Harper Creek Community Schools Board of Education Meeting 2-10-2025

001a board of education regular meeting for Monday February 10th 2025 to order please rise for the pledge of Allegiance followed by a Moment of [Music] Silence I PL ALG to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you Madam Secretary please call the role Mr hon is absent Mrs Ryner here Mrs Waton here Mrs Alward I'm present Mrs Wallace yes Mr Smith here Mr BS here and our student board Representative Sam Cook is not here tonight Arabella Stanley here and Alex sner here all right we have a quum all right thank you for that um and as Min understand we have a modification of the agenda to add Waddles Park men's club and their representative

002Tony zebel to the agenda and you like to read that motion chair calls for a motion at the Harper Creek Board of Education approve modifications adding Tony zeel wles Park men's club as item e under Communications to the February 10th 2025 meeting agenda as reviewed so move support do we want to make it item e or do you want to just make it a good that that'll work I'm sorry who moved that um Mr Smith and then Mrs Wallace supported by Mrs Wallace do we have discussion all right hearing see none please call the role M Ryner yes Mrs Waton yes Mrs Alward I vote Yes Mrs Wallace yes Mr Smith yes Mr Bess I vote Yes motion carries all right thank you for that move on to Communications and start with the president's remarks

003welcome to all in the audience tonight both uh here and online watching on YouTube board members please mark your calendars uh for next uh Monday the 17th um I sent out a couple emails 5:15 at Battle Creek Central uh we're going to enter through the um parking lot nearest the football field so we're going to park in the football field parking lot will um go over across the street and um they will have representative us to meet us there for the uh joint area school board meeting that we're going to try to do once a semester um every year so anybody has any questions on that please let me know um congratulations to our competitive cheer team who won the All City meet this weekend very neat congratulations for our wrestling team nine wrestlers qualified

004for regionals including our own student board rep Alex still um congratulations that's very neat awesome uh just a reminder to families that conferences are taking place at each building uh please check with your students buildings for times and uh sign up times dates with that being said pass it to Mr Ridgeway Administration okay uh a few Communications first uh we had a cancellation of PA teacher conferences the high school which is rescheduled for this Thursday although I understand there may be a weather in forecast at this point but we'll see um the wildpark elementary grandparent ice cream social it's in connection with their book fair uh is February 18th at 6 o'cl it's it's a really nice event so if you haven't been to it it' be a nice event for board members to attend

005I mean thousands I would say hundreds of people attended for sure um we do have a half day of school on February 21st coming up uh Elementary records uh and then Middle School and High School teachers doing professional development um and then we don't have school on February 24th which is it's a compensation day for teachers basically at the end of conferences each each semester there is a day where that within their contract until there's no school for students and staff the next beyond the serial bowl is March 6 at 8: a.m. I know that's a tough time for some in on the board but if you can make it it it has been pretty good up late um breakfast starts at 7:30 our High School Musical is coming up once on a mattress the

00614th 15th 15th of March uh we had our Winter Carnival dance for high school but we actually had a bunch of dances the last little bit so we had a Sonoma Valentine's dance Friday wild spk Elementary family dance Saturday um next Friday on Valentine's Day I believe is is that yours Mrs beet Lake had theirs already heier so so sonomas is this next on Valentine's Day all right oh okay so they're all done okay the middle school middle school is is oh that's the one that's a fun one no okay uh so the pilt meeting the casino um money meetings with the local Revenue sharing board is starting on March 14th I will check to see if they're having an actual te check presentation this year um I want to talk well I'm going to

007talk about about robotics first so at the last meeting we had a um a question from a comment from the public about funding and the board had asked to look into the funding that we have as well as surrounding schools so this is what we found and correct me if I'm wrong on any of these numbers um Mrs over it looks like to me so we have a grant that we received from the state that is almost $8,000 little shy of $88,000 and then we add in another $3,000 out of general fund um that puts us at about $1,000 in terms of the total amount that is to our Robo two teams one Middle School one high school so 11,000 total um of which about 4,000 goes to coaches who's who are coaching um those

008teams and then the rest would go towards the robotics team as compared Marshall they have 19,4 56 but they have six teams not we have two they have six so about 3,200 per team um and Lake you has 18,000 for 12 teams or 1,532 per team and ours is 3,990 per team now I'm not going to sit here and tell you that they can get it done for that amount they do fundraising especially corporate fundraisers when I say corporate F they get funds corporate donations basically and we do want to support robotics so we want to consider that as we move and put our budget forward but I want to make sure you knew this is how much we currently spend and the amount that we have out of general fund as Mrs over has

009said is it's when I say comparable to sports it's actually more than any sport team it is yes for supplies or supplies or for registration yes because a club doesn't a club doesn't generally receive funds from the school right like the the junior football doesn't receive any funds from the no junior football is completely separate that's a separate thing yeah completely separate we sponsor robotics you know as a extracurricular at the school so we do put some money in it I know he had asked me that question previously but we found that we are putting some money in it's definitely not enough to make it uh sustainable for I don't know the kids the parents everybody involved but there is definitely some money in there as we move forward um other things so executive orders

010I had sent sent out to the board you know information I don't want to regurgitate the information I said but for people that are watching either online or in the audio there's been several and not just executive orders there's also been court cases um that have happened but one Federal funding freeze we do not believe that that will affect our funding um we received money from title Title One title two and title three as well as idea which is special education funding um that money flows to the state to the school district district and at this point that is not going to be affected by this by the funding freeze and as a matter of fact we the experts that I talk to from the uh the administration Association of of the country is that

011more than likely we'll receive about the same money in federal funding next year now I can't guarantee that but that's that's what we're here immigration enforcement I had talked about that uh quite a bit with our staff as well as with with our board um you know we will follow the law as as it pertains to to um both enforcement of immigration as well as our privacy um obligations to students uh but we did a procedural uh step-by-step process for our staff to follow we will certainly cooperate it's just a matter of making sure that the correct legal paperwork is there there is a school voucher um order and even though Congress needs to act on this to make it happen the details would look like this is and this is a preliminary a $5,200

012tax credit for families that would like to attend a private school or be or or home school students um there was a proclamation about gender ideology ending discriminatory Equity ideology and pro promoting a patriotic education I don't have much information on that to be honest uh so I I don't really have details of what that is or what that means exactly um from you know you know either our state or from any or the FZ at this point but that was as I said more to come on that um transgender students and Athletics was another one uh at this point that means biological males could not participate uh in female sports um biological females have always been able to participate in male Sports and my assumption is that will continue um as far as I

013know we have not had a biological male participating of female sport as of yet um and I did notice the NCA changed their policy and I have not heard from the mhsaa which is the Michigan High School Athletic Association and then the LA well two things shuttering the Department of Education um shutting down the department would take an act of Congress uh but it does sound like they are laying off some some employees from the Department of Education and people ask me like what does that mean and well they oversee that money I talked about the title and the idea we have something called grow your own that comes from the federal government for our for our teaching staff to get serves um I can't tell you exactly what it means I my assumption and

014it's just me talking at this point would be that money would go directly to the state who then would oversee that money they kind of do now because when we have audits it's done by the State Department of Education not by the federal department of education um so more to come not not exactly sure what what it's going to mean I know the folks the same folks the administrator Association said that's one thing you shouldn't worry about of all the things that are out there just you know it's going to take an act of Congress to make it happen and then finally Title Nine um that was a court case that occurred in early January so Title 9 has been reverted back to 2020 standards and you'll see in our policy revision that we would

015revise our policy to go back to the 2020 revision and that was a a court decision not a executive okay I would like to call I said this last time but I I mean it this time a building committee meeting the second week of March and a Personnel committee meeting the first week of March we are going to start negotiating with our teaching staff in in March so I'd like to call Personnel committee to meet before the board meeting and then we would talk about it in a closed session about our strategy for negotiations so does the first week of March look good for those people that are on personnel I could be here at 5 five o'cl any any any of the dates any of the dates okay anything that's a nogo for anybody

016specifically who's personel I think it's Aaron Sarah Shay you just want to do it right before right before the board meeting we could if you want because then we would go into into the Clos session to talk about the strategy I just want to get together and update where we're at where we think you know the things that um on the 10 language and things like that at 5:00 y perf okay we'll make that happen and then the building committee we can either schedule it later yeah i' prefer that you want to schedule later yeah then taking the time during our board meeting to SCH meeting okay thank you and then of course Bo talked about the joint meeting um remember the dinner is at 5:15 and then the meeting I think is dinner starts

017I think at 5:30 but I don't can't tell you the exact Logistics but I think wanted people there at 5:15 so we can geted at 5:30 um Madam Secretary anything no communication right student board members guys have anything um so following up Le um you know last meeting we talked about um I guess that you know that survey we sent out you know the how the students felt about like their future plan and stuff like that so we reached out to the counselors talk bit we honestly haven't gotten as far as I would have liked like by this point you know we need to need need to have another meeting with them and you have an INF person me them and talk to them more about that but basically what we got from that is

018we need to bring out um all these opportunities that the students like they have they have all these opportunities but they need to like know about them we like kind of bring bring it out so that they're aware of what what options and Roads and paths that they have like with like college or like financial aid or so we're there for that um I'm G have to get back to you guys on that because we have to to discuss it more with the counselors but since Sam isn't here he asked us to give like a little summary of what he was going to say so that Mr Gman mentioned that credit requirements will vary this was about like the schedule changing and everything will vary for a few years and the seminar block will be

019versatile catering to specific grade needs like test prep for freshman and college essays for seniors for example and Math and Science and KCC students won't be significantly affected as electives remain semester long he asked for a survey and plans to discuss it with each grade to get student feedback over overall he feels positive about the changes though they're still being refined that's kind of what led to like you know they had a meeting so MRE was able to talk to with the ninth graders the 10th and 11th graders so that they were kind of like they weren't misinformed and they knew what was going to happen next year for the schedule change so there's that sounds sounds promising right I think for the counselors just don't forget about like the freshman and sophomores too like

020prepar like even though it's not College like getting them to understand how to prepare for like enrollment orer when you're just like yeah all right thank you for that Mr zel Waddles Park Men's Club come on up [Music] thank you well hi everyone uh good evening my name is Tony zel I'm with Waddles Park men's club um for those of you who may not be familiar with us uh we're an organization that exists to provide athletic opportunities to the Youth of our community in a team- based environment and all of the character building fund that goes with it um we have six core sports in our calendar that we provide every year uh we start at the beginning of the year with basketball uh we run volleyball and indoor soccer which is what we're about

021to start now um we have a big Spring soccer session uh that runs in April May and into June uh which is typically our biggest sport we run baseball softball and t-ball uh that runs from uh typically we start in in May runs in June and July we run a fall soccer session um that runs in August September and October uh we run a little indoor baseball clinic that's kind of become my baby for the last few years in November basketball practice start in December and the wheel turns round and round um we cater to all of the youth in our community um we run programs some of our programs start as young as prek uh and we go up to 8th grade um and there are a couple of programs uh that we offer

022uh our uh we offer open to high school students as well um and that's our that's what we that's our core demographic of who we serve um and I'm here today to provide our 2024 annual update uh so let's get into it um first point I want to talk about are our participation numbers year-over-year um overall across all of our programs we were very very close um it's it's basically the same um from 2023 to 2024 however we do have some trends that are interesting from the sports that we offer uh spring soccer continues to be our biggest sport um it's our most popular and last year we had 700 signups uh we were not able to accommodate all of those players um for various reasons some of that uh is on our end where

023we don't have the capacity to fill it some of that is on other folks end right you'll sign up in February and then life happens and plans change and then they decide not to play so so the signups are not the exact U number we ended up having just over 500 participants that finished uh the sport with us in the spring um that was our biggest in years and years um and we're seeing strong demand for that now and I'm anticipating something similar in the spring this year um the other sport that's trending up for us that's really interesting is volleyball uh we're about to start our volleyball season uh first games are Saturday so if you're excited and want to watch some youth volleyball come on out um but this is going to be

024our biggest volleyball season in at least 12 years uh we added a high school league due to demand uh which is really exciting um yeah it's it's it's it's the first time that we've added a league in a sport for a different age in a long time um so we're really excited about that um so volleyball Spring soccer are trending up our basketball program is even our baseball softball t-ball program is about even year-over-year with random variances uh fall soccer was down a little bit this year um and then indoor soccer is down a hair but that's a smaller program so a lot of that is just random noise um the trending the the one program that we've seen Trend down is fall soccer um talking about why that is uh one is if you

025notice in our core sports uh we offer three of them are soccer based right we have the indoor like the footsole style um which we put we mark it as kind of like a supplement to your outdoor sports right so it's inside it's on the gym floor um it's fastpaced so you're working on ball control passing movements that type of stuff with a smaller goal um so we we move we kind of put that out as a training session um but we have three soccer programs um spring everybody seems to be very excited to get out of the house we've been cooped up inside we want to go do something and fall we've just kind of seen that folks sometimes want a little time off getting back to school there's other stuff going on we've

026had a busy summer um like I said it's not tanking or falling off a cliff but it is it is noticeably uh a trending over the last few years um a million years ago or approximately uh when I first started working at Waddles as a high schooler doing groundwork uh fall soccer was the biggest sport that we offered um and spring and fall have kind of flipped over the last is that 20 years I'm G to feel really old anyway over the last about 20 years they've kind of flip-flopped so now spring sacer is is our big sacer session and fall is kind of the the supplement so bring this back up I got to talk too long my computer fell asleep uh those are our trends for our overall participation numbers another uh thing

027that folks are typically interested in is who's playing in our program so where are these kids coming from um this year like previous years uh 2024 wasn't much different our uh programs across the board are Harper Creek pluralities meaning that the uh we have more Harper Creek students than any other CL class so School District or homeschool which is getting bigger um our biggest uh Harper Creek sport concentration right now is going to be this 2025 volleyball season where we are over 40% Harper Creek typically our number across the board are between 35 and 40% Harford Creek students um there's random noise that makes That Vary throughout the years typically it go it's that's where we start and then um it's the various other area school groups and the other one that we've noticed that's

028a trend that's interesting is the the folks that identify as homeschool that are coming to us like that was we had a sport this year where that was our if homeschool was a school district that would have been the fourth biggest which is wild for us that's never really happened um so anyway that's what we're looking at um it's not it's pretty similar to years past um but again volleyball for for whatever reason the numbers are growing um and that's there's a large number of Harper Creek kids that are in that which is uh which is fun to see um I would like to go to our financial state for 2024 um so we closed the year uh 2024 at a slight deficit um to the tune of a couple couple thousand dollars um and

029this is due ex pretty much exclusively to uh greater than anticipated uh maintenance and utility costs uh at our building um we also had a one-time expense with our outdoor uh concession stand um that was pretty large um and we're we're making some adjustments to that so that we don't have that happen again um for those who are unaware we run uh concession stands at both uh both our indoor building and our outdoor facility uh both of those are licensed through the health department we have two licenses one there one here so there's standards we have to maintain right to keep our food licenses um so sometimes there's you know maintenance costs there that there's there's no like it's got to get done um and so we do it um we have uh we're meeting

030uh with our board of directors uh we've met uh We've started 202 five with a real strong commitment uh to raising more funds through donations um and we're off to a pretty good start with the first uh month or so the reasoning for this is because um as we as not just for us I'm sure you see it you see it in your households costs are increasing pretty much you know for for lots of different things and we are really committed to maintaining um our prices for our participants where they are um this last year we had two sports that increased in price one was by five or they were both by$ five typically across the board we are the least expensive option or among the least expensive options around town um we're the only

031basketball program that I was aware of that you could play for under $100 this year um volleyball is similar um there are some soccer areas that are that are pric pretty well uh some of those are uh entities that are funded by taxpayer dollars um so that's you know a little bit harder for a self-funded organization like us to undercut um but we're we're really really focused on keeping our prices as low as we can for as long as we can that's kind of our whole mission the reason that we exist that we started years ago before I was born and the reason why we're still doing this now at the gist of it is we want kids to play sports and if there's no areas where kids can play sports where it's easy to

032sign up it's accessible there's no cuts and it's AF you know affordable then then kids are just going to do other things um so it's really important for us uh that we continue that which is why we've uh turned into this uh our fundraising status here um we actually we got a title sponsor for our B basketball uh program this year um and we're hoping to try to model that for all of our programs um and that's really going to go along ways in helping keep the program sustainable at the cost level for the participants that we uh that we currently have um we do have a couple other uh revenue streams that are uh outside of our concession sales our player fees and our sponsors uh we do rent the building out occasionally um

033we've got a group uh of folks there's actually a lot number of Harper Creek teachers that are playing in this as I noticed the last time I was up there um we've got a Sunday night volleyball group that turned into a almost an all day Sunday thing um so we now have uh adult volleyball for uh fall summer and spring or not fall sorry not summer fall winter and spring we have adult volleyball in the building from about 11:30 in the morning until 8 at night um so they pay they pay us rent to use the building um we open it up we're on site to make sure that you know if anything happens you know somebody's got to be there um that's been very valuable for us again also in terms of keeping us

034running and keeping our prices where they are um as being able to utilize areas of the calendar um that are outside of our core programs um just to clarify we're never going to do anything like that to affect our core programs that always goes everything starts with our core programs then we kind of you know fill in around there um I want uh I was asked to talk a little bit about our building and maintenance uh operations and some notes there and I have some notes for us here as I kind of alluded to before uh the biggest issues we've run into are the cost to operate utilities the biggest one uh is we've I would say that we underestimated the both the effort and the cost to keep that place clean to a standard

035that would make us happy um it's a lot of man hours and it's a lot especially on these winter days where you get a lot of folks in um it is a be keeping Street shoes off the courts there's a lot of mopping we've broken two mops already from vigorous mopping this year um but it that that I would say um those are our biggest uh day-to-day operational hurdles there um in terms of Staff there's currently two uh full-time folks who are are working there it's me and a guy named Nick Rous uh he does all of our operations and facility stuff and anything else that I need him to um and then we also have a small army of uh high school and college kids that are hourly folks uh who help fill in

036when we're busy on game days and when we need cleaning and all of that type of stuff and in the summer they do a lot of our uh field work measuring painting picking up trash that type of stuff stuff um we're we have a few uh I would say maintenance needs uh the biggest one is we're due for a floor refinish soon um which we're currently working on raising funds for um from a longer term perspective uh we have some we we need to put some more uh investment into our outdoor baseball fields they're still playable and all of that but they're showing their age um and that will be likely another thing that we'll need to f for here soon um from a day-to-day operations note um the biggest part for the building that

037we've noticed are that is that when we have uh specifically when we have a lot of snow and there's a lot of snow pushed off to the side um parking can get real tight down there um we've we've worked to there it's not just the number of spots what we've also noticed is the folks it can be real difficult on Saturdays specifically which is our you know where we play our games to turn left onto Michigan Avenue um because there's no light there right so it's it's just there's a lot of traffic and sometimes there's not a break in traffic for 30 45 60 90 whatever seconds um and there can get a a line uh that kind of backs up into the parking area um we've taken a couple of steps to deal with

038that the biggest one is uh we've moved a number of games uh to offsetting times so we'll have a couple of games to start on the top of the hour and a couple that start at the half hour with the the idea that we're trying to break up the traffic flow a little bit um I think that's been fairly successful um but there really isn't a way around some of the weeks when we have um as you guys you know the number of cars can vary wildly right so on the days when Grandma and Grandpa show up and Mom and Dad and cousins and everybody else you might um it's it gets tight in there um so we've looked um we're our board is talking about some options of what we can do uh but

039for now that's that's the what we've taken to kind of mitigate that uh that issue the other uh operational issue we haven't had now but is more of a summer one is we've had a I I'll say an explosion of folks driving golf carts around the soccer and baseball fields uh during games and practices um to the point where we've made uh we've put up a couple of signs at our entrance and publish it in our uh newsletters about asking not to drive those on the sidewalks and by the fields during practices and games um it really just becomes an issue when you have high foot traffic and it's that's just a that's a liability that scares us a little bit you have a lot of kids small kids running around um we have the

040if you're kind of familiar with our facility you know if you're part parking kind of behind Waddles Park Elementary and you walk up that sidewalk there's the little storage building on the left there's kids that run all the way around that it's a blind corner right so somebody's driving their golf cart up um and a kid runs around the building it scared us enough to put some signs up um and to try to basically turn people around when we're uh going on there and if anyone here on the board or otherwise has words of advice for me on that I am all ears so please uh I would love to hear to get some feedback on that or what we can do better there um those are my thoughts uh for 2024 uh looking into

041the future we have a few areas of immediate interest or growth um the biggest one are uh we seems like we are kind of underserved in the summer and the fall um we have some pretty big hols in the calendar and we have a lot of people requiring about things that we can do there um so what we're looking to imp me this year um are a number of camps and Clinics we're also looking at uh we're workshopping programs for younger children um that are not necessarily based on leagues or hard skills but just like get to know soccer or get to know a uh like a four- week class where you come on Tuesdays and we have a different sport each day and you get to see the ball and the court and do

042activities that way um we've had a number of people reach out for that um so we're kind of work shoing what that might look like we've also had a lot of requests for summer basketball um so we're looking at some options we don't want to clone our current basketball and just run that in the summer that's a lot harder to do for a variety of reasons uh but we are looking at doing either like a three on three or a series of clinics uh or just uh some type of a more structure than an open gym um but something to get kids shooting Hoops in the summer because there a lot of people uh asking about that um the other thing we can do immediately is increase are indoor baseball capacity so I um in

043November that part of the schedule which a long time ago some of you will remember used to be floor hockey in our calendar um that is not happening because it will destroy our floors in the new building so I've taken to uh doing like an indoor baseball kind of a skills Clinic uh we run scrimmages in there and it's great uh the problem with it right now is it's my baby in it's low capacity so I run the whole thing um and there's only so many folks that we kids that we can actually fit in we filled that uh league in less than a week and a half this year um so we need to figure out a way to add capacity to that um and that will uh that will go a long way

044towards getting more kids playing um and also filling kind of some slower times in our uh in our calendar and then uh the other goal for this uh immediate year is to continue uh pushing through with our uh fundraising efforts um with stronger community outreach uh so that we can continue to keep our prices low um and operate as we do longer term goals uh we'd like to identify uh this is coming from our board um we'd like to identify new areas of programming that are valuable to the community ideally in those slower summer and fall Seasons uh we'd like to develop stronger relationships with sponsors that we're starting this year so it becomes uh they can kind of roll into uh just like a Community Partnership type of uh relationship and then we want

045to remain a strong partner of Harper Creek schools and provide the Harper Creek community with programs and opportunities that uphold the values that you set for the district um so that is uh my little 2024 overview of the Waddles Park year I would love to answer any questions that anyone has either now or after I'm happy to give out my selling email uh to anyone who's interested or if you just want to talk shop I sure love doing that so anyone who's interested in that uh you've got my ear Tony the uh majority of the the hourly employees the high school kids helping out the majority of those harp Creek kids yes um they are I can do this in my head all but one of the hourly high school kids are Harper Creek and

046both of our College hourlies are Harper Creek grads um so we're not exclusive but we're close yeah I think that's a great I'm I'm taking notes right now I think that's a great idea and yeah that that also is nice because you can uh kind of forecast the open spots on your schedule or like the slower spots of the year and there's that's a great idea thank you Tony who's your title sponsor the blue oval Ford uh Factory that's going up they were our basketball title sponsor um so we've been shopping these uh sponsorships to start as two different forms we've been uh General sponsor uh which gets you a banner placement on our website a shout out in the newsletter um and and then we've been shopping title sponsors which are a significantly higher

047amount of money um they get banners as you walk in for all the sport or for the the sport that they're titling and then uh they get a thank you and a title and a blur at the top of every single newsletter that we send out weekly for the each sport um so like for example the basketball newsletter was going out to 450 emails weekly with typically like between an 80 to 85% open rate uh 60-ish percent click rate on things in there so we've been I've been saying we've been kind of pushing that as the value prop um to try to you know say that if you're a title sponsor for this we're really going to demonstrate that you're supporting the Youth Sports in our area and we're going to get you in front

048of those eyes so that people are aware that you are the folks who are are really stepping up to help this particular program basketball in this case you're still doing scholarships for students yes absolutely that's a good point so I did kind of gloss over the intro here sometimes I don't want to take up too much of your time in bore of but we do we let anyone play who signs up full stop so we intentionally when you go on you on our website to sign up for volleyball for example fill out the form there's no mention of no mention of payment um that's on purpose um the purpose is that we don't want that to be a barrier to entry for anybody if you're out of work if you're having toughed out whatever it

049is um if you want to play you're going to play with us assuming we have room obviously you're not a weight list but you you sign up like everybody else if you want to play You're GNA play full stop and we'll figure it out um so yeah we have typically um it varies per Sport and year there's uh noise this last basketball season that just finished we scholarship approximately 5% of players um so yeah yeah we still do do that and it's uh that's an important part of who we are and last question is student pricing how is that I think when I was coaching you know 20 plus years ago was I think we were 35 bucks a sport so what where we at now that's a great question it varies by sport so

050one of the things that we've done in the last maybe probably since Co so the last four years or so um is we've really taken a look at and we used to kind of operate where everything was just like a big big pot right where it all goes in it all goes out we operate as one we tried to pull that out so that we were pricing Sports accordingly So based on how expensive they are to run so our most expensive sports to run are baseball by a long shot and then basketball there's various reasons officiating is more uh baseball I mean you're using new baseballs every game right and baseballs now if they're any good you know like we can't send so we we use the pitching machine for a lot of our baseball

051leagues the synthetic cover cheat balls will not work they they will they won't throw strikes over so we have to have leather nice normal leather baseballs those are nine bucks a ball now um so imagine at least two of those for every game for the whole season um they're a longer game so we have to pay the officials more um baseball so rattle it down baseball and basketball are $90 a piece uh our soccer sessions are 75 a piece baseball is 80 a piece the indoor baseball session is a mere $45 um but that's where we are um um for the most part uh you know dep going from other options in the area um we are on par or below with everything else in the area um soccer there's a couple of entities that

052undercut us uh well there's one and they're they're funded by taxpayer dollars and that's a little different animal that we're dealing with but we do run a longer season we have more games and more practices with there so there's a little bit of a value prop there maybe the last Pieces Just For Those might be online or in the audience that don't know or current board members maybe 30 seconds to a minute just on uh what the relationship is between the men's club and Harper Creek absolutely so um we are we operate entirely on uh Harper Creek School District property um we are um we kind of tasked with uh kind of promoting Community good through Athletics and keeping up the property uh to a standard so that the school doesn't have to the goal

053is that the school shouldn't have to lift a finger or pay a dime towards uh doing funding doing anything with the property um cutting grass doing what whatever it is um and we in turn use it for our athletic Endeavors to make uh give opportunities for the Youth this has been a relationship that's kind of grown uh throughout the years um it started off again before I was born so I'm getting history lessons uh from folks in the community here um it started off as a group of dads which hence the name men's club uh which is a question that we get a lot um that wanted to get kids out get kids together and get them playing sports uh started with baseball and then grew to basketball and soccer and floor hockey and a

054bunch of other things um and it grew uh kind of into the the big it started very small you know with a group just a small group of you know Harper Creek dads and kid kids and then it grew into this uh entity that you see here today um we still have the core values uh that they did from the start um and we have the strong uh belief that we are uh are we're kind of symbiotic I guess with Harper Creek that we provide value to the school and the school obviously provides value to us in return um all so that we can give uh more opportunities to the kids of our community is that 30 year lease on the building is that right 20 years that's well thank you I'm not I'm certainly

055not going to pet myself on on the back but I will Pat a lot of the all the folks around us right because it's really not me it's the folks who are volunteering it's the folks who are on our board it's the folks who show up to our community day in the spring and help us clean up the fields and get ready I mean though those are the folks like we we some guy isn't going to come and do it it's it's the community and it's like to what you're speaking of right if I think folks see the value in bringing folks together in a larger program right because the the value ad and why it's not just exclusively Harper Creek kids all the time is that you could run your own leagues right if

056we just had you know if you have just like well here's one team well that's great for you know folks who want to go and play everywhere but not everybody wants that right away so you have a lot of value in having enough participants total to be able to have a nice building facility and run leagues where every game's a home game right and there there's value to that and I think there's there's certainly people that see that we do too so thank you thank you Tony and do give yourself a Pat in the back and also uh would be unfair to not mention Gary Lincoln um and his contributions to The Men's Club um and the people that have come before him so thank you to all definitely thank you very much thank you

057for your time thank you all right mren Greenman open lunch and high school scheduling update good evening good evening so on behalf of the high school I'd like to Echo everything you said Thank uh Mr zebel for everything he does for our community obviously he learned from the master and Mr Lincoln and the things that the men's club has done for our kids and our community over so many years is is just unbelievable so thank you Tony for all that you do thank you also for the opportunity to speak to you tonight about our open lunch and about the scheduling process that we're going through right now with our open lunch uh as you will remember it's something that you guys approved of for last year kind of a reward system for our seniors and

058we've got 58 seniors uh currently that have taken advantage of our open lunch remember that is a privilege it is something that they have earned uh we've got kids that uh you got to make sure that you're passing all of your classes so we do a weekly eligibility very similar to what is done in our Athletic program uh also a student can't have during the current semester any type of in school or out of school suspension in order to have the privilege of being able to leave during lunch they also have to make sure that they have a signed permission slip from their parent or Guardian giving them per to leave at lunch and we also have our uh hall monitor that sits by the exit uh so when they leave for lunch they have

059to sign out and then when they come back they have to sign in so I'm happy to say that we've only had one student this year that has lost their privilege of open lunch uh it was a temporary loss and uh giving that person a second chance but uh came back extremely late from uh lunch and uh one of the consequences is that it was taken away for a period of time so overall I feel like it's it's gone very well for us this year uh we have 88 Juniors right now that are on a list of we gave a incentive for when they took their PSAT exam in the fall that if they did well on that exam uh we threw out a carrot to where they could earn open lunch after spring break

060for this year so in addition to the 58 seniors we will have 88 Juniors doesn't mean that they'll all do it but they uh if they get their form signed and follow through with everything uh they will have that privilege extended to them uh this spring so uh as far as our high school scheduling update to kind of give you a history on that uh I think it's been something that's been talked about for years years as you know we're on a block schedule and last year there was probably five or six meetings that took place with high school staff counselors High School administration uh just trying to figure out is there a better better approach to delivering instruction to our students other than the way that we've been doing it for the past 20

061to 25 years when the school year ended we didn't really have a definitive answer so we continued this year with uh additional meetings trying to figure out what might be best and at the present time a leadership team at the high school made up of counselors mtss coach special education coach uh myself Mr urius the vice principal uh Mrs Williams Mrs Burkhart here in the uh administration building we've been meeting along with uh several meetings with staff uh getting input from our students we met with our Uh current n9th 10th and 11th graders to get some feedback from them we had a High School parent meeting got feedback from our parents uh we were had a eighth grade parent meeting schedule for last Thursday but that unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate so we're trying to

062get as much information from people as we can uh you know as we continue to move forward uh some of the main reasons that we have been looking into potentially bringing to you uh a recommendation or bringing that to Mr Ridgeway is uh to me the biggest one is just the the Gap and learning that takes place right now in a uh block schedule so the example I always use it could be used with really any one of our core classes uh take English as an example if when kids sign up for class class the computer spits out their schedule and let's say they have English one first year of their freshman year second semester they could not have an English class then you have the normal summer slide and then first semester of their

063sophomore year they could not have an English class and then the next time they take English would be the second semester of their sophomore year so then you compound that potentially with the same with math the same with social studies the same with science there's that huge learning Gap so that that's the one that stood out to me as we've been through all of these meetings and doing research and trying to figure out you know what would be a better way to deliver instruction uh that was one of the the driving forces for me another one was our our standardized test scores uh so we took it upon ourselves to kind of compare ourselves to uh like schools and we went back about 15 years with uh testing with PSAT t in with sat testing

064and unfortunately when we compared oursel to like schools we were pretty much at the bottom now it's not to say that the magic wand is to switch to a traditional schedule and that's going to change that but on the other hand to continue to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result didn't really make a whole lot of sense to us so another reason uh that that we've been looking into this then when you think about uh I'll call it a teacher shortage I don't know if that's the uh official term but I do know that we've had a science position open all school year and have not been able to fill that position and uh only had one candidate for that position it would happened to be someone that wasn't

065qualified so uh we haven't been able to fill that science position all year and then we're projecting quite a few retirements from the high school I believe the middle school is in the same situation and it appears that you know a group of people that may have come in together into education kind of at the same time are probably going to be going out at the same time and uh from from what I understand with the traditional schedule uh staff you don't need as many staff as you do in a block schedule so that's kind of another reason that we've uh been looking into this uh one so our our what we were planning on doing with approval would be a six hour day when I say an hour day it's probably going to be

066more like 56 57 minutes long with a seminar so essentially a 7even hour day the seminar would only be about 30 minutes uh the seminar would be a situation where in the high school we don't really have like a home room so there's been an emphasis in our district on social emotional learning which I'm sure you'll agree is very important for our kids today and we have not been able to be as intentional in the high school with seal than say the middle school and the elementaries have been able to do but with a seminar class it would be one where our uh freshman would be together sophomores juniors seniors and we could be more intentional with each one of those classes with so social emotional learning with whatever their needs are at that level

067of development so for instance our freshman they might need to learn more about what's it like going into the high school what are the traditions of the high school uh what's it like to uh how do you behave when you come into a high school building our seniors have been through that for four years they need more Direction on how do you apply for uh college applications or if you're going to go into the workforce how do you work on uh filling out an an application for a job so uh we we feel like we can be more intentional our uh we're getting great training as you already know I think from Terry trzinski with our counselors and our support uh staff so we want to be have more time where our counselors can push

068into a classroom that being that seminar class on more of a regular basis so we actually we just feel there's a lot of advantages to it uh having the opportunity to meet with our kids uh and and our parents uh obviously there's a lot of questions that they have and it's kind of a a moving Target still because every time you think you've got something solved something else comes up and like most people they're going to wonder globally it might sound like a great idea but then they narrow it down to them how does it in affect them but we had great questions by our students when they came in had some silly ones like how long is lunch going to be how long is the you know class exchange going to be and things

069like that but those are things they need to know uh but if you don't give them information they come up with their own information and sometimes that's not correct information so it's been advantageous for us to meet with them uh see what they have to say and like I said said we're meeting on a on a weekly basis right now still trying to work everything out but uh I think we're moving in in the right direction and hopefully within a month we'll have even more information for you so any questions that you might have over open lunch or uh scheduling yeah more of a comment than a question y i i i happen to sit in the parent meeting at hat and I I my bias is certainly to agree with the the change that's

070being proposed but another piece of it and or how many staff members did we have visit ad stens high school it's just around 50 I think so we have a series of and I think we've all heard about that right we we had a we made a significant investment in going to visit a school in Illinois that is arguably one of the best in the country re you do that type of benchmarking is to uh to borrow the good ideas that are working elsewhere so I know adley Stevenson was on the uh this tradictional versus block schedule so again just um you know out a deference to the the the investment we've made in in trying to learn from people and schools who are doing it well I think we would do ourselves a disservice

071if we didn't pay attention to what we learned when we went out on the road so yeah to my knowledge locally the only School District was alette I think pretty much everybody else has moved to a traditional schedule but that that's a good to look at Mr R when do we have to land this plan I believe that my understanding is that we are in of moving forward I don't want to say that what would happen with the board at the board level is what you approve is graduation requ that changed based as well as that's but we have to schedule by um March get this done right okay so I'm not asking the board to make a vote on if we're going to change schedule or not what I'm asking the board to is

072if we do change we'll have to change some of our anything further for Mr G greeman okay thank you very much appreciate the expl very well done all right move to District updates curriculum Mrs Williams good evening good evening um since we last met last board meeting lots of work with continued professional development and what we call tier one our viable curriculum um we had Janice in our elementaries all last week um in class rooms and with grade level teams to um continue their deep their understanding around the components of bridges which is our math board approved curriculum um likewise mid school math will be here um the end of this month to be in classroom so we have um individual teachers have mentors then we have the team support each other then we have

073our instructional coaches and then we bring people that are experts in that curriculum on a periodic basis so there's lots of layers to support and deepen our understanding around the um we are looking our um high school we have a couple piloting math I've played a lot of phone tag over the last six weeks um but Kazo and Troy and actually several other schools this isn't in there but um we're trying to get a date schedule where we can get into those math classrooms so our teachers can just kind of see it in action um we had our district PD day where all everyone was learning so lot lots of professional development assessment wise our NWA um reports will be with our school Improvement meeting for time with you in March and then our summer

074programming we are moving forward um very quickly on that I was at the high school to meeting and one of our supervisors said all the first round notes are out so we're ahead of schedule or at least on the schedule we want to be for that um Mrs Chapman Tammy and I hosted a networking session for grow your own so they could just share what's working as they're trying to mitigate working and going to college that was last week so those are the Nuggets anyone have any questions is oh yeah sorry first countown isth ofch yep and they're feeling really solid about the communication we're refighting okay thank you for that uh move on to facilities Mr Robinson good evening thank you sir I uh submitted our report um couple things uh I I we're

075working the crosswalk is actually working now so I am going to resubmit that to uh get it taken over by the county and the city and the SE where we can go with that as far as getting some response as far as getting help uh getting our drivers to acknowledge it I tried using it today and about got ran over literally I was standing out in the road cars still just flew right by so but anyway it is working correctly um and then we're just starting our summer planning right now getting we're have summer school going on our you know our maintenance filter first is going to take a lot of our efforts this summer and then our regular maintenance as well are the autonomous cleaning machines in yet or not they are in they're

076not operational we're still working on some training with those they were installed last weekend Prett excited about seeing so will those do like a major chunk of the hallways but some you have to go through and get the edges or we'll do that yeah they'll do like the majority and then somebody will have to like do some fine tun um good spots be like our Varsity Hall areas our gym floor areas stuff like in the middle school and high school yes sir something I've been looking at probably years any questions fromson the building committe will look at sums all right thank you uh financ and Mrs OB you mean I have submitted my normal um board reports but uh the big one is the first budget revision of 2425 I um wanted to talk a

077little bit about the Nuggets um as you know we started um in June we we you guys passed the budget for this year based on some assumptions of the state the state level one of those being that um there would be an increase to Foundation allowance and there and there wasn't um we estimated a $241 increase um to the base Foundation it stayed the same which is 9,68 um and so with our with our count that we estimated that was a $663,000 difference from our original budget another thing that um the uh committee assumption we used was our spring count which is actually usually a little bit lower than our fall historically it has been um this year our spring count was 14 um higher than what what it our fall fall count came in

078so uh the decrease of 14 FTE was $134,000 less so that's a that that was a big change um one thing that made but the state change I guess um I gave you a one sheet I don't know if you guys have that in front of you you sheet of paper color and I just pointed out some of the bigger things that um you know changed those were those were the two big ones that the revenue um there's there was you'll see an increase to some grants that I just didn't have the numbers in but I also didn't have the expense um and then you'll see an increas of 3% I don't know if you guys have heard in the news about this 3% repayment to some employees um it's a retirement that they've that

079people who chose at one time um to fund their retirement health insurance it's fully funded and so they're wanting to pay that money back um so I had no way of knowing what that number is they still haven't given it to me I ran a number um based on last year's information and it was right around 00,000 that would be coming in out so that that's a change in the state also an increase but it it comes back out at the bottom yeah the color code is so the blue and the blue go together the orang and the orange together uh a federal is just a little bit of an increase to the grant but then again that that's just an increase to expense grow your own um it was just my estimated numbers on

080what the Western would be and we have more students in um or more employees taking advantage of that program um so that's an added expense the um incoming transfer increase of 490,000 a big chunk of that is special ed uh education reimbursement and that would be we added a program at beet Lake and then we also um have one to more oneon-one AIDS based on IEPs um and that 100% reimbursable um by the ISD and that comes out at the bottom also um there was a reduction in retirement percentage and so there was a benefit to the um budget by approximately the bottom line of being around 600,000 uh grants and everything since we fund some um people out of title and at risk grants it while it was a benefit it didn't benefit the

081bottom line that that percentage reduction in retirement a couple of other things um like I said the big the big adjustments from the original budget is just Revenue the decrease in FTE and the 0% Foundation allowance but our maintenance and operation is something else uh just like everyone else um are incre I estimate usually around I try to estimate about sometimes 10% increase depending on the trend of things um in this maintenance and operation this is just a trend so we're only in this is through June um if nothing changes I have a 23% increase in electricity from where we were last year uh a 24% in tools supplies and equipment um and then a 133% in some building and ground U maintenance and so that took up a of if you look at maintenance

082and operation there was an increase in expense um and that that's just now that's if we did nothing that's just looking at you know through J January um of last year looking at that compared to January of this year and trying to do do my best um estimation but those are the major the K12 Communications was an expense EAB programming that I had not accounted for in the original budget and then if you look down and after care we added um a middle school Child Care Program so that accounts for the added expense there but again our we're hopefully going to offset that by a little more uh revenue from that also so in the end um last year based on the final budget we did end up adding $400,000 more than what was estimated

083um so that that helps a little bit and um we 10.4% of the original budget or the original budget you passed and we're at 9.8 right now so we would be in the negative a deficit by a little bit more than what the original again this is a conservative budget um based on the trends that I'm I'm seeing right now another thing I wanted to point out is there's some information I just don't have with the retirement if you look at the revenue something called retirement offset I had to use what what quarterly we've only received one quarter and it was down um 50,000 compared to last year and so I just estimated you know the four quarters I'll know in February if that's the case you know what I mean so it's it's somewhat

084of a looking at last year and and trying to do but I I plan to come every month with any changes that I see like that that retirement I'll be able to tell you if it is on Trend you know what I mean the electricity I'll be able to tell you if it continues on that trend so yeah I'll just kind of a couple things I like to make things super simple so um in our original budget we did not get as much revenue as we thought and we didn't save as much in what the what the um legislations did they basically said here's a sa and retirement cost for the district we had thought it would be about a million dollars it really is about $600,000 that's a pretty big amount plus the amount

085we lost in Revenue that we had um budged it puts us in a sitation we we were at about a $1.3 million deficit up to a $1.9 million I want to be really careful for people in the audience or those online that are listening uh we have a a fund balance in the district where we've saved money over the last really 10 years and we we put ourselves in a spot where we had a 15% fund balance to start this school year a little over $6 million this would eat into that if we use it up we are going to tighten our belts and it is conserv we do budget conservatively so don't think we're going to finish at 1.9 million hopefully much better now Ginger prom she told me I couldn't say what I

086think it's going to finish at because that way it doesn't put a Target on everybody's back but much better than 1.9 million we had a meeting with administrators last Thursday during the snow day to talk about this so that they understood what position we're in but I don't want anybody to think we're in a bad situation except for the fact we've saved a lot and we've got ourselves in this position now why why are we here um during Co the pandemic we teachers to the elementary school five five teachers we paid for that with ESS money we've heard that the lower classroom sizes are much better for elementary teachers we Tred to maintain that and we purposely didn't reduce teachers this year because we wanted to maintain that level well you know we're going to

087have to take a look to see what we can do moving forward um to have the least class sizes but stay within our budget we'll have to right siize this as we move into next year's budget just so everybody's aware hopefully in a nutshell made maybe a little simpler but that's where we are at not happy about it I'm not going to be I'm not going to sit here and tell you that oh this is Rosy but I am going to tell you that I've done it for a long time and we just simply have to right siize it as we move to the next year we are we are going to ask you to approve this budget at the $1.9 million deficit to work from and we will look to be much better in

088June when we do our final budget any questions that you have for this is over my myself I just have a question I know that um we've heard about the the teacher shortage a little bit and so I just wondered with the grow your own I know there's a there's a requirement for them to stay within the district for a certain amount of time what happens if we don't have a position for them in in whatever they decide they're going to go to school for potentially they could go somewhere else um but our goal is with all the retirements things like that we we we will have some openings right so um potentially we wouldn't hold someone back to go to a local um but they have signed something saying that they will stay with

089us for as long as it took um them get yeah and we were very intentional as far as um looking at succession planning what when could people retire when do we think they will and so we aligned the applicants in the programming the best we could to those and you may have noticed we've already posted positions for next year um because we want to get out there to know the colleges with the graduating because because of the shortages just to try to get folks right away guess just little more color commentary on the revenue side of this thing and we use words like conservative um and I just someone I've been on the board for 14 years now and close to the budget and when we say conservative people need to understand we have a

090range of options when we the two big revenue of PS typically are around number of students and how much state aid we get without every year we do the same thing we if there's estimates on state aid we take the number if we have a range of estimates on students we take the lowest number with the idea being that if there's a surprise our surprise is always going to be on the positive side um in my time on the board this is the really the first time we've seen those assumptions not come to FR fruition and when you look at those two items that's $800,000 out of a $1.9 million deficit so we're not happy about it but I think our path has all I mean you could all you could argue that it's not

091just conservative it's pessimistic when we think about Revenue which I think is the right we will continue to take that tack just for perspective first time in my time on the board that those really conservative assumptions we miss those were usually always better than that so I think there's reason for optim that we can close the gap primarily on the revenue and this is why we've been good stewards for the last 10 years and things have worked out properly now we have a a year that things didn't align like we thought they would and um but good explanation bar anything further for Miss over Mrs OBM all right uh technology and Mr Mayor good evening all right um first thing on my list have been countered tonight um uh recently our finance software updated their

092password policy and this is something that we've talked about for a little while doing um so we've recently upgraded the strength and complexity requirements for staff passwords and to best of my knowledge this is the first time that we've ever asked all of the staff to change their password at the same time um and it went reasonably well um the reasons for doing this in addition to this being a good idea is that um you know our our insurance company is always pushing us to do more things to be ready because they give us our cyber coverage and so in order to get that coverage at a reasonable price they want us to do things and this is one of them um recent Power School incident that did not affect us but the fact that

093it could have um just kind of hammers home the need that we always need to be doing more and so as a result we did that um maybe a dozen people seem to have trouble with it staff wise once we got going and uh so hopefully that'll be good moving forward um our clock project the clocks at Beetle Lake are now online the company installed them in kind of two swaps so the uh they should all be running except I think the one in the teacher staff Lounge is not working right now but we are working on that um they went back to Middle School to finish there I noticed today they're still not done so I'm going to find out what's going on there and then once we get all those bills paid out

094because that was funded through safety grant money so if there's money left in that account after we get this done we can move on to another building and the camera project is going reasonably well is also um the new servers are in and installed that cover the elementary schools those were paid for entirely by the county Grant project along with the cameras in all three elementary schools are installed um Beetle Lake most recently and the company is supposed to have a uh a meeting this week to get them actually focused pointed and set up and then we're working to get the software on the various staff members computers so they can see them so that's going well we also got some secondhand servers to use for the middle school high school and those are close

095to being ready we're waiting for a licensing upgrade to be completed which I found out is going to be paid for by someone else um we don't know who either the company that makes a stop or the company we bought it from because they're going to they're going to do right by us because they sold us this stuff um in anticipation of the county project which then took a year and a half longer than they said it would and so the software got upgraded in the meantime so there's a paid upgrade to existing licenses to make them compatible with the new stuff and so once somebody pays for that it is not us I'm not sure who but somebody else is going to pay for it we'll get that going and we can move forward

096on the Middle High School installation out armor any uh questions for Mr ma all right thank you for that comments related to agenda items do we have any robotics we' talked about it uh you want to save that until it's really not agenda item but um in the interest of expediency I'd say let's go talin rob about robotics funding uh please state your name and addresses um and you have three minutes although there are 30 of you so we'll we'll give you a little latitude there I think they're gonna give me their time I'm just doing my first name is Peter last name emman e c m an I live at 11608 V Drive North which is exactly four miles that way and I drive it every day to go to robotics I'm one of

097your head coaches for the high school team so thank me thank you I want to thank you for giving me your time tonight uh right now I'm sorry I was late but I was teaching kids how to code a robot and one of the one of the dads came and got me and said hey you're coming to the board meeting tonight I said okay so shifted my my mind um I read through what you guys put out at the beginning of the meeting and that is great that the uh school does provide some funding to that through the Grant I also work for the state of Michigan so I'm very familiar with that and have been coaching robotics for 10 years necessarily here this is my second season with this team only because I live

098four miles away and I don't have to drive an hour and a half to go to practice every night and that that was with followall high school which I started that team my daughter's been through this program one of the things and if you can't tell I'm pretty passionate about it um I don't have kids inside the school system anymore my youngest is 26 just got a full-time job with a automotive company that's going to do autonomous um big rigs which is kind of cool make more money than me in 3 years so good on her I want my Corvette I kill people with kindness as you can tell I have pretty good joking background but back to robotics uh we're in midseason right now build season uh I invite any one of you on

099the board that want to see what they come and do the kids are very enthusiastic about explaining things to other times Rob has been down and so has Laura been down to see us when we're building things to uh categorize our high school program really quick we have a new robot every year which is new costs every year we try to reuse as many things as we can from year to year um and that's what increases the cost per year is one of the most expensive um programs and I'm not going to lie about that the average is about 18 to 26,000 per year and I can break that down yeah wow um a lot of that is all about participation fees now the MBE grant that we currently uh get from the state of

100Michigan and we ify is about6 to 8,000 that depends on the type of program that you're running a middle school team is much easier to run cheaper than it is a high school program just for instance just to pay for our two events that we get to go each year putting a robot on the carpet to compete is $6,000 that has no money towards a robot it's no nothing with parts nothing with the tools that we need nothing with raw materials that the kids use that's just put something on thep and it's something that I cannot control it's something that I question first uh first inspires is the parenting group that governs first robotics and I asked them why is it so expensive they don't like me asking that question um because businesses are businesses

101and I get it they're nonprofits and they have to run things but when it comes down to to small communities such as this and I like I said I did come from fille which is very much the same way there's not a lot of money in the school systems and everyone is trying to get money for their thing um so one of the things I could tell you and I'll reiterate it's about 18 to 26,000 aside of that you say hey Pete that's 20 that's anywhere between 12 to 18 Grand where's the other money go we have to build robots there is no kit with our robots we're building from raw materials that means big tubes of aluminum that get machined down we build a a new robot each year so it's not a new

102it's a new game every year you build the robot and the kidss design the robot to compete in what the game is um I could talk about robotics forever if you can't tell and I did drink a Red Bull before I got here so I'm ready to go um it helps me energize and caffeine is my lifeblood in robotic season myself uh we have three mentors or we call them coaches but we call them mentors on our team myself Tom back and a mike um two of those guys according to your thing are paid and that's true that's part of the mde grant is to get the MD Grant you you have to pay us but I'll will tell you that every single scent of that money is paid right back into the stuff that

103we need for a robot we don't pocket that money at all if it's something we we typically go in the hole into our own personal budgets just to make sure that we can get the stuff we need in fact we we between last year season this year this is my second season uh with the robot uh with your your high school program is we started a nonprofit organization called the Harper Creek robotics boosters that is not just focused on the high school team it's focused on all stem activities across this uh Community um we've went in front of I just put myself out there in front of the Optimus Club two weeks ago to try to get a grant from them I even join the Optimus Club because I like giving back to my community

104I am a prior service member just like is I thank him for his service um and it's something that I want to express to the kids and try to get them enthused about something that is not a video game system sitting in their hand or the phones that I remove from them every time they come into my build shop because we have and once you visit they put their phone actually in like a little um rack so they can concentrate on what we're doing just to get them to do that to unplug themselves and focus on something that is not death scrolling across social media and we want to don't want to go down that rabbit hole is something that they can DED their time too as as I said my daughter went through this

105program that's how I got exposed to it I'm not going to tell you my age I'm a little long in the tooth but this program didn't start until three years after I got out of high school had it been part of my life I might have not gone in the service because I've always been that guy that Tinkers with his hands I was an airplane mechanic in the service um now I lead the um uh I told you work for the state I lead an entire programming group that does everything for Department of vets across the state of Michigan so every application that a vet or vets get uh funds from are my applications and some of those those team members that I have on my team have have actually done robotics so I look

106at that I'm fully involved probably this deep if my wife can tell you um she can't get my attention between January and in April and April which is our season I'm just trying to do as much education I can in my little time span that I can because as I said there there's a lot that goes into that um so we're thankful for what we've got by all means because at one time Mr geman and I think him we had this little room that we were sharing with the football coach now we have a fully carpeted like competition carpet space at the end of this uh building which we very much uh it improves our uh competitiveness because if you can't practice like just like footb I used to coach football if you can't practice

107on the right field how can you play the game correctly a lot of sports and and Robotics has a lot of common thing across the state of Michigan there are four or 583 High School robotics teams and we're one of them we're n one of nine in the area and if you ask me hey Pete why don't you fund raise we created that nonprofit so we can get those funds but here's the kicker too and we're kind of behind the eightball is that there's nine other teams or eight other teams in this area that aree for those same funds to approach um commercial entities whether that is II Stanley whether it's Kelloggs whether it's Optimus club or anything of that nature so that's why we're asking um me as a taxpayer too because I live

108four miles down the road and I pay taxes even though my kids not in the system to see if there's any any additional funding that we can get for the team just so that we can up that level of competitiveness um just as an example last year was was the best year that this team's had it's been around for 12 years we were five points away from going to Michigan Michigan State championships five points away and I can't get into that how we qualify for that again it'll take hours but we were five points away but knowing that we didn't have the funding to go to States is something that would heartbreak my heart I mean a to the kids because they put their souls into this for you know six weeks seven weeks building

109something from and rolling and competing that if they get to state championships and I say I I I have money I I'm not I have nice retirement fund but I can't bankrupt my retirement fund to take the team to States so just to go to States is around $110,000 including lodging and food because it's at sag State Valley uh University so if you guys have any questions um I understand if you don't because I threw a lot at you yeah we uh generally don't do not answer questions or don't give anything but we appreciate the presentation thoughts and um I 30 seconds how's that um my name's Doug catchman K I live at 53 santalina Trail s n t a l i n e Trail um I have a 10th grader that's in robotics and

110I have two seventh graders that are robtics as well um one of the things that is really interesting and I love telling people when we talk robotics is that um in elementary school you we are we teach all of our kids that you were supposed to be friendly you were supposed to be helpful you were supposed to um be competitive but be friendly competitive and then at some point with our regular Sports we move away from that we get into our tribalism where it's Lake View versus Harper Creek or Harper Creek versus whoever um and with robotics it's not like that they have something that's uh it's gracious gracious professionalism and what that is is that if you don't know robotics works is that there's um the teams come together at one competition and it's

111not just you against all the other teams you you have alliances and in middle school it's two teams versus two teams and then in high school it's three teams versus three teams and those teams you have five competitions or six competitions um and those teams change every time so you can't have a rival because your rival will be your team partner and then if you are good enough and you get into the finals you then to pick your alliance members and then so you are then picking whoever beat you because they have a better robot than you but you happen to get into the finals then you get to pick them to join your alliance um and that is something that is rare amongst any high school or uh School activity is that you don't

112have an actual competitor other than a nebulous uh other um which is really neat um the middle school team um they've managed to do really well they G to State four I think out of the last seven years that I know of um and this year we placed third um and in Michigan um it's hard to put a uh it's hard to say just how difficult Michigan is and there's about 3,500 High School robotics teams uh Michigan has over 500 of them um same thing with Middle School uh that there's I think 7,000 middle school teams and we have about 600 um and I know I don't have any more time but um Michigan is considered um a worlds within the uh within the competition we have more teams than Texas we have more teams

113than California um I think we have currently the highest number of teams in the United States um and uh that's because of our great manufacturing base so um we can obviously Pete talked about all the money um but uh really it's every kid has the opportunity to go pro in every kid has an opportunity to succeed um most sports you don't have that luxury you have I don't know how many kids are on on a football team or a soccer team but I mean you have kids that'll go to state um but then that's where their career will end um and with robotics this will be their career for their lives so thank you thank you we we appreciate your guys's enthusiasm we thank you for being coaches and we thank you for presenting to

114us tonight so okay app supp thank you those the two okay all right we'll move on to the consent agenda Madam Secretary cheer calls for a motion at the Harper Creek Board of Education approve the consent agenda as follows approve the general fund check School Services fund check school lunch and student School activity fund checks in accordance with the list discussed approve the following minutes as reviewed January 13th 2025 regular meeting minutes January 23rd 2025 superintendent compensation committee meeting minutes January 30th 2025 policy committee meeting minutes February 6th 2025 budget committee meeting minutes then moveed by Mrs Wallace supported by Mr Smith do we have discussion heing see none please call the rooll Mrs Right yes Mrs Waton yes Mrs Alward I vote Yes Mrs Wallace yes Mr Smith yes Mr B I vote Yes

115motion carries 6 Z all right thank you for that information discussion item a school safety update Mr rid way we met today um we spent the most of the time talking about the emergency operation plan dry up um you can expect as board members that you will see the final emergency operation plan either in Mar or a depending on how quickly we get through the the draft process um and so that will update us and put us in line with where we need to be with our safety operation any questions all right we'll move on to schools of choice each year we have to decide if we're going to participate in School of Choice um for on the overhead and within your packet I put last year schol this is what this this looks like

116my recommendation is that we Sim we stay similar in terms of targeted for first through 12 and so what I will do once we have our second count which is this week determine how many slots we have per grade um so in this chart you can see how many kids we have at a grade level this would be current year and then how many sections of classes that we have and then the School of Choice SLC 2425 is the slots available so what I'm asking you to do is to be targeted for that and then for kindergarten we have been open so unlimited School of Choice and we've been that way for a long time and one of the reasons that we do Unlimited in kindergarten but not the rest is that uh we want

117to ensure that we so we're doing this so we can keep the programs you know we we heard from robotics today as a program in the school but we have lots of programming and by accepting School trade students it helps us main those programs that we have um I don't think it's a good idea for us not to have school choice it's my opinion uh there are some folks that would say well you know why would we have kids from outside coming in well so we can maintain what we have if we didn't have school of choice we would have one less Elementary School we didn't have school choice we'd have lots of programs that we couldn't offer in our high school specifically and so I think this is something that's a good thing for

118the district again in my opinion and so I would recommend that we 1 through 12th we do open or unlimited school choice for kindergarten I will have to set the windows for application period you can kind of see a sample so for 1st through 12 it'll be somewhere around the first or second week of May to the first or second week of June and then kindergarten will be open for a longer period of time and that needs to be open before the first kindergarten um countdown to kindergarten that's coming up on March so tonight I'm asking you that to participate in school of Jo for the fall semester you will decide if we want to do school choice for winter semester next year which we have not done for a long time typically just do

119school and so you're also directing me once we do that once we have the numbers to fill in the blanks and how many slots that we have you'll notice last year we did not have a lot of slots available in first through really you go all the way down to eth nth or sorry eth grade if you add all those up there really wasn't very many school choice that had to come back our because we had talked about how full we are within our school district and so there's a little bit more room in the first grade next year but you can see we don't have a we're not adding a ton of kids through school TR we're just maintaining and and um when I say filling classrooms I mean filling classrooms to a spot

120where we is feasible to run the class I'm not trying to fill them up to capacity I just want to make sure it's feasible I hate to get us in a situation where all of a sudden we only have two SE Elementary class at a building then classes do getg we like we have it FR that's at the school because we don't have space toate all of them right so we have a great great start Readiness at gsrb at the high school two classes and one at be Lake and we don't have space at Waddles or much run those say last year supposed say next year what's that said you said you were going up next year 25 potentially yeah next year it be 25 26 it says last year the heading is oh so

121what what this what that would have meant so 2425 the previous year we you say previous the last and that would have been the 203 24 numbers slots we had we had a lot more slots open the previous year as a board we said you know we wanted to make sure we stay at that 28 29% and so we offered less slots Goa does that make sense yes it does now I'm assuming that we want to stay in that same range we're not looking to expand it we just like I said maintain with where we should questions comments all right move on to Michigan Association School boards 20202 election all right we have to make a decision tonight on who to support for the msab board of directors for region six I'm gonna flip to

122that page hopefully Tiana Harrison or Elizabeth Odell so Tiana Harrison from C repu or elizabe Elizabeth Odell from sty Tiana is the incumbent I believe correct or not I didn't notice NE incumbents maybe I don't think so does anybody know any either of these two people if not a lot of times to say which one is closer but I'm not saying that's how you should vote then the other piece of the pie is you know 10 years of service oops service and the other person certification similar anybody have any feel for recommendations I think they have all held all four positions anybody want to make a recommendation location I get I I'll just throw when I read them both I thought they were both great I guess I was leaning towards Tiana yeah after I

123support okay the way I all right so when we get to the um action section um maybe you can the chair can read a motion that reflects Tiana y all right uh we're going to move on to the super contract renewal all right well it is in board book U let me grab that it's also my bag but I did not grab it out well generally the contract is a three-year contract um typically we do it after the evaluation the new law in Michigan says that you can have an exempt year get years effective or highly effective and so this was an exempt year in the in the cont or in the contract in the evaluation piece and so this time of year is typically do that and what is typical it's a three-year contract

124and so we basically just add that third year on on an annual basis so this is really just talking about what that third year like yeah and this contract is redlined so it is it's not redlined in board book with the appropriate changes were made by true and Law Firm to update uh to any necessary um changes and in general um there were uh about five different changes made U Mr ridgeway's life insurance was increased to two times um his salary which was is standard I believe for for I think so others um vacation days were increased based on his length of tenure um got a standard 3% increase in Pay we did add um time off for the Fourth of July week and the week between Christmas and New Year's um besides that no

125other major changes were noted and um anything that Sarah or Barry would entertain who are also on the superintendent compensation committee with me other than just thanking him for another year the the red line the TR updates really is important because that gets you in the right position legally you know if things happen within either the relationship or to me with health or any other reason that protects the district and so the changes that you made really were for you know the district protection side um and we are not reevaluating this year because of your um three years highly effective yeah but we will have to start the process so I think that's something we need to take we got trained we need to take a hard look at setting setting the goals I think

126the Strategic plan is going to be a piece in terms of these other goals gu okay sense all right we'll move on to policy update oh this is a lot of fun so that was riveting and there was really three different sections it know as simple as I possibly could in the board generally the first thing is we wanted to talk about renaming facilities and we wanted to have a procedure and so TR did give me um a policy I didn't really like it so the committee and I took a look and we redlined it so we added a few things the first part is just putting in our um Mission but really in terms of if we're going to rename a facility facility we did add so significant contributions to the quality of Ed

127extracurricular programs for the district or public or community service were the things that we would name for and then if you go down to the section in terms of what would be the steps so there would be um a request made to the board um the board would then establish a committee with at least one administrator one teacher or coach one parent one Community member and one School Board member minimum um the naming committee will meet a written recommendation to the board the board would then hold a public hearing because we want to get some input from the public we did add on there that it needed to the public hearing I missed I missed the word by the way the public hearing will be advertised at least in the local newspaper the shoer probably

128and on social media trying to get people here and then once that happened then the board would vote it they would do yes or no on this name change we did discern there's a difference between versus naming a new facility we thought if we had to name a new facility uh there would be a there would be additional steps that would happen because people would probably do contest or a survey of what name we should put together so then the naming committee can go through that simar yep I'll go to the next one so the next part was Michigan Ear sick time go thank you Michigan Ear six time act um it's just a new law that came into effect it comes into effect on February 21st this puts us in a position so that

129we are ready for that really the biggest difference is people can earn sick time like you work 30 hours you get an hour of sick time with a maximum of 72 hours a year now all of our employes more than that that's about n days our employees have 10 days of sick time the difference in the law is that they can take these in one hour increments we currently allow half day increments so that's going to be a little bit of a change um I know that I heard from Steve frisbee at the Beyond cable that there is a new bill to tighten that up a little bit so it's easier to manage but for now we really need to pass the S time policies and it would do a couple different things um so

130it would add policy 4205 I'm sorry it it would eliminate 425 and add the policy of 4113 which is because the paid medical act used to now this is the one that so take a policy away add a policy and then there's a form that we have for notification of I recommend that we move forward with that and then t polic was a update that came last minute and so the board took a or the sorry the committee took a look at it and so if you haven't heard Title 9 went from the 20124 version back to 2020 version because of a court decision a federal court decision that occurred and so there are 18 policies that are are affected they basically go back to what we did prior to this last summer we just

131changed the policies in the summer so it just goes back in time a little bit um I could go through every single polic ch generally um it just simply puts us back a year or two by do it's all legal I would recom we do the michig Nur and the title policy and then if you have any thoughts on theing District facilities what does our motion read right now it Nam all three okay so yeah there's any comments we can talk about the facilities separate out is anybody gonna have anything they want to see different in the motion okay just want to just want to check now um all right let's move on to the Strategic plan um as everybody knows I've sent out I think a couple times on that I didn't hear back

132from anybody assuming we're good to go but you want to pick it up from there Mr Ridgeway well I think I showed this document last time a couple different times in terms of what the look of the the Str plan yes there were things that were that are changed but typically for verbage reasons to make it easier to read for our community that was the the thought process um there were a couple of things that were new one is a comprehensive program for special KNE students as one of the objectives we know that we have a lot of Behavioral issues in the younger grades and trying to come up with a plan to help that a lot of that work is being done with our multi tier systems of supports within the districts and they're

133working really hard on it and we've actually seen less or sorry office referrals um this year than we've seen in past year so we're seeing some growth which is which is good although we still hear about some kids that struggle um another thing planning seeds for corporate Partnerships wasn't directly in there even though was talked about some uh talking about robotics tonight that's that's an idea of how can we get those seeds for more C Partnerships beyond the nonprofits we already work with um in my opinion everything else is was pretty much within the Strategic plan that you looked at last year this would be an update to that so I did look at some other school district strategic plan because to be very honest when I saw this I was like ginormous and this

134is very wordy and I don't know if this is like if we're really trying to like appeal to the the community if I was just a parent and I was reading this it's just a lot but like not a lot of information about what we're trying to do um but this is what a lot of them look like they they are kind of um a little vague and pretty wordy um and so I don't know that kind of helped me feel a little more warm and fuzzy about our strategic plan you know I just think um I have a lot to say but I will email versus talking about it here just because of time and I think it's more to do with our objectives and our you know our goal setting and that kind

135of thing less about what we have as strategic plan yeah I think as you look at this the the five priorities Drive achievement invest in our people create closure collaboration improve Communications and create our future these would be the the major things so in an outward facing document those would be the things that would be highlighted along with Mission Vision and I believe po values I have asked our marketing team work Marketing Group to come up with a draft they did have a draft but I sent it back because I wasn't happy with it yet so that this is not what the outward facing will look like it will something that will be much more easy to read I think and so I think when we see that maybe we'll feel better about it but

136in terms of the verbage I believe this is what my hearing is we want to potentially move forward with as I did like that a lot of school a lot there are some School District who used like parent surveys and like the the information that we collect from like after conferences or uh focus groups you know they had a team of people um and included them in the strategic planning and I think that um I I really like that idea especially if we're looking for Community Buy in moving forward for a lot of the things that we're planning to do so gu for future reference I think that would be a great idea originally when we put this together we had that larger group yeah so um but I as far as followup I think

137that can be implemented and I think the whole purpose of redoing this is so it has some some strings that come down that can be it's a living document not just a document that goes on the wall um and I think those objectives and some of those uh pieces under the objectives will give the board more control and try to measure and um you know yeah I mean adapt I mean this is the Rob point I mean what you would share with the public is got to got to concise message this but on the flip side of that the Strategic plan is only as good as all the detailed work that has to be done that delivers on the objectives so I think we've boy this has been what a year and a half in

138the make I mean and I agree with you it's there's a lot of words there but man when we came out of that Community session a year and a half it was like an encyclopedia so I do think it'll be good for us to to see these are the details underneath each of the it's really hard to see just as an example Implement a comprehensive curriculum know the smart goals the action steps that that would be required and to be honest we are in process and have been working on this for a few years and so we're getting closer and closer closer to delivering on that and then the same for you know our our PD plan are you all the things that we would do in terms of that so all those details are

139actually and this this is the same format that um some large corporations use to deliver value to their stakeholders so I agree with you I think that outward document has to kind of grab the community and get them fired up and then then we got to we got to have the details to make sure that it just doesn't become a piece of paper that you hang on the wall that you're actually delivering against what you say you're you're going to deliver and Rob when do you expect to have that final Madison Avenue okay by not there okay all right we've been working behind seem to help move that along so um anything further on the Strategic plan we are going to take action tonight to approve it all right any comments from the audience all

140right we're gonna move on to action items School of Choice chair calls for a motion at the Harper Creek Board of Education approves participating in School of Choice program for fall 2025 with kindergarten being unlimited School of Choice and the first through 12th grades being targeted School of Choice further the Board of Education directs superintendent Ridgeway to determine the targeted School of Choice Flats available for first through 12th grades and set application time periods for both unlimited and targeted School of Choice and moved by Mr Smith supported by Mrs wat Waton um do we have discussion I almost did it I almost did it you did do it Bo I did it's I want to put that extra tea in there I was thinking what you said that one day all right we have discussion

141sorry Shay okay no discussion please call the rooll Mrs is Ryner yes Mrs Waton yes Mrs Alward I vote Yes Mrs Wallace yes Mr Smith yes and Mr B I vote Yes motion carries 6 Z all right uh Michigan associate School boards election chair calls for a motion the Harper Creek Board of Education takes action for their Collective vote for the masb region 6 Board of director one-year term for Tiana Harris kouo Public Schools as discussed and reviewed moved and moveed by Mrs Wallace supported by Mr Smith do we have discussion hear and see none please call the role Mrs Ryner yes Mrs Waton yes Mrs Alward I vote Yes Mrs Wallace yes Mr Smith yes and Mr best I vote Yes motion carries 6 Z right thank you for that uh action item C

142revised 20 202 20242 budget here calls for a motion that the Harper Creek Board of Education approve the revised 2024 2025 budget as presented support good move by Mr Smith supported by Mrs Wallace do we have discussion hear and see none please call the rooll Mrs Ryner yes Mrs Waton yes Mrs Alward I vote Yes Mrs Wallace yes Mr Smith yes Mr B I vote Yes motion carries 6 Z action item D superintendent contract renewal chair calls for a motion at the Harper Creek Board of Education approve the superintendent contract renewal as discussed and reviewed been moved by Mrs Wallace supported by Mrs Waterson do we have discussion hear and see none please call the rooll Mrs Ryner yes Mrs Waton yes Mrs alard I vote Yes Mrs Wallace yes Mr Smith yes Mr B

143I vote Yes motion carries 6 Z all right thank you for that action item e policy update chair calls for a motion at the Harbor Creek Board of Education approve the policy updates to the naming of District facilities Michigan earn sick time act and Title Nine as presented support support all right it's been moved by Mrs Wallace supported by Mrs Ryner do we have discussion hearing Cena please call the role Mrs Ryner yes Mrs Waton yes Mrs Alward I vote Yes Mrs Wallace yes Mr Smith yes Mr Bess I vote Yes motion carry 60 all right last but not least the Strategic plan chair calls for a motion that the Harper Creek Board of Education approved the Strategic Plan update as discussed and reviewed so move support we'll move by Mr Smith supported by Mrs

144Wallace do we have discussion hearing AUM please call the role Mrs Ryner yes Mrs Waton yes Mrs alart I vote Yes Mrs Wallace yes Mr Smith yes and Mr bth I vote Yes motion carries 6 Z all right and items for the next meeting anything anybody can think of as of right now as usual I will text email I wouldn't mind to see an update on the number of retirements I know that the March 1 um deadline is approaching um for their incentive so and do the wild SP Mets Club give you give you a good update tonight good job Tony all right uh we will adjourn at 803m good evening