves all students of course have access to support services within the school and yet we will still be adding additional processes for following up with those students who have reported concerns for their peers as that can also result in a secondary trauma experience Miss DeVries provided us with a brief overview of the budget documents that were shared in detail tonight and Dr Martin provided an update on our sharetime service provision as

117well as concern brought up by a Community member regarding pfas in artificial turf products we also had two community members who shared their concerns regarding the district's textbook adoption policy and process our meeting was adjourned at 9 45 AM questions thank you we'll move on to 7B which is finance and operations committee thank you our finance and operations committee meeting started at 7 30 a.m Ms DeVries presented budget amendments to the committee and highlighted changes that will take place Mr Hess shared his recommendation for commissioning of the community center proposed fencing around Emmons Lake Elementary Stadium turf and weight room equipment at the existing CHS weight room Mr vuc Devine shared his recommendation for Contracting with internet service providers and additionally he provided an update on the progress of technology updates funded through the 2020

118Bond Mr Kingsbury gave an update on shared time and the transition to school Financial Services concerns raised from a Community member with the process used for raiding and awarding construction management contract for the 2020 Bond work was also discussed Dr schrober and Dr Diaz provided an overview from the teaching and learning committee the committee also discussed the request to add an additional Law Firm that had been raised during January's regular board meeting because of the size and lack of public school experience it was decided not to move forward out of committee with that request Dr Martin finished with a superintendent update and we adjourned at 9 25 am any questions for that committee thank you we will move on to additional board reports when I got here today I'll start I did receive the adopt

119a road cleanup so if you could just make note I will send an email too but the first dates are April 29th to May 7th that we will look to coordinate sometime during that time frame to make that work and I will send an email with the additional dates on that we were also looking to schedule a board Workshop date and we will put on the agenda the curriculum or I'm sorry committee meeting as as far as structure or reporting out on that okay you're you're referring to the video recording of the Committees right minutes or however that can be a discussion for that okay thank you yep all right any other board reports all right we will move on to superintendent report thank you um last week on Wednesday I was able to provide

120a quick uh presentation for the Caledonia Area Chamber group and I was joined I believe it was myself Chief Seiler president Lindsay from the village Lieutenant roon as well as supervisor Harrison I believe they have put out a public uh video of that presentation for all those who want to watch it and for all those who want to get in a more in-depth version of that presentation live you can join me uh tomorrow morning at seven o'clock at sprinkles uh where we will have the first uh five dialogue with docs with one of the primary things that we'll be discussing is the upcoming 2023 Bond board members I put some information uh in the memo about a potential land swap of some land that we own with land that's owned by the township for calplex

121we will be working with Township officials to see if this is something feasible for us to do I believe I provided a letter in a previous memo to the board that was sent to the township supervisor and is being shared with the Township board members within the last week so just wanted to bring that back to your attention and hopefully we'll start to make some decisions real soon as something that should be a win-win for the township cysa and our school Community as well um other things just a few notes of congratulations we have some Vex state qualifiers so we're excited to announce that too uh that two high school and four Middle School uh robotics teams will be representing our district at the Vex robotic state tournament at Kettering University so we'd like to

122congratulate those students for their work we also have some high school students who took first place in the regional competition for Odyssey of the mind this win will qualify them for a state tournament on March 18th we have about 44 new students who were inducted into the National Junior Honor Society at Duncan Lake last week and last but not least we have six young ladies who qualified for the Michigan FFA competition from our high school FFA program so a lot of good news with our students who are doing well across the board again if you didn't get a chance to look on the district website or see the information put out we will begin our first of a series of dialogue with Doc uh meetings so you can join us tomorrow morning at sprinkles there's

123about four other dates and times listed on the website we'll also be doing one for the senior center coming up real soon and um I think that's all I have for tonight that's it for now thank you we will go on to public comment if you haven't turned in those cards please make sure they're turned in at this time first we will have Judy followed by Walter followed by Pat wait as we taught in a trailer park where the tennis courts are now um I'm here on behalf of the cea today I've been a member of the executive board probably for about 18 years our teachers uh the things that we want to highlight this week is our teachers at Caledonia High School MNS Cadillac and Paris Ridge showed great adaptability last week when they

124did not have power the creative ways our teachers dealt with this I saw a picture of a teacher writing on the on the window so the kids could see it because there was no light um was was amazing um at Duncan Lake Middle School which happens to be my favorite um our student council leader Mrs balot and Mrs Kane worked amazingly hard with their students and they did a great Fall Fest week in conjunction with the Winterfest um the kids put on a great program um also our FFA team qualified for State under the lead of Stacy Bowden yeah Bowden we have Bowman and Bowden it gets confusing to me uh the dlms and high school creative writing teams also led by Jesse belote competed in their Regional Tournament over the weekend and they took

125fourth fifth and Seventh Place in their divisions out of 17 team totals 11 of the 16 writers qualified for the state tournament in May uh at craft Stacy young Craig and Jeremy geardis's classes created Valentine informations for each member of the class students were able to read kind positive notes from 26 to 27 classmates because this is their first year without a valentine party it's kind of traumatic um they were so excited to read each one and it was kind of a great way to celebrate kindness and Duncan Lake choir teacher Aaron goodick will be traveling with the 7th and 8th grade choirs to sing the national anthem at the Griffiths game on Friday the 24th of February in addition the students in Mr goodx class had the opportunity to work with the Collision from

126MSU as they prepare for the msvma district Coral festival and also they had when um okay I'm not gonna remember the name now what is it when the last musical was in town he one of the uh Grand Rapids Broadway people came and worked with them and we could watch it in our classrooms as well through the thing and it was a really cool thing so great way to bring Arts to the kids that's it thank you very much to all of you next we have Walter followed by Pat after that will be Brandon good evening Walter bujak 6639 Thornapple River Drive your Kent County Commissioner from District 21. I come before you as an advocate of the board I'm asking all of you to take note and consider taking action to deliver a policy

127as to how to deal with prop 3 issues as they will no doubt eventually arise within your District by establishing a policy you will be proactive rather than reactive you'll become leaders rather than followers and you will establish a model for other school districts to follow why establish the policy for prop 3 the answer is simple it's the right thing to do by carefully crafting a policy you will mitigate your liability and protect yourselves from costly lawsuits the basis for your policy other than protecting the district from the legal ramifications of your decisions and actions should be parental rights and why parental rights because prop 3 as a Michigan State constitutional amendment is poorly written but written in such a way as to exclude parental notification as a requirement please keep in mind that the

128Michigan state constitution is preceded by the Constitution of the United States which you have all been sworn to uphold the Supreme Court ruling confirmed in Washington versus gluckberg 521 of U.S 702 in 1997. says that the 14th Amendment due process clause protects the rights of parents to direct the care upbringing and education of their children this is exactly why you should be writing a procedure that includes informing parents of student requests to facilitate abortion rights and or gender modification and gender transformation under the current prop 3 Amendment you a school board administrators are required by the state Michigan Constitution to facilitate the requests of any individual coming to you with these requests for so-called health benefits now protected by the Michigan state constitution please make parental rights your highest priority and please consult with your

129attorneys and craft a policy that includes parental rights notification it's the right thing to do thank you thank you oh okay so mark sorry I thought the Way It Was Written it was going the other way around so I apologize for that so please make note that Mark will have Pat's time as well that yielding minutes worked and that's okay um my name is Mark Hardy I'm a Caledonia resident and I'm a concerned Citizen and I want to speak to the board tonight about the public comment portion at last month's board meeting as I observed in previous board meetings as in October the public has always been instructed to speak into the microphone and because it's being recorded and to address the board as a whole please don't direct comments to individual board members don't

130call out individual staff or students not a time to deal with political agenda or election information as I noted in the uh November 9th special meeting that there was no instruction given other than instruction to address the board no personal issues or issues of students on the November 21st board meeting no instructions just to public comment the December 22nd regular board meeting again no instructions as to public comment I did now finally realize that on the back of your comment card or collection card it does State the instructions I had never seen that before I apologize um but as I listen to the comments on January 16th there were three people that were called at that time the second person spoke to what seemed to be a personal attack that person ranted about a newly

131elected individual who she named X which was very discreet she continued to share about her displeasure of some of the foia requests she was blocked how she was blocked on social media how she had screenshots proving re-elected board members had police reports on Stolen campaign signs and there were several other social media topics that she seemed to feel that she wanted to talk about these comments were in no way related to school board business they should not have been allowed there's no stated rules at these previous three board meetings so I'm not sure why she was able to continue with that dialogue why was this person allowed to talk for seven minutes yielding topics elsewhere that didn't involve any school business related to any agenda on the on the board policy or policy of the

132district my question is is the public comment section of this a bashing platform I suggest not I suggest that the social media personal blogs sub Stacks letters to the editors sun and news and other individual platforms should apply here not at a board meeting as much as I support freedom of speech and the First Amendment right I object to this Behavior it should have been stopped it should not have continued for over seven minutes it seemed personally directed abusive and irrelevant to school business the president has the power to call to order and object such Behavior I realize that uh you got a big job here I was a little overwhelmed by all the slides and numbers and I know this is kind of a mute point and I'm almost embarrassed to talk about it

133but I I really think that as a board you should evaluate and improve how the public comment is uh addressed and to not allow this to happen again you know that the last election proved some things there was uh people elected and there was some change and people wanted change and if you're going to continue to be aboard that the people want to support you're going to have to respect the Rules of Order and not be able to allow this kind of thing to happen and I know going forward there's going to be a bond issue and I think it'd just be a good time to reevaluate the trust that needs to appear from this board no politics should enter this school board meeting not to continue and not to go on these are the

134types of things that hurt your credibility the board people want to trust you all and when this sort of things happen you lose accountability so I just want to make note of that thank you for all for your time thank you but this time I'll ask Brandon then James then Mallory at last month's board meeting um there was a board member that I think had a speech I'm going to call it an attack on another board member that I didn't really it didn't sit well with me um one thing that I think this board member forgot to take into consideration is that Mr Morris was just re-elected by the majority of this community and he is doing exactly what this community wants him to do and doing it in the regards of what he should

135be doing so I thought the attack was really out of line and going back to the policy manual from the Caledonia schools the board of education's intent is to provide an environment that Fosters the respect and dignity of each person so kind of piggybacking on what Mark just said I don't know why it was allowed to go on you as the president have the right or have the ability to end it and I just thought it was really extremely disrespectful and I think Mr Morris is doing a great job and I think he should get more recognition for that thank you next we have James followed by Mallory and then Robert two words for me tonight compassion and sex compassion comes first and last I know a song everyone needs compassion it's true life is

136hard everyone is insecure everyone messes up everyone has struggles that we don't see everyone needs compassion second word sex uality is Central to Who We Are sex can also make fools of us or drive us to despair struggles with our sexuality make us insecure and with sex as with every aspect of life everyone messes up many arguments in school districts around the country pertain to sex parents feel rightly that they bear primary responsibility for the moral formation of their children they don't want to give that responsibility up to anyone else middle and high school students are adolescents adolescents are children who are becoming adults discovering sexuality is part of that it's not easy it's especially hard for young people whose reality is not what their social media or their parents were hoping for both straight

137kids and queer kids sometimes act out inappropriately they may have to be called to account but they also need compassion I have sat in these meetings and heard harsh things said about lgbtq kids when they have messed up I've never heard harsh thing said about straight kids who act out so maybe that doesn't happen in Caledonia some people say harsh things about Educators who are just trying to make sure our kids know that they're not Freaks and they're not alone some people call Compassion indoctrination or grooming some people want to ban books that recognize and accept the existence of lgbtq people this is organized bullying it's mean and wrong and I hope that this board will be United in resisting all such efforts adults also screw up sometimes the adults who do the harshest moralizing

138and accusing of others are themselves acting out sexually sometimes they get exposed they may have to be called to account but they also need compassion we don't know their struggles I hope we know we cannot take them seriously if they advocate for policies that would bully our young people who have struggles with sexuality but harsh blaming and shaming is not the way to deal with these adults either everyone needs compassion a love that's never failing everyone if you as trustees and we as community members will remember that we might avoid some conflicts that could otherwise arise and compassion could transform some that do arise into occasions for deeper understanding thank you [Applause] Mallory followed by Robert and then Angela hello again and thank you for being up here um Mallory Walsh representing tonight as the

139chair of the 2023 supplemental Bond also known in the community as friends of Caledonia Community Schools I am serving alongside my Committee of leaders which include Crystal say do Monique Brennan and then also Kyle Clement who served alongside many of you for six years we want to thank you all because this is a courageous step in this climate this financial climate um and you're making a brave decision to deliver on the original plan that the Caledonia voters said yes to um just this morning I was at EB with a grandmother of a child of special needs at Dutton who was brought to tears because the need for actual hallways that are sufficient for those children conversely this afternoon I was in a Baseball Softball Association meeting where we are trying to figure out at calplex

140how we can host the 700 youth that are signed up for baseball and softball alongside all the other sports that happened there trying to plan out our celebratory opening day and how parking is even going to be possible for that one League so that said we all know the need for this supplemental bond to go through is is there um and hopefully everyone in this room and everyone in Caledonia knows that it can happen all without raising the tax rate so um that said I just wanted to thank you because myself and the other three folks who are helping lead this charge are working tirelessly on this effort but I know many of you are doing things behind the scenes and I appreciate that a lot um so with that said I just wanted to

141invite everyone in this room this flyer will be on the side if you'd like to get involved with our efforts to vote Yes on May 2nd or through your absentee ballot we would love to get you involved so thank you all thank you next is Robert followed by Angela and then Amy good evening a little of this will be redundant but so be it uh George Washington said the following we hold self-evident that government officials lawyers and judges are not the creators of our rights our creator endowed these rights to We the People our constitution recognizes this restraining the power of the federal government and preserving the liberty of the people this gets to the heart of the fact that our country was based on the principle of subsidiarity and that means what the lowest

142social organization can accomplish by their own initiative and efforts should not be taken from them by a higher authority and deprive it of its competence the family unit is the most basic social institution and higher government authorities such as Public School Systems should not have the right to co-opt that responsibility when their parents are able to do so the school board has the duty to support parents in their desire to educate their children in a way that's consistent with their wishes in the recent School Board elections our community echoed this Desire by electing all three new board members precisely because they believe this principle and responsibility is fundamental how'd the sitting board members and some Educators react to the voting voice of the Caledonia community you allowed a board member to denigrate a voter endorsed

143returning board member and then stripped him of his Treasurer position uh you voted yourselves all the other positions so that these three got not no positions of authority the president of the board allowed a Community member and Educators to fear Monger about the motives of these newest members some of whom outright slandered a new member for more than seven minutes without interruption rather than limiting their comments to board and school business similar to what we heard before uh the President also accusatorily preached to the new members about speaking with one voice and I'd like to add that the very reason we have seven members is to allow for many points of views to be heard that's the point of the board your own policy on board member ethics states that the board will encourage the

144free expression of opinion by all board members and seek systematic Communications between the board and staff and all elements of the community those of us who attend in this meeting to congratulate the new members were shocked by the obvious orchestrated Beatdown of these same new members I find it sad that a school board that should exhibit the highest standards of ethical Behavior should act so disrespectively to its own members and Community elected him with that said I pray this division ends and that the original four board members can get past their politics and biases to work together with the three new members to ensure educational Excellence for all students at Caledonia schools thank you next we have Angela followed by Amy hello representative regas here I'm actually here to offer some a legislative update from

145Lansing regarding um on Thursday we are going to vote on Senate Bill 12 which is the um pertaining to the third grade reading Law I know that's been a Hot Topic in our communities and I just want to offer um a little bit of information on that and also I would like to leave my phone number at the end because I do want to hear from my constituents if anyone has any concerns or any further information or insights about the district regarding this bill I'm absolutely happy and to take those calls so the um Senate Bill 12 this is amending the revised school code removing the mandatory retention requirement for third grade reading Law put forth previously and there is their support it's pretty heated I'm just going to say this that we've got one

146side saying that no we we absolutely do not want this and then we have the other side saying that we do so I feel that I am not in a position to make educated decision on this bill and I would like to hear from the Educators in our community so that's why I'm here and then also sorry this is not my phone my phone died so this is actually my staff's phone so sorry about the delay on that so and um obviously you know with the shooting with MSU last week it was very um a very uh traumatic experience to go through again in Michigan going through um a school shooting so um I just have a statement to read if that's okay um the violence that unfolded at Michigan State University was horrifying and

147it shook all of us as we gather information to try to understand what took place I'm particular interest in and hearing about what could have been a done to prevent this type of death and destruction one thing is clear we must put Solutions on the table as how we can prevent this from other happening again and give our students a sense of safety back and I'm committed to that in fact the Michigan house is already taking action to address specific problems identified in the wake of the 2021 school shooting at Oxford High School we recently introduced a bipartisan plan to strengthen safety at Michigan Schools and support the mental health needs of students the plan resulted in months of in-depth work by the bipartisan school safety task force the house form last year in response

148to Oxford school shooting after meeting and Gathering input from teachers administrators parents law enforcement mental health professionals and other experts the task force released its final recommendations in the report last December our plan of actions can contained in house bills 4088-4100 is designed to organize and unified approach to school safety and student mental health with communication training personnel and more the package addresses specific problems sorry I'm going to go over identified with a task force establish the school safety and Mental Health commission dedicate staff to Key Safety and mental health a plan for safety I know that you mentioned okay to say this goes a little bit farther and putting a ID cards directly on the school access um and also improve responses to school safety crisis a comprehensive training program will be established for

149school resource officers and staff in all Michigan schools the plan would also create uniform definitions for school safety terms to Foster better Communications during emergencies and to add active shooter drills even more actors shoot active shooter drills to ensure at least one drill includes local law enforcement and another is conducted between classes this obviously addresses K-12 and we will continue to explore additional ways to improve access to Mental Health Services Statewide I personally am a supporter of parental rights so I am not in in big support of bringing mental health and putting that directly on the school systems I think that you know you guys have enough to do right now and um but just to identify those those areas so if anyone has any more questions for me please call my office my phone

150number is 517-373-1403 I apologize over my time thank you you're fine thank you Amy hello to you all um congratulations to the new board members and to you Tim for being reelected I wanted to also say that what I experienced here last month I found appalling it was really um it was really disheartening to see that the board did this so I'm not going to continue on that because I have another matter that was brought to me and asked to address this night from another parent I wish I could say that this that I was shocked to hear this but unfortunately this type of information coming from our schools just seems to be par for the course these days I was driving in the car with my 12 and 17 year olds yesterday and we

151were just talking about school and different things and my 12 year old is sixth grader at craft intermediate tells us that these mental health checkups they are doing monthly that they are doing them monthly at the school apparently the counselor is sending a Google form asking the kids how they are doing and how they are feeling it sounds like a positive step towards making sure our kiddos are feeling and doing okay and I hope that it does help some fine help find some of the kids that may be struggling before they make a decision that affects or even ends their life however the story about mental health check-in didn't end there apparently the form also asks the students their pronouns you know that my 12 year old's response response was her words I hate that

152they ask us that if they can't tell what I am by looking at me they are the ones with the problem I am so tired of all of that she's tired of it she's 12 in sixth grade and it and she's tired of it why would you subject every every single student to this pronoun Insanity when the majority of them do not even want anything to do with it why does that question need to be directly asked why can't Sally who thinks she's Billy just be given the space to do that without subjecting every sixth grader in the school the simple question is there is there anything you are struggling with opens that door to not only the gender confused child but the one who is getting bullied the one who is hungry because there

153isn't enough food at home and the one who feels like they have no friends why are we allowing our 12 year olds who do not allow who who we do not allow to drink Drive get tattoos watch R-rated movies or even just go to the mall on chaperoned the freedom and in information that can be physically something they simply are not while I feel the initial intent of this form was to be used in a positive light are Caledonia School administrators have allowed it to to go entirely too far two years ago we had issues with the high school teachers having students introduce themselves in their pronouns in front of everyone in the class and the outrage of parents and students had that shut down immediately however we now find out that the same conversations

154are being had in our intermediate and middle schools it is simply unacceptable the vast majority of students do not want to deal with this Insanity stop making the majority feel uncomfortable for the sake of a few please Focus your energy on those that are struggling with any issue that comes to light but do not make my child feel awkward or frankly annoyed by your woke agenda anymore thank you [Applause] at this time we're going to move on to our nine which is our action items we have nine a schools of choice resolution I move that the board approved the resolutions to opt out of Section 105 opt out of section 105c and participate in the Kent ISD collaborative schools of choice program for the 2023-24 school year I have a second by Brittany are there

155any questions on that and I have roll call please Robert Garcia yes Randall usage yes Morris yes Nichols yes they do yes white yes Aries onto 9B building commissioning Cal Community Center I move that the board approved the superintendent to enter into a contract with f-i-s-e-c-x for the service of commissioning at the Cal Community Center as recommended Bart second by Tim are there any other questions on this a roll call please Barbara Garcia yes Randall yes esich yes Morris yes Nichols yes they do yes white yes motion carries 9C fencing for Emmons Lake Elementary I move that up the board approved the superintendent to enter into a contract with fencing consultants for the provision and installation of fencing at Emmons Lake Elementary School as recommended we have a second second by John any other questions

156I have roll call please Robert Garcia yes Randall yes you said yes Morris yes Nichols yes say do yes white yes motion carries 9d State Stadium turf I move that the board approved the superintendent to enter into a contract with AstroTurf for the provision and installation of Synthetic Turf as recommended I have a second support any questions oh you've got a question I just wanted to I saw Mr Hess step up here too so just want to make sure we can clarify um I know there's been Community questions about pfas and I believe we have a letter um from the the intended vendor that states they do not have pfos so uh I'm going to talk about that a little bit before we continue on please not a problem it's why I stepped up one

157of the two reasons I stepped up um yes a Community member has raised the question regarding a pfas content in Synthetic Turf and the unfortunate news is that up until two three years ago 100 percent of that Synthetic Turf contained pfas either in a pfos chemical of which there are 32 they can test for right now there is contained in both the manufacturing process as a lubricant and in the raw materials that make Synthetic Turf this was a surprise to us it is it was kind of a great unknown something hiding out there and we do appreciate the citizen bringing that to our attention our selected vendor AstroTurf has provided a statement that is fairly unequivocal and very clear that they specifically starting in 2020 tested for and 32 pfas chemicals in both their raw

158materials and in their manufacturing process and they eliminated them 100 percent that's not to say in any way sheer perform that there's not additional pfos that may be identified because there's apparently new ones popping up all the time that they're discovering in in nature and in the environment and that is unfortunate but nonetheless AstroTurf has gone out of their way to supply the statement and gone out of their way to test their products and be able to make this statement that says we do not include pfas we've also included a letter that at the recommendation of the same citizen it's in the packet that we would like to send out to the Kent County ISD School Board the village of Caledonia the Kent County Board of Commissioners the Kent County Health Department and the chartered

159Township of Caledonia identifying that we are putting in an artificial turf field and that our selected vendor has provided this statement we'll send them a copy of it with it that they do not contain pfas and that this is not a product that will leech pfos into the environment and while this is not an endorsement of AstroTurf nor request of one by any of their offices rather a possibility for them to encourage others to be aware of and to recommend or indoor support other companies in taking care to eliminate pfos from their products so that's just a portion of of what has come of that and we are proud that we I'll be frank accidentally selected a vendor that does not use pfas that was not first among our our selection criteria there were a

160lot of other things that came into it but we are very lucky to have come into that and we're very proud of that that we were lucky and we uh we have selected a vendor without a pfos containment in their product to add to that I would also like to say that there were questions about pfos testing we did work with Arch environmental who has done a lot of the variety of testing and they currently run our asbestos testing program as well as a few other things bfast testing is available at 600 per sample four to six excuse me 15 to 20 day turnaround on on testing on testing samples in a product like Turf they would require a minimum of four to six samples from different levels of the product and different aspects of

161the product so six hundred dollars per sample times four or six um and that they can sample water runoff a little more difficult to capture um what running on what water running off the field might contain and the sourcing of that is a little bit more difficult to determine but it is something that they will make available and can make available if we decide to do that at any point in time our Scotland Yard turf was produced and installed 10 years ago 12 years ago and we are looking to replace that in the coming Bond as a potential project that would be something that we would definitely be recommending a non-pfos product for as well just to make sure that we are in stewardship of our environment as we proceed with this type of a

162product thank you go ahead Jason one more question and that is at what point in time can we put the field rendering up for the public because it is gorgeous as soon as you approve this I have more of a comment than a question really but I just wanted to say thank you for your transparency and all of that you know admitting that it really wasn't on your search criteria but that when it was brought to you that you went through the necessary steps and even drafting a letter to the various local government agencies so thank you very much for that I appreciate it welcome thank you okay can I confirm too that there's no pfas in the installation materials or processes correct yeah the the the base is Stone and sand um and the

163the field is the field and we don't know of anything else in the process that could contain so any additional questions thank you I appreciate you going down this road with us and I will coordinate with you later for information all right Stadium turfs we've already do you have every okay all right thank you roll call please Robert Garcia yes Randall yes esich yes Morris yes Nichols yes they do yes white yes motion carries is it posted yet dude [Laughter] work on it tomorrow 9e High School weight uh training equipment I move that the board approved the district to enter in to a purchase agreement with sorenex for the supply and installation of weight training equipment second thank you any additional questions on that for Mr Hess um I do have just a couple questions

164the current weight room equipment what is the age how long have we had it and what is the life expectancy on this new equipment we're going to purchase uh the equipment that's in there has a variety of Ages from upwards of 12 to 15 years to less than one or two I know that um actually I take that back it's not less than one or two because a lot of the equipment that coach Pennington brought in when he started was used was acquired through a a reseller so I would say that the equipment that's there has an average age probably 10 plus years I do not know the average lifespan I know that um we have talked about different repairs to the equipment that exists a lot of the cables have been replaced several times

165a lot of the pin structures and the bars that hold the pins in place see I do know more about weightless equipment than I thought it's embarrassing uh anyway a lot of that stuff has been replaced on the existing equipment um that we have the existing equipment will in all likelihood be offered up for sale where it's appropriate to do so if it's equipment that has been repaired multiple times we'll recommend obviously demolition or getting rid of it um without reselling it due to the liability my other question is regarding the indoor turf that they're planning to put adjacent to that will that be done by AstroTurf will that be done through sorenax and can we be assured that that does not contain pfas also yeah no uh we can't be assured of that it's

166an indoor product so it's very very different it is something that is specifically meant to be used indoors so I feel pretty comfortable that it doesn't contain harmful chemicals and and and and such and that the glue is the same glue that we use to adhere carpeting so I feel more confident about that because it's an indoor specific product it's being acquired through a different company anything additional right could we please have roll call Robert Garcia yes Randall yes he said she asks Morris yes Nichols yes they do yes white yes motion carries 9f budget amendments I move that the board approved the 2022-2023 budget amendment resolution I have a second second any further discussion I have real call please Barbara Garcia yes Randall yes esich yes Morris yes Nichols yes sadieu yes white yes

167motion carries thank you to all of you thank you to all of our community members I just need a motion to adjourn please motion second all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed all right thank you