BOE 03/04/2021

001call the novi board of education regular meeting march 4th 2021 to order i would like to welcome everybody on hopefully our very last at least for the board members in the administration um zoom meeting we will see how that goes i don't want to make any promises but fingers crossed and mr mena if we can get a roll call go please rusty cook here trusty hood here trustee manna is here trustee murphy here trustee rony hey krusty ruskin here and trustee smith here if we can rise for the pledge of allegiance that mr menno will lead us in this evening i pledge allegiance 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 [Music] if i can

002get a approval of the agenda for this evening's meeting move to approve the gender as presented support recommended by mrs murphy and supported by mr smith roll call vote mr mena trustee cook yes trustee hood yes trustee manna yes trustee murphy yes trusty roney yes trusty ruskin yes and trustee smith yes motion carry 7-0 first up we have our comments from the audience related to agenda items as everyone knows when we are on zoom we have a google form put out uh before the meeting for the public to make comment dr matthews i am pleased to report this evening we have no comments okay everyone is 100 happy in our district thank you we will save you from all of the talking tonight then right next we'll have the report to the board and we

003only have one item this evening it is the school start times dr mia thank you dr ruskin and tonight we bring back to the board an item that the board dealt with in november uh of 2019 when the district bell time committee presented a report to the board of education on changing school start and end times highlights of the report were that 12 to 18 year olds should have 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night the biological changes that occur during adolescence shift the internal clock for this age group and make sleepiness occur later in the evening the center for disease control the cdc reports that 58 of middle school students get less sleep than they need and they also find that 73 percent of high school students get less sleep than they need

004while all students suffer when they do not get enough sleep some subgroups asian black and female are disproportionately affected sleep deprivation increases risk for diabetes obesity anxiety depression sports injuries and behavioral problems lack of sleep impacts academic performance and delaying start times improves attendance decreases disciplinary actions increases student attention improves student family interaction and increases gpa and test performance in reviewing options it became clear that developing a perfect schedule would be impossible buses after school activities student supervision at home and other concerns were all considered in developing the new proposed belt time schedule on december 19 2019 the board of education approved the following school start and end times novi meadows would be 7 30 a.m to 2 22 p.m novi high school would be 8 a.m to 2 4 p.m the novi adult transition

005center would be 8 a.m to 2 4 p.m novi middle school would be 8 30 a.m to 3 11 p.m and all k-4 buildings would be 9 am to 3 52 pm these proposed times had the following advantages high school and middle school students would have the ability to get 45 minutes more sleep each night meadow students would be dismissed before the elementary building so that older siblings could be at home before younger siblings all elementary schools would start at the same time there would be no needed change for care and the early childhood education center the traffic flow on taft would be maintained and our bus driver hours would be maintained disadvantages were noted it was not compliant with the 8 30 am start time for high school that was recommended by the cdc

006younger students start earlier than high school students the winter darkness would impact younger students more and after school activities could be impacted after board approval the new start and end times needed to be discussed with our novi education association that discussion has taken place and we are ready to move forward with implementing these start and end times for the 2021 2022 school year and so um that's the report this evening and uh in the end it probably worked out well for us with the covid pandemic that we didn't try to implement these uh last fall uh which was the original time frame we had originally approved them in december of 2019 with a proposed beginning of the 2021 school year but with covet happening last march and and continuing into this fall we are now

007uh poised to make the new start times uh ready to go for this coming fall uh the 21-22 school year and so i we are making our preparations now uh we're going to communicate uh we have communicated these start times to our community we'll keep reminding them and later on in tonight's agenda we have a discussion about some walk zones because all of the k-4 buildings starting at the same time causes us to need all of our buses for the elementary runs so we'll have that discussion later on this evening so that's the report this evening dr ruskin thank you dr matthews do any board members have any specific questions regarding this report okay seeing none we will move on to the next agenda item which is the consent agenda we have the approval of

008the minutes the regular meeting minutes of february 18 2021. we have approval of bills which include several items december board report check register for december 2020 purchase card report from october 31 2020 through november 30th 2020 january board report check register for january 2021 purchase card report from december 1st 2020 through december 31st 2020. if i may get a motion mister i'll move that the no by community schools board of education approves the consent items as presented before recommended by mr smith and supported by mr mena mr menno if i can get a roll call vote please christy cook yes trustee hood yeah trusty mena yes trustee murphy yes trusty roney yes trustee ruskin yes and trustee smith yes ocean carries 7-0 thank you next we have our action items we have four action items

009this evening and we will start with the personnel report dr matthews thank you dr ruskin and we will go to dr kinser for the personnel report thank you dr matthews uh this evening we have one new hire sheila minik esl teacher in adult education two retirements brian gordon district athletic director and andrea coles esl interventionist at novi middle school and novi high school we also have two leaves of absence melanie stoner speech pathologist at ecec this is a year one child care leave of absence for the 2021 school year and audrey akasu 5th grade teacher at novi meadows a year 2 personal leave of absence for the 2021-22 school year thank you thank you dr kinser if i can ask for a motion mrs rowney that the nova community school board district board of education

010adopts a personnel report recommendation as presented um i'll do that okay thanks mrs romy can i take a second i'll support recommended by mrs roney and supported by mrs murphy any comments or questions this is roney i i brian can't go newly noted that's all he just can't go he can retire can't leave okay that sounds good to us mr mena yeah it's going to be interesting uh you know brian has i don't know how many years he's he's been here we had this this cycle where we had like three we had like two or three athletic directors in a row and then brian came on and boom he's been here i don't even even know how many years but uh he's done a lot of great things in the district i i could tell

011you that within the uh athletic director [Music] community because i get an opportunity to speak to a lot of he's well respected i know that he's well respected in the state and man i um it's going to be interesting to see when uh dr kinser does his work to to hire a new athletic crew i always tell him that there's two positions in this district that can make or break your job i mean the people will run you out of this district dr kinser you screw up on a band director you screw up on an athletic director hire you're in trouble okay i say that jokingly but you know part of that is really true so it'll be interesting to see um um you know who comes in to to phil's brian's shoes i luckily

012my understanding from talking to people out in the field is is being an athletic director in novi is is a position that is uh very much valued so i'm going to expect that not only will we probably have some internal candidates but but i expect that we're going to have a lot of really good external candidates uh be interesting to see uh whether or not this person comes in and is in the same mode like brian was in hosting like five million events a year i still don't understand how he was able to do that but he did he had a lot of support i know uh but i think he'll be missed i i think he did a great job while while he's here i think a lot of you folks were on the

013board early when he was here and he certainly took some arrows early on but i think he learned moved on and did a fantastic job for our district i'll certainly miss him i had a lot of fun working with him over the years and i look forward to spending time volunteering working with whoever replaces him in the district just to answer your question mr gordon was hired in 2012 so this is his ninth year um and i would like to just make a comment or two uh i agree with you that mr gordon is highly respected across the state for sure and and deservingly so i also feel very strongly that we have a terrific process in place we will post this position tomorrow morning and we will attract outstanding candidates both internal as well

014as external most likely and i'm very confident that uh we'll we'll have a strong uh final candidate emerge that we'll be able to present at a board meeting later this spring that's great thank you dr kinser and thank you mr mena for your comment any other comments dr matthews please uh i would just like to uh uh express um you know my appreciation to both uh mr gordon and miss cole uh our esl teacher over at the middle school in high school and and mr gordon who's our athletic director you know one of the bittersweet moments in our district is when we have these retirements come to the district both of these people who are on the retirement list tonight have have made significant contributions to our district and they both will be missed you

015know mr gordon is is certainly more visible than miss kohl's but miss cole has made a tremendous impact in the lives of many students over the course of the time that you've been in our district and and uh you know i think it does two things for me one it identifies that there are people in in our community who want to work for the novi community school district and they want to work here because they understand the opportunities that are present in our district and two the people that we are able to attract are very high quality people they they do their jobs and they do them very well and so i am very appreciative of both mr gordon and ms kohl's uh for the work that they have done and the work that uh

016hopefully they will continue to do as they go about their lives because they are still very young and they can continue to make a significant impact with their families and with others in the community thank you dr matthews dr webber so miss coles i'd like to say thank you too in the sense that our community school district comprises of 33 percent of our students are students who are english language learners and miss coles has been part of the team that has built and attracted families who know that we will care for them and she is an exceptionally caring individual if you imagine her combination of being a teacher of english language learners in a middle school put those two together right so you're working with that in a real gift and then brian gordon what

017i'll say about brian and from an athletic director's standpoint myself as a former high school principal willie's point is accurate the amount of attention that a community places upon and this saddens me a little bit as an academics guy but the amount of attention that a community sometimes places on athletics really makes that position the focal point of a community and mr gordon has done well with that and finally i'll say that brian's real attention to the mental health and well-being of our students is the thing that in my opinion separates him and will truly be his legacy he has walked the talk as far as caring about the mental health and well-being of our children and that is something that i will always remember him for so thank you thank you so much dr

018weber any other comments okay sitting down i just had a quick question for dr kinser it's not actually a question it's kind of a comment but i noticed that um miss minnick who is our new hire she has 33 years of experience i found that to be remarkable that we would be getting someone with such experience and um a diverse set of just different types of experience into our district so i was excited on that piece she's an excellent addition so that's great thanks okay i think if we're ready for a vote um mr mena if we can get a roll couple please trustee cook yes trustee hood yes trusty manna yes trusty murphy yes trusty roni yes trusty ruskin yes and trusty manna i mean trusty smith i'm sorry yes thank you motion carries

019seven to zero thank you next we have our second action item which is the 2021 roofing program at deerfield elementary dr matthews thank you dr ruskin on january 15 2021 the district received bids from three contractors after a seat of the bids plant moraine crescent participated in post bid reviews with two firms cei roofing and butcher and butcher concluding several discussions with both firms the bond team recommends awarding to butcher and butcher butcher and butcher's ability to meet our schedule and provide the specified materials for key factors in this recommendation budget for the deerfield roofing replacement including soft cost is two million seven hundred ninety five thousand nine hundred sixty three dollars based on this award and anticipated stop cost we expect this work to come in under budget with an anticipated final cost of

020two million six hundred and twenty thousand dollars the bond team recommends the district administration should enter into subcontract agreement with butcher and richard pending final negotiations between plant mary and cressa and true law firm on behalf of the novi community school district you have the reference structure text award recommendation package dated february 3rd client moran cressa can answer any questions that you may have had we had no question since our last board meeting uh the recommendation is is missing here but we would just ask that you approve the recommendation as presented tonight thank you dr matthews if i can get a motion mr cook you're a mute mr cook mr cook you're on you sorry about that i thought i took myself off practicing embarrassing uh i will recommend that the 2021 roofing program for

021deerfield be recommended or be presented recommend it as presented thank you very much we get a second support recommended by mr cliff and supported by mrs murphy any further questions or discussion before we take a vote okay seeing none i will ask for a roll call vote mr trustee cook yes trustee hood yes trustee mena yes trustee murphy yes dusty roney yes trustee ruskin yes and trustee smith yes motion carry seven to zero and we will move to our third action item we have irs letter closing agreement dr matthews thank you dr ruskin i will uh read this uh recommendation to you uh um we bring this tonight for both uh discussion and approval because of a timeliness issue mr mcintyre would be able to provide you with additional details if the board needs them

022before your vote on september 4 2012 the michigan public school employee retirement system mipsers was amended to require eligible public school employees to contribute three percent of their compensation to an irrevocable trust for retiree health benefits the three percent retiree health care contribution to be enrolled in the mitchell's health premium subsidy the irs has treated these contributions for federal income tax and fica purposes as it relates to the federal tax treatment of the three percent contribution to the mipster's health care trust the michigan office of retirement services has confirmed that multiple reporting units receive consistent favorable guidance from the irs as a refund claims it had been submitted relative to federal income tax and fica taxes that had been reported deducted or emitted under 2012 pa 300. we treated the three percent contribution as exempt

023from federal income tax in federal fica however if we participate in the closing agreement this will provide protection against a future unfavorable ruling for a period of 2013-2026 it is not mandatory that we participate in the closing agreement the closing agreement has not yet been finalized and is handled by w alan wilk of daikon gossip and and the cost to participate is 3 000 which may be paid by ors on our behalf form 2848 was submitted to meet the february fifth deadline and give mr welcome authority to represent school districts in this manner form 2848 will need to be resubmitted along with the resolution should we choose to participate ors is not providing advice as to whether we should participate in a closing agreement or not it is likely each reporting unit participating in the

024closing agreement will be listed on an addendum to the closing agreement we are a retainer client or troon law firm and trune has indicated 50 of their school district clients have adopted the resolution and they expect about 75 to 100 to be the final count so tonight we would recommend that the board approve the attached irs closing agreement resolution and as i said mr mcintyre is is clearly much better suited to answer any questions that the board may have on this particular recommendation thank you dr matthews if i can get a recommendation mr meadow yeah i move that the board of education approved the attached irs closing agreement um resolution as presented i support recommended by mr meadow and supported by mrs hood we will open the floor up for discussion or any further questions

025any board members may have okay seeing none i think we're ready for a roll call vote mr menno trustee cook yes trustee hood yeah trustee mena yes trustee murphy yes trusty roney yes trustee ruskin yes and trustee smith yes motion carries 7-0 thank you we will move on to our final action item for this evening it is the extended covet 19 reconfirmation dr matthews this is your favorite item each month i understand and so i will try to help you enjoy it as much as i do each month the novay community school district board of education is required to reconfirm our extended covet 19 learning plan the legislation requires that the district report out on key metrics the key metrics are reported by the oakland county health division each week among the key indicators reported

026are the following the seven day average of daily cases and counts per day since school began on september 8th and as you can see um we uh back in july there were 35 daily cases and 51 counts per day right now on march 3rd which was yesterday there were 97 it was the seven day average and 56 was the count uh yesterday the daily cases per zip code since september 8th as you can see they give for each of the three zip codes that constitute most of our school district um and as you can see um back in september it was at 22.5 and 48374 13.6 and 375 and 22.7 and 377. yesterday march 3rd it was reported at 18.6 and 374 14.9 and 375 and 16 and 377. the cases per by district for

027ten thousand uh you can see back in the uh summer in august it was at four point three uh we are at 11.2 the most recent report also reported is the percent positive and the most recent report from the state of michigan for oakland county was 3.84 on february 4th 2021 the novi community school district board of education approved a revised extended covet 19 learning plan recommendation tonight the administration recommends reconfirming the following recommendation one and recommendation one is that the novice community school district board of education approved returning k-6 hybrid students to a five-day a week in person learning if our covet 19 case counts meet these thresholds case counts for 10 000 residents in the novi community school district is reported on the oakland county health division coveted website or at or below

02830 for three consecutive weeks case counts of the three zip codes is at or below 55 for three consecutive weeks and the 14 day average case counts in oakland county are at or below 200 for three consecutive weeks k-6 hybrid students would stay in five day a week school unless numbers begin to trend in the wrong direction uh case counts per 10 000 residents would go at or above 45 case count averaging the three zip codes would be at or above 75 and case counts in oakland county or at or above 275 for three consecutive weeks and then the no i community school district board of education approved returning seven twelve hybrid students to a five day a week in personal learning if our coveted 19 case counts meet these threshold case counts for 10

029000 residents in our district are at or below 20 for three consecutive weeks case count averages for the three zip codes are at or below 40 and the 14 day average case counts in oakland county are at or below 125. 712 hybrid students would stay in five day a week school unless members uh numbers begin to trend in the wrong direction case counts for ten thousand residents were at or above forty for three consecutive weeks case count averages for the three zip codes were at or above and case counts in oakland county are at about 225 for three consecutive weeks the board of education directs the superintendent to communicate weekly the status on meeting these thresholds the parent and school community that the board of education and administrative team work collaboratively with teachers and support

030staff to ensure that plans are in place to begin five-day in-person instruction for hybrid students when the thresholds are met and that virtual students remain virtual as per their choice in december and in discussions with the board it was felt that some flexibility be given to the superintendent and recommendation 2 was brought forth to address this issue recommendation 2 is that the board of education designates that the superintendent has the authority to monitor the metrics and alter the learning plan if circumstances warrant such a change the board will be informed of any significant change before it's implemented and b the board would be called to a special meeting to vote on the change assuming that it could be done in a timely manner that would not imperil student or staff safety so tonight the recommendation

031is that the novi community school district board of education reconfirmed the extended covet 19 learning plan recommendation one noted above and that if you choose that the no i community school district board of education approved recommendation to as noted above as well and just as a little bit additional information our k-6 students returned last week our k-6 hybrid students returned last week to five days of in-person instruction and the report has been very positive i've visited many of the schools i've been in the classrooms talked to the teachers seeing the students interacting with each other and both teachers and students report that they are very pleased with how things are going this week our 7 12 students have returned uh other than the occasional grumble that i now have to get up five days in

032a row it's by 7 15. most of the students are very happy to see each other in in the halls at novi high school i've seen students greeting each other in in mostly appropriate ways at the high school we struggled a bit in the lunchroom to make sure that the students sit only three to a table we've added some additional tables at both the middle school and the high school to keep students spread out as we noted before this began when we were contemplating a return social distancing especially at the middle school in high school is is more problematic than it is at the k-6 buildings but even there is some social distancing issues at the k-6 buildings but overall things have gone very well in our return of our hybrid students to five days

033of in-person instruction and and both teachers and students report uh very positive experiences uh for for the k-6 students it's now been almost two weeks and for our k our 7-12 students it will have been uh one week tomorrow uh so we would present these recommendations to the board uh to approve um and uh we believe that the numbers are continuing to trend in the right direction they've stabilized a little bit but they've stabilized both below the metrics that we've identified which is good news for us and and so we think we're on the right track and this is a good experience for our our k-12 hybrid students thank you dr matthews if i can get a motion for a recommendation mrs hood okay i'll try this um i uh i moved that the novak

034community school district board of education reconfirmed that the extended covid 19 learning plan recommendation one noted above and that the novik community school district board of education approved recommendation 2 as known as above we have support all support recommended by mrs hood and supported by mrs murphy any discussion or conversation or specific questions okay seeing none mr manna i think we're ready for a roll call though oh i'll actually pipe in here um so just to let you know um you know obviously great news the kids are back to school um is everybody happy no everybody's not always happy i think a majority of the folks that i've talked to i think a majority of the hybrid parents that are i've talked to and the majority of the hybrid students i've talked to um are

035are glad to be back in school um excited to be back in school who knew it would be that day would come um but uh you know but but no parents should know that uh you know we we do read letters from those parents who who aren't as happy um um but we do hear you we understand the concerns and we're making decisions we think are in the best interest of uh the majority of our stakeholders that being said this will be the first month that i will be voting in favor of this i think i think our plan is solid and i'm very happy for how things have transpired um over the past month thank you mr meno and thank you for pointing that out yes we've had some dialogue but i think we've

036had some nice discussions working through those conversations via email when parents or students have had concern dr weber please yep uh being a community member i've had conversations with numerous students and parents i think in this dialogue sometimes we forget that 55 of our parents chose virtual to begin with and those parents as evidenced by emails to the board and myself or coming in making statements at board meetings uh their non-statements and non-emails that you've all received that have been critical of the district uh have also corrobor or i should say um are congruent with the conversations i've had with numerous parents who are very happy to have the opportunity to have their students learn in that format and from my own focus groups in the community i am happy to see what i frankly

037always knew that students would just as our teachers and administrators want to be back five days a week as soon as they could and it's no surprise to me that they're happy and no surprise to me that they're connected i want to say thank you to dr matthews and thank you to the school board for doing so however in a way that put a premium on the safety of our children and the safety of our staff ahead of um the vociferous criticism of a small number of people who felt that we should be back much earlier in this format so thank you for each of you for sharing your truths and being leaders in this very difficult time so i'm just going to give you some love from the parents and the kids i get

038to talk to on a on a regular basis that in this time it's very rare for everyone to be completely happy but i can say that the comment i hear again and again is i am so grateful my kids go here you guys did it right and that means a lot to i hope all of you thank you dr webber any other comments or questions oh mr cook yeah um i kind of wish these two recommendations would have been voted on separately but uh seeing you know going back and looking at the numbers and everything the the the i think we put together a good plan and and chose some good numbers for getting the kids back to five days a week but looking over the numbers for if it goes high again you know

039it potentially could be our k-6 kids that go home go back to hybrid before high school kids so um you know it's uh that that kind of that potentially could be a concern if uh things get worse again but recommendation two kind of takes care of that so i you know that kind of qualms uh calms my fear of the or the two recommendations being voted on as one so i will be supporting this but because i think we're doing the right thing and getting the kids back to school a lot sooner than a lot of other districts are and it almost looks like you know hearing some news reports other districts are starting to follow us and pick out metrics so mr cook um just to follow up on that i mean you certainly

040do have the ability and i know that you know this but if you would like to see it's broken into two recommendations you could just make an amendment if you would like or we could just continue as we are but i want you to know no it's you know i just want to note that when i saw those numbers when i you know revisited those numbers and i saw that that you know having the having dr matthews uh being able to say hey you know we're in a situation where we need to change and call the board together you know the board still makes the decision and we'll follow the metrics as much as we can unless things get really bad and you know trusting dr matthews not to you know jump the gun or

041anything like that i think we're you know we're good with both of them together okay thank you this is what i saw your hand raised i was just going to say i combined them to paul's point i combined them into the one recommendation but i'm happy to i mean i would support if we all wanted to vote no on this recommendation and then split them out if you wanted but if paul supports it then then i'm okay with not doing that i suppose that sounds good i know that um at the passport meeting i had some reluctance but the way that it's written i feel very comfortable and i will be supporting this the way that it's written so okay seeing no further comment mr mena if we can get a roll call go please

042rusty cook yes trusty hood yes trusty manna yes trusty murphy yes trusty roni yes trusty ruskin yes and trustee smith yes quotient theory seven to zero all right um we will move on uh to information and discussion we have quite a few items here six items so our first one is elementary walk zones and redistricting dr matthews thank you dr ruskin i'm going to share my screen just so people at home will be able to see some of the things that we're talking about in the fall 2021 all elementary schools will be starting at the same time as a result this has caused us to review our walk zones at our elementary bus route and before i get too much further i i would note that ms valentine is here uh this evening with us

043to talk about this issue and also the bus purchase issue as well and so i appreciate this valentine bean uh we want to accomplish two primary objectives first we want to make the bus runs as efficient as possible because of the start and end time and we want students to arrive and depart school in a timely manner second we need to enforce walk zones at all levels because we need to ensure that buses are available to transport students our transportation policy 6009 states students who reside in the district and meet the following requirements are eligible for transportation to and from school the student lives more than one and a half miles from his or her school however a student who has been granted permission to attend the school other than the school to which he

044or she is assigned is not eligible for transportation by the school district historically we have not always enforced this policy we were able to not enforce this policy because we had five bus runs each day but with the new start times which are good for kids we will need to start living this policy in practice what we will do next year is provide transportation for k-6 students who live one mile and further from school and for 7-12 students who live one and a half miles and further from school deerfield has uh currently has no walk zone but they will have this walk zone so if you if you know where deerfield is right there and so uh you will see that it encompasses a lot of island light for example it encompasses the new subdivision

045that was built on 11 mile road just east of the middle school and deerfield complex it also encompasses some of the uh island lake that are on the east side of wickson road so this will be the deerfield walk zone next year the middle school also that will pretty much be their walk zone as well they currently have no walk zone but they will have this walk zone as well so you'll notice up here is grand river and that subdivision up there by grand river island lake the new subdivision on 11 mile and the island lake that is across on the east side of wickson orchard hills walk zone will not change and park views walk zone will not change village oaks walk zone will expand here is their current walk zone you will note

046that this area in the upper right hand side of this map and in the lower right hand side of this map currently uh are provided transportation uh in the new walk zone those areas uh because they're within the one mile uh area will be walk zones you'll notice this area right here uh on hagerty road uh is not included and the reason for that is that there's no direct drought from this subdivision so students would have to walk down hagerty road to to get to a place where they could make their way over to village oaks and we don't think that would be safe so this area even though it's within the one mile area because they don't have access and they would have to walk on hagerty road will still be provided with bus

047transportation but these other two areas the upper right hand and the lower right hand will now be walk zones the novi woods walk zone will expand and this will also impact redistricting between novi woods and parkview elementary school as we extend the walk zones one neighborhood currently in the parkview attendance area needs to become part of the novi woods attendance area and the k-4 students in the simmons orchard neighborhood currently are buster parkview we when we only bust those outside of one mile at the k-6 level the simmons orchard neighborhood becomes a walk zone for parkview but the only way for those students to walk to parkview is if they go directly past novi woods so it makes sense to have them stop at novi woods so you will see here nova woods is in

048this area here this simmons orchard this area right here is currently a no by woods walk zone and this area here is a parkview bus zone you will see that down here this area here is a walk zone and that's that area right there but what we're proposing is that this area here uh become a walk zone because it was it's within one mile of parkview but to get the parkview the only way to do that is to go directly past novi woods so we would say that this section simmons orchard would walk to no by woods so the administration would recommend that any current third grade student part view who would be a fourth grade student next year at parkview would be allowed to continue at parkview with parent transportation all other k2 students

049siblings of third graders would attend novi woods from this neighborhood if this was implemented this current school year and the impact on enrollment would have looked like this so so you would uh oops that that should be part view sorry that's my mistake uh that should say part of you but uh you can see that we would uh kind of stabilize the enrollment between those two buildings and making this change through the start times we would also like to change a boundary between village oaks and orchard hills so the village oaks and orchard hills changes unrelated to walkshow this recommendation comes to the board because we believe that implementing this change at the same time as the start time change makes sense the administration recommends this change in boundary for two primary reasons first this

050organizes the bus run in this area of novice so you can see this area right here this green area currently is a village oaks bus run what we're suggesting is anything north of grand river becomes orchard hills so a bus for orchard hills is already going into this neighborhood it's more efficient to have all of this area be one school instead of two schools the proposal is to have everything north of grand river attend orchard hills so that would be all of this area here all the green there would be orchard hills second the administration believes that decreasing the number of students at village oaks and increasing the number of students at orchard hills makes sense currently village oaks has 601 students and orchard hills has 378 even with the new physical additions at villa

051jokes this makes sense village oaks would be under 600 if this was implemented this year at 578 and orchard hills has capacity to handle approximately 20 more students so you can see the the if this was implemented this year what the numbers would look like and we think it would be similar next year so a recommendation will come to the board at the march 18th board meeting to confirm our start times approve the walk zone recommendation and approve the boundary changes for orchard hills and village oaks and novi woods and parkview so that's the report this evening and as i said ms valentine's here to answer any of those transportation questions uh and and we can if there are any questions on the other issues we can answer those as well thank you dr matthews

052mr smith i saw your hand up so please go ahead first of all my thank you to those that have been involved in this project i'm sure you're pulling your hair out and drawing maps and it's uh one of those things that i i bet there's at least one email you'll get that more than one probably express their gratitude for having a kid i mike my first comment is just uh as a as a parent of three kids that attended deerfield and middle school and all three have left those buildings uh when i look at the the walk zone dr matthews and mrs valentine that's that's you know that's a decent walk that but i i i can i can confess that i've taken all three of my kids to grand rapids michigan and i've

053driven them from where i used to live to my bus stop and it's it's twice as far as the longest walk and it's uphill oddly both ways and in the snow all the time um my question dr matthews is in the map you just showed with village oaks i'm sensitive to village oaks i think dr ophelia's done a great job there we've had a couple uh teachers of the year come out of that building and i don't know if you guys know this there's people teaching out of that building like in a closet there's just there's no room there why not have the boundary be it north of 10 mile versus north of grand river that would free up another because because even with the change north of grand river that's just a sliver i

054i just would encourage us to try to free up some some space there in vl yep and that's a great question and we've had that discussion uh sorry about that and i'm assuming you mean this area right there right that's exactly right okay uh what uh what i will do uh over the next two weeks is is give you what those numbers look like so that you'll have a a way to compare you know if we just did this area or if we did this whole area originally we had talked about doing this whole area but with the new additions to village oaks we think that that uh the spacing will be good but we will make sure of that and we'll give you a comparison of this area this whole green area north of

05510 mile or this area okay i'm familiar with that area as most of you know cream drive is where they do the staging between grand river and 10 mile for the parade every year for the memorial day there's a lot of mostly commercial buildings and then there's a lot of uh condos and townhouses there off of you know just to the to the west of that so i encourage you to look at that please okay so we'll we'll provide the board uh a comparison of just north of grand river or north of 10 mile okay thank you you're welcome thank you mr smith mr cook yeah i i know we're looking a lot of this for busing purposes but by increasing the walk zones we're probably also going to increase the number of parents that

056are driving their kids to school can all these schools handle uh additional car traffic as you know right now i've talked to you about what's happening at meadows both five and six and it's also happening down at the middle school where cars are out on the road waiting to turn in to pick up their kids right so um we're going to have an increase in traffic there have we considered any of that yes we have and and we are looking at multiple ways to ensure that uh the the uh the car traffic has ample room and we don't create backups on on you know significant roads and so we'll get you some information on what that might look like principals are looking at creating double drop off areas uh when possible and so we'll provide

057some of that we also know that you know during the first week of school it will be an adjustment period as people kind of figure out can we carpool uh you know can my kids walk all those kinds of things but we will certainly we we have certainly considered that and we we understand that uh more than likely car traffic is going to increase at all of our buildings and we'll make sure that we have before school starts in the fall we have a good plan for that but we'll talk about that and get you some more information before march 18th and then the other thing you mentioned was uh the current third graders would stay at their existing schools is that for all schools uh uh that's for um uh just village oaks uh

058and uh and parkview so if they're if they're in third grade this year and they want to finish out at the school that they started at we would allow them to stay up to parents with transport but everybody um you know k through two uh including siblings would go to the new school so then we potentially could have siblings at one school yeah separate schools you know and and and that's our recommendation you know i'm um it's just a tricky thing when you grandfather people in because you know if you potentially if your grandfather people in they could stay you know depending on the spacing of their kids it could be several years before they kind of matriculate out of that building and so we thought making a clean split would probably be the cleanest

059way to do it but certainly you know the board has the ability to alter that recommendation if the board were would choose to do that and then the other thing if you could provide it is you know i know you've provided some of it for parkview versus norway woods and for orchard hills versus uh village oaks could you give us an estimate on the number of students that are going to be uh affected by each one of these walk zones sure uh cindy can you uh we will do that we'll have those numbers for you i have a couple of them so deerfield would be 102 students and middle school would be 59 but i'll look at the other schools and get those for you those were the two that didn't have a walk zone

060so i pulled those but i'll get the rest of the schools and i think the one thing that you didn't uh add in uh you you may have just been overlooked but for the deerfield the subdivision that's north of uh cc is also included in that walk zone for dear friends and the middle school my understanding in talking with the city is that they don't anticipate that children will live there but but we will look at that because i think it's it's technically marketed as an adult you know uh uh um kind of subdivision but but we'll make sure we'll confirm that with the city is that the polti development not saying that 55 year olds can't have children but more more than likely they don't but which i do so are you moving there's

061an older father dr matthews i uh i i don't appreciate that all right are you good mr club yes thanks mr man i saw you had your hand raised yeah dr matthews that last slide that you put up the uh i just want to make sure that uh i didn't miss something there on on the village oaks one this one everything yes and i know this is a this map is a boundary map for the district not not a walk zone map right so so the kids north of 10 mile get bust here correct they get buster villa jokes uh because we don't want them crossing 10 miles okay good good when i saw this initially i was thinking boy i hope we're not going to have the kids over by sealy cross grand river

062and and 10 mile but no we don't i'm glad okay good good thank you you're welcome thank you mr menno any other questions or comments doctor yes uh president rusk and i do want to make sure that the community understands that our students with special needs and their students with ieps will be looked at on a case-by-case basis so we can attend to their transportation needs and their schooling needs um that are most um optimal for their own family in their own environment you dr webber for making that clear mr smith i'm sorry i just want to make one more request please i i know uh specifically along the uh wixom road which for those of you that are familiar with wix road in the morning i wouldn't say is any less dangerous than hagerty

063um we've had some client or some uh clients sorry we've had some uh uh community members ask for signs to be put up for speed zones for schools and whatnot i know that there's been some dialogue and discussion and whatnot between youth dr matthews and the city but i think at the end of the day we still don't have the signs up so as we implement these walk zones not just along wix road for deerfield in the middle school but i just would would ask that that your administration really makes a commitment to work with mr auger or whoever with the city to make sure we get the signs up and i mean our our city spent a fortune on the signs for the bike path you know that that goes across the different roads

064i think we could do the same for our kids yes we've had those discussions with the city and committed to having a school zone uh signs uh speed reduced speed limit uh on wickson road and we've also had discussions with the city about having a crossing guard uh there as well and so uh you know and if we identify that we need crossing guards at other locations uh the city has been very receptive in our conversations with them about about that idea all right thank you thank you if anyone has any if if there's anything right now that's great but if you think of something that you need to have a final decision in a couple weeks please forward that to dr matthews and he will forward it on to mrs valentine or whoever in

065the team needs to help gather the information that we need but are there i don't want to cut anyone off so is there any specific questions that you'd like answered here okay i think that we will move on to our next information and discussion piece which is the school bus purchase dr matthews thank you dr ruskin in review of the district's bus fleet it has been determined that due to condition age and mileage and repair costs four 2013 and 2014 bluebird school buses that are scheduled to be replaced the business office is recommending the purchase of four new buses from the holland bus company utilizing the statewide public bid known as the michigan bus purchasing program as received by the michigan school of business officials the cost of one regular passenger bus from the holland

066bus company is 92 549 for a total cost for four buses of 196 dollars the business office further recommends that the source of the funds be the 2014 bond fund in addition to the fleet replacement we also recommend uh changing over to dec from diesel fuel to gas fuel for the following reasons listed in the memo uh that mr mcintyre provided and so these bus purchases are presented tonight for information and discussion with rewarding of the bid on march 18th and you'll note that mr mcintyre has provided a more detailed a review of the bus purchases and the rationale for why we're using the 2014 bond fund the original source of the funds were to be interest earned from the 2019 bond however earned interest is not really materialized as expected and we still have

067funds in the 2014 bond fund that we could use toward this purchase and in addition you can see the recommendation of why we're changing from diesel to gas fuel mr mcintyre is here this evening as is miss valentine and so if you have additional questions i would uh direct you to ask of them because they certainly are more qualified to answer the questions than i am thank you dr matthews mr menna i saw your hand go up yes so mr mcintyre please do share for the community this thought about switching from diesel to gas yeah uh the cost is going to be much cheaper going from diesel to gas um there's a smell associated with the diesel that you don't have with gas um we also recommended to switch over a tank we're gonna make

068that switch over as well so there's some benefits uh long-term and short-term benefits for making this switch and so um making this switch also we're going to be moving our bus fleet uh we're going to switch into our bus fleet as well so we'll be consistent with moving the fuel over with the bus fleet switch over as well so we're going to have a time where we're probably we we store fuel right at right at the transportation depot right okay so so right now we just store uh diesel that's correct so we are we going to have to change i mean are we going to add a new tank are we going to change over a tank i mean we can't mix them right so we have separate tanks yeah we're in the process of

069purchasing a tank right now um i thought i had that in the report yeah okay so um okay and the other question is then um as far as see i was always under the impression that the reason a lot of folks go to diesel engines is because they last longer they go uh many more miles is that now a myth or is is that still not the case i mean how many miles are we supposed to get out of these gas engines versus um versus what we would normally get off a diesel yeah sandy you want to take that one on the mountain um i don't know that will actually we'll still keep our buses for the same amount of time but it will eliminate the there's the new diesel emission fuels uh that we

070have on there that have caused us some problems we will eliminate the cost of a preheater they're much more reliable in the cold weather uh the preventative maintenance is much less expensive the cost of gas versus diesel right now is a lot cheaper and we have a 10 000 gallon tank for our diesel right now we'll be leasing a fuel tank for the gas and when our fleet gets converted to gas and we only have a few diesel buses left they'll be able to convert our 10 000 gallon tank to gas and then we'll use that lease tank for diesel until we get everything converted to gas and so cindy on the uh the mileage uh you don't anticipate that there will be a significant impact uh that we'll have these buses uh for uh

071fewer years or fewer miles than we do the diesel bus no okay thank you mrs roney i just think uh i guess maybe a clarification we have gas here for a buck 75 a gallon um do we have contracts is that why that price is so much lower than what we all pay at the pumps yeah we don't have to pay tax on as part of it too and yeah there is a there is a bid that would process that we go through right now we're using corrigan oil uh who we have found to have good pricing they also let us know if there's going to be a price increase coming so we can order and fuel before the price increase happens okay answers my question okay thank you mrs roney this is hood yeah

072just a question about the grid that you've provided with the uh listing of our buses so this is for four buses um four buses right and are they the ones that are listed in the 2020 column or the 2021 column so these would be the four buses that are listed in the 2020 column um these that were part of the 2014 band um okay so yeah i hope that answers wait it does uh well can we should we expect then another four buses this year yet in 2021 uh yes that's something that we would like to do after july one okay that's fine and then um can you just explain when we uh the description gen ed spare are those buses that are typically not used on a given day correct those are spare buses

073so we would use those when we're doing field trips if we have a bus in for maintenance uh those are the spare buses that we have available to us to use okay thank you thank you mrs hood mr smith did you have something no yeah just a quick question i i didn't see it anywhere normally we have some accounting for a recapture from the sale of the old buses is that going to go back into our general budget yeah last year we sold five buses for thirty three thousand five hundred dollars and yet go back into the general fund thank you mr smith mr cook yeah um how many miles are on the four buses that we're replacing i do not have that handy but i will get that for you please because the another

074thing that i noticed we're switching over to holland bus now um in the past we've always done bluebird because of spare parts um holland is the talent is the dealer that we're getting the bluebird buses from so we are sticking with bluebird buses correct yes and that the same dealer okay have i know switching to gas is a savings have we considered electrification of the fleet or anything like that grants from grants from the government or anything to help pay for some of the infrastructure but have we considered that because electric electric buses have a lot fewer moving parts and fewer moving parts means longevity greg do i take that one or do you want me to take it i could but i defer to you okay uh no i have not considered electric buses

075um if you look at the pricing even with the grants that are available they're they're very expensive um the charging stations are expensive the uh projected mileage that you would get on a charge is 120 miles so you know that could eliminate being able to use them for field trips if you get one of the uh charging stations that takes eight hours to charge you know then we have a bus that we can't use for eight hours the ones that take three hours to charge the cost of those charging stations is estimated to be 20 to 60 thousand dollars um we have not been able to get a definitive price on what it would cost to replace the batteries but on the bluebird electric buses there are 14 batteries i know oxford has lion electric

076buses they have three battery grids and basically what they say is they're not worth replacing uh when my mechanics were at uh mechanics meeting um january of 19. they were saying that the battery grids would be about a hundred thousand dollars to replace so they wouldn't be worth replacing so if you had grid one go out you'd be running on two grids that would lower your miles that you could go and then your second one would go out you'd be running out of thirds so um i have not considered electric but i could get more information if you wanted it okay well because the other the other thing is we're paying ninety two thousand dollars for a bus and we're getting roughly six thousand dollars back when we sell them and last last time we

077sold them they roughly had a hundred and hundred and twenty thousand hundred hundred twenty thousand somewhere miles on them which is for a diesel bus very low for a gas bus that'll be very high so i know we're replacing these things quite frequently and we have been replacing our diesel buses well before their useful life has been up but uh if we're going gas at that rate i think we'll be we may end up being in trouble um my last question is yeah we have a number of spare buses how often do we dig deeply into that that uh fleet of spare buses do we have some that just sit there forever no we don't we uh well the lift buses this year we don't use as frequently because we only have one run that

078requires a lift bus so we have been rotating our lift buses to keep them in service you know every day that run uses a different lift bus so that they're not sitting but we do quite frequently use our spare buses when we were down and not having field trips we kind of rotated those on our regular runs so again so they weren't sitting but we do use them every day and you know if we have buses that are out for warranty work they can be out for an extended period of time if we have to send them to grand rapids um and just when we have buses buses in that uh mechanics are doing just a general maintenance on we use our spare buses we also use them for field trips okay and by switching

079over to gas you also allow mr dragu's fleet to be fueled out of it too so yes that's correct that that is a benefit with the maintenance buses running maintenance trucks running all over the place right you currently have a 500 gallon above ground storage tank back there by the salt shed that our guys use for all their mowers and their gas powered vehicles and we think we're going to maintain that and keep it separated just for fuel monitoring and stuff like that so we're not mixing the two groups okay thank you both and thank you mr cook mrs hood i just had one other comment based on what mr cook was just talking about for the engines so we probably have to think about how many kids pile in and out of our buses

080every day 100 kids 200 kids per bus so i've got an eight-year-old car and it's in perfect condition but it's just me in and out of it so i assume that the insides of our buses get pretty pretty worn yeah we we our buses are very well maintained but when we when we're replacing them we uh you know they're out of warranty and um you know they'll have something wrong with them that is very costly to fix uh last year we had i think it was two of the buses that we auctioned off needed new turbos that was a six thousand dollar repair so we obviously didn't didn't do that before we sold them so matt and tom are great at keeping our fleet up and keeping everything done properly and uh so i do

081take their recommendations to heart as well so far with vehicle repair and parts on the buses we spend more than 57 thousand dollars and we're already over 19 000 for what i've budgeted for as far as repairs on the buses thank you alrighty any other specific questions you can send through dr matthews and i'm sure that uh the team would be happy to get us any further information we may need okay we're going to move to the third information and discussion piece which is the district's technology five-year refresh plan dr matthews thank you dr ruskin the technology department created a five-year refresh cycle plan for devices as they come to their end of use in phase one the teachers usa received a mobile laptop to help with their virtual and hybrid instruction we are now

082entering phase two which will replace the existing workstation all in one that are starting to fail with the docking monitor allowing educators to utilize dual screen and connect to the hp laptop in addition phase two will refresh student ipads that have come to their in in the use these devices will be placed into service for the academic year the administration is recommending the novi board of education approve the following purchases from the technology capital projects 2019 fund in the total amount of 806 thousand and 787 dollars and seventy cents the pricing for these purchases is based on the remc educational cooperative bid the specifications are listed in the recommendation letter below this comes for information discussion tonight would come back to the board on march 18. tonight we have anthony lucrecio uh uh from oakland

083schools who uh is part of our technology team uh who is here to kind of walk us through this recommendation mr lucrecio thank you dr matthews can you hear me okay we can terrific uh first thing i just wanted just to bring to attention that the figure should be um a total of 900 6 000 excuse me 906 let me back up my apology um 900 6 800 excuse me 87 and 70 cents my apology so there was obviously a typo there so my apology all right so what we're going to first do i can talk about the refresh first of all i'll go over that real quick if you look at the document the chart there so obviously in 2021 the board already approved the 580 teacher laptops along with the 2079 chromebooks that

084has already obviously taken place and we're already in the middle of working on getting those chromebooks out excuse me anthony can i apologize for interrupting can you just share your screen so folks could see as well if you have that document in front of yes thank you willie thank you that i apologize again for interrupting thank you can everyone see the screen perfect thank you so what we're gonna do is we'll start on this left column obviously we notice this is what has already taken place the 580 laptops for the teachers administrators we also have um in possession already are the 2079 chromebooks my team are prepping those and those will be distributed this summer now going in to the 20 excuse me the 2022 year we've got this is where we're adding that monitor

085with the docking station built in it for the educators because the current laptop has a 13 inch screen so they're going to need something a little bit larger on their desk to obviously be more efficient building lessons gradebook then we go down to the student ipads there are um 700 from 2014 that are pretty way past their life and so we're going to replace those with 700 ipads and then you go down to your non-instructional staff so that's like your administrative assistants that's also your um secretaries and we also have machines in the the media centers the libraries and we're going to place those so 277 of those and i'll go over in a little bit what actually the devices will place replace with them again in 2022 we've got 105 imac desktops which are

086split between the middle school and high school then you also have the points of service devices which are in our cafeterias so 26 of those my apology let me get back to and so if we go into 20 23 we've got another 921 chromebooks those were purchased in 2017. and then if we head over to the next column which will be 2024 you have 788 ipads that will we will be replacing those are from 2018 and then you go down to non-instructional there are 34 laptops that my predecessor actually purchased and currently those are being used for obviously during pandemic with the secretaries needing to be a little mobile you know during pandemic working at home so that worked out well we'll replace those and our instructional labs those are the all-in-one these are a

087separate device in our basically computer labs where the students are at and we go over into obviously 2025 there's nothing projected for that year go over to 2026 the refresh of the laptops which the ones that were placed obviously in 2021 and then you go down to the student chromebooks the ones that were purchased in 2021 then there's obviously the the five-year refresh and then obviously we continue on into the non-instructional 277 and then go up to 2027 you've got the refresh of the monitor that will be asking the board to approve for tonight and then we go on down to the last which would be those points of service in the cafeteria i will next if there's any questions on maybe in any of this five-year refresh i can take those if you'd like

088anthony i just have a quick question i can't see everyone else to call on them so you'll have to excuse me on that but before you go out of here um so on the um hold on i'll look on my on the um line that says 2026 um there [Music] is the replace the 277 or 277 it says that they were purchased in oh that should be 20 22. okay and then there's one more of those that i saw let me find it apology um also that bottom 2027 at the bottom right corner where it says replace 26 points of sale oh thank you and that should be 20 22 that's that's my error my apology problem i just wanted to make sure it gets changed so absolutely absolutely any other questions about the five-year

089refresh yes i'll speak up instead of raising my hands the the 105 imacs in these are the instructional labs um with our we're one-to-one with devices do we need instruction you know devices and instructional labs or can chromebooks or whatever the students have handle um what's being done there yeah great great question those imacs those are i mean when you get into some of the designing i mean that's that's really your bread and butter is really using those those mac devices i mean they've talked to anyone in that industry a photo and that type of creation it's that's really where you need to be they do it best apple they honestly do we've looked at trying to you know whether do you you upgrade some of the parts in there but the way those are

090are built and the way everything's all in one it's it's really a waste to actually upgra to actually upgrade those machines so which is why we're looking for a refresh well yeah i was more curious as do we really need to have in you know the instructional labs anymore where you know with the one-to-one chromebooks or and whatever we have that that could handle the job but for photo editing and the likes of that i agree that the ios systems are yeah and that's better no that's a great a great uh question paul i think that's a discussion that we can end up having with the educators that do go into those labs find out you know have discussion what type of software are they using can we can they be utilized on the chromebooks

091um there's there's constantly being advances where we've been working through some things with oakland schools of putting some things on some virtual servers so that stuff that could end up you know end up getting better and there might not be a need for those great question what if i may mr cook this you know we developed and shared this five-year plan at the board's request i think the last time we did the purchasing so this is a snapshot of just replacing our existing technology devices as anthony said we're continually looking at and evaluating what options we have given the changes in devices and deployment and as anthony said we're looking at some other services whether it's virtualization as that becomes a little more relevant and the cost comes down to be able to deploy some

092of those high high need apps that traditionally be in a normal instructional lab like a cad lab a photo editing lab even your business labs where you need microsoft office products for testing that you can't necessarily put on a chromebook so some of those are the purpose why we have still instructional labs but we are continuing to evaluate as the technologies change what options we have so this is a snapshot of just kind of what isn't for the board to anticipate some purchases obviously as we continue to evaluate each year our opportunities uh it may change a little bit okay thanks moss and yeah my apology i'm only working off the one monitor which is why i'm not seeing any other hands if there's any other questions please do just jump on and unmute yourself

093all righty i will go on down to the items for this evening and again so if we go down for phase one that is the teacher workstation so that is an hp a docking monitor where the educators will hook their laptop everything directly into that monitor and then going on and again please jump in if there's any questions and then going on to number two so for this evening we need talked about replacing the non-instructional staff device so these are again your secretaries your administrative assistants we're asking we're looking at a hp pro desk with the g6 the i5 and obviously here's other specifications right here eight gigs of ram the speaker bar and you'll have the two so dual monitors two dual 24 inch lcd monitors obviously there's a mounting bracket so we can

094put this pc behind one of those monitors and it comes with a wireless keyboard mouse and then the three year warranty and then now one thing to remember is as the we are refreshing pulling out those all in ones they'll those are no longer there so obviously if an educator is out guest sub comes in there there needs to be a device so that's where we went in and looked at we're going to be purchasing asking the board to purchase the hp pro book now this is similar to the elite book but it is not touch and it is also not um a two in one and so that brought up a uh tremendous cost savings and not to mention that the current elitebook that the educators have now has increased by 283 dollars so

095to me that was a big cost savings error and those laptops have the 8 gig of ram you have the 256 gig ssd hard drive 13 inch screen and then the three year warranty and then so that would be from in a comp and then going on to part two for a different vendor this is where the student ipads come in and this is the ipad so it would be 70. yep go ahead is there a question okay 70 10 packs of the apple ipad the standard 10.2 inch wi-fi 128 gig storage space gray and then on top of that the carts that we have to house these we will need to order 105 cables for the usbc to lightning and then asking to award it to apple in the amount of 277 750 15

096and 2 cents i'd like to open it up for any questions or any comments any questions or comments i guess i'll ask a real quick one the ipads uh protective cases yep yep we have um we plan on utilizing ones that we currently have on the um excuse me on our current ones that we're going to be swapping out but again that's something else we also want to test and look into is either purchasing maybe something new maybe possibly a little more rugged have we seen much damage with the ones that have the current protective cases you know one of the things that we've seen paul is as some of the current cases have gotten a little bit older the end up um the type of material it kind of comes out around it's really

097really difficult to get them back in once you pull that ipad out of that current case and then get some age on that case it's kind of hard to put it back in that's the cases are stiffening and correct warping okay correct so we'll see something come through for protective cases on that yep my team just hasn't had time to to look at and really test i like to get those in our in our hands test them put them in the device and put them through a little workout and with the laptops and uh and uh pro books and stuff are we getting uh carrying cases and stuff for them are they just uh they going in carts or how are we protecting those so the the um guest and substitute devices those we're going

098to have carts and so they'll be checked out so we're going to work it up and that'll be another thing they'll be coming to the board soon um once i'm able to look at some of those um but again we're also thinking about a case too it's just due to the time constraints getting this out i need to get the devices the devices are high much more demand than the cases right now so that'll be the next thing is putting those through our gamut and testing okay thank you mr cook mr sun yeah just a quick question about the the guest teacher daily use device um i can't figure out the quantity of those is it well the docking monitor so i assume that's the dual what's the quantity let me ask you that and

099the number if it's in your grid then just show me your um yes that's actually where i'm gonna head to thank you so we're talking about the the student oh i'm sorry we're talking about the the guest teacher uh devices correct yeah in your part one right no no no no it's not monitored so in part one you have teacher workstation in part two you have non-instructional staff and then three you have guest teacher daily use devices and i just did the quantities in the paragraph here correct yeah and you know i will i'll go through that actually right now my apology so what we have is starting off with the the docking station monitors so these are for the educators you have 550 of those those are the nea educators within the district that's

100giving them that monitor and then of the for the guest teachers or substitute teachers there's 110 and then okay then we've got and that's fine so so is that locate you know i love graphs so your graph above in is that 110 the hp pro book is that included somewhere in your in your graphic in your no because here no this was that graph that we have down here the chart that was based on what we currently have i'm sorry good okay thank you yep thank you just to note also is you know we need the loner devices for our daily guest teachers once we start to do staff refreshes and have some other devices available we'll be able to filter in some of the older staff to become the daily use substitute devices as

101we get into our normal refresh cycles thank you are there any other questions for anthony from us okay seeing none as just with every other um information discussion thank you guys for all your hard work on this and all the information and the graphs where we could see where we were from year to year if people have questions they can certainly send them through dr matthews to the team and they will get us the answers that we need to move forward for this to be an action item at our next board meeting okay thanks guys next we'll move on to [Music] it looks like information and discussion item 4 which is garden brook formerly walsh college property e-rate infrastructure dr matthews thank you dr ruskin and garden brook is just a placeholder name at this

102point this is the walsh college property the garden brook is actually the street that takes it in there we know there's a naming committee that will actually officially look at a variety of names we're just using this as a placeholder at this point ids worked with the district technology staff tmp architect mark mccarthy and smith and plant miranda determined the technology infrastructure needs for the garden brook formerly walsh college property these projects include self-provisioned aerial fiber optic cable network electronic core switches structured network cabling wireless networking equipment these projects were bid out in february 2020 as part of the e-rate federal program the timeline requires contracts to be board approved by march 28 2021 with the work to begin april 1st per the e-rate eligibility and conditions all of these will be 2019 bond expenses

103and will be filed for reimbursement with e-rate by using e-rate funding program will save approximately 30 percent of the eligible expenses the four letters of recommendation are attached for network electronic core switches you see the the bids there the apparent low bidder is delta network services however their bid calls out for extreme switches and the district currently uses cisco switches therefore ies recommends a ward of network electronics and wireless go to presidio in the amount of forty seven thousand four hundred seventy two dollars and eighty eight cents ids also recommends a district uh managed contingency of seven thousand one hundred twenty one for the wireless networking equipment you see the bidder there is presidio presidio bid a solution-based cisco meraki wireless access points nobody is scheduled for a refresh during the 2021-2022 school year the

104cisco meraki solution is compatible with the current cisco solutions and will be considered for the district-wide refresh ids recommends the award of net of the network electronics and wireless in the amount of twenty seven thousand sixty eight dollars and twenty four cents and recommends a district managed contingency of four thousand and sixty dollars for structured network cabling uh we had two bids the apparent low bidder and con successfully met our requirements of the mid specifications ids recommends awards for structured cabling to amcon in the amount of twenty two thousand six hundred and seventy dollars along with a district managed contingency of uh three thousand four hundred dollars and for self-precision aerial fiber uh so this comes before the board for review tonight we have moz uh here and also uh mike matt mccarthy from ids

105as well uh and so if you have questions or concerns you can direct your questions you can search either moz or to map i if i can interrupt again i think we're getting some echo i'm sure folks are hearing it so i guess if everybody just muted that might help go away questions or concerns see what happens when i listen to willie this is romney um i just had a question why we are not looking at the extreme switches at all so we uh evaluated it and because of the few number of switches required there and then just a little different programming and management and having some spares we didn't want to introduce uh extreme into consideration for the garden brook property we keep some cisco spare switches so if something were to go down

106we'd have some parts available so that was kind of the the leading factor for not introducing extreme uh into our cisco environment in this particular case okay i mean because there's a substantial savings there is and we will be undergoing a district-wide refresh um either in 21 or 22 i'm sorry i don't remember exactly where we'll be doing a complete district-wide refresh so we wanted to take a look at the whole environment holistically versus having kind of a mixed environment so talking with our engineering team they thought from support and and long term looking at this it'd be best to just put the cisco switches in having the redundancy and some of the spare parts available for the short term and then looking at the whole networking environment in the whole coming up in 21

107or 22. okay because they've acquired some nice robust wireless access points as well um right yeah we're familiar uh you know as oakland schools we use uh delta networks and presidio across several districts so we're very confident with both solutions in this particular case cisco made much more sense than going to extreme okay thank you mrs roney mrs hood i was just gonna ask related to that um did we not tell delta networks that we that we um preferred the skill we were going to do only system so we put you're required to put bid specs out um for e-rate that anybody can bid on delta does know that you know where we're at with as far as manufacturers and what are in each district however they often you know put in proposals as well

108because it is a federal e-rate program so they oftentimes vendors will submit even if they're not the the lead candidate so they can't anticipate if somebody else doesn't bid on a project so they don't want to miss if somebody else didn't bid on it they could be the only bid you have a follow-up no no that no i mean that doesn't really make sense but okay do you want more clarity well no i don't under i didn't i'm sorry i apologize i didn't understand that explanation so when we if we were going to require cisco switches why would delta propose extreme switches that's that's my question delta's an extreme provider they don't sell cisco switches got it okay thank you sorry about that alrighty any other questions no okay thing none of course you can

109get some further questions to dr matthews if you have any thank you to uh you guys you've been extremely busy as we can see with all these different uh refresh projects and bid packages so um we'll send you any further questions we might have we're going to move on to information and discussion on number e bid package number 5a novi meadows site and soccer pavilion contracts dr matthews uh thank you dr ruskin we have uh with us uh lana ruble from tmp and also agnes from mccarthy smith to answer questions if you have any tonight uh as well uh on on this particular bid package on thursday february 18 2021 seal bids were received and publicly opened for the nova meadows site and soccer pavilion in attendance for the bid opening were representatives from the

110nova community school district plan marianne cressa tmp architecture and mccarthy smith and interested bidders which were opened recorded and tabulated through a zoom meeting the project team conducted post-bid interviews with each of the following qualified bidders for each bid division of work during the post bid interview the project team reviewed the scope of work project schedule manpower requirements and specified materials with each of the contractors based upon the project team's review of the proposal and bidders we propose the following recommendations for contract award you'll see there are several bid awards there the total award recommendation comes in at one million four hundred and sixty three thousand five hundred and eighty three dollars and this comes to the board uh for information and discussion this evening um i will let um either lana or agnes kind

111of explain this project to the board so that you'll have kind of an understanding of what the project is for here i'll i'll go ahead um so this project there's some drawings attached but basically this is the uh new parking lot behind the fifth grade we're calling that the west parking lot uh and then the adjacent uh soccer field will be getting a new uh pavilion building it will be located on the back um you know towards uh of 11 mile uh exit access there there will be a new structure there will be also have his own scoreboard and uh it would be used for during games and matches to have a function for referees it will be changing rooms you know the ice machines toilet rooms that's down the right there the little building

112and then on the left is the new parking lot that we'll be working on this this summer the parking lot is required to switch switch out the functions of how the traffic will flow for the future expansion as we're working on a new addition to the front of it in the summer we'll be working on that parking lot and when it's completed by in the summer we will be taking over the east lot which now right on this drawing is filled with a new edition graphic and we will be uh switching over to parking from east to west uh we've just kind of discussed it in the past but that really is the first phase of the meadows renovations remodeling project the soccer pavilion work will start early may and then the parking lot work

113will obviously start right as the school school gets out um it will include the demolition of that modular structure there it's currently there in the parking lot so all those contracts the total um would be it basically covers the work that's indicated there in the graphic and i've also attached the graphic that shows the rendering of uh of the of the pavilion thank you agnes i can't see everybody there we go that's good and agnes will that um structure we complete uh at the end of the summer it will be yes yes that's where we're trying to we're going to be breaking ground uh may and this is why we're we're um you know try and get approval here by you know two weeks to hit the ground running in order you know the brick

114and and start on site first thing uh come may first so we've uh we've coordinated in the access of 11 mile and discussed that so we're actually gonna talk with uh brian gordon we're gonna fence ourselves in and create our own working space while the uh games are still ongoing we're kind of lucky there's enough space in the back of that that uh field because it used to be an old uh football field then even when they play soccer it gives us ample space to take over that space and and function and build something there while they're still ongoing and playing sports right any specific questions for the team this is son yeah so this red i'm looking at the red area of the parking lot um i'm trying to figure out the map so

115the last time i was behind meadows was about a year ago and is this new is this new or is it expanded from the existing lot or am i missing so it's it's significantly expanded so right now uh you're we're probably doubling this the numbers of spots there so like that uh i would say uh if you cut the line vertically from the middle of the parking lot anything to the left of those two double lines is is new so we're yep all that yep thank you okay right now there it's all it's basically grass okay because obviously we anticipate years of construction in that area and i'm wondering if this would get chewed up by construction equipment et cetera as we build new meadows no so so the this back parking lot that will

116get put into a place this summer that is going to be your full-time parking lot that will service you know for the whole duration during construction we don't anticipate uh going back there other with some small you know chunks of it to be um you know do some upkeep but really that we're we're building a depth to for the duration of you know long-term duration the the parking lot that currently is in the front that will be taking over after the summer yep right through there they'll be all taken over this summer for construction so that parking lot will be gone and that's why we're trying to get as much parking implemented in the back okay thank you any other questions mr cook um are we doing that entire parking lot at once because there's

117a section of building that sticks out in the lower left of that yeah this this is the graphic i have at this time there is a building that protrudes out and we're building phasing around it and that building will come down um about a year and a half from now when well close to two years so two summers from now so those two rows on the lower left won't be put in yet okay but there will be a direct path for cars to get around there and drop their kids off yeah so we can be using that drop-off area while construction is going on right and and and i think as we talked while this has been a while back the the you know pair and drop-off will be off the back now so that

118actually will extend the stacking for cars which actually will provide some more lane with lift length to stack the cars to loop around the back parking lot which which should be helpful um for the for the pickup venture up off yes okay thank you mrs romy just a question on this soccer that front little part like near the bottom of the drawing um is that like for officials like a little official room yes yep it's a little um space for them to you know change and um there you know there's a potential putting in some announcements uh out of there you know as far as keeping score or you know whatever needs to happen but yeah it's a separate adult space okay and this is basically just for like the teams the officials no public

119correct yes okay and it's it's it's it will be winterized so it will not be accessible during winter thank you any other questions mr menno the the drawing with the with with the parking i believe the um where the soccer pavilion is and between that and parkview that's parking there right isn't it i mean it's currently parking um it's just not drawn in there correct we do have some parking on on that side uh on the 11 mile side yep that's parking and that that's parking for uh the fleet uh the team that's uh driving the buses so we've coordinated that with uh with with the team and we'll be getting some parking spaces and access through there so there's a fence that runs between those parking spaces and that new soccer pavilion so we

120will be using some of the spaces to gain access and we've coordinated that access with uh with transportation okay i'll have to take a look at the map i mean um something doesn't register uh with me with with how that map is drawn in in reality but it could be just in my mind there there's a parking lot there and then there's a excess of 11 mile with its own entry with its own uh entry under that parking lot yeah so the i think i think what it is is that whole column that tmp architecture column is blocking because there's right there's parking to the the north side of parkview there and then there's a parking lot uh to the east of that um it's just being covered up that is that parking gonna still

121be there or is that yeah that that all stays is uh they're just granting us access through there and uh letting us use some of those parking spaces to use as an entrance uh to come in through the back there instead of coming uh through the field or you know through the west parking lot which obviously will be all torn up during summer so yeah we also have some utility work for the pavilion that will be coming across that back parking lot okay thank you um i just mentioned something so in my summary uh the site work um i have a budget right now um carrying 625 thousand dollars uh reason being for that is that we are still going through post-interviews uh and vetting out the contractors the between the two low bids um

122so i didn't carry that but i felt that it's very important for me to get to this to the rest of the bid categories to the board for approval because we need to procure all the materials for the pavilion uh where the site where contractor is really more important for the parking lot and that we felt we need to take the time to do the vetting out of of the contractors so i'm currently carrying the higher budget second bid number just to be safe but as you can see even with that we're under budget so that process will be completed next week and i plan on two weeks from now having to you a recommendation for the site work portion thank you agnes we love when you use those words every time under budget it's

123good if there's any further questions i'm sure that again dr matthews can get them to the team and thanks mike i know you've been sitting on this call for a long time we do appreciate all the work that you do with uh with the building team and everything behind the scenes that you don't always get uh kudos for we appreciate you thank you danielle hey can we get a couple dog houses in there for mike's coyotes all right um next we'll move on to our final information and discussion piece tonight we have um a report a diversity equity and inclusion dei report dr matthews thank you dr ruskin um earlier this year the nova educational foundation supported a grant request from the parents of african american students and novi pass to support bystander intervention training

124for our novi community school district staff the purpose of this training was to continue discussions within the district on how to create an inclusive environment within our schools the first training session took place on february 16th with our middle school staff a key element of the training was having our staff think through and think about scenarios that occur in our hallways and classrooms and how they could intervene to support students reinforce our district beliefs and the value of each person and help students learn uh the nova education foundation uh supplied me with a little bit more information and in december the nef funded a grant for professional development training facilitated by interfaith council for peace and justice this was one of 22 grants the ncsd nef funded for the 2020-2021 school year the training disrupting

125injustice for co-liberation was provided to over 70 middle school educators in february our educators worked with three facilitators from interfaith council for peace and justice to learn and practice non-violent communication intervention strategies and methods to effectively respond to acts of discrimination including racism misogyny excuse me and homophobia while ncsd is committed to making our school safe and welcoming places for all it can be challenging in the moment to know how to respond to discrimination and harassment this training helped participants build their toolkits and gave them a chance to practice these skills in advance when confronted with acts of racism or other harassment or discrimination in ncsd or elsewhere these educators will now be well prepared to handle or are prepared to respond in a manner that is non-violent and effective this is expected to have

126a positive effect on the social and emotional well-being of the targets of harassment as well as those who witness or perpetuate initial feedback from teachers and administrators who participated in this training was very positive on march 8th the inter faith council for peace and justice will be providing training to our k-6 special intervention and ancillary staff one of the goals of the naf grants is the pilot program which might be scaled to a larger audience in ncsd this particular grant was a great fit with that goal with the nef grant theme of advancing equity it further if further evaluation shows that the training is beneficial ncsd may look to expand this professional development opportunity to other staff and educators in the district so we can continue to build capacity and make our schools even more

127safe welcoming and just environments for all students and staff another tool the district has developed this year is the k-6 social emotional learning guide the purpose of the 2020-21 ncsd k-6 social emotional learning guide is to provide information and resources to staff to support infusion infusing social emotional learning frameworks into our existing school and classroom systems into our instructional practice and into cultivating strong positive relationships with students colleagues and families there are five social emotional competencies that we are working to help our students develop self-awareness self-management social awareness relationship skills and responsible decision-making included in this process are social justice standards that focus on identity diversity justice and action the social emotional learning guide is a tool to help us understand and support our students and supports our district goal of fostering a district-wide culture

128of unity and well-being students who feel good about themselves are able to be more inclusive and supportive of others in traumatic time students who experience stress and anxiety can lash out and push others away in our district we're building a community that works to support students and staff so that we can develop inclusive positive relationships that will work to support our learning goals and that's the report this evening dr ruskin thank you dr matthews do we have any questions from any board members regarding tonight's report okay mr menno um yeah i am when i saw this i was initially confused as to why it was being brought to us but i'm actually glad that it was on the agenda in my opinion i feel that this may be a good time to take a temporary

129pause and i say this because we've had a social justice initiative in our district for many years and and now might be a good time to reevaluate and identify what problems still exist in our district um after that i think the board can set direction on initiatives to solve those problems we we now have a dei committee that will be having its initial meetings shortly so i think it makes sense that they be chartered uh to help with that um i wanted to add many years ago when i was on a president library board our director stated that she wanted us to partner with the novi library i mean with the novi schools on the social justice initiative so i know dr matthew recall i set up a meeting um with the school administration including

130yourself to to learn more about it and at the time i was told that social justice in novi schools meant that everyone would have a voice so that was the the definition that that i was given to and i left satisfied because um you know how could anybody really argue with uh with that it's obviously a worthy goal and then uh after i was on the board um you know we got more explanation and and i believe we were told that the impetus for starting the whole social justice initiative was that um at least at least one reason that we had some teachers who were reaching out to administration because they felt that they were not adequately prepared to adjust their teaching styles to serve the growing minority population uh that was coming into our

131district so getting help for our teachers to better serve all students is also a worthy goal but based on communication i've been fielding um this school year i'm i'm concerned that our scope has changed uh quite a bit as i told dr matthews recently i'm fielding multiple complaints from parents this year upset with what they call and this is their term indoctrination in our curriculum and ironically i've also had teachers reach out to me sharing similar concerns uh just today i spent an hour on the phone with one such parent and although i pointed them to the chain of command they felt uncomfortable to speak up on this topic because of potential retribution or possibly embarrassing their child it's just a very uncomfortable topic for many people to talk about and this particular parent reiterated

132that that what they're saying is that we're crossing into this line of indoctrination and feel that many conversations that are being had in the classroom should instead be left for the dinner table parents as well as some teachers have pointed to our ninth grade reading list and our ela content as a concern other complain about topics being brought up under the guise of social emotional learning i've also taken the time to loop back to some of the parents who had reached out to me earlier in the school year and asked them what how they feel um you know what we could do better and what they're suggesting is maybe that we consider creating like an after-school dei group for parents and children that we share with the board and community all documented survey data and

133justice is happening in the district for increased awareness um they you know they would like to see us hold off any additional training until we have a documented understanding of problems that exist in our district i'll work on solutions to these problems and only bring in outside help if we don't have the skill set to resolve these issues and lastly what they shared with me is that if we do bring in outside help that these organizations be vetted to make sure that their message is clearly geared to solve the problems that we have in this district um and um and then so that we also avoid alienating folks as as they feel the district is doing now so i felt it was important that i share this with the board because i'm told some of

134what we're doing today is having is is actually negatively impacting um while it's positively impacting some folks it's negatively impacting others it's and it's actually impacting family decisions to stay in our district so because of this perceived indoctrination there's actually at least four families that i know of a total of 10 students that plan on enrolling their children in private schools starting next four so this is something we really need to start looking into that we need to start getting ahead of in addition we need a bit more uh you know they ask that we should be a bit more transparent in the district when it comes to curriculum um suggests this maybe we should start posting reading material and curriculum topics on our websites so that they as stakeholders could review it uh summarizing

135and reiterate i think we need to to really define the problems that currently exist so everybody know exactly what it is that we're trying to resolve have this documented list and come up with some solutions we're about to start up a dei committee and i believe that should probably be the charter for this committee so again define problems come up with solutions internally if possible and then do it in an inclusive way and that is in a way that doesn't alienate district stakeholders as i was told many years ago everyone in this district should have a voice so i'm certainly looking forward to working on this dei committee in hopes to come up with uh the best possible solution for any inequities that exist in our district that is a goal that everyone can rally

136behind i certainly love our students so do the parents that i've been talking to and they certainly want everybody to be successful thank you thank you mr menno and as mr mena pointed out there is a new dei board committee um it will be um myself as the chair he will be serving on the committee and correct me if i wrong i have a lot of lists in my head but i believe mrs roney will be sitting on this committee with us as well this is rony and myself currently are representatives from novi on a ad hoc committee at oakland county school board association they have a dei committee and my thought on the committee is not to be problem solving but to come up with a mission and a vision i know at oakland

137county schools they um discuss you know this is a hard conversation and wrapping your mind around a culture and not just coming up with a list of problems or things that we need to solve so that's what i'm looking forward to and i'm looking forward to having further conversation about this any other comments or questions no okay oh mr smith sorry i'm sorry i just would be remiss if i didn't uh compliment the work of the nova educational foundation and uh getting this original grant going um i'm sure many of you know that the one of the reasons the nova educational foundation has been so successful is we get ideas you know we get input from community members we get a suggestion or an idea from a teacher and we raise money you know outside

138of the scope of what the district's able to do and it's through our generous community members and community businesses and individual supporters that were able to support a grant request like this or to do a program like this and uh over the years whether it's been leader in me or the community gardens program that we now are doing at every one of the elementary buildings uh we we take some great ideas and we make things happen and uh you know this was a a topic that um uh that you know some people didn't want to talk about but uh i want to applaud the nef for uh you know for making this happen and uh just you know thank you to the great work that they do thank you mr smith this is hood yeah

139i'd also like to um thank nef for doing this and i also you know i want to thank the the parents of african-american students in novi for continuing to advocate for their students we had a there was a petition last summer but i think it was at least 400 people many students signed it to ask our district to pursue this um you know this dialogue this conversation like mr smith just said these conversations are not always comfortable to have so i applaud everyone's work here and look forward to the next steps in both the cei committee and anything further that the nef is doing to support all of our students and listening to them so thank you thank you mr sun any further comments or questions okay thank you we will move on now to

140committee reports we had one committee that met speech since the last time we were together and that was the capital project committee so i will ask mr menna as the chair if you'd like to give us a brief report uh let's see at the meeting we discussed walsh college and the associative programs that we're planning on running in that facility again with st walsh college because that's currently what we're calling it we we certainly looking into planning on signage and branding opportunities for the property we discussed how we're going to continue to do community updates i talked about cadence for updates and reporting and we had a pretty robust conversation about master planning for the district we reviewed uh a proposal for for master planning and then looked at some discussion on school property and

141city property and some potential opportunities that we have working with the city thank you mr menno and thank you for your leadership on that uh committee we appreciate you next we have our second opportunity for comments from the audience this can be anything that the public would like to share or comment on again this is through a google document and dr matthews i will turn it over to you thank you dr ruskin we have two comments the first is from tia murray sanders hello as a member of the novi north road racial awareness accountability and action group recently i shared with the school leadership and some of the board members a comprehensive survey conducted in oxford michigan school district that is intentional in addressing racial disparities in their school culture and environment and which looks

142like a great example of being proactive rather than reactive to these concerns recently as parents have watched the board meetings the novi northrop racial awareness and accountability accountability action group has had more families reaching out to share and discuss disappointment on athletic department issues around handling of equitable experiences and we urge board the board to actively listen to parents and students on these experiences i would ask district leadership to address the experiences of students in the classroom as well as in the athletics department in our aaa is actively extending ourselves to the school leadership staff and families for better understanding on racial and social concerns and actively seeking opportunities to work together to make the district better for all students we will be watching for those opportunities and improvements thank you for the work you

143have done and continue to do so we can all be safe and the second comment is from sharon trump on behalf of the novi northwest racial awareness accountability and action group we were pleased to see the addition of the diversity equity and inclusion report in tonight's agenda we were particularly happy to hear dr matthews speak this evening about the interfaith council for peace and justice's bystander intervention training which was held in february for middle school educator the training was specifically called for in the anti-racism position which was signed by nearly 600 individuals and presented to the board in july 2020 we believe it to be an integral step to ensure that all ncsd staff have the opportunity to learn and practice how to intervene when they witness racism or other forms of harassment this protects

144students and staff alike and will help ncsd to create a culture that is safe just and equitable to all indra which is what the north novi northville racial awareness action and accountability group is called nra would like to thank ncsd nova educational foundation and the parents of african american students and novik for helping to make this training possible we also call on the board and administration to expand this training across the district and to ensure that you are continually examining and responding to the need for ongoing dei work in our district in addition to expanding uh the icpj training throughout the district we continue to ask that hiring and supporting the training of staff is prioritized to this end we request that dr kinser move forward with a proposed listening session with the bi poc

145staff and the dr matthew schedule a listening session with administrators of color to better understand their needs enroll looks forward to more dei reports and in the coming months and we are always happy to act as a resource to the board and administration and those are the comments this evening dr ruskin thank you dr matthews and thank you for the public comment from those who submitted information and feedback um next we have the superintendent's report dr matthews uh my report is brief this evening i would just like to also highlight uh some nef grant uh and district uh working together uh we we are bringing in some additional therapy dogs into the district and and that training started last sunday and we uh with four uh novi staff and their dogs and these will be

146trained to be therapy dogs in our district all told we'll have uh 10 additional trained therapy dogs we currently have some therapy dogs in the district but these 10 additional dogs will be helpful as we work with our students to provide them with support uh through some of some difficult times that they might go through and also uh to provide support for our staff in our buildings as well and so we're very thankful for the nef for supporting that grant and working with the district to make this happen and that's my report dr ruskin thank you dr matthews next we'll move on to the administrative reports we will first turn to mr mcintyre thank you dr ruskin uh first of all i want to thank the board for approving the irs closing agreement and for

147your consideration on the bus repurchase um action item uh secondly we're expecting another round of federal funds to come into the district and so we'll be looking at ways to best serve our students and get that money into the classrooms so i will we'll be meeting with the office of academics team next week to make sure that happens thank you mr mcintyre next we'll move to dr kinser thank you dr ruskin uh just one item this evening uh our fifth uh mentee monday session of the school year will be on march 15th um it will be a virtual session and i will be focusing on appropriate and effective utilization of social media with our new teachers thank you thank you dr kinser dr weber um has been excused so he has no report tonight and

148we will move on to board communication do any board members have any communication they would like to share or comments no okay um i wanted to congratulate the 102 students at nova high school who were inducted into an adjust last night so miss tobias did a beautiful job with her team putting together a virtual induction ceremony i know that it's usually a highlight of the board members to be able to be over there at the high school on the stage and congratulate them but they had a humble uh celebration through virtual with their families so that was safe and great um the oc sba which is the oakland county school board association had a dinner meeting last night it was also held virtual dr jay marks was the speaker and the moderator i know that

149a few board members were able to attend um if you were unable to attend i received from the president of ocsba today that is on zoom so it's recorded via zoom so you can go back and watch that if that's something that you're interested in and that's all i have to report this evening mr smith i'm sorry to step away briefly i just wanted to let everybody know uh through this public forum that the two organizations that were or one organization the nova educational foundation this is our second year in a row of not being able to hold our annual fundraiser so i would just encourage everybody if you'd like more information on the work we're doing to visit our website and i also wanted to make you guys aware of some of the work

150that the no by youth assistants is doing uh also this year we're not able to hold our annual fundraiser which is typically a bulathon at no bible which has been impacted uh pretty severely by colbit but i would encourage everybody to visit that website know by youthassociation.com and see the work that we're doing and uh just as an example in the month of february we had 10 cases uh referred to us where we provide counseling to uh kids anywhere from you know k through uh whether it's an issue about uh depression anxiety uh schoolwork truly what not but what i thought was interesting was all ten cases had to do with depression and some anxiety issues that had to do with some of the issues that our kids have been facing in school and uh

151i just you know uh want to encourage you guys and the public to visit those websites and continue to support those organizations that try to support our kids that's it thank you mr smith for that great reminder and for all the work you do with both of those organizations we appreciate your volunteerism any other comments okay seeing them i'd also be remiss in not thanking the administration and the teachers and frankly our students for um a well-done transition over the last two weeks they've been out of school for 50 weeks five days a week um some of them had been in school several days per week in the hybrid model that was provided to them but it's a huge transition for everybody including parents who are getting their children up doing things that they haven't

152done every day on a daily basis but i see mr baker out there waiting to try and get those cars in the parking lot in the morning since not as many students are riding the bus and i'm sure at every school building there is just so much behind the scenes work going on to support our kiddos and our staff who went through a traumatic experience and who are now transitioning into their next phase so thank you to all of them and to all of our community for the work that was done to get us to that place in space this week and last with that i think i'll just ask for um german unless there's any other um comments this is ronnie i kind of saw you so i was trying to i saw you

153getting ready to raise your hand well my question was is this going to be our last zoo meeting so the answer to that is um yes i believe it is unfortunately we've still been given a little bit restrictions with our capacity limits in the public so that will be a work in progress and we can't just go back to our norm but i am hoping that i can sit at this table with each and every one of you after 52 weeks of not and have a regular in-person board meeting i'm not sure that i won't be trying to click on things and i'll be looking at you it's probably going to need a little bit of time to get my social skills back but yeah that is the plan okay if i can ask for

154um a recommendation to adjourn i'll move that we adjourn that would be great i'll second our support recommended by mr smith and supported by mrs roney if we can get a roll call about mr mena rusty cook trusty hood yeah trusty mena yes trustee murphy yes trusty roney yes trusty ruskin yeah and trustee smith yes motion carry seven to zero see you guys all in a couple weeks thank you good night everyone