001good evening everyone we're going to call to order this caledonia community schools board of education meeting for august 8th if you would all please rise for the pledge is just a couple of quick housekeeping things thank you for all of you being here tonight please make sure if you are speaking for public comment or for any of us up here at the head table that your microphone is on and that we can hear you so that the recording does pick up all voices try to stop somebody if you can't hear them though please if you are here and going to speak for public comment we do ask that you fill out one of these cards and it does ask for your personal information on there that is to follow up for contact as as needed
002you're allowed three minutes to speak on a topic and at that time we ask that you please do address your comments to the board and the board is a full or as a whole i'm sorry um no personnel issues with that and we will then provide follow-up as appropriate at this time we are going to have roll calls oh i'm sorry is there a reason why the board member comments i have it in front of me as number eight board member kevin we have board reports it's under 7c i'm sorry i thought you said public comments nope i'm good okay thank you could we please have roll call asper here barbara garcia here he such here morris here how you do here white here thank you we move on to number four our consent agenda
003we have the july 25th 2022 minutes in the august 2022 person or personnel report i move that the board of education approved the consent agenda as presented have a second thank you are there any corrections questions on those reports no we have roll call please asper yes barbara garcia yes research morris yes say do yes white yes motion carries we will go to five reports and information we have expanding enhancing emotional health with mrs dubison thank you as you are familiar communicating throughout the course of the year and even prior years regarding this grant through the department of health and human services this year we were in collaboration with arbor circle awarded that grant and are excited about that new partnership the reason it's being presented to you tonight is that the grant requires that
004we have a public uh documentation of the grant and partnership so it needs to appear either on a board agenda or in the minutes so we just wanted to make sure that we met that requirement of the grant we are excited to like i said uh partner with arbor circle and are currently looking for a provider to continue just to help us meet the mental health needs of our of our students thank you very much do we have any questions at this time tim can you remind us how long the grant is the initial grant was awarded uh through the end of september but excuse me arbor circle has consistently been renewed for those grants and so that will be renewed and we will continue to communicate that with the board thank you any additional
005questions on that grant thank you very much at this time we'll move to our sixth or discussion items we have the student handbooks with ms prakowski yes on august 1st at the curriculum and learning committee we reviewed the student handbook changes that were made as an annual review of student handbooks so we'll go through those rather quickly as we these have already been approved this was through the policy committee from march 29th and just an update and revision on long-term suspension on the hearings the changes that were made on the 29th of march were that suspensions up to five days are appealed to the principal with the decision final suspensions over five days are appealed to the superintendent's decision final suspensions over 10 days can be appealed up to the board of education level and
006all appeals must be received within two days of the suspension the recommended change was being uh to reflect current practice of superintendent discipline hearing with appeal to the board as shown in the linked versions again this was part of policy back in march so it's just more of a reminder and we also had a change to the non-public transfer credits so the last sentence in the policy was removed and that was just to align with current policy or sorry with current practice both here and around the region for high schools so those changes will be reflected in the high school handbook in terms of the middle school there were no policy recommendations this year there was just a lot of cleanup of language to better align with policy and with the high school so that
007we had some consistency across the board so those are linked there and those were in the board report again no policy change is just more verbage and at craft and the elementaries and early childhood center there were no policy recommendations or changes other than that we have been working to try to be a lot more consistent across the board with all practices and all the elementaries while there are nuances to each building most of the practices and protocols uh you know are consistent or we're working toward that any questions thank you very much this time we'll go to 6b which is high school social studies we have dr trober and ms perkowski i think i'll take this on so at the last curriculum and learning committee we talked about the ongoing process to adopt new
008social studies resources starting back in the early part of the year early part of the calendar year we went through four different vendors invited them in and asked that they supply us with materials from that we chose two uh two to go forward the pilot um and from the pilots we then selected uh one uh eventual uh resource the process in more full if you can put that site up there mrs zoett the social studies team consists of those different departments at the end of that slide and i do have some teachers with me representing the social studies department to talk through the process from their lens but you see essentially what we try to do is make sure that we try to fit the resource with the grade level content expectations which are the
009standards that are adapted by the state the next slide shows not only the timeline specifically within the last adoption process as well and so you see reference there different years associated with aspects or components of social studies and you see that some of the resources it's been quite some time since we've officially adopted anything at the board level concerning of course we want to make sure that we are up to date with what we are teaching and so again i'll have representatives from the social studies department come on up and as they do know that the timeline is up there on the top of that slide in addition to what's not noted up there is the timeline that we had for review and the materials for the most part have been on display since june
01021 with the exception of two materials and those have since been incorporated into the into the display the timeline was there therefore lengthened to fit the make to fit the time period which we have referenced in the past according to our ongoing processes so team i'm going to come on up here and i'll have the social studies team introduce themselves and talk through what they went through as a part of the pilot process and what they saw from the students as well hello my name is patience hule i am one of the social studies teacher here at chs so first of all thank you for having us and letting us kind of come talk to you today about the process to give you a little background as we spoke last week when we bought books
011in 2008 i was a second year teacher and world history is what we went through this was the process for that was literally we're going to sit in a classroom our whole department was there we had two book reps come in we they gave us their material it was a very quick like here's the options and within 24 hours we kind of had to select what one we were going with so it was very limited if you want to even call that a you know process so that was kind of the last experience so we were very very appreciative to the involvement that our whole department got to be a part moving through this resource and obviously you can see it's been a bit since we've had resources so we've been really on our own
012kind of just piecemealing and spending an awful lot of time making sure that the resources that we were finding whether it's online or other book resources did meet our content standards so the opportunity to get a new resource department-wide to get us all um more cohesive as well we were really excited about that um so i'll let mrs naraki talk a little too a bit about the process itself hi i'm mrs naraki gina naraki i teach social studies at the high school i'll be going into my 25th year this coming school year and i really appreciated the process that we went through there in the past i can say that we never had dedicated time during the school day so that really showed us that how important the process was um that we could all
013get together during the day um to go through that textbook you know navigating through all the textbooks and seeing which ones kind of narrowing them down and the fact that it was you know we had a very structured agenda so um in the past i'm going to be perfectly honest and say that the process was not so structured and you know we often did that process through our time after school so we really appreciate that my name is jenny yonkman i've been teaching at caledonia since 2009 and i'm a lifelong resident and current resident i want to add just the process that we went through recently with the four resources so we were able to work with the isd which had not been done before and the isd was able to help us guide the
014teachers through the four resources from the four resources then we were able to narrow it down from two as a social studies team as a social studies team then we were able to take those two resources and actually use them in our classroom and see how it worked with students and we also were able to get student feedback which had not been done in the past from there we were then able to collaborate as a team and say out of the two resources that we narrowed it down where we had as a social studies team and the decision was unanimous and just for perspective we geographically are not all together in the building we will be next year so we are not every day able to quickly speak with one another on how the process
015is going so to come back as a team and be unanimous is where we ended up on one resource and that was our process from there but this time we were able to actually bring it into the classroom and actually teach lessons which had not been done in the past that's kind of how the process uh went for us do you guys have any questions it was a structured uh approach can you document on how you evaluate walk through the yep so let in conjunction with the isd consultant they walked us through a process they've used in the past process they use currently but essentially after every week we were able to get feedback from not only teachers but also the students in response to the lessons and or resources that were utilized so is
016that a document what could be supplied is there a document there is yeah and i believe that the questions that were noted as a part of that um were actually a part of the word packet the curriculum curriculum and learning um committee meeting packet we did get that information yes i said i apologize um so when you were evaluating this how many publishers were looked at initially there were four from the four we narrowed down the two and with those two we piloted and then pursued the one that we recommended with savvis what was the deciding that it was unanimous yeah that's i'll let the teachers speak to that well for the students themselves um they were unanimous in pickings of us as well and um so they are very honest when they're giving their
017opinions about things so but i really appreciated their feedback because they are ultimately they're the ones that are going to be using the textbooks um they for some of us they really like the interactive components and um i think because a lot of the questions were more relevant for them like the essential questions so for me i was piloting the world history book and we were currently on the cold war so the essential question for them was how should we handle conflict so it you know even though the topic might be something historical the questions were relevant to their lives so one thing for me as a teacher what i appreciated about the textbook were the primary sources because those are very important and oftentimes it takes a lot of time to look for those
018primary sources and look for good ones so i appreciated that they seemed to have a really good set for the cold war and it was something that the kids also found very interesting it was on popular culture and it talked about things like mcdonald's opening up in the soviet union it talked about um different bands um like popular bands at the time and i think it was like pink floyd um ellis cooper and how the soviet union were trying to ban um the soviet union from being able to hear western music and um another topic was on the hockey rivalry so i just think it had a lot of things that really interested the kids so i think that helped to sway their opinion i'd like to kind of add to a little bit with
019that so all the extras that sabas was able to provide so when we did create our rubric which is what was i think provided and that was what we answered each week and that's what we use to kind of go through and narrow it to the two um it's not just the book we there's so much more now that goes into resources that we use all the time the accessibility of the service book just links right into our google classroom so like for us that was a very simple process i didn't do it with my students that piece of it just because we i didn't want to do that part you did and it seemed pretty easy so that's one thing i know moving forward we were looking for is how accessible can we make
020this moving forward in the digital age another thing that i really appreciated was when i asked the book rep if she could send me the michigan content standards she was able to do that for i just asked for world history and us history because of the two classes that i taught um and it was right there so it did help me kind of it provided a road map if you will to what we do teach and where i can find it how i do that so that was very very convenient yeah any other not really a question but just wanted to say thank you again for coming on on monday morning very early and and into the curriculum meeting so i just wanted to say thank you again it was nice it was refreshing to
021come in and go through textbooks and to see the new textbooks and i can understand why why the kids and and why you're looking forward to them when you you know realize what you've been working with um and so you know it was it was a pleasure to go through that but we appreciate you coming to committee meetings the information and the time that you've spent helping to inform on the process as well as your thoughts on it thank you all thank you i have a couple more questions for mr trump oh i'm sorry okay so in uh in the finance and operations committee you had some questions about the book numbers uh numbers that were on the order i just want to make sure that that is the case and not just number from
022the books that was sent from savis that it matches with buying viewed in the public review process yeah so specifically you're talking about the isbn numbers and the isbn numbers are what references a particular book we have then supplied with the isbn numbers i have checked the isbn numbers and the isbns that were on display are in fact what we will be purchasing i know after the the meeting i looked and there were or that we're not lining up with manifest so the information that i've been uh forwarded and indeed does match so i can i can go back and i can show you that if you'd like i'm just going off what was provided to the board in last month's packet so i want to make sure we're getting what we we buy and
023that we didn't view books that weren't purchased no in fact there was uh there was a book that was i think going to be adopted by savis in their upcoming revisions that they go through as a part of their own company but we are not pursuing that text we're pursuing the text that was previously aligned to what we had seen to what we had previewed to what we are comfortable with so i'm not sure if that's what you are referencing or not i'm referencing what was provided in the the board packet which had the quote i had the numbers so so just to bring some clarity to that i think or at least i felt like we addressed it that it was brought up that there was a question about is the isbn number consistent
024to what we're ordering since that board packet we did go back to confirm that what we have out for display is what we order and that was and that also coincided to the same time that new books that were missing we got those two books we put those out for display and in actual transparency we decided to extend the process for the community or the board or anyone who felt like coming to view those textbooks we extended that process so that they had ample time to come in and view that so we do acknowledge that for whatever reason that was not consistent at one board meeting but i want to make it clear that uh since you brought that to our attention we did go to make sure that the numbers are consistent that was
025brought up at the curriculum committee meeting and we discussed that those numbers are consistent what we expect to order and we extended the time frame to make sure that anyone who wanted to come out to view that could and i would just say if there is a disruption in any way that we are not comfortable then we would of course treat that like anything else we'd go back out we'd make sure that we got what we were comfortable with what do you mean by that so if in fact we attempted to order a resource and we were not favorable toward that resource we would retract that and make sure we got the information that we were comfortable with there's uh i i have some concern about the publisher and responsive learning advisory board members there's
026controversial individuals on there billions adding spillings is a bit of a well she she mentions that color blindness should be ignored there's a bit of a racial concern he's an activist in inner field and just concerned that that type of philosophy is reaching our children concerned as as a board member who represents the community and just want to get your let me maybe address that in you i think a lot of the things that i've been hearing uh regarding uh dr gloria lassler last lads and billings and the affiliation with crt i think in a lot of ways i'm a little concerned that maybe it's not fully informed there's there's some content out there people choose to read the primary source such as her book and her writings itself instead of maybe just something that's
027put on social media but but certainly not gone through the rigors of peer-reviewed by researchers considered as valid i think if you go through that process if you read some of her texts in a lot of cases what she is talking about quite honestly is equity and raising the question on historically questioning why we see maybe underperformance for african-american students but regardless of whether she sits on the board and i think that the big concern that i think we need to pay attention to sitting on the board and actually writing the text that we're asking the board to consider it's two different things she is not i'm not aware that she's the author of the sabbath textbook the other thing is we have heard a lot of concerns from a few community members but a
028lot of those concerns were not specific to the actual things in the text they were more broad-based and more general so i want to say it's important for us to be mindful to acknowledge to investigate and see if there are some things that are questionable in terms of we're asking to adopt and maybe separating out the two because if someone wants to say well i disagree with caledonia community schools because one person sit on the board and i don't like their opinion i don't think that they should view the entire school in the school system as a whole as inappropriate because they just person who may or may not write the curriculum or teach our students in the class i do feel comfortable with what teachers have gone through and have vetted you know when
029you look at our teachers collectively you're talking 75 plus years of experience teaching this content i do feel that our teachers have the professional expertise that if they see something regardless of new or past curriculum that if they felt that it was inappropriate they would either one make an informed decision and let their administrator or curriculum department know so address that omit that change that we have a policy that has long held in our district in terms of if there is questionable content and a parent or student felt like they needed something different we can create an alternative assignment but i do feel pretty comfortable that the people who are actually using the resources did a good and thorough job vetting it i think they are probably elegant enough to understand what appropriate for kids
030at the level that they instruct that and if we find something that is inappropriate i think we have to deal with it but i'm not sure if if i make the same leap of faith or or distrust that a member who sat on the board but was not the actual author doesn't have the expertise to at least sit on the board and give their opinion to a company and that becomes old impetus to adopt or not adopt a curriculum because i think when you look at that any textbook that is broad based and cover a substantial topic or period of time is likely going to have dozens if not authors and i think we'll be in a situation where we'll never adopt a textbook because we adopted a math curriculum they have multiple authors and
031we've had people question that math science technology it's all related to marxism the question becomes in that book specifically where the objectionable point should not be based on i disagree because i don't like this person sitting on that board for their personal or political view the content from what we receive i didn't see much objection to the content more objection based on the person sitting on the board and i think for the board us as educators we all need to be mindful of what is the content that we're exposing our kids to making a decision on something that weighty because my concern and i'm sorry for getting long-winded but my concern would be that we have allowed our teachers or put them through the challenge of spending a lot of extra time trying to search
032critical primary sources to teach from when you have multiple teachers dealing with hundreds of kids and the time frame that it takes to do that in a sound methodical way which you also allow is the opportunity for a bad actor if you will all in our teachers bad actors but you allow the opportunity for them to teach things that we would quite honestly not approve of potentially because they're working with materials that hasn't been vetted since 1990. so they have no choice but to go out and find secondary materials and in a lot of cases i can say from a research perspective people go to the first thing the first couple hits on the internet and said i did my research but from a truly academic standpoint in a lot of cases that is not
033high quality research and our children need to know the difference but how is that much different than what we have now where we this we don't have any in this program we we have no oversight on where they go on the links other than maybe npr msnbc is doing the fact checking and is that going to change it can change without us even knowing it so i'm just concerned about about what we're putting in front of our kids and that it matches with with the community i i would say that that first of all just in understanding and and eons ago being a teacher myself is as far as where a kid can go on their internet or something that is endless and we see that all the time as far as the teacher following
034a lesson plan that should be based on the standards that they're required to teach through the state of michigan and then finding curricular resources and content that matches up to those standards part of that is the quite honestly it's the art form of teaching and and a good teacher i don't care what textbook you adopt a good teacher is going to look at some of this and say that is spot on and it gave me the resources i need and it was done in a way that the the kids could grasp the content because the most important thing is the learning a good teacher would also look at something and say you know what i like this book but for this particular lesson this particular unit it is shallow it doesn't hit the points that
035we need it doesn't bring enough outs outside resources and let me go and find that let me consult with a colleague and find the resources so that i can provide those but but all of that becomes the expertise of the the classroom instructor but i think what we're trying to do is give our teachers more tools to make their job a little bit easier a little bit more accessible bring our curricular in this particular area advance it at least two in some cases three decades forward so that they don't spend an inordinate amount of time trying to go out and find content because they're working with a textbook from the 90s or a textbook from the 2000s i do think that i don't care who write a textbook i do think there's going to be
036a time where someone finds something like maybe there should be something better but i think that's the art of teaching and that's where i have faith and trust that our teachers either a make the right decision if it is questionable for parent or student or teacher there's a process in place to which they can select not to teach this because we feel it's not appropriate and move on but but in terms of if a teacher doesn't present it as part of their lesson plan but a kid decide to go the extra effort because they agree or disagree or want to find an alternate you whether it's through saabas or whether it's through just going to the world of the internet we want the opportunity with more relevant materials to help our kids be critical thinkers
037to try to discern what is a good resource what is opinion versus fact based what is a primary resource and help and give the teachers the tools they need to guide those conversations in in a critical way when you look at what our students and what our teachers have been able to do whether it's past or the current our teachers our district have done a phenomenal job academically moving the ball forward and we haven't always given them the support they need i think in this case this has given them more tools so that they can be more effective and continue to do the good job the fact that we have four teachers who have been doing this for decades i think that's a pretty valid resource in itself to really critically look at some of
038this if this is a good curriculum i'm sorry to get a little passionate but a long time ago i used to be a curriculum director do that again i think it's great that we do have a curriculum i i want that structure and i want that flexibility that that makes us teaching the curriculum flexible with the teacher and and and i appreciate their discretion in a way that reflects the community too i i just when you say that people like the the advisory board they're there for a reason and they're not there because they're not influencing some of this text so um be naive not to think that so if i could just jump in and say one thing um the objective stated up there on that slide up there is the process that we
039started with the process are you finished with and what i mean by that is we invited the isd in because they have a bigger lens than what we do in caledonia and so they have a what i would term as a best practices process and the the initial step they let us through was not looking at the vendors themselves or the resources it was a matter of going back and reacquainting ourselves with what the grade level content expectations are the standards and so we facilitate the resource always by the standard and so if there's a depth of knowledge regarding the standards the teachers are able to cross reference and check what's appropriate what isn't and so i have of i've a great deal of confidence in their expertise and them them knowing the instructional practices
040and the standards to the great they need to to really assess that resource and facilitate the information necessary to get across what it is that the content expectations expect thank you are there other questions but i would just add at the curriculum and learning um committee meeting we did have an opportunity to hear from the teachers as well at that time and they did talk i was going to mention kind of exactly what you said that they were able to review the the content standards and expectations for the state and match them up really clearly and directly with the curriculum that was offered in this resource and so that gives us good faith in the consistency that our students are going to be receiving in the education that they're going to be receiving and they
041felt that this resource was also when we pushed on this you know as free from bias as one can expect and i think their commitment to that was actually very very obvious in the fact that they were looking for the primary sources in particular so to me that shows that they were all very committed to that practice and teaching those critical thinking skills i wanted to thank you for that because that showed that that dedication to what you were doing and the commitment you're making to our students so thank you i think with all boards you know the boards aren't put in place because they're all knowledgeable about everything we weren't elected to these positions because of our experience in picking curriculum that's why we have our experts our teachers our administration that have been
042through this and you go through this process you know what your standards are you you you very carefully clearly went through this i look around the room at teachers that are currently working and retired and i've sat with probably most all of them at some point in time with all of my children and i trust our staff to do what is right all of my kids were very well prepared leaving high school to go on to their next level there's nothing that i can say that wouldn't wouldn't put me in that space of trust with them i trust if the fact that they come along curriculum that they're not comfortable with or a section they're not comfortable with that they know you know who to go to that they weed out what they need to
043weed out and i appreciate the time and the expertise that you all put into this and thank you very much for this process and i look forward to having new books in front of our kids if this curriculum passes so thank you at this time we're going to move on to 6c which is our dutton elementary bid pack 2 with mr hess good evening last week it's going to be two weeks ago we brought to you the project start for our cal community center and this evening we are bringing to you hopefully our project start continuation let's start digging a hole in the ground for the new elementary school i'll start with saying if you did print this there is a math error in on the form um if you are using the online version
044it is correct i would point out that on page two the total project estimated cost was printed at three thirty million five hundred and forty nine thousand nine hundred eighty four is actually thirty million 299 448 so we start this presentation with saving 250 thousand dollars all right on to the uh on to the project here bid pack one uh passed the board of education back in march that was securing the scheduling and delivery of the precast concrete construction system a bid opening for bid pack 2 which had excellent bid response i would point out as a note that there are many school districts in the state that have had zero bid responses um and we had a very long bid opening because we had excellent bid responses in every category there were no single
045bidders so it's a great sign that we had a good project in place we are presenting this budget as to be honest i believe a high estimate i say that because we are still evaluating prices we are still evaluating long-term bid results and we are still evaluating what we call value engineering that is the art of taking every item and looking at it and saying how can we do this faster how can we do it cheaper how can we do it better one of the cases i would present is that we've replaced a number of the a great number of the copper wiring with aluminum wiring aluminum is currently one half the price of copper it's also perfectly standard aluminum wiring is perfectly acceptable it's perfectly up to code it just happens to be a
046significant amount cheaper so we're actively looking at reducing the number that you see here another example would be in the memo from plant moran number one we're carrying a million dollars for the completion of the caledonia township water main our portion of that will not be a million dollars however at this point we don't know if the other investors are on board and we certainly need water to open a school so we're carrying more of that cost than we will end up eventually paying so there are some things in here that are are riding a bit high on the dollar figure and there are actively every day every hour things that are coming in cheaper and better so that's where we are again the total cost right now is approximately 30 million 299 448 the
047budget for this project was 21 million so we are yes significantly over budget it was something we talked about today and we're sharing some information and we're looking forward to sharing with you in september and october steel costs alone which accounts for a great deal of more than just structural construction it accounts for wiring it accounts for plumbing it accounts for you name it everything is involved with steel you know the ac the air conditioning ducting the heating ducting it's all steel and that is up currently i believe i printed that out at 96.5 percent from 21 2021 to 2010 to 2022 second quarter that's a huge increase so at this point we're looking at the fact that we're about 40 over budget and we're glad for it we're glad we made the pivot away
048from steel construction even though it delayed us we definitely have saved a lot of money in just construction and availability of construction materials and with that are there any questions microphone did you did you have something you need to dan well i was going to add but i'll maybe wait to see what the questions are okay tim did you so what are what are we doing to keep the costs down with uh runaway inflation and material cost skyrackening at this point we are locking in contracts um once we say yes here the chrisman will move to lock in these contracts most of them are carrying anywhere from seven day to 15 15 and 30 day expirations um and they're holding them through this this week so that we can lock these contracts in we lock
049these contracts in these are our prices if we have the benefit of some how and suddenly we prices start going down we also benefit from that christman is structuring their their contracts to take advantage of savings that any anywhere we can what about moving forward are there any costs that we got to be concerned about increasing after bid packs approved we hope not there is no bid pack three there are a few minor addendums out there that will change costs a little bit but at this point these are our major fixed costs at this point really and truthfully from this number i believe it can only go down hold on to that one yeah that's where we are jason where did we land on the driveways for don this plan this bid includes an entrance
050from 76th street and an entrance from paterson avenue it includes both part of the cost increase the driveway from the school to 76th street is included here at 376 thousand dollars and that does not include the wetland mitigation and the bridging and the widening of 76th street so there's allowances in here for that we hope they're too high maybe maybe a question for sarah but where are we getting this extra nine million dollars from well that is the topic for september and october's board meetings we are going to bring to you all of the remaining projects in the bond we have a fair amount that are ready that are are unbid undone undesigned and untouched um we're going to bring all of that to you and present it to you and talk about making some
051decisions of what we're going to do and what we're not going to do these are the the two stellar projects of this bond these were the biggies right up front in bold letters the cal community center and the new dutton elementary so we're going to look at everything else and uh with a new light to come september and talk about what we want to do and that if i can interject is why i was grabbing for the mic and talking to some uh superintendent colleagues across the state um when we see a price escalation and five or ten percent range maybe we can do some things to bring the cost in line when you are in an inflationary environment which i'm sure people understand in terms of gas and food and you are in a
052supply chain issue that are pushing prices north of 25 to 40 percent what i'm seeing is a lot of districts are saying there's no cute math that you can do to this so you have to make a conscious choice of what you're going to do without whether that's in that project or other projects you're going to have to make a conscious choice if you're going to go out to your community at some other point for things that you hold of value but you cannot do so it will take us some time one um to pull that together and look at it but we want we feel like at this point we do hope that it gets better but um with the delays that we've had that didn't allow us to lock in things and the
053timelines as well as the cost got extended and regardless of how we feel when we pass a bond we have a definitive timeline in which the entire project must be completed so the longer we wait the more we run at risk of not completing it as required when you go out and bond for a project so what i'm hearing from superintendents is several of them have just said we were renovating four schools and we're only going to renovate two because you can't get cute and save 40 this is what you're not going to do moving forward so we're going to have to have some interesting conversations in a few months we want to allow some of the process to to get the shovels in the ground because we don't want to have some other unforeseen
054surprises out there that could come up and so trying to speculate or guess at it today will be truly wild-eyed speculation that will be better informed in a couple months our biggest speculation right now is that getting it in the ground once we get the hole in the ground and we know the ground is good and we know the ground is safe to move on we're a lot more comfortable with our pricing and moving and locking in and then just from an overall bond program with this bid pack included and the community where does that leave us from overall bond i don't have that number i don't or maybe what's remaining i guess i i don't have that number and that's going to be part of our research and work uh to do to figure
055out what that's going to look like and but we felt that of everything that we are aware of the biggest two projects we think that we can handle but it means that a lot of other projects that were smaller but things that we value we'll we'll have to really think about can we do it and if so how and what does that look like moving forward so as we get a little deeper into this we'll have a better idea of what the potential extra monies are so i appreciate cautious optimism matt i am also a cautiously optimistic person um but i'm also hearing we can't do cautiously optimistic math and so i will be clear like i'm concerned about digging a hole and getting going and i understand that we need that information and i'm
056also concerned about what that means if we do dig that hole and we do run into other problems and now we've already spent that money like what do we do then not a worst case scenario person but like nope the good news is is that what's in here is prepared for finding an old farm structure for finding an old oil tank for finding no not for finding jimmy hopper that would be really bad um you know that type of thing we're prepared to find something okay everyone to the best of our knowledge looking back at the records of that property there should be nothing there there should be nothing um and i've worked on couple projects where there should have been nothing and there was something so okay we're cautiously optimistic but we're prepared for
057that that's in here okay and if i can add to that i think part of our uh expression to the board is that right now we need to focus on these two projects in these two projects only moving with the mindset that all other projects may not make the cut and maybe we just do these two projects to the best of our ability so we're other things that we think crossing our fingers cautiously optimistic maybe there's an extra couple hundred thousand or a couple million and we can start prioritizing what we can do with what's available but we feel pretty confident that we can move forward with these two if we're operating under the understanding that everything else will have to be put on hold until we have a better idea so that at least
058we can finish these two and not even really focus and maybe not mislead people to think oh we're going to do this and this and this it could be in the worst case scenario these are the only two we can do and that's it that would be the worst case scenario and we think that there's money enough to do that in the worst case scenario if that helps it does thank you and my follow-up question to that will be i'm sure you've run through a number of if then scenarios and so i am curious about um what is your like most realistic number where you think this is going to land nope i don't have one i i have i have some good cautious optimism but there are way too many variables right now for
059me to hold on to any kind of good number and share it sorry coming out of last the last board meeting we did indicate that all all other projects are on hold unless we unless we've committed to it and we have it in progress so we're just wrapping up a number of things that we just had open they were smaller ones we're finishing those and clearing them out and nothing else starts at this point i guess to your point brittany it's it's what does all this look like what are we going to give up to be able to finish these two bond projects that visions to make so any additional questions for mr hess or dr martin on this all right thank you we'll let you just scoot right into the 2324 school bus purchase
060okay um yes that is 2023 2024. we normally approach this subject in march however as we look at the replacement cycle we are currently recommending the purchase of three new 2023 77 passenger buses at hundred and 127 six dollars each this is a significant increase over the price that we paid for the 22 buses that we are just getting in delivery now the purchase of these three buses will continue to bring the bus up to fleet up the fleet up to date and maintain a safe efficient and reliable fleet for transporting our students all three major manufacturers thomas international and bluebird have indicated additional price increases at five percent at quarterly intervals um over the next two quarters so october 1st and what looks like december 1st are telegraphed out in head for five percent
061increases and we're looking at the potential um at least thomas has shared with us that there are two more five percent increases coming in the spring so at this point if we can get these buses on order now not paid for just on order they will be delivered in june or july of 2023 so about it you know a little under a year from now um we will save just about 39 200 um against our purchase later on in the year they are cancelable up to up to about march 15th and we will be very aware of where we stand financially and react accordingly before that time so that we can you know either cancel the order altogether or lower it or change it do so do whatever we have to do there was a
062question in the years past we have purchased quite a few lease buses that have come off of lease we buy them used about a year old they're in excellent condition because of these cost increases for new that also translates into new leases there are almost zero leased buses available for sale on the used market this year so that that well that availability has dried up from our vendors so we don't have that option i wish we did two quick things what are the ages of the buses that we will be retiring then uh they will be 13 and 14 years old by that time 14 years old part of me got you and this is money that has been uh earmarked correct within the budget sarah that was this is actually slightly above slightly above
063over over the uh the budget we have right now that's why we're going to be watching that situation very closely but we'd like to get three on order just in case but march is the date to cancel bye yes and if i can add a little bit last week talking to another superintendent who is in the saint we were lamenting because their vendor told them to expect between 5 and 15. in increasing in that that case he was looking at up to 30 000 per bus additionally so he's actually going through the same process we are saying we need to at least get our order in early and try to lock in that price it is it is a wild inflationary period that in some cases is exacerbated by the limited availability of parts and
064other things to steal to get the buses so it's a challenge jason can you remind me what the budget was for the buses 300 okay there is some information to be added that will update the current fleet statistics um and we will have that for when this goes to vote next month we'll have that out in advance so just from a budgetary standpoint are we did we have some already for this coming year and this is going to hit that next year's budget right this is the 23 24 budget do we have a 22 23 budget for buses and that's what's being delivered that's what's going on okay delivered in july okay so that went on this budget okay last budget of this budget and just to follow up as with before when we purchased
065these buses you talked about ways that we could make some money back off of the buses that we were getting rid of is that is a 13 or 14 year old bus possible to get money out of it you get a couple grand you know we're still looking at better options there is a interesting market for them in south america we just need to hook up with the right people to sell most of the time they're simply bought for the transmission and everything else goes to the grinder so okay tim okay so just to be clear too we talked about in committee about the price we're not going to pay more obviously but if the price goes down for some reason correct worst case scenario if the price goes down and they want to charge
066us this we have until march to cancel it so jason has another question uh last one from me is there any sort of deposit that's going to be required to hold these okay zero down i sound like a car dealer there yeah right are you zero down 12 months are you selling these or what anything else great thank you very much that'll be back in september okay perfect thank you at this time i'm going to offer a quick reminder if anyone is signing up for a public comment to please have these cards turned in back in the corner there and we'll get those to follow our board and superintendent reports we will move to 7a curriculum and learning committee jason the curriculum and learning committee met on august 1st 2022 at 7 30 a.m ms
067burkowski provided an overview of the student handbook policy changes for each building from the march 2022 policy committee meeting dr troger and teacher representatives from the high school social studies department provided an overview of the curriculum review process the pilot of different curriculum options student feedback and their recommendation to the board for a vote at the august 8 2022 board meeting aka this meeting again thank you teachers for your early arrival on monday morning ms dubison provided an overview of the e3 grant defined as a program located in a school or on school grounds that provides on-site comprehensive mental health services from mild to moderate severity of need it includes referrals tracking and follow-up throughout the year with signed agreements with the host school and or local school district and arbor circle these services will
068be available beginning this fall in caledonia dr martin and mr kingsbury shared updates from the finance and operations committee which will meet on august 4th the meeting adjourned at 905 the next curriculum learning committee meeting will be held on september 13 2022 at 7 30 a.m thank you are there any questions for that committee we'll move on to finance and operations committee tim thank you finance and operations committee meeting was held on august 4th 2022 the meeting was called order at 7 32 with two members from the public present mr hess presented the dutton elementary bid pack 2 bid opening was was held on july 7 2022 followed by a period of post bid interviews negotiation discussion and value engineering commitments seeking to align the project closer to the stated budget any of the bids
069submitted carried a 15 or 30 day expiration however all vendors have agreed to hold proposals through the board of education meeting this monday today brisbane construction plant marine cressa and district administration are recommending the motion to approve chrisman construction to enter into contracts for the project as they are finalized in the post-bid consideration estimated construction cost for bid back bid pack 2 is 26 million 384 000 bid pack 1 approved by the board on march 21 2022 for the precast concrete structural components of the project have an approved cost of twenty six million seven hundred and sixty eight thousand six hundred dollars in this project there are one million two hundred and thirty eight seven hundred twenty four reserve dollars for contingency leading the total project estimated cost to be thirty million two hundred ninety
070nine thousand four hundred and forty four dollars remaining bond work will be just discussed in the september october board meeting time frame an update on current district property was discussed as well as the potential to purchase a piece of property adjacent to one of our schools was brought up for discussion with the committee mr has presented the 23 2324 school bus purchase proposal that was going to be to the board a little earlier than usual as prices to continue to rise for school buses and the lead times to acquire is much longer than we have seen it will be discussed at this monday which is today wage enhancements to the transportation contract were discussed in response to the market and the challenge in not only acquiring but maintaining our bus drivers this perkaus d and
071dr trober provided an update from the curriculum and learning committee and a time of discussion ensued dr martin finished up the superintendent up with the superintendent update the meeting adjourned at 8 47 a.m the next finance and operations committee is scheduled for thursday september 8th at 7 30 thank you are there any questions for that committee all right and do we have anything for board reports i'll just say the the as from a board member's perspective the the curriculum process review for for me seemed a bit difficult um having to drive in to view the textbooks uh was difficult to be able to give it a full review i think having the the links to the supplemental web-based material would have been nice to have earlier i think if the publishers are going to push
072back on this they have to understand that this creates a bit of concern to board members especially in light of what uh what may be in the curriculum or may not be in the curriculum so i just wanted to share my opinion and thoughts with my fellow trustees or maybe an improvement in the process moving forward thank you anybody else here i do appreciate that we were given away based on talking to dr can you put pull pull your microphone down just a hair thank you sorry sorry i realized that the publishers took a leap of faith because we could have done whatever we wanted with that information there's copyrights for a reason i do appreciate the extra effort everyone made jason i just wanted to make a point of clarification that maybe is a
073topic that we have to address now in policy committee because our policy states that only the student textbooks would be for review not the teacher editions which was what the links provided so we went above and beyond our policy by having the teacher editions available so i just maybe that's a conversation for the policy committee but um again i just wanted to point we did go above and beyond the policy and the things that were more held back were just those online teacher editions so all right thank you um just so the board is aware the adapter oh clean up is finished for the summer so we're all good there and then please write down on your calendars for thursday august 25th which is our football concession night got that daryl all right superintendent report
074yes thank you um for the parents in the audience and for everyone we are getting close to that time first day of school uh is august 23rd so we you know our staff is getting very busy trying to get ready for our students our staff will start returning for during the week of august 15th so that is actually next week for various level of orientations if they are new teachers or new to our district or professional development thanks to our teachers we were able to negotiate a contract with two additional pd days on the front end that's been kind of something that we've been working towards because we want to make sure that we invest in our teachers and give them the time to do everything they need to to get ready and maybe a
075little less rush than in the past so we're looking forward to our teachers and our students coming back over the next couple weeks parents we have a various uh schedules varying schedules in terms of open houses that will begin the week of the 15th many of them will be on thursday the 18th but please look and visit our website or contact your child's building for the specifics on the open house opportunities for your child as we get prepared and this weekend i think i probably saw about seven or eight news articles from across the country just the impending shortages that we see and so kudos to our hr department our building administrators our curriculum department because we have a lot of parts but quite honestly we're in pretty good shape i think part of that
076is we worked hard to to create a fair contract with with our teaching staff to make sure that they are paid competitively even though we weren't required we did step up and provide additional pay for all of our hourly workers as well working with the transportation department to make sure that they have competitive compensation and so right now i think i've heard that we're about two bus drivers short as of today still two weeks out so believe it or not that's in pretty good shape some of the reports that we're seeing around the region and around the country staffing levels we are in pretty good shape i think we still have a little bit more work to do hiring a few teachers but two weeks out i'm feeling pretty good considering the challenges we're seeing
077but you know we're not done there's more work to do i also want to say thank you to miss perkowski for those who are unaware she will be leaving us moving on to a new school district we could not find a better person to hire right before the actual pandemic hit and she led us through with grace with positive spirit and attitude that was infectious she has been an outstanding mentor to a lot of our building administrators um and the this was clearly an opportunity that that she could not turn down but we just wanted to officially uh or publicly say thank you for serving our district so well over the past two and a half years and guiding us through some very challenging tumultuous times as it relates to how to educate and educate
078well during a pandemic so with that being said that concludes my comments for this evening oh i was going to give mr hess another opportunity for good news thank you i apologize i'd like to steal some of the good news here and there uh last friday this past friday we had final final occupancy inspections for both duncan lake and craft meadows and those projects are officially closed with the state of michigan [Applause] so that is great news thank you and thank you very much for being here with us over the last two plus years we do wish you all the best and we appreciate the time that you put in and we hope that you don't have anything to deal with like we've dealt with for the last couple years here so we do wish
079you the best thank you all right at this point in time we are going to move on to our public comment section all cards should be turned in at that time you do have the three minutes there will be a timer that starts for that i'm gonna start with cheryl you did have to leave so i will follow up with her individually to make sure if there was anything we could address janet good evening my name is janet thatcher and my family lives here in caledonia first of all i want to take a moment to personally thank all the board members and the administrators that are present i'm probably more than most understand the challenges in serving in education currently i want to thank each and every one of you for the time and the
080effort you put forth for the students in this community so thank you um i also know that there is some concern about the current curriculum and i want to offer some insight about some things including the topic of diversity equity and inclusion if you accept the idea that public education should amongst other things prepare young people for the future for future employment in the general economy and i suggest that we all stop viewing de dei in a negative manner and understand the concept better why because it's firmly embedded in our corporate world thriving growing companies have figured out a long time ago that diversity in the company's employment practices is necessary for economic reasons you cannot appeal to a diverse customer base if your staff is from a narrow demographic background do you want proof
081of this consider five u.s based companies that currently exist walmart amazon apple cvs and exxon these companies collectively employ over 4 million people and generate 1.7 trillion in annual revenue there's one thing that each of these companies have in common with each other and thousands of other companies in this country all of them have active diversity equity and inclusion programs and continually monitor dei metrics many of our students are going to enter the corporate world when they graduate from caledonia with companies that will not tolerate an employee being dismissive of dei's importance students can learn this concept now or they can learn it in their working years but in one way or another they will encounter it thank you thank you next i have bob and chris good evening everybody for more than a month
082my wife and i have used your public review process to evaluate the proposed savas curriculum on january 20th we gave our excuse me july 20th we gave the board a detailed written review of significant problems with information bias accuracy and pushing students to become social activists long before they've got enough material to do it we also told you that sava's ceo has stated and quote culturally responsive learning must be woven into everything we do the curriculum we build the pd we provide and so forth so culturally responsive learning is formed out of crt and advanced by glory lads and billings as you mentioned right the author of crt in education and she just recently hosted an event called or was a provider of a seminar called 2022 crt summer school every day crt and k-12
083education so i mean honestly if we want to embrace it that's fine as long as everybody owns up to it and we know what we're getting into she obviously says we should that's fine we just can't say that we don't have crt in our school and yet put it into our school she and other like-minded advocates of race and gender theory are on the culturally responsive advisory board for savas which the ceo said they were going to use to try to infuse in everything that they did so it's hard to believe that it doesn't make its way into the curriculum we've been trying to initiate open and honest discussions about this and what it means for our teachers our students in the community last week at a public review committee meeting board member isaac claimed
084that criticism that kirkland was politically motivated since we are the ones who presented criticism of this content she was talking about us and she doesn't know anything about us or what our motivations are you're the one who made it political by saying this and we deserve an apology we didn't do this tedious work because we had political agenda or enjoyed dissension among our community i hate doing this stuff that's not what i enjoy doing we did it because we felt the moral responsibility to ensure that our students are taught free from the racist indoctrination my son experienced by a former caledonia teacher who happens to be in this room also at a last week's meeting the superintendent one of the administrators and the same board member claimed that any debate on the content of the
085curriculum was somehow attacking teachers this is can't be further from the truth we appreciate everything they've done to evaluate the curriculum and you know we're glad that they're engaged in it uh this this was basically pointed at both us and sitting board member morris it's unacceptable understand anyone who claims a simple disagreement over critical school issues rather than teachers that we're attacking teachers that's politically motivated in itself our children graduated from caledonia we know they're great teachers here we want to ensure that our teachers get the best curriculum possible and they have the best chance for successfully educating our students without indoctrination providing updated learning materials that are user friendly for teachers and students alike is an awesome goal and the teachers are best to assess this so we have no issues with that but
086if i were a teacher i'd be upset to find out the administration was only give me curriculum and fuse with racist ideologies so all the board members only one board member has expressed any interest in talking to us we're always available to answer your questions and for now we request that you still vote no on this material until so you can find material that doesn't have this in it that's okay now we both were listed on there a gentleman who is running for school board and is therefore seeking the board and teachers votes has apparently sent you a critique of our review his letter is full of assumptions and lies i guess based on the belief that he can read our minds he also makes straw man arguments claiming we meant something that we did
087not and then argues against his made-up premise for a man who claimed just last month at this board meeting to be so educated he should be aware that this is very poor debate technique the reality is there were many concerns about how the material is being presented in the textbooks but way too many to send in an email review that had to be written quickly as you were supposed to vote on this last month we expected the board members to reach out to us for clarity but of course you didn't do that instead josh trauber came in during my review process and harassed me it would not allow me to take photos that i could have used as an examples to give the board to make the connections i was making i hope you all
088have enough critical thinking skills to know when you're being politically manipulated if you want to understand where we're coming from ask us and by the way i have been studying this topic things like dei crt etc for several years now and i do not get my sources off social media as the superintendent suggested thank you thank you last we have james our family moved to caledonia in 2003. our first full day in town was the 4th of july so we walked up the hill to the park we heard music we ate hot dogs we met people as we walked back we met a man pushing a bicycle his kids had run on ahead he said are you the new people down on costner i was supposed to find you and invite you to our cookout
089as we sat outside our house that night watching the fireworks with other neighbors we knew we had found home fall came our kids started school they made friends their teachers welcomed them for eight years we were blessed by the expertise and kindness of caledonia school teachers these teachers staff and administrators are some of the best people on earth in this room in may i heard a caledonian who wants to represent me in lansing say our schools are full of extreme leftist ideology that promotes racism last month and tonight i heard another caledonian say these textbooks are loaded with critical race theory i do regard statements statements like these as slurs against the character or competence or both of our teachers and administrators who select these materials and use them and against you our school board
090trustees when i asked the person who spoke against the textbooks to show me evidence he said the evidence was in a letter that had been sent to you so i exercised my foia right to obtain a copy of that letter i have emailed to you my assessment of their letter you can share it with anyone who asks you it was also posted at verbosparsa.org my blog site as of 7 pm tonight i think tim morris might find the content reassuring there's about 7 000 words of content my finding the review does not support any of their complaints as i said here in july these are good unbiased textbooks in which we have seen no evidence of crt where do these complaints come from the world around us is changing fast change makes us anxious and
091fearful we don't all see all the changes in the same light so there's confusion fear and confusion can turn into anger and strife bad actors globally and nationally deliberately yank our chains to create instability so they can grab power they have direct channels of communication into our homes 24 7. they want us to attack each other we must not we must rediscover neighborly generosity and humility we must recognize when our imaginings turn dark and when we begin to view our friends and neighbors including our teachers with suspicion and hostility and ask ourselves why we must speak and act out of love when love falters we must follow established laws and protocols all caledonia parents want the best for their children so do caledonia teachers i believe everyone in this room does too and i believe
092you do thank you all for your good work to that end thank you at this time we're going to move forward to nine which are action items 9a which is student handbooks i move that the board accept the student handbooks as presented second are there any further questions comments on the student handbook all right could we please have a roll call asper yes barbara garcia yes yes morris yes say you do yes white yes motion carries on to 9b high school social studies textbook adoption i move that the board approved the following high school social studies textbooks from saavis products as presented geography world history u.s history economics government advanced placement psychology and advanced placement sociology second any further discussion on that tim i trust the teachers to do the right thing with this curriculum
093i don't trust the curriculum my bottom line that's why i'll be voting any other comments questions on the so i i guess so you don't think our teachers are clever enough or smart enough or understand enough to to get by that i mean i'm i guess i'm confused it's it's the please please at this time this is a board discussion thank you very much i i would never charge the teachers of having to go look at all the links that the students are going to look at so there that is the crux of where i stand on this i think i think we could have used more time in this process or had the information provided to us a little sooner um i know the publisher was a roadblock in this it wasn't necessarily our
094administration but when you look at all the links and all the opportunities you just don't have enough time to look at what all this is and i wouldn't expect the teachers to do that either i mean we had 75 plus years of experience of teachers that went through months of reviewing the curriculum right so i have full faith and trust in all of those teachers all of the administrators that did this and you know that's full faith and trust that they're going to pick the right curriculum for us right and i don't see how voting no means you can trust them like if you don't trust them we should probably get rid of them 70 years ago there weren't thousands of web links and fat taking you to fact checkers i trust the teachers i
095don't trust the curriculum but those are available with or without the books that could take somebody to some place they don't want to be i mean without this or any other curriculum so if we don't links are always we're paying for this well so if we don't adopt this one we have what's what we have which is books that end in the clinton administration and so the teachers are going to have to find some stuff links and websites and students are going to go to links and websites that are even less vetted than a curriculum that we might adopt here and and that's going to be a better situation than taking what we have here that was unanimously selected by people with a wealth of wealth of experience no i said i i think we
096should have a curriculum we should we shouldn't go without curriculum but we're moving from books to no structure over that period of time and now having a curriculum opportunity which is different it's different how we're delivering the curriculum so we didn't have web links in 2005 and we didn't have npr fact checkers as a as a resource that is who knows what it what where where what our kids are going to be looking at well and i'm not comparing to 2005 i'm comparing to if we vote no we have no new resource we are left with what we have which was what was adopted in 2005 or 1990s for for some of it they're being supplemented right now with links by the teachers by other things by youtube by whatever um that are you wanting
097to vet all of those too i mean we don't have the the the pieces in place to have a comprehensive curriculum so if we vote no we're left with that now right if we vote yes we have something again that was unanimously selected right so if we vote no great you want to have a curriculum where do we go part of the thing that i brought up right ahead just straight ahead into it part of the thing that i brought up in the finance committee meeting was that i was hoping you would share your concerns with the board prior to the board meeting so if there was something that we should know about that would hold up our teachers getting the resources that they've been begging for that you would share it and i didn't
098get anything i don't know if anyone else did so that's kind of frustrating on my end this is public discussion not committee discussion i know i won't we are we are to discuss this in public not in private so i realized that but i'm saying i had hoped if you found things that were concerning you would share them with us so the rest of us could make an information i did share them with you i don't have any email from you other than asking about isbn numbers i'm not going to put the toothpaste back in the bottle okay i've made my decision that's fine i've spent a lot of time working on this too so we'll see where it falls and you know i can sleep at night so are there any other questions or
099comments concerns before we take roll call okay all right we'll move forward with roll call please asper yes barbara garcia yes esich yes morris no they do absolutely yes white yes motion carries on to 9c which is dutton elementary bid pack two move that the board approved chrisman construction inc to enter into final negotiations and sign contracts with firms and contractors for the 2020 yes 2020 bond project that in elementary school we have a second a second sorry any other questions on that comment no can i please have a roll call asper yes barbara garcia yes esich yes morris say do yes white yes motion carries this time i'd like to thank everybody for coming out i think our community members that did choose to review some curriculum as well as thanking all of our
100teachers and our administrators for the work on all the things we've been on tonight if i could have a motion to adjourn motion second please second all in favor say aye aye any opposed all right thank you very much have a good night