001versity social justice achievement and ensure growth for all I will turn it over to dr. Webber thank you very much dr. Matthews and I believe I have to share screening my own screen to get the presentation up so one moment please for those of you have worked with me in the past you'll know that I really would rather do this sort of thing with you all so let me share the screen in a second here and we'll go ahead and we'll be off wonderful now let me make sure my partner Derby happens step is online and available this happens study author good evening yes I am wonderful thank you so really this was a presentation that frankly I'd hoped to share more towards the end of August a presentation really the was rooted in what
002began with the murder of George Floyd and the events that occurred at you muted yours so you have to unmute yourself here that's the the difficulty I think with that is if I have earphones in then it doesn't allow you to come through for whatever reason in a presentation mode so bear with me because the audio could be a little bit difficult with this particular computer so this is a story that really wanted to tell at the end of August in light of what was happening after the murder of George Floyd we thought it was important to do so however was asked to move this up a bit so we're gonna go ahead and mister B happens that and I are going to share the past decade of work that we've done in the know
003vitamin E school district what we plan on doing going forward and a little bit of a story too just to talk about how these things began and why they began and we look at this as a tremendous opportunity to share with the community the work that we've we've done and the other opportunities we've had so let me go ahead and next slide so I am the assistant superintendent of academics from Novi Community School District the picture that you have in the upper left hand side is really how our relationship with Playworks began and that's me playing jump rope at the Academy of the Americas Elementary School in southwest Detroit and i'm darby happened said i'm the director of student support services so really the compelling why of this work in what led us to begin
004the work is a recognition that while ideas are equal the opportunities afforded to students in the Novi Community School District were not we had a title one audit that occurred in 2009 2010 came into the district the second day on the job I found this audit and it had 27 violations against the Novi Community School District six of which revolved around the fact that we did not have a clear curriculum the parents or students could access also compelling why is conversations with staff students and parents around issue of equity so in 2010 and in 2011 had over 250 conversations with teachers students and parents a common theme that arose is the demographics of Novi were changing very quickly however our teachers felt wholly unprepared to be able to teach as well as they wanted to
005so to me that was a mark of humility on their part the on-ramp where we began was asking for help I went to Oakland schools and said these are the things I see and what we're finding and that would have been the second week of September of 2010 I was fortunate enough to be given an opportunity to be one of three school districts to begin a social justice cohort four-day training and that was also in conjunction with the University of Michigan so we jumped at that now for the sake of brevity I'm gonna go ahead you're gonna see pictures on here that tell a story but because we wanted to in needed to truncate this presentation a little bit there may be some things dangling out there pictures that you're wondering what they mean and
006so on what I'm hoping is that the board president and superintendent give misshapen stet and I the ability to dig a little bit deeper later on so on the left-hand side of this you're gonna see our collective leadership and meeting agreements that we have we use that in the office of academics if you've ever had a meeting with me you've seen those and on the right is just a picture that was drawn by Calvin Terrell which we'll talk about a little bit later the arcus Center for social justice leadership in Kalamazoo was actually another part of this origin story so to speak I believe in 2012 miss Hoffman set and I just drove out there and had a conversation with people there around what social justice really meant and what we could do to be
007a better district with that in building our constituency support our community partners such as Oakland schools passin University of Michigan School of Social Work University of Michigan depression Center rotary Novi Public Library our inner school councils and sustainability wise we named social justice as a pillar of our community school district at the end of May of 2011 we demonstrated a yearly commitment to staff and student capacity-building we have district team of educator to help us lead these efforts and we have built a multi-tiered system of supports which again will speak about miss novice level as well these are again pictures we've hosted exhibits in the district race and housing and metropolitan Detroit this was brought to us by a former teacher set for a low in house at the high school in the right outside
008the auditorium on the lower right-hand corner that's the monument if you're not familiar with that that is where we named social justice as a pillar of our community school district and that's on the lower left put s ax came and spoke and about the importance of a name there's a whole story behind that that that we can share as well perhaps to the later date so this quote in the upper left hand corner was a quote that darby happens that Carole dig Leo and Andy comb all employees of the district saw when we went to a four day training by the Great Lakes equity center and and I this is a quote that means a tremendous amount to me and to so many of us in our to me school district in a world that
009is unequal across both race and class lines and in which student populations are increasingly diverse educators must strive to talk more precisely about which acts help equalize opportunity and for whom so that would have been in 2014 that we went to that training on the right side there is training we did with parents administrators and students around anti-racism with Calvin Terrell again going to the right our summaries dialogues on race and ethnicity which looks a little bit more about and then restorative practices is really going to be a linchpin of our work going forward but I'm proud to say that Andy comb and Robert Baker who are in that picture and myself presented in front of 300 people two years ago at Eastern Michigan University about restorative practices and how to integrate restorative practices and
010circles into schools so 2010 really was a monumental year in my own life for a lot of reasons but that title one audit came and to me there was a wrecking our school district could be significantly better Bobby Murphy was the only person who's on this call who was with me at that time in 2010 and I'll never forget the second board meeting when I came in front of her former school board and told them were a good district but we're not a great district and one of the board members who's no longer a board member called superintendent the next day and asked why they hired me and I'm okay with that because we weren't as good as people thought we were then and I'm proud of who we had become and who we're going
011to be so again here's the monument this is important on an aligned curriculum aligned assessment aligned observation and aligned instruction story Oh darbie this guy Roger Fisher numbers are convincing in the human story is compelling rather Fischer is somebody who was the lead one believe trainers for Darby and I was happy at 19 2011 the University of Michigan intergroup relations and in the point he was making is that you know we can talk about the numbers about what we've done and you're going to hear some of that tonight what we want to do but what's really important is the human story and that has stuck with us and really has been a North Star for when we worked with students and staff members and parents is listening to the story in trying to get those
012stories to come out so what's critical in this story for us is a guaranteed and viable curriculum for each NC NC SD student remember that we had 27 in title 1 violations in 2010 six of which said we did not have curriculum that should shock you with reality theater it probably doesn't shock you though if you know schools and districts and how they work so in 2011 we began a comprehensive approach to curriculum alignment that is ongoing this day it is through this approach that we earned the distinction of being the first district in Michigan of a fully searchable curriculum you can find that mass in our approach utilizing an inclusive structure that honored staff voice over 300 teachers working on the line in our curriculum throughout this process we begin that intentional listening effort
013in a theme rang out again very clearly the demographics were changing and staff members said that we need training into how to better serve students that don't look like us and I thought that humility was amazing the staff acknowledged the lack of diversity the teaching ranks in the need for capacity building or a better serving students from a variety of backgrounds the final point that was really one that is a critical import to me and it really ties in to where this happens that's going to come in and tell a beautiful story so some of you know Tracy her name was Tracy Cadwell at the time Tracy Stevenson former Novi Community School District board member it was at a pass and meeting in 2011 the Miss Cadwell and educator asked me mr. whatever why don't
014we have a response to intervention plan where is it and I looked her in the eye and I said Miss Kat well we do not have a response to intervention plan and we can't have a response to intervention plan because we don't have an alignment or aligned assessment or aligned evaluation but I can promise you this we will and I am proud to say that because of the efforts of misshapen stet and a whole bunch of people in the school board that's willing to put the money behind it we built a multi-tiered system of support plan which is synonymous with RTI that is envied by many misshapen stet has been asked to speak to districts around the state to help them build their own plans and I'm especially proud of that I'm especially proud of
015the fact that when I was called out at a past meeting that I was able to acknowledge what we didn't have in what we were going to have okay we'll speed this up so if you read through these pieces and and lukina you can read them you're gonna see about our line curriculum aligned assessment aligned observation line instruction the key to think about though if you're not an educator is if you don't have an alliance curriculum and if you don't have an aligned assessment system then it's really very very difficult to build an EM tss system and it's very difficult to truly approach issues of equity in our district so why these things are important again I just said it you have to have that alignment you have to have an ability to measure the
016progress the struggles that we have so staff training and opportunities curriculum capacity-building and curiosity here's a picture of Calvin Terrell amazing individual really opened a lot of eyes on racism institutional racism you know I can say my own journey in the past ten years has changed radically is my own ability to see the not only the privilege I have but the things that we need to do as a Community School District to provide opportunities for students this picture again you'll see in the left hands upper left hand corner working together with our students around these issues student dialogues which you're going to hear about a little survey picture in the lower left is gonna be part of our story as well this commitment to the University of Michigan you'll see that University of Michigan School
017of Social Work best dr. berry check away amazing man and mentor the Darby or misshapen Stetten I met in 2011 so I think what what's next and this happens that's gonna speak to these issues and this is really the for those of you wondering what is it that you've trained your staff and what is it that you went toward and this happens that's going to do a fantastic job of really encapsulating that next thank you and this happens that you're just going to tell me to switch the slides sure thing thanks dr. Webber so I will walk you through the content of staff training and the first training that you'll see is what we call our social justice capacity-building workshops and that was the partnership that dr. Webber spoke about with U of M in
018Oakland schools and I see this as a foundational learning F foundational learning to become an anti-racist educator the work really begins learning about the individual social identities that exists such as race gender age ability religion and how identities impact us as individuals and then in turn how those experiences can intentionally or unintentionally be brought into the classroom and during this training there's a focus on stereotypes and the dangers of fixed or over generalize the leaps about a group or a class of people which you know can turn into bias which can develop into prejudice which may lead to discrimination racism and oppression yep see on that slide please and staff also learn about the come concepts like microaggressions and the harm they caused our our student and staff and then the I want to point
019out the Lera method that is really a method that helps individuals practice the art of active listening rather than listening to respond so it's important to be able to dialogue and listen to each other and the Lera method listening affirming responding and adding is is a method that is taught also click handling classroom incidences which help staff with the skills to effectively address situation that may arise okay you can click thank you the next training that we offered so after staff went through the social justice capacity-building training they were hungry for more and so we collaborate collaborated with U of M to offer the training that builds upon what they learned of at an advanced level participants were able to spend time considering our systems within the district and how to break down barriers that
020exist for a marginalized groups next and you can see more of the focus for social justice for one okay okay so culturally responsive teaching is also a four-day event and that has been facilitated by dr. Jay marks who is a consultant at Oakland schools the overall focus of this four-day training is focusing on creating inclusive learning environment and developing and executing multicultural curriculum and that has been offered both at Oakland schools and most recently the last few years within our school building so you know it's difficult at times to get people to or large groups of people in our district to go to Oakland school favorite and I think you just very very play someone fun okay so we've been able to bring dr. marks to our buildings and provides training for the entire staff
021which the building principals that have engaged in this work have been very creative scheduling wise to be able to bring dr. marks in and have that training no courageous conversations about race is also a four-day training that we've offered and it's based on Glen Singleton's book courageous conversations about race you know there's a more neural focus specifically on race for this training and and really the broad picture is the intersection of race power and privilege in addition to the inductor Marx also facilitated this training and then he also facilitates a training for staff on educating african-american males and several groups of staff have went through that training as well so on this particular slide we have attached a compendium of our social justice efforts from 2010 to 2020 that is a link that you can
022click on and that talks about things that we've attended to from staff students community and our district what's happened set and you let's say to that okay so this picture noticeable that we had and actually within 30 minutes of our teachers being finished the woman on the latter name is Rebecca Bosch is a first grade teacher at Village Oaks Elementary this half-hour put together this event in which teachers and community members lined up on 10 Mile Road to make sure that our community and our kids know in new especially our students of color that they matter and to her right is her boss dr. Alec Sophie Lee who is the principal of village Oaks Elementary here we have just another picture I think that's miss Brisingr and her husband and Miss Christian as a second
023grade teacher at Deerfield elementary student opportunities so many here and this is really if you want to get this happen at 9:00 to an hour and a half presentation we could do it for you on just the slide so proud of our kids here and our students here if you look at here just too much to talk about in general we're gonna take you through a couple but what you're gonna see is you know whether it's working with the Damon Keith center for civil rights at Wayne State University Law School just today we had three of our students lead a 250 person presentation on student agency and student voice for the American Institute of Architects in January our students led a presentation to every superintendent in the state of Michigan and it was just a
024magic this picture right here is impact impact is our two-day professional development that we offer and if you really I want you to key in on the on the agenda and if you look at student dialogues which is the second kind of line down in the grid every single teacher and administrator over 400 went through a 75 minute capacity building exercise led a hundred percent by our own children and what it's like to be a student in their classrooms when this happens that and I talk about this people from around the country their jaws hit the ground they've never heard anything like it and so incredibly proud of our students and this is actually rooted in survey work that was done which we're going to share with you a little bit that our students co-created
025the survey our students then took that survey and built professional development opportunities on top of that the Summer Youth dialogues on race and ethnicity in metropolitan Detroit the Novi Community School District has sent eight years of cohorts to this program and what this program does is they'll be an explanation and for their slides on it but it's very very powerful and here's a picture of that that power happening where our kids and our students are actually leading real dialogue and constructive dialogue around what it takes to make our schools better and I I can't not compliment missed our behalf and stuff for this many of the kids you see in this picture our students that she met with tirelessly through the summer to help them prepare it's pretty scary if you think about it as
026a student to go ahead and now teach your teachers I think this slide is very powerful and and this gives you a little taste of the survey that our students built so the question on this slide is how many of my teachers question mark and then you see one two three four five six so this was aimed at middle school high school we do give this survey to our fifth and sixth grade students as well what this gives you an idea from the student participants and the numbers of people who took this or kids who took this particular survey we're on the right over 9,000 students have taken this survey but this slide was used in professional development that our students did with every administrator in the district in 2019 November there are be anything
027you'd like to say to this well thank you and pictures again that event that we did in the upper left-hand corner is after we ended up fish bowling which fish bowling meant the kids were able to tell their story and we listened we were able to get in and tell our story and they listened and then they led dialogue on the right hand side is Sunita Mokhtar and she was on the aia call today on the lower right that is students from the detroit public communal district the Novi Community School District and the Dearborn Community School District is we got together to work on the presentation for masa in the lower left-hand corner is a group of students preparing for our summer work more pictures because I really think it's important that we see the
028joy in this in the Joey and this is the fact that when we empower our students to stop up and to have agency and really allow them to ask questions that might make us feel uncomfortable or push us to think differently about issues whether it's gender or race or sexuality or religion that it helps us be a better school district you know what I want you to see in these three pictures is the smiles there were very difficult conversations had in each three of these different pieces and if we believe in our students to help ask those questions and help us be better as adults we're going to be significantly better off it's a staff and community opportunities just again being cognizant of time here opportunities to build capacity around this there are many P
029perhaps we can come back and speak to this in a later date something that's really near and dear and this happens that nice heart is feed the need it's something that that we had the good fortune of co-creating and this happens that went ahead and and pitched this idea to the ministers in novi and walked out of there and before we knew it we were off to the races and helping rotary create this and really it's that simple ethos of what happens when you get together and break bread with each other and you get to learn about each other and who people are in providing these these types of things to close the gaps that are obviously in our society communication camp we can talk about perhaps at a later day you can read about
030what it is I know former president of passiveness Paula Henry came in vehemently supported communication camp at a time that our school board was not willing to continue with it Playworks is a organization that we've engaged with and is going to be a huge part of what we do when we come back to school and what it does really is it focuses on these issues and aspects of respect inclusion healthy play and healthy community and what we know is play is that universal language that can bring us together and we're excited about having Playworks back in the fall student dialogue scores at the high school we had a student dialogue scores at the high school set furlough in a number of students built it it was very successful as far as enrollment we had many
031many people unfortunately we ran into some situations where school board members at the time did not support the course I do think this video is worth showing and then we'll go ahead and get ready to close this down but this will help you understand about restorative practices Oh world is changing at a breathtaking pace social patterns that have one characterized human life are changing dramatically around the globe diminishing social bonds within families schools workplaces and communities but humans are hard-wired to connect just as we need food shelter and clothing we also need strong and meaningful relationships to fry with all of this in mind what is restorative practices restorative practices is an emerging social science that studies how to strengthen relationships between individuals and within communities when put into practice the effects and profound in
032schools students experience greater safety and sense of belonging resulting in improved behavior less blurring and less violence in workplaces leaders facility direct communication of my staff can address conflict as it arises the result is higher performance greater accountability and effective collaboration in criminal justice new options allow victims and offenders friends and family to repair the emotional harm caused by climb throughout our neighborhoods restorative practices get regular people more voice in the issues that matter most in a nutshell restorative practices is the science of relationships and community where individual daily interactions have a big impact on the world around you at your job with man people and throughout your community we relate matters this video was brought to you by the International Institute for restorative practices to learn more attend a flagship event basic restorative types
033so the important part of restorative practices is really we brought this to the district in 2014 I've had a long-standing relationship with the ACLU was fortunate enough to get some really amazing people from the ACLU to come speak to her our administrators about school to Prison Pipeline we did that in conjunction with Calvin Terrell to help educate our staff about institutional racism in the end of axis Leone african-american students we then worked hard to build restorative practices into our culture of the Middle School and trained every high school teacher the restorative practices will be a critical and aspect going forward with our plan to address what's happened in the pandemic with our students as well as it's a great smell Dean you know that it reduces the number of out-of-school suspensions we believe will benefit
034from these processes I'll take the support on this happens that's gonna speak to this for a bit I would like to say that the interesting piece of the story is that Novi Educational Foundation supported the inception of play words the inception of our work with Haven well sorry the inception of our work with restorative practices and so they have been a wonderful partner in helping us do things moving so much love to the NEF for that but it is a curriculum geek what this happens that's about to share with you right now to me if we really want to talk about the unforgiving of social justice if we really want to talk about the top like mmm-hmm we have to provide an equitable opportunity for each student in our system to succeed and these are
035not just words or platitudes or whatnot this is the absolute core of why education is an amazingly liberating tool and why we chose the term social justice in this district over the term diversity ten years ago the term social justice pushes people in my mind to think of things like gender religion and sexuality that are very important but now let's get into the the good stuff here on why I get so excited about the work we're doing in Novi and I'll say it again she'll never say it there is no way this happens without in the top and stuff thank you dr. Webber appreciate that setup so this is really our equity work and Mt SS is designed to provide students with what they need to be successful both academically and behaviorally I have added
036Michigan Department of Education description about the framework but if you'll click dr. Webber I will show you our representation for NCSD of our framework and I won't go into great detail into each tier but as we move up the triangle basically we intensify and individualize our support words for students and you know I think that most recently and I'm super proud to say this most that miss oddvar Engle our supervisor for the English language development program has developed intervention for our English learners I believe it's the only type of intervention service of its kind in the state so that has been a beautiful add to the work that we've already been doing and it adds another layer of support for our English language learners you can click to look at quite and so in order
037to have a robust system we have to have a continuum of intervention services and really to close skill gaps that exist and build confidence in our students oftentimes students that are one or two grade levels behind lack the competence and and they obviously need the work the individualized support to close the gaps that exist and this is really we're focusing on our our bottom 30% of students we also have to have go ahead we also have to have a human resources in order to support our framework so we are exceptionally fortunate to have full-time literacy specialists in each building we have full-time math specialists this past school year it was the first time we had a full continual math specialists in the district which is just it's amazing and and then I mentioned social workers
038so and then in addition the English language teachers that support our English language intervention we focus heavily on early elementary you know our kids come to us in kindergarten with a range of skills some can read ready some are not able to identify letters or numbers and it's important to provide those services as soon as data shows that there's a need and that's really the beauty of Mt SS is to utilize our assessment system to identify which students are in need and to be able to immediately respond and I neglected to mention our student support coach which we hired at our high school okay dr. Webber I think he's frozen maybe you so and I look what I'd like to add to this story is that this this is if you're not an educator I
039want you to know that this is unique if an educator you know how incredible this system is and this is because we've had school words it community that support that all my colleagues that we have interventions for k-12 in that that the support is rooted in assessment that we have deeply embedded in their regular supports tie in with this level of support and then with the addition of again pushing one-third of our students are English language learners in the know Viking school district building an apparel level port for students who may need more time to the beautiful ideas come out this really is a stunning piece of what we do so we're gonna go ahead and let you in everyone know that we will continue to go toward the needs our students have educationally emotionally
040and physically we as a district will expand our efforts than race trauma student agency and community discourse had we had more time tonight I would have loved to have shown you how we've already attended to those pieces but I'll never forget a conversation that Jane dr. J marks had with me in 2011 and and it was after he had been doing some professional development in Novi high school and I heard a couple teachers speak to the fact that when they were leaving the room well is there an expectation that were you know going to be able to solve all of these issues and I was really frustrated in NJ dr. mark said you know RJ you're gonna go through your entire life really angry if you think that we're gonna be able to change everything
041quickly and you need to be in this for the long haul and I really really appreciate doctor many of our school board members currently and over the pass through the support of these efforts we looked around the country the hard tricks that have done this all that being said it's not nearly enough sorry to bum you out but but we have so much more we can do it so much more we need to do think back to that quote about how precisely we talk about who has opportunities and who does not so I appreciate the time tonight we're gonna sign off here and it's I'd like to thank you for your time hopefully we'll be afforded more time to speak about this I live in the community people find me at the pool is that's
042no problem the East be and I'll talk up a coffee with anybody at any time who wants to have a substantive respectful dialogue and genuinely want and speak it's an open mind and I do as well with that said I know Darby of a few things say I just wanted to very briefly address I know that there is the community petition that was brought up and we'll hear more about that tonight and looking forward to that you know initially I was a bit defensive but after pausing and thinking of about the big picture you know I said to myself this is a coalition of students parents and community members who want what I want they want what dr. Matthews wants what dr. Webber wants and and so many of us in the Novi community school
043districts and I firmly believe that in time of struggle there's great opportunity so coming together with the Coalition is an opportunity to further our work and for that I am exceptionally grateful as we've shared we've done good work around social justice and our anti-racism work but you know as a Community School District we've been you don't put quite progressive we need to do better and we can and we will so as dr. Webber mentioned this is a journey and I think that now there's a greater urgency than ever before and I'm really just thankful and grateful to be a part of it thank you miss happens that thank you for all the work you put in as well in the long haul of this absolutely and I'm people to know testing oh I think you're
044freezing up there dr. Webber so we will we wanted to bring this to the board and as a report tonight if the board has additional questions we would encourage you they will understand it is not up to or it isn't it's not about you in the sense of those feelings will come but the one of the biggest things that I would say that I've learned is that we need to work on ourselves before we can work on what we need to do going forward with everything so we have a long way to go it's absolutely unacceptable that George Floyd frankly was murdered for passing a $20 counterfeit bill and if anybody thinks that the injustice is that the black community or people in this buffet is starting to do these what these cameras are well
045has been present in our society for far too long I cannot wait for the opportunity to get better and to go forward and the commitment that the Novi School Community School District has is to do that beside and with our community so thank you for your time if there any questions from the board happy to entertain those I believe we did our very best in truncating what was going to be an hour and a half into about 33 minutes thanks we would encourage the board if you have questions to reach out to either Dr Weber or mishap instead or or to myself and we will bring back some of these topics over the course of this 2021 school year to dive a little deeper with the board into those so that's our report this evening
046dr. reskin I would just like to thank you and I would like to thank you for putting your report together sooner than anticipated we all know the urgency and I think that it's really was really great that you could bring that forward we could begin to tell our story we know it's the beginning of a journey I reiterate everything yeah Darby has said and we look forward to our Board of Education walking alongside of our community and alongside of our administration as we continue to do and tell our story but to be better and make changes so I appreciate that next up we have comments from the audience related to agenda items our usual format would be if we were in person we would fill out a card and come up to the podium with
047a five minute limit currently we have an executive order from the governor that puts us in a zoom meeting so we have asked any public comments to be sent through a Google Form I do know that dr. Matthews has 50 plus comments from the audience tonight I believe that they will all fall within the five minute time frame I haven't heard that that's gonna be an issue so dr. Matthews if you would like to begin and read those to the board of education that would be great thank you dr. Ruskin the first comment is from Sharon Trumpy my family moved to Nova in 2012 guided primarily by our desire to live in a diverse community when we looked at Novi schools we were impressed to see classrooms full of black brown and white students from
048all over the world we heard about meant the many languages spoken in Nova home 71 according to the in the NCSD website here we thought was a school district and community that would embrace and support both our sons one black and one white the week we moved here I met a friendly mom who lived not far from me when she learned we were new to the area she told us how much we would love it here she worked for the school district and her children attended know why schools with a big smile on her face she gestured at my black son and said and no worries my kids that my kids have black kids in their classes and they don't even mind I think about this all the time they don't even mind sometimes I
049feel like this is a representative this is representative of our overall experience here a tolerance of diversity but I'm not asking for my child to be tolerated by the community I want him to be recognized as a member of the community I am NOT interested in whether you have taught your child to be kind of mine despite his blackness I want all of our children to learn that blackness is to be celebrated and that kindness is not kind when it values white comfort over black dignity I'm not interested in whether the school district website features a smiling black child walking into school I want my child to walk into schools where he sees black educators and professionals where he learns that his history is our history where he reads books not just about black pain
050but about black excellence our black and brown students are not props not statistics our districts diversity does not insulate us from racism instead it should call us to anti racism now you may be thinking but Sharon have you looked at our district goals they say unity also equity diverse and culturally competent I am glad for this outspoken commitment to these values I am thankful for the diversity equity and inclusion committee and their current 21-day anti racism challenge I'm appreciative of the district's work around social justice and mental health as dr. Webber and Miss Hoffman said shared with the board tonight and I am here to boldly tell you the time to do more is now I am asking that the district recognize that Noma is not immune from racism if mental health is important to
051the district recognize that your black and brown students mental health is impacted by daily systemic racism if social justice is valued in novi recognize there is no justice unless there is justice for all a commitment to anti racism will not just benefit my black child or any other black and brown children in our schools all our children will be better for the diverse world around them when they're educated about true and true and imperfect history and their ability to make our community even better for all of us you will hear comments from many community community members today some of them will speak to specific goals for our district some may choose to entrust you with their personal experiences of racism and some will amplify the voices of others who ask for their stories to be
052shared with the board anonymously board members administration community members you can listen to these voices as an indictment or an invitation my intent tonight is to issue you an invitation both an invitation to reflect on all you have already done and an invitation to commit to do more what's an invitation to have pride in the excellent school district you lead and an invitation to recognize that excellence requires continuous work what's an invitation to say that that these demands will be challenging and an invitation to recognize your role in meeting these challenges thank you for all you have already done for my children and for all the children in novi now come join me come join us to do even more the second comment is from Taylor banks as an alumni of the Novi Community School
053District I am speaking in solidarity with those who sign the petition I present to you now to dr. Matthews and members of the Novi Community School District Board as Novi residents know my community school district alumni current students and allies we as a community condemn the violent acts manasyt manifested by systemic anti black racism and police brutality in this country it has been clear for quite some time that dismantling systemic racism must occur at every level of society including and especially public k-12 education we are writing to address the ways the NCSD environment harms black students and students of color as well as bring attention to the urgent need for social justice and anti racism k-12 education that has been neglected by NCSD thus far very salam 9 now and in years past have come
054forward to call out the races in the NCSD environment to which in CSD has unacceptably made little response the k-12 education we received in Novi schools Lester left us won't fully unprepared to understand and confront systemic racism in America without a thorough and without a thorough k12 education on systemic inequities and how to tackle them we continue to send students into the world complicit in and in some cases perpetuating these and justices we cannot let any more graduating classes leave in CSD without an accurate understanding of such historical and existing systemic and justices how to recognize them and how to begin dismantling them and importantly for black students going through our schools we must end the continued racism and injustice of both nowise achievement gaps and disciplinary system therefore we demand the following immediate actions
055to be taken by the NCSD school board one include social justice and equity as the v of NC s DS district goals to guide all current and future curriculum and faculty development to release a specific detailed plan to hire and retain teachers of color specifically black latina acts and ended indigenous educator as well as establish leadership positions at the school board level and at each in CSD school dedicated the social justice diversity and equity three plan and implement professional development trainings for all in CSD staff and faculty on anti racism tackling implicit bias and racial equity ensure that there are specific safe and actionable mechanisms put in place for faculty experiencing racism and bias to report it for include courses on social justice anti racism and community organizing and Nova high school curriculum as well
056as address anti racism in every year of k-12 curriculum five review existing world history US history and social studies curriculum to ensure that NCSD is teaching an accurate history that recognizes in justices and is not influenced by white supremacy six release a plan to audit and diversify school library books that students have access to and are assigned a reading plan including expansion to anti racism text and more books by authors of color release and implement a specific plan to address the achievement between black hispanic and latino students as compared to other students as indicated by the top 30 bottom 30 analysis by the Michigan Department of Education 8 release and implement a specific plan to address the disproportionate and racist disciplinary actions taken against black students who make up only 8% of the district students
057but 27% of the district's out-of-school suspensions according to pro public's 2018 mis-education project in the involvement of the noah police department and NCSD disciplinary actions and address the racism that causes such disproportionate disciplinary action at its root in school these demands are doing that at the beach these these demands are meant to be the beginning of an ongoing discussion wherein we Center the voices of people of color specifically black people to ensure all eight goals are met efficiently and effectively various know by residents alumni and current students welcome the opportunity to work with you to achieve our goals together cameron banks to the Board of Education and NCSD administration Taylor banks just just shared with you the text of a petition asking you to hear our voices and to end systemic racism in our schools
058I am here to voice my support for this petition and to share the community response to this petition as at 1:00 p.m. today the petition had been signed by 599 people the majority of the supporters were alumni of know high schools or current students about 25% of those supporters were know by residents and parents and the remainder of respondents were Nova educators the names and affiliations of all those who signed the petition will be shared with the Board of Education and the administration via email in addition to signing the petition respondents were asked if if they had anything they wanted to share anonymously with the administration and the board of education many Novi students alumni and educators have personal experiences of racism but they do not feel safe and speaking out publicly one of the
059ways that those with privilege can take anti-racist action is to lift and elevate the voices of others thank you to the parents community members and alumni volunteered to comment tonight to support the petition and to use their privilege to give voice to current students educators and others thank each and every person who bravely shared their story Board of Education members and administration thank you for giving your full attention to each of these stories we are entrusting you with tonight Thanh tera hurt ask thanks to have all who have been involved in the process of developing Nova's roar during unprecedented times for everyone this is definitely uncharted territory I plan to listen to the details supporting the email sent previously but I would like a future opportunity to dialogue with you before making my family's return
060to school file option selection is that part of your process included in your timeline thanks Nancy sprawled my name is Nancy sprawl and I'm an oh my resident and parent from the anti-racism petition I am speaking on behalf of current Nova high school student who shares his story in elementary school I regularly heard lunch ladies tell my Japanese peers that they needed to speak English the last time I remember learning about Native American history was in 4th grade I am a senior now in US history classes there is a vast mystery of princes misrepresentation of our history I didn't learn a lot of things that I now know are commonly left out clearly for our comfort on behalf of a know my resident and educator I share this response the need for restorative practices training
061for all faculty is dire the interaction staff have with students need to be restorative and trauma sensitive not punitive and re-traumatizing serious PD and trained staff should inhabit all buildings especially Elementary the support the staff as they interact with an increasingly diverse community during an increasingly dramatic time period ANOVA high school 2020 graduate cheered this comments on the petition teachers not acknowledging when students say the N word pretending they don't hear it racism reported to student council advisors and they don't care where is the accountability my friend was called China virus in class when she isn't even Chinese the teacher did nothing the kids who said the comment laughed and walked away from Innova high school 2008 alum I share this story when attending Park View Elementary in the 90s I was definitely one of
062the only Indian kids in school was bullied mercilessly because of it the principal at the time was objectively useless and didn't do anything to help the situation after I went to 5th grade things got better but it was never comfortable around those students the 2015 nova high school graduates shared this comment on the petition before my first day of high school some older friends sophomores and juniors were helping me get acquainted with the building they showed me shortcuts the less traveled hallways places to be in places to avoid one of those places was named Africa described as the area where the black kids hung out before and after school on behalf of an O vile um and educator I share this response as an educator myself I would like to see more people of color
063enter the field of education as quick k12 educators especially in areas that lack certain elements of diversity from a Novi resident and former NCSD educator I left in CSD after four years of daily microaggressions and the overall racist system that left me feeling unsafe unwanted and broken from Ian Reed twists my name is Ian Reed twist I am pastor of the Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Nova I'm here to support I mean here in support of the anti racism petition and lend my voice to those who sign the petition and ask that their story be presented to the Board of Education I know by 2012 alone shared the story we had a section of school called Africa where the African American and black students were forced to congregate I as an Indian woman had to
064assimilate to whiteness in order to survive a social spectrum at Nova being an athlete and having predominantly white friends met my voice was silenced I had coaches tell me they would send me back to India people calling me Slumdog Millionaire teachers have mocked my ethnicity and said that they liked me better than other Indian kids because I was more normal and involved in things outside academia there were constant microaggressions and when I would speak up about being made fun of or having kids throw out my foreign lunch my mom packed me I was told by his being a drama queen the 2019 graduates shared this I remember clearly the area where the bus dropped off at the high school is being referred to as Africa because that is where a large population of black students
065would hang out I never had a non-white teacher the entire time I was in no way only after I went to image you did I have a black my junior year a to know my 2013 graduate shared this my sixth grade teacher at meadows called Orchard Hills the elementary school I attended and live near ghetto even a young age I was distraught by this comment Nova is beautiful because of its diversity educators and other leaders in the district need to understand and be extensively trained in de I + CRP the Nova high school student who graduated this year has to say I remember a math teacher asked me why I wasn't good at math and that I should be because of my ethnicity Asian if you look at the high school majority of majority of
066groups of kids are segregated into their respective races my friends and I were bullied for being friends because we don't share the same skin color this is a problem at Nova and it needs to be addressed the 2016 Nova high school alum shares this comment black students were treated differently black girls that were smart were told to act white we're told they act white places where black kids hung out were called Africa the current student no my high school states although I personally haven't experienced firsthand racism I've seen a lot of people experience it and it usually centered on the type of language people use for example using the n-word when you are not allowed to or using the word gay as being synonymous with being lesser the 2015 Nova High School graduate or crawls
067during eighth grade on my tour know my high school the area labeled Africa was specifically pointed out students made it a point to inform other white students of this nickname was it my tour guides intention to reinforce racism probably not did this impact my views entering Novi high unfortunately yes it is time to end the racist culture that exists in the Novi School District Adrienne Haslam my name is Adrienne Haslam I'm a parent of children and the Novi Community School District I'm here today in support of the anti racism petition and I am lifting up the voices of respondents who requested that their words be shared with the Board of Education a current student know my high school right so I have a sim I have several if it's okay for me to share one
068I remember the first time we talked about slavery in school first grade class of 2020 to set huddled on the carpet in front of the SMART Board I sat next to my two best friends at the time knew neither of which still attend no high school is one of them being the only black girl in the grade we likely latched on to each other for that reason until I transferred from my prey to primarily black public school in the Bronx to primarily white know why she was the only one when we learned the only enslaved individuals were black every student in the room turned toward me my friend and the only black boy in the room for some odd reason the only black students of Nova woods 2010 first grade batch were in the same
069class all eyes were on us I don't know why none of my ancestors were slave I'm a product of immigration even at 6 that was something I knew if the teacher noticed she didn't say anything that was the first time I realized that my differences as a black girl carried over to my schooling by the way the glances didn't stop even in high school US history I was a target of unwanted attention I can't tell you how many times I've had to pull up a matrix trying to ensure that nobody touched my hair no matter what I did with it it was the target of for wandering eyes and grabby hands no matter how many times I said no someone still ended up wrapping their fingers in my braids knocking my beats together or making
070comments on how fluffy or oily my afro was I clearly remember a girl in third grade yanking my braids two or three days after I got them done this may not be common knowledge for getting cornrows or box braids done is a long painful process and even more so for my eight-year-old tender head itself I told her not to touch my hair because it still hurt and on our way back to into the classroom she did it anyway I had the reputation of being scary tough black girl to maintain so I didn't let myself cry my dad is a jovial person who likes to make lasting impressions on people no matter how long they know each other this applies to parent-teacher conferences as well so I've gotten quite used to teachers mentioning to me the
071next day how interesting of a person he is I don't mind it I do mind when they comment on how my how good my parents English is or say something offhand about their accent of course my parents speak proper English everyone in Nigeria speaks English it's the official language in slight continuation of that my name is long long and unfamiliar so I understand people being off-put by it I know that on the first day of school and with the occasional substitute teacher there will be stumbling and all eyes will be I mean when I interject with the shorter name I've had to adopt to accommodate people's unwillingness to learn my name it doesn't make it less embarrassing when someone comments that my name is exotic I can handle beautiful and even though I have anxiety
072I can take being asked how to properly pronounce it or where it's from being called exotic is an insult to me I feel like a burden is ooh and it's humiliating being a black student in advanced courses is hard I've done it my whole life but it's still hard I get sideways glances because I'm the only one in the room who looks like me I've heard someone whisper that they think I cheated on my test out it's hard because everyone expects you to fail so you're working overtime to prove yourself capable there's constant there's a constant spotlight on me because even more than usual in other people's eyes I don't belong and to not do well is to be what others think I should be but I'm so much more than that it's difficult to
073make others see it even teachers and counselors have tried to stop me from pushing myself I didn't realize it first and so my mom pointed it out to me but it was likely because of the preconceived notion that it's a black student I'm not as likely to do well it feels like everyone else is told to reach for the stars but I am given the silent reminder that they think it's too high for me this student had a lot to say her other comments will be voiced by Betsy bow-bow dine Betsy boudin my name is Betsy boudin I'm a nova Community School District alum as well as the parent of children in NCSD I am here in support of the anti racism petition I'm using my voice to share the words of a current nova
074high school student who responded to the petition she had many personal experiences of racism to relate five of those stories were submitted to the board by andrea.adrian Haslem the student also shared these experiences know by middle school has no black teachers the only adults black students see or the janitorial staff what is that supposed to make us feel like who are we supposed to look up to our trust novi woods at the time I attended had no black teachers from that young age you've limited what is supposed to be considered normal the lack of diversity assigns a silent stereotype that carries over until it's broken by what would then be considered the exception my teachers are all white except for janitors are normally black but now there's a black person personal teaching my class that's
075a dangerous idea to enforce and a worse idea to instigate the 4th grade we were supposed to sing a song about the Constitution's preamble the song we used had a rap part to it the music teacher had us choose collectively as a grade who wanted to do it someone brought up the fact that the black boy I mentioned before should do it because he's a good rapper mind you he'd never rapped in front of us before they only said this because he's black and that's what they expected of him I don't know what other classes thought but mine came to a unanimous decision he's a good rapper because he is black and therefore he should rap the fact that a system was so well cultivated that it instilled the idea in a group of nine-year-old
076scares me to this day it's likely a state-regulated decision but until seventh grade the only time I ever heard about black people in history was because of slavery Martin Luther King jr. and Rosa Parks how was I supposed to grow up thinking I could be more than a janitor when I didn't hear anything but oppression and helplessness tacked on to the narrative of my people why were founding fathers so consistently praised when Thomas Jefferson wrote all men are created equal with the same hand he beat rape slaves with we learned nothing of other religions until we were 12 or 13 nobody knew where other any countries in Africa were some didn't know Africa itself wasn't a country it came as a shock to some people how many potential lies how much potential lies on the
077continent Mansa Musa was unheard of and I still to this day get nasty comments on how my family is only able to afford living in my neighborhood because we're Nigerian scammers and how my parents grew up in huts and we're dirt poor having a Eurocentric education does nothing but narrow our horizons teach us about powerful bi POC that's black indigenous people of color teach us about who created algebra tell us the truth about Thanksgiving because we all know it wasn't a friendly feast educate us on the corpses on which this nation's foundation was laid and teach us early dismantled stereotypes early don't throw us don't throw in small things like where are you from and say novi acknowledges diversity this district is too diverse for its students not to know India isn't a language and
078: your eyes back is ridiculously offensive to those of southeastern a southeast dissent I may have gotten carried away but these were just the things I could think of off the top of my head diva sitar my name is deva siddha I'm a graduate of Nova Community School District and currently a medical student at Northwestern I'm speaking out and supported the anti racism position and lending my voice to share the stories of partition respondents a 2017 graduate and a white high school Road I was not even aware as a white student that the Aryan school fellow students called Africa could be taken as a racial slur this level of white privilege is astounding and should not be allowed to continue any longer the 2020 graduate in Ottawa high school had this to say about the
079anti racism petition to be quite frank I hope this is seen with the rest of the submissions because it will be quite different I believe that most of the points made in this article are poor as they are racist in themselves why must we read books written by black authors hired teachers that are black or any other action that supports the black community simply because they are black I completely support the black lives matter movement however not the organization teachers need to be employed based on merit this is the final word it should not have to do with race I am all for hiring non-white staff as long as they aren't being hired because they are not white rocks like this regenerated by a couple of students and they do not accurately portray the thoughts
080of the whole student body however if anybody disagrees here somehow automatically a bigoted racist talks like this are scary to people like me who do not think like the machine in America there's trying to make them think doc like this are far more diverse than our mislabeled systemically racist school district another from Novi High School alum states Nova is and always was full of privilege white and Asian especially South Asian student who threw around key words like diversity and intersectionality when they needed to get into university but are completely silent in the face of actual racial injustice I know several Nova alum who have freely thrown around the n-word despite being informed of the implications of using the word these same students who received Ivy diplomas from Nova over the past few years I've had
081the misfortune of attending University with many of these students as well and saw them grow from being uncivilized routines to now young professionals and students entering society with their unchecked and it's up reading further cultivating the detrimental effects of the racism and xenophobia trickling into the real world through post-grad schools and careers if nobody truly wants to call themselves a diverse and equitable institution I call upon the administration to have these very difficult conversations and ensure that repercussions are in place for any students with racist and xenophobic values and comments I definitely think Nova has fostered a culture where privileged students think they can get away with saying whatever they want and doing the bare minimum for society as long anything as long as they can fake it on their applications I want these students
082to be held accountable for their actions and to genuinely work on being anti-racist and intolerant of racial injustice within Novi schools and the walls beyond Audra hall-door my name is Audra hole Dorf and I'm a parent of two children in NCSD I'm support is a petition to end systemic racism in NCSD I'm also raising up the voices of those who sign the petition and ask that their stories be shared with the Board of Ed 2010 Nova High School alum stated very good school racism is racism is not an issue in novi keep doing a great job thank you the 2020 Nova high school graduates chaired I was called a terrorist my head where was inappropriately touched by another student I was reported to the administration and only one out of the group of students was
083held accountable a Novi resident an alum wrote I've lived in Novi since 1968 and I'm still here and and I'm still here put my kids and now my grandkids through noise schools plus I went there and I'm proud of Novi schools for all they've done over the years a 2016 alone shared as a student of Novi I felt that I lacked that a lot of Education on racism and microaggression I wish I was taught the impact that ignorance had on minority student we don't learn anything about racism and how systemic it is I feel like a lot of the history we were taught is all repeated through one of the great levels and there's nothing significant to it I wish we learned how important it is not to use language which was not intended for
084us racial slurs for example the reality of systemic racism what why exactly did people suddenly leave Detroit much more and topic topics such as that I feel like I was not prepared by Nova at all and along the way my ignorance may have unintentionally infected people in a very negative way as a minority myself not black I feel like we are not treated respective respectively respectfully by white students microaggressions and stereotypes are Breann normalized I feel like an appropriate education would put a stop to that onobu educator and Renta's resident wrote lately I've been in a lot of reading and anti racism and working within to recognize my own implicit biases it's imperative that all staff members do this work because without knowing these thoughts they could harm students these beliefs that they could these
085beliefs that could be unbeknownst to are unjust and we need to teach ourselves along with our students so that school and life is equitable we have a pillar of social justice but I don't see it being attended to a noble high school alumni shared my high school bio teacher told me to go back to my country if I wasn't happy with current politics absolutely unacceptable and yet because he was a teacher I had no sense of how to react a no-buy resident wrote all of the items listed on the petition need to be addressed immediately in the last two years nearly 60 teachers were hired or none were african-american without these voices that the district continues to spread bad history and does not tell the real history of african-american they have had several racially motivated
086incidents that get swept under the rug is not important we demand action now no more lip service on diversity and how the district tries to be equitable make changes now we will not stop until things change 2019 graduated Nova High School rights teachers and students calling a section of the new wing Africa teachers having lower expectations for minority student students constantly saying slivers and when things are reported administration does nothing black students are policed way more than any other demographic fix it another 2019 alum had this to say upstairs there is an area called Africa and for the two years I was at Nova I reported it and they didn't do anything another situation is dress codes white girls get to wear whatever length they want but a black girl like myself were just the
087same thing I'm either forced to change or go home Kameron Trump my name is Cameron Trumpy I'm currently a student at Novi high school I support the petition to address systemic racism in the Novi Community School District I'm lending my voice to share the stories of other students who sign the petition and wished for their words to be shared with the Board of Education one student one current student wrote one time I got my hijab pulled off in front of a teacher I ran to the bathroom crying while she just stood there and did nothing she didn't report it or anything the next day when I went to another teacher and told him what happened he asked me to forgive him or or tell a counselor meaning he wasn't planning on telling anyone that had
088happened this happened at Novi Meadows 3 or 4 years back another incident that happened was that I was told to go back to my country in front of a nova high school history teacher and she stood there pretended not to hear it this happened in the xx 2019 2020 school year going back to my metals experience as a hijab' my teacher always looked at me while reading anything about the Middle East even though I told him multiple times I'm Asian Pakistani and then not from there to me this is an example of pure ignorance by that teacher choosing to ignore my Corrections another incident is that I always felt misunderstood as an asian-american at Novi which really shouldn't be happening as nobody has such a big Asian population I always feel like I have to
089explain my culture and educate the faculty at Novi and how my culture works and they always seemed so ignorant about how the basic desi culture is even though it's full a school full of desease another current student had this to say I remember in middle school in the high school I would have males substitute teachers are just regular teachers white men and during class it would make me feel invalid or make another girl feel invalid or wrong by praising the boys in our class praising them by talking about how able they are be more like the boys I hate that so much I should and every other girl should not feel like they're not good enough because they aren't one of the boys another student in high school shared I've been going to the Novi
090Community School District my whole life and I was never taught about social racial racial and justice growing up at school it is sad that most of my information towards this topic came from sources that were not school related I think it's important that kids grow up knowing better in order to help stop the problem kids are taught young right from wrong therefore k12 sets up a moral code for the rest of their life another current high-school student wrote in class a lot i've been called on to speak on the african-american half of things by teachers and students and i can't count how many times I've heard slurs at novi from nine people of color another current high school student said I feel like when I was being taught in history class there was a lot
091of times when white supremacy wasn't being pointed out and some students won't ever learn if it's not from school a student at Nova high school stated my eighth-grade English teacher had given me a few low grades on my papers throughout the year because of her lack of feedback on how to improve my writing skills my mom wanted to come in and talk with them when I told him that my mom wanted to come in and meet with him they refused to meet with her and said because she is an immigrant she wouldn't understand English even though I told them that both of my parents were well-educated and went to college they refused david trump i'm a nova resident and parent of two children in novi schools I am commenting in support of the petition to
092end systemic racism in our school district I'm also here to share the words of no very residents alumni occurrence students who responded to the petition the 2012 Novi High School grad recalled it was a long-running joke to describe an area in Novi high where many black students hung out between classes as Africa white kids were conditioned to be scared in this part of the school which was of course harmless this is a terrible example of how segregation takes new forms when we're raised to fear black people our brothers and sisters I hope today students of color do not experience racism another alum wrote I've never seen the racial inequalities that were so prevalent around Novi high school I never saw them because I wasn't taught about them my place of education severely let me down
093in my education about ratio and justices they made me believe it was a thing of the far distant past they ignored the fact that it was going on today in their own schools no my school's needs to do better a 2011 alum wrote Novi had a lot of different ethnic minorities which was good idea traces 'im was still very present when I attended in high school there was an area of the high school where most of the black students hung out and people called it Africa which honestly I took part in at the time was I look back and reflect I had no idea how hurtful and racist that was a 2018 graduate and over ice I've always felt uncomfortable eating my traditional food because people would always come up and judge me for for
094that based on the smell the middle school principal made a comment on the field trip to Washington DC how we shouldn't bring smelly food on the bus and brought up with stories of Japanese girls bringing smelly fish the principal could not have mentioned that story because it should not have mentioned that story because it was like a jab to the Asian community that we have smelly food after that a lot of students made fun of Asian culture beaten smelly he didn't have to bring that story up because it brought up an opportunity for Asians to be targeted because of his speech the 2012 graduate stated while I wasn't I never faced discrimination myself as a student one of my most visceral visceral memories of being a student at Nova high school was the designation of
095a certain area in the school ie little Africa or the Asian hallway I can't recall any instance of a teacher correcting students for using those terms I now live in an area with much less diversity than Nova and often speak strongly for increasing diversity but that has to come with understanding knowledge and tolerance and a willingness to compat internal biases 2018 Nova High School alum said my history classes were often not focused enough on the issue of racism and how it is still so prevalent it's clear that the curriculum is too biased and what they want to learn I don't recall any much of anything at all about black movements and leaders such as Malcolm X and the Black Panthers and yeah I am and yet I know more than would ever be necessary about
096Mesopotamia and various trees made in more time went on about the Civil War the issue of states rights is emphasized while we know who is slavery that the states wanted to rights you making the war issue of slavery we're taught more about the Confederate leaders and President Lincoln and about black citizens who led movements to earn their own right the victories of civil rights movements are glorified and brushed over the fact that systemic racism is still prevalent in our society in high school there was an area where black students would often gather between classes and was coined Africa by other students this was never addressed by the school even though they must have known about it when you XI my name is wen Yu Shi and I'm a nova high school alum I am commenting
097to support in support of the anti racism petition we also like to share the stories of other pictures respondents with the board event at 9 1975 Nova alum rode as a resident and graduate of no high schools I have witnessed a change for the better celebrating diversity in know why schools I'm hopefully hoping we continue this forward movement with better curriculum and educational resources to teach our children of inequities and how to change how to learn to live and enjoy each other's differences and how to help us move forward together a local resident wrote mother of a son who spent his entire year without recess in Novi Meadows made sure she she a teacher made sure he was miserable no actions taken by the administrators by multiple complaints and many kids switching classes 2018 grad
098share this story I had to stop riding the bus because black kids were getting beaten to the point of unconsciousness I also rarely visited my locker as it was in the upper north wing and that was where most fights broke out so I didn't exactly feel safe walking through as a small white female mmv 15 alumni wrote and many in my four years in Novi high school this teacher was the only teacher of color I had another alumni responded when I was at Novi high school there was a clear social Center segregation among black and non black students by addressing the concerns listed in this petition all students may be better integrated and better able to learn from each other in order to extinguish any systemic racism a 2011 graduate remembers in middle school someone
099made a fake myspace with the intent of calling me a slur nothing was done about it the 2013 Alumni shares their experience of being told that black people were only supposed to hang out in Africa a current student at the high school said people are educated about the truest people are uneducated about the true history of racism and often oozmas misinformation to to guide their beliefs a 2012 alumni stated racism was rampant in the hall with one area of the high school the hall by the bus drop-off being named little Africa a current students shared while I have a personal experience in extreme story of racism I know that I felt obligated to act a certain way or speak a certain way to fit the status quo while there are clubs in place to encourage
100various cultures I've always felt a little out of place when demonstrating my culture or addressing a certain way 2014 graduate said it's unacceptable that students call a section of Nova High School Africa this is racist no question about it administration needs to empower the staff to discipline and educate students in a response to such microaggressions and a nova resident wrote thank you for this petition I was just discussing with my husband how we need to use the current climate as the background to write another letter so they can explain why my children are being taught and injured servants for life instead of about slavery and the horrors of it Nicolle Heuer I'm a resident Nova and have two recent graduates that have one child still in NCSD I believe in CSD to be an amazing
101experience for students and yet I know we can be even better I've been thinking about the current movement of a social justice front and how the world would be a better place if people stood up for the injustice as they see whether it's an everyday citizen a cop a teacher a parent a student etc this made me reflect on my own behavior and some things that I perhaps should have spoken up about before I witnessed a teacher be sexist and racist the students at the time we were new the district and I did not want my reputation to be the pot-stirrer nor did I feel I had the credibility to say anything so I said nothing I have stories from a specific child about racist tendencies from a different teacher but because it was just
102that kids perspective I didn't know how to take action on what the child sees our society as a does not always value or believe children's perspectives even if I valued and believed my child so I said nothing instead I taught my child how to handle working with people in authority who misuse your power I've heard stories from my kids about racist and sexist things that other students say but kids will be kids and it is their pinch job to teach them how to behave so I said nothing all of these things I now see that I should have said something but I didn't so why didn't I say anything on events that I witnessed or knew about and felt were wrong I did not raise my hand and tell people who could make a difference
103in righting a wrong I'm not proud that I have not always stood up but I do feel that speaking up is heart it makes you feel vulnerable and the risk of possibly not being perceived well or believe is added to the strain I am an active member in our community and school district I have great relationships with parents teachers and administrators and I still have said nothing until now why perhaps it as a personal weakness or fear of how reporting such action could hurt my kids my family or me or perhaps as a human flaw I really do not know what I know is that it needs to change I believe that if I am not comfortable speaking up then there are others who are not comfortable as well I'm thinking about all of this
104in the context of being anti racist and anti-sexist and how we need to speak up for others and I am thinking that speaking up creates a cell phone or ability that can be hard to take on I know the NCSD has an anonymous tip line I also know that I do not feel comfortable using that tip line for big issues that is not fair I realize as you have provided a process to address the concern but I am trying to be honest and realistic and approaching this issue because I see that something needs to change I do think the anonymous tip line is part of the solution however I strongly believe that there needs to be more than one way we're trying to tap into this so what am I asking for I'm asking that
105NCSD take a very serious look at institutional racism and sexism within its own constructs I'm asking for NCSD to seek feedback on these issues to help take away the stigma is speaking up so that people can and will share their experiences in order for NCSD to be a safe place for all students I'm asking NCSD to think of different ways of reaching parents and kids for feedback on issues that go beyond academia I know that it is a messy request given at your school first but the reality is we are community too we have responsibilities as community members to protect and provide opportunity to all of our members and we cannot protect them if we do not know where their true fears are we cannot know what their true fears are without providing a safe
106and comfortable forum for them to share a few years back in CSD started talking about mental health at a time when that was something of a taboo topic I think we have another taboo topic that we need to break open this feedback is in no way - this is feedback in no way takes away from how great I think our school district at our community our social justice is an area where we can be better and we owe it to our community to try to be better thank you for your time energy in thought and making in CSD a wonderful community Jason Haslam my name is Jason Haslam I'm a no bi resident and parent of children in Novi Community School District I haven't commenting in support of the petition to address system racism in
107NCSD I'm also lifting up the voices of students alumni educators and residents who share their personal experience of racism to be related to the Board of Education the 2016 graduate road I'm sure this has been shared before however I'll never forget the designated name of the Adrienne atrium at the end of the science all being called Africa this name created a racial divide by white students of Noah and made those that used it seemed of greater popularity and likability by other white students it was an absolute exploitation of black students at Novi for a white student social game it was disgusting and looked and loaded trend that lasted many years and was never formally officially addressed by faculty and staff despite their exposure to the name in its context another alumni remembered during my time
108at Novi high school were my most one of the most influential teachers I encountered was the name is redacted as an educator he engaged the class and meaningful discussion as a human being he was sure to encourage the building of good character I would see him actively in Hollis taking care of litter engaging with students and setting the bar for being excellent to one another the 2017 graduate wrote my senior year of high school I signed up for a class called social justice dialogue ran by the teacher's name is redacted and it was extremely excited to take this class because one you had to apply and be accepted to take it and two it touched on a lot of topics that are important and also controversial the description of the class was this class aims
109to increase dialogue on race and ethnicity among high school youth the Novi high school and metropolitan Detroit one of the most segregated metropolitan areas this class significantly shifts the dynamic of a normal course and that each student in this course is an expert the content of the class is our own personal experience observations opinions and emotions all students are equal members of this community and therefore experts on the experience of race ethnicity and issues of social justice within it young people representing the demographics of our school community participates structured intergroup dialogues that focus on race ethnicity and other topics around social justice issues an increasingly global society our ability to communicate effectively with those who are different than us about difficult issues is no longer an ideal but a necessity through this course students will
110gain the skills they need in order to be able to engage such dialogue and also have the opportunity to explore issues of interest to them which was found in the 2015-16 catalogue this class was later cancelled and I did not get the opportunity to take the class there was not an official reason why it was cancelled but a lot of people speculated it was too political and controversy controversial which was very frustrating this class is a perfect example of how nobody needs to step up and address social issues the class simmered under this description description would be a great course to add to the required classes in Nova I know I was extremely excited to take this course because I knew it was I was going to learn a lot and hear a lot of
111different opinions and sides severa men's sitar I'm a parent of an O I graduate and commenting on support of the petition to end systemic racism in the Novi Community School District I'm also assuring the responses of those who support the petition and one of their stories related to the Board of Education the 2010 grand responded I am deaf I definitely agree there is work to be done regarding history courses especially after speaking to students who had other k12 experiences the further brings to light what needs to be changed in in CSD specifically a friend who grew up in Philadelphia mentioned how their school system they offered a black history course which highlighted the inaccuracies difficult u.s. history courses taught this was never an option in Nova additionally the English courses offered within CSD also made
112improvement it's especially evident within these courses that the students who are in honors are favored in it almost as if students and non honors courses are given up on the non honours students are never worked up to the honors level it's more so if you show up for class show pass all students should be offered the same opportunities to succeed the recent 2020 nova high school graduates shared when the Pledge of Allegiance came on a substitute teacher who used to work for nova as an art teacher he looked at me funny and told me to stand i refused she then proceeded to aggravate me and my black friend next to me who also decided to sit for the rest of the class period and eventually write an stuff for the teacher the next day while
113on a rampage she expressed that you should stand for the Pledge of Allegiance considered not respectful if you don't she went on to say that her son or someone in her family was in the army and they fought for us to stand she ended that rampage by saying it would be respectfully you went to another country and when they're asked them or pledged was being son the teacher never got reprimanded and I was scolded for not complying to her rules 2014 alumni wrote I spent my entire high school experience knowing you know I mean there was a section of the high school hallways referred to as Africa because that was where all the black students hung out or had a locker there I also believe our US history curriculum is the need of major changes
114it is extremely white Washington mentions almost zero people of color significant US history and barely covers the indigenous people of this country that goes for all know high school level there should be a specific section and Nova high school curriculum that focuses on systemic racism another alumni recalled tons of kids used term Africa refer to where African American kids hung out and no one did anything to stop it I constantly heard kids make fun of students at different colors ethnicities backgrounds and no one punished them or reprimanded them a current student at the high school said I have heard students of color particularly black students feeling a lack of acceptance inclusivity and having issues with a teacher at Meadows instead of fixing things about the teacher getting rid of her students are moved to other
115classes as avoiding the real problem of racism in this teacher Katherine McGuire I am a no-buy resident and parent I am responding me to support the petition asking NCSD to address systemic racism in our school I'm also here to speak for students alumni educators and residents who use the petition to share their private experiences of racism a 2011 alumni wrote our history and social studies classes often glossed over the hard truths about our country's history and glorified problematic figures rather than presenting all historical figures as humans who are capable of good and evil actions we spent so much time focusing on the Krister Christopher Columbus narrative American Revolution an overly sanitized version of the Civil War in selective aspects of World War one during World War two we didn't learn the hard but necessary facts
116details regarding slavery genocide brutality of indigenous peoples Native Americans other Wars Vietnam Korea u.s. involvement in South America and the Middle East and important low points in our history Jim Crow laws redlining murder alongside movements they sparked civil rights movement Stonewall anti-war activists all of this is necessary for students to learn so they can be better informed citizens and neighbors another alumni wrote I'm white female graduate at Ottawa high school I tend to know high schools through k12 and reflecting back on my time each school desperately needs change I would witness acts of the way white teachers would argue with black students I would watch as a students time and time again would stand up for themselves and the teacher would usually take them outside of the classroom where we can all hear the teacher
117raise your voice unprofessionally that eventually escort the student to the principal's office looking back it makes me sad that I sat in silence it makes me sad that since leaving though I have had to truly be educated on a black history and realize that so much of it is neglected you know all of the US history course is taught in CSD nobody finds itself on diversity diversity so why don't you protect it why don't you train your teachers better hire more teachers of color prove that you are the best School District of Michigan I was also once involved with the police officer you know white high after I accidentally bumped into a car in the parking lot I was 16 scared and ashamed of the incident I'd waited in the parking lot left a note
118and then drove home the next day the officer called me down to the office he told me there was no note and stated that the damage to the car was entirely worse than what I had explained it wasn't I remember I will never forget how this man slammed his hands down on the desk in front of me as the VP stood by his side it scares the hell out of me I was 16 accidents happen the lowlife officer had clearly never solved any cases before in his life because coming after me for the incident was maybe his greatest achievement he continued to yell at me for what I he could have done since I drove away without leaving a note but then drastically shifted his mood to but I just need your insurance information I
119was a young girl who just had an officer yell directly in my face so I was hands down on his desk in front of me I am white but I'm not sure how that meaning would have ended if I were black I hated that officer it left me with a horrible anxiety every time I saw him in the halls I knew that he was an angry man it terrified me I'm not sure how the black students I attended school with were treated by him but the thought scares me higher better and the VP who stood alongside not caring at all the way the man was literally terrifying me should be ashamed of himself again this interaction I assumed was absolute nothing comparison to what students of color must endure during their time at Nova looking
120back he still scares me I hope he isn't their 2015 graduate expressed concern regarding lack of diversity and teaching staff promotion of white Christianity centric beliefs by multiple teachers as American century being told by a teacher to read the Bible Max Shanker I have a 2011 alumni of Novi community school did I'm commenting in support of the anti racism petition and I'm lending my voice to those who requested that their stories be shared with the Board of Education 2012 grad wrote in Novi high school there was a hallway area of the building it was often referred to as Africa because people would see African American students hanging out there I always wondered why this was accepted by students in the current staff because I'm sure that they knew about it to 2018 alumni recalled during
121my sophomore year know my high school student council planned an American cultural day for homecoming spirit week I wasn't surprised and impressed that this was an event in a NHS had chosen but I was happy to school wanted to recognize whatever diversity it had to offer as an Indian American I proudly chose to wear a traditional saw war come as well I was walking down the stairs to my first hour a white male someone I had interacted with in middle school walked past me and called me a terrorist under his breath shocked I stopped immediately flipped my head behind me and watched as the male sneered at me and ran up the stairs I remain frozen on the staircase unsure what to do I looked at the people walking in the same direction as me
122none of them had stopped did I imagine him saying that how could someone imagine this still processing my thoughts I made my way to my first class and set dumbfounded for the rest of the hour did that really just happen why would someone even do that it was just a small incident shouldn't should I tell even tell someone I eventually decided I was overreacting and I decided to do nothing I have to her play this memory in my head still in disbelief that it occurred it was only when I got to college that I realized how wrong it was yes it was one seemingly small incident but it still happened and it was big to me I wish I recognized how unfair it was and I wish I had spoken up and know what to
123do I hope that through this initiative in CSD can create a culture that prevents such incidences from occurring amplify student voices and welcomes diversity within its student body faculty and curriculum a 2015 graduate wrote section of the school being called Africa Hall monitors blatantly singling out black kids walking in the halls and taking them down to the office teachers using racial slurs only one class on social issues fought for by one teacher at a few student another resident who signed the positions petition said I am a retired teacher if we want systemic change we must be proactive in planning and implementing professional development in the area of implicit bias and value the diversity as well as hiring a racially diverse professional teaching staff Makena box I'm a Novi school alumni and I'm commenting to express
124my support of the petition I'm also raising up voices of those who sign the petition and ask that their personal stories be presented to the Board of Education I know my high school graduate wrote I remember as I was graduating there was a hallway people started calling Africa because a lot of African American students had their lockers there throughout my life and Nova is one of the few Jewish students in the district I had derogatory terms and jokes made to and about me and was often called on to represent and speak to the Jewish American experience in class when really it's never fair for students they have to represent an entire multi-faceted community a 2015 graduate wrote simply Nova was a place of racism and sexism the 2010 graduate said I remember a sub 6th
125or Uihlein that was often reinforced by staff and teachers about the population of black students and NHS the idea that the families of these students use the same address to appear that they lived in novi to be able to attend in CSD even though they were from surrounding areas such as Detroit well I think the intention was to make students grateful for the good school we were able to attend the story often created an other ring effect on the community of black students at the school it created division by reinforcing the idea that they were not real nobody residents and svet students and teachers alike up to assume these students were inherently not prepared to handle the rigors of school like NHS coming from previous education in Detroit another alumni remembered as student of color
126I felt I had to explain and justify my place in novi school I remember distinctly being asked infront of my classmates if I had cheated on my social studies exam when I got a hundred percent I was the only student every question about getting the top score I felt like if I didn't do well in the rest of my test that I would be seen as a fraud I felt my teacher expected me to be less than capable than my peers the current student at the high school said I was in English class watching the film about video games it is required and one of my teachers made her mark that rubbed me the wrong way the main character speaking as a teacher described was shady and obviously more manipulative than the other character in
127the film to elaborate his claim the teacher pointed out a woman cleaning dishes in the background of the old restaurant said that woman is probably an illegal immigrant right he assumed this woman was an immigrant just because of the way she looked and the fact she was doing a dirty job then not many other people wanted to do he even made a point to say that last part debka you've ara I am commenting in support of the petition to address systemic racism and in CSD I'm also using my voice to lift up the voices of those who share their personal stories when signing the petition they asked the three stories be shared with the Board of Education a 2016 graduate wrote when the movie Detroit came out it was astonishing to me that was the
128first time I was learning about race riots you need to be taught all history especially when it happened in our own backyard Novi resident said simply my children are graduated from Novi and have seen discrimination here Asuna just graduated from Roma high school this year said the use of the n-word is a joke or while singing along to songs containing the word highlight no lies lack of emphasis on race relations despite our highly diverse surroundings that required more than other community 2019 Graduate wrote the use of the n-word as a joke were wild scenes two songs containing the word highlight no voice lack of emphasis on race relations the 2020 graduates had multiple times I've heard students call others the n-word as a passing green these students were white and when called out decided that
129it would be great to use the word even more the upper level classes I get told there are no black people here because they're not Marnell could they be here by multiple classmate the 2018 alumni remembered how they heard about the racism racist comments about little Africa and the Novi high school the 2019 alumni said did not learn until high school that Christopher Columbus was not someone who found of America but rather led mass genocide I've heard students use slurs without being reprimanded I believe truly that all the above statements could only make no buy a better School District one that is more diverse and stands in solid but student who just graduated from high school wrote in eighth grade one of my peers asked me when I was going back to India I am
130a Michigan native the 2019 graduate stated I remember in high school there were parts of the school were mostly black people in another part were mostly Indian people would meet and I distinctly remember those areas being known as Africa and India and some jokes being made about it which is not okay this is number 26 of 61 seals on I'm a noble 2019 graduate and I am Khamenei in support of the anti racism in support to anti racism in Novi Community School District I'm also lending my voice to elevate elevate the words of students alumni educators and residents who sign the petition and requested that their personal stories be shared with the Board of Ed 2019 alumni sat in elementary school I was laughed at for where I brought to lunch in middle school I
131was laughed at for what I wore in high school I was laughed at for how I spoke in each school there was always a way for people to make fun of me based on my ethnicity and how it affected my personal life and values these people also got away with it because it would be characterized as just jokes a current know my student wrote I had gone to NCS knew since I was eight and I really enjoy going to no high schools however I experienced direct and indirect racism while going to know my school my first experience was when I was in fifth grade and my teacher was giving a lesson about George Washington my teacher and other students were speaking about George Washington in a very positive way and it kind of bothered me
132so I brought up the point George Washington was a slave owner my teacher said something I'll never forget maybe George Washington was a good slave owner there's no such thing as a good slave owner another experience I had when I was in eighth grade I was one of the few black students who rode my bus quite a few of the male Indian and Caucasian counterparts would pick on me they would say things to me like I know your mom is poor because she's black or getting into college won't be easy because you're black they also used the n-word in front of me multiple times it also make jokes saying I eat fried chicken and watermelon I came home upset every day for a year I would tell my dad about it all the time and
133he got sick of it he reported the incidents to administration I was called to counseling I told them everything none of the people in my bus were reprimanded as soon as I got on the bus that day they said we never said the n-word or any of that stuff even if we did you're the only person he had a problem with it but made it even worse is black students especially those who aren't as affluent will be reprimanded harshly with our second thought but students of color of different races will be given multiple chances I've been given chances I have been yet I have been given chances myself but it's mainly because my family is upper-middle classes very involved I'm asking you all the whole teachers and students more accountable when it comes to race
134we also community Vignon need to have an honest conversation and make a change so students won't go through these types of experiences I really love going to no lie and I've had an overwhelmingly good experience but my few experiences with direct and indirect racism racism have affected my life in a big way 2017 graduate remembered my sophomore year as approached by it by a teacher about participating in a social justice programs at University of Michigan about my completion during the following school year has invited to attend a social justice initiative held by NCSD the program was inevitably cancelled because the school board did not see the importance of spending money on and staffing this retreat in CSD has continually suppressed the share no idea the voices of bi POC and conversation regarding all social issues
135including racism throughout my time in NCSD I was failed in my education it was taught whitewashed history not given enough opportunity read books from authors of color and had very few teachers of color during my k12 years this is 27 of 61 it's Nina Sneha Rey John I'm a member of the Nova high school graduating class of 2015 I am commenting in support of the petition to address systemic racism and no high school I'm submitting on the behalf of those who signed the petition and requested that their experiences be relayed to the Board of Education a no-buy resident shared my middle son talked about history class on slavery where the term wasn't used instead they used the phrase indentured servitude for life the curriculum must be more truth and anti-racism in anti-racist in his teachings
136the 2010 graduate recalls when I was in high school there were hallways called Africa because that is where the majority of African Americans had their lockers not sure why no I had all the in American lockers together the race should not determine where someone's Locker 2013 alumni wrote I remember the racist nickname students had the areas of my school one area where all the lockers meet was referred to as Africa because that's where all the black students hang out one area of the school in the old wing is referred to China Asia because that's where the Asian kids hang out students would use these nicknames nicknames to describe things it was so well known I would be very surprised if at least some teachers were not aware of this for example where is Miss mr.
137mrs. mrs. X's classroom oh it's the one right next to Africa a 2018 alum remembered in sixth grade we read roll of thunder hear my cries at class my teacher gave us a whole speech about how she would be using the n-word that we all needed to be okay with hearing it I recently learned that other teachers did not use the n-word I grew up thinking this was normal and every other student in America was hearing her their white teachers say the n-word turns out I was wrong a student graduated in 2019 cheered I was called a racial slur by another student another 2019 alumni wrote things such as all the agents are getting into U of him no one else wow you're smart and you're not even Asian and worst of all the upper
138common area of Nova high school was commonly known as Africa throughout the entire high school this is unacceptable twenty-eight of 61 Sydney Hardy I'm commenting to support the petition to address systemic racism and know what in the Novi Community School District I'm a 2012 alumni of Nova high school I'm also here to share the stories of the students alumni educators and residents who sign the petition and ask that their experiences we brought in front of the Board of Education the 2019 graduate remembers when I was in sixth grade my teacher thought I had drawn all over my hands may need a point to call me on Friday the entire class scolding me without realizing that I have henna a traditional Indian cultural temporary tattoo on my hand not only did the teacher embarrass me in
139front of my classmates but she showed complete utter disregard for the cultural diversity among students throughout my sixth grade year a 2011 alumni wrote systemic racism is an insinuated sidious process that is built into the institutions that long existed within our sadly the Nova Community School District exception was not an exception this ingrained institutional racism must be addressed it's not as obvious as overt racist acts directed towards people of non-dominant races and cultures within our community acts that when seen can be called out rather it is a system of rules policies and passive biases that maintain the status quo so those who are part of the in-group the dominant culture so to speak the status quo has been working for you to those who are part to those who are these are problems that perhaps
140you have not seen and have not affected you or your family they have however impacted people with our community that have neither as loud a voice nor the power to change these systems as most represented on the NCSD school board we need to change the way in which we address these problems passively calling it out when we see it is absolutely not enough instead acted changes to make NCSD anti-racist I for one cannot believe that in my time from 2nd through 12th grade in Nova I had no black teachers this right the obvious need to diverse to have a diverse set of role models I really believe in the phrase it takes a village to raise a child I had many good opportunities given to me during my time in NCSD which are set me
141up to achieve many of my goals in life I wish these opportunities were accessible to all students in our school districts including those without the historical representation moving towards an anti-racist society must start at our schools the first of many gatekeepers and social mobility a 2018 alumni reported being on our underestimated and discouraged by counselors and teachers what I would share my goals and seek opportunities to advance the segregation of black children is special education classes with little progress to regular education due to the underestimate underestimation rooted in bias 29 of 61 gr attorney I am a nova resident come commenting in support of the petition to address systemic racism in our schools I would also like to lend my voice to share the stories of other supporters another educator wrote students calling a certain
142area of in HS a name based on the students who hang out there hearing students of color stories regarding the racist experience at NHS we like diversity as many schools do our staff but it's not as easy as just hiring people of color the there are less and less overall people going into the profession and the whole profession is desperate for any teachers so how can we better help to recruit and retain teachers of color and encourage our students especially those at Kali to be teachers or leaders and in all professions and empowered to do so in a system that has oppressed them outside of their schooling and influenced their lives a current student shared this is not a story per se but I want to say that our history classes always sugarcoats at serious
143topics this defeats the purpose of our learning a member of the class of 2017 said we have a social justice class that was taken away and my artwork had a swastika etched into a permanent one at 2014 alumni was asked to test out of the ESL program despite having been in novi schools my entire childhood I believe I was in third or fourth grade already and remembering me confused why was why I always asked you I'm chinese-american no discussions about what microaggressions are we had to learn and name them ourselves another alumni said I was I was always frustrated in the lack of diverse reading material in the English curriculum however I appreciated the inclusion of diverse materials in a peeling a response from a 2014 graduate said I remember the bus circle being called
144Africa because many black students would hang out there I'm not sure if the school admin or faculty were aware of these raises comments but it's something that I heard when it when attended from 2010 to 2014 2010 alumni wrote I was told by my US history teacher that I could not possibly be 100% Indian heritage as the British colonized India India for a couple of hundred years I found this to be incredibly demeaning and distasteful and I was not in an environment where I felt I could speak up about that this incident has stuck struck me near stuck with me for nearly 14 years later a recent graduate of the class of 2020 wrote I feel that on the issue of systemic racism in this country as it relates to what I've taken away from
145my education at no I have almost nothing to say because I couldn't call no particular emphasis or great depth ever being placed on these issues of race that have and continued to plague this country 30 of 61 falen Johnson a tooth 15 graduate of NOAA high school I'm writing support of the petition to address systemic racism I'm also sharing the stories of other petition signers the 2018 alumni row when I was a student at Deerfield I was the only black girl in my class I was told by a white classmates that I couldn't play with her and Mike and her friend because I was black and that it was ugly because of my skin color hair lips etc I told the teacher but the incident was never properly addressed the girl was made to apologize
146but no further action was taken my parents and the parents of the girl were not even made aware of the incident I don't think that no my teachers are properly trained on how to deal with racial issues like this it seems like incidents are brushed under the rug and ignored a current no my students said is a student who's going to know why schools my whole life I would love to see a change in curriculums and talk about race we need to amp up amplify black voices more effectively in their stories that could be taught in school from that I've noticed growing up at our school son what open racism has always been an issue and over a resident residents I in the position and shared we strongly condemn any form of racism in our
147community a 2020 grad wrote this incident did not happen on NHS school grounds but in an interaction with other NHS students alumni my name is something that I've all tried in all my life people have difficulty pronouncing it but I understand my language vowels and English vowels are are read differently so I per lightly correct the other individual but what I am not okay with however is a mockery of my name heritage and culture unfortunately this summer a few individuals who are associated with the no I Community School District as students and regional recent alumni decided to do both my my and my friends named and not so original laid when told to stop they continued this in itself would have been irritating at the least and a nuisance at the most but when called
148out on how disrespectful I found that rewarding at of my name a certain individual decided that they were going to mock my home country India and discuss the colonization read mass war murder rape against my country by the British saying you mean the country that got colonized by England among other comments implying both myself and India is weak I find this unacceptable I can't I called out this obvious racist comment and after a long long while the racist individual decided to apologize I decided to leave the discussion where it was and accept the apologies but a few days later after some instances of anger against me and my friends due to outside conflict that same individual decided to message me with one simple word colonised for a white man with no regard for my heritage
149and culture to be calling out my country with one simple word colonized or to be calling out my country my heritage and myself as we can help us is unacceptable rude and should not be tolerated unfortunately as I said before this incident happened this summer II could not be brought up to administration as nothing would have come from the matter the whole reason for this petition but this is just the most recent of continuous racism and ingrained mindsets and know why that must be dismantled for a better tomorrow another member of the class of 2020 recalled teachers forcing students to read the n-word in To Kill a Mockingbird because it is accurate literature 31 out of 61 so the only math on what is the detailed plan if the parents choose the online method of
150instruction for fall we're expecting daily we are expecting daily zoon classes not a once a week interaction with the teachers also what is a return to school protocol if that is the option chosen are you expecting a certain number of kids only at school in class how was the born ensuring the safety given the number of cases that is going up 32 out of 61 Akash ray I am writing and supported the petition to address racism in the know I Community School District I'm lending my voice to students staff parents and alumni whoever asked that who asked that their experience with the be shared with the Board of Education 2008 alumni wrote this I tend to know my schools and have lived in novi my whole life I've seen many changes in Noah including making
151novi and an open school district back in 2005 6th and how it has affected the community I believe that making Novi schools that open district was intended to be an opportunity for all kids to receive a great education but in the process people never actually accepted that there would be children families men and women in this community that may have different color skin or heritage that would be working and living next to them it is because of white supremacy ignorance generational misinformation and deception and simply being extremely undereducated about african-american community that nova has not adjusted and accepted people of african-american descent we must educate the people and children so they may have some sort of concept and knowledge of social just injustice and racism that starts with teaching kids that there is only one
152race the human race we all deserve a quality education opportunity freedom love acceptance and to live without fear I stand with the african-american community and stand up against racial injustice also I think that the police have no business being in school harassing students and racial profiling teachers advisors counselors principals of parents should be the only people involved when a juvenile is in trouble or trouble police enforcement and enforcement on civilians is not necessary a 2013 alumni remembered a high school English teacher consistently graded black students essays lower than other students even when other students who were who were earning good grades English helped a student edit and revise their work a social studies class addressing world religions was inaccurate in its depiction of Hinduism my a Hindu student was asked to verify the information and
153instruct the class on the teachings of Hinduism the social studies teacher mocked Hindu beliefs in front of the class a 2017 alumni said my brother who is a POC has gotten into trouble for defending himself by faculty when he was called multiple racial slurs including the n-word my siblings are PC and I'm Caucasian have seen them faced discrimination and racist bullying even an area of the high school has been referred to as Africa because POC hung around there the class of 2016 grads said in previous normal high school yearbook there's an Emma Jo a student at black race standing next to another student wearing a KKK outfit secondly a certain hallway in the high school was designated as Africa because black students may have congregated there frequently a 2015 alumni said out of all the
154teachers I had one to twelve as I moved in no right in the first grade I had to POC teachers both in high school other to my class probably had zero both of these teacher became my favorites because I connected with them more as I am also a POC we need more POC teachers so that kids might be able to feel more comfortable with the teacher that looks like them and can connect with them 33 of 61 Louisa Zhang I'm here to support the petition to address systemic racism in our schools and to lift up the voices of other supporters when what their story is shared with the Board of Education the 2014 alumni remembered when I was a junior in high school every rising senior had to have a group counseling session with their
155guidance counselor in order to learn how to prepare for their final year of high school and their post college career my guidance counselor in the room a full of 15 students asked do you know who will be the most successful after high school without waiting for a response he pointed the only four Asian students in the class this perpetuated not only the model minority myth but also made students of other montt minority ethnic groups feel inferior as if no matter what they did they could not just not get ahead I don't think I need to spell out how harmful this can be a guidance counselor telling black indigenous and the Teaneck students that are in that room that they will never be good enough disgusting shameful the counseling retired soon after so unfortunately I do
156not have the pleasure of seeing him get repercussions for his rhetoric and alumni who graduated in 2000 17-year old because I am brown some of my teachers assumed I was automatically good at everything but I needed help they'd spend maybe five minutes with me or giving me the same answer when I didn't understand what was happening meanwhile my white classmates would get more time with the teacher and the teacher would actually try to help them understand I I do want to reiterate this is not all the teachers I had and I had some amazing teachers who truly inspired me and I'm now studying become a teacher but there are definitely some teachers who play into the racial stereotypes and it's affecting their student another petition supporter Sherrod I'm a white alumni of the graduating class
157of 2019 I'm disgusted and appalled the calling a section of school Africa was normalized in our student bodies throughout my two years at Novi high school and before although I never took part in calling at that and even discussed how it was wrong with one of my favorite teachers I never did anything to actively stop it as a white person it is my duty to listen I hope we can address our failures students teachers and administrators and use it as a on how we can do better in our own community admins need to take the role of educating us further than the textbook the 2010 graduate said so many moments of my upgrading could have been unpacked understood a process between being a man times faced the dialog and understanding one another and unpack systemic
158inequities and that's just to speak to the microaggressions and moments that largely white students and faculty perpetuated and perpetuated throughout my time in knowing we must be better we must do better 3461 Katelyn waters I am commenting tonight to express my support for the petition to address racism and no high school I would also like to lift up the voices of other supporters who asked that their story be shared with the Board of Education the 2011 graduate remember when I graduated we ate we may have had only done 10 black students in my class two black teachers and one black administrator 2012 alumni said I'm a Caucasian female who ran track it had been the African American friend the biggest thing I remember hearing from both my white and African American friends is the locker
159room it's the locker area and the downstairs science hallway was turned Africa because that is where the majority of African American lockers were at and this was a clear term said out loud in front of teachers it was never corrected or pointed out as wrong something else I remember is not learning true black history my husband who happens to be african-american couldn't believe how little I knew and was taught especially the fact that I did not know the meaning of June 19 the woman I recalled one time when I was in a restaurant with my family back when I was in middle school I saw another boy with his parents from one of my classes I said hi to him and then he didn't say hi back and his parents didn't say anything either they
160all just looked at us the incident felt racist to me a 2008 alumni wrote I didn't have a single teacher of color until my freshman year of college just seems highly problematic that one teacher remain the only person of color I've ever had fallen in the know like Community School District another petition supporter who graduated in 2008 said people of color specifically back students have been systemically and disproportionately targeted and negatively impacted by systemic inequities and racism not only within our legal system but within the edge system it is well beyond time for curriculums to include accurate history and not the whitewashed versions and step towards reaching equality for black people a 2012 graduate remembered once while leave in Novi high school 2010 summer school program I saw so fellow students driving by the front
161entrance in a truck flying Confederate flags and chanting America that's why Africa is black sin knows in word back they were from another district and only there for summer school but regardless this kind of behavior is reprehensible and should be addressed through education as well as consequences and the 2016 alumni said as an alum that is an educator I fully support this petition I remember my time and no high schools fondly I would like to see the school system continue to grow and improve nor leader in public schools in Michigan and as such you have a responsibility is setting an example for the rest of the state and maybe even the country be on the right side of history or at least trying to be take this petition seriously put your money where your mouth
162is and be a leader at what you always claim to be 35 out of 61 Bailey more Ricky I'm coming in today because I support the anti-racism action in Novi Community School District I would like to use my voice to share the stories a petition supporters who wanted the Board of Education to hear their experiences in the high schools one alumni remembered being called Africa and being asked insulting questions even singled out by teacher 2019 graduates that I remember clearly the area where the bus drop-off at the high school is being referred to as Africa because as we're a large population of black students would hang out I never had a non-white teacher the entire time I was in no line another alumna from the class of 2019 wrote I remember in high school there
163were parts of the school were mostly black people in another part more mostly and then people would meet now I distinctly remember those areas being known as Africa and India and some jokes being made about it which is not okay 2010 alumni said I don't remember learning anything in any my classes of no high schools attended k12 on systemic racism Tulsa and rosewood massacre redlining or anything the things I'm just now learning in it as an adult about the adversity the black community is facing today and why those run deep in the history curriculum has been whitewashed and sugar-coated the truce has been kept from us and it's time these things are addressed in classroom let's be the change we want to see in the world it starts with educating our youth and stopping any
164forms of racism at all cost I remember there being a distinct division between white and black students at Novi high school the white kids referred to sections of the school where the black kids hung out as Africa I also remember a kid with Tourette's in our class that yelled profanities and racial slurs in the middle of class a black girl and class cried when he kept shouting the n-word I don't recall anything being done about that no one said anything no one did anything I'm sure there were more instances of racism that I was blind to at school but I really believe there needs to be more done to unite students diversify staff and incorporate the truth behind systemic racism in our history classes 2019 alumni said schools are where children and teenagers spend the
165most time during the year without addressing racism they will not understand the issues that become more prevalent once they leave high school for those parents educators and anyone else in their life who believe these conversations will be uncomfortable I urge them to think about the people that suffer from police brutality racism and microaggressions every day education and human rights are not and should not be only for a certain group of people but for everyone the current student wants the Board of Ed to hear this there have been multiple instances that I can count where I've been told jokes about doggy awesome all my eyes are and more like that unfortunately I can't think of a story associated with these events because of how normalized it has become that in itself is a problem for racist
166comments to be thrown around and not being able to remember a story associated just shows how normalized it has become and how common it is within our community however there is still a few stories that have stuck with me in elementary school I remember sitting down at a table for lunch and opening it to eat as soon as I started to eat my lunch people started making remarks of disgust one kid who I still remember the name I went out it was way to say you can sit by me but don't ever bring that again referring to my lunch as soon as he had done that away with similar comments came sit at the end of the table if you're going to eat that that smells so bad you can sit here but not if
167you're going to bring that again another story revolves around my legal name my legal name is and the names were that growing up I we all we seek my legal name because of how an American or how none how many was I would always be made fun out for my name I hated it I would always go by the name another name I remember going on a walk with my mom one summer and begging her to legally change my name which routes from Korea and given to me by my grandpa I can just imagine how hurt she must have been in CSD has made me feel eighteen eighty even when I'm a citizen in the United States and got me to hate my culture that is my story thirty-six out of 61 Neha go Guinea
168I'm a 2018 graduate of Nova high school I'm here to express my support for the petition to address systemic racism in our school I'm also lending my voice to elevate the voices of other respondents who wanted the Board of Ed to hear their experiences but know my resident rote teachers from 2008 to 2011 allowed students to tease and salt to other students of colors without any repercussions and even times laughed along with the students making the joke another resident signed the petition income in my child's English teacher was reading and broken instead of saying the n-word actually said the word aloud in class my China said it was very uncomfortable for black kids in class and was upset with the teacher it said the word a parent no my said my sixth grader wants to
169see the end of the one-sided narrative of American history and our textbook please stop signing contracts with textbook companies that whitewash history Innova parent shared my son in kindergarten was approached by a classmate in conversation I'm a bi-racial person who is Asian and European we have diversity in our family at home my little one came home one day and said I don't want dark-skinned I was floored because our family is one rooted in the promotion of diversity the classmate told him that white skin or light skin is better in brown skin or dark skin is bad when I asked who his classmate was you may be surprised or not to know his classmate was not white whoops I my family from India I'm aware the India also has a caste system based on color of
170skin but the reason why I bring this up is because we have a huge opportunity to address anti racism and diversity from a very young age it is needed a five-year-old can be made to feel shame for who they are or what they look like as a parent we cannot allow this to happen I grew up in a predominantly white community and experienced racism due to my being Asian but nobody is hurt tremendously it's community and that is one of the reasons why I wanted my son to grow up here but because we are diverse community does that mean we cannot be lacks when it comes to teaching our families and youth to be anti racial this racism and Prejudice that racism apprentice in any form is not acceptable dr. Matthews can I stop you
171please thank you so we are going to take a 5-minute break since we've been at this for a bit and then I also want to have a discussion that in our operating procedures the board designates 30 minutes for this portion of the agenda we did let that go on because we find this to be very important conversation but we're gonna take a five minute break and then we're gonna come back and dr. Matthews if we have any other comments from the audience regarding a different topic I would ask that in our second opportunity for comments from the audience if you can read them at that point so we can continue on with our agenda okay can I just ask dr. Matthews are those all printed out now they will all be downloaded and the board
172will be given them and we could also post them in the minutes of the meeting okay great and even the ones that you did not read we will be able to to see all right thank you Sheila has already emailed them to us great thank you Mary Ann I haven't had the opportunity to check that while we were on here and for those of you watching I'm in are unaware of public comment so public comment we do not have a back-and-forth conversation the comments are read to us and as was pointed out all of the comments that have been shared via the document will be shared with the Board of Education and the cabinet so we will take a five-minute break and then we will resume at 9 yeah thank you okay we are back
173from our break we are going to ask Lucas to start recording and we will continue on with our Genda next item is the consent items our consent agenda has two items it's the approval of the minutes the regular meeting minutes of June 18 2020 and the approval of the bills and the check register so if I can get a recommendation this is only I will move to approve the consent items as presented so Part B cook yes trustee hood trustee hood oh my god yes all right trustee meta yes trustee Murphy yes trustee roni yes trustee ruskin yes trustee Smith yes yes we have one action item the personnel recommendations dr. Matthews thank you dr. Ruskin we actually have two parts to our personnel recommendations this evening I will turn the first part over to
174dr. Kinsey Thank You dr. Matthews this evening we have two resignations in one retirement the resignations are jodi McKevitt special education teacher known by high school and melissa Matson executive assistant in the office of academics and the retirement is sasha roberts levi adult education teacher thank you dr. Kinser make it a recommendation no not for me okay mr. Meno Matson mana don't do it if you were to give you accept Melissa Matt resignation I'm done with the Rena yeah he can come after me okay I approve I move that we approve personnel report as presented support supported by mr. Cook any comments I will be a reluctant agreement reluctant very very reluctant just one record unless it was a rock star is a rock star we go through this from time to time or somebody
175who is just invaluable to the district decides to leave and for one reason or another and they will be sorely missed you know it's really not within our control to say no you have to keep working although we would like to yeah I'll tell you serving beside Melissa for five years you know stunning as a professional is an understatement there are so many things that touched and made happen I think if I'm gonna say one thing that I'm proudest of is our psychiatric evaluation form work doesn't get a lot of press it's nothing flashy and glitzy but it took so much effort to get that across the finish line and now there's schools throughout Oakland County using it and that's for students who may be thinking of harming themselves that's one of five billion things
176that she did I'm really proud of her making the decision to move on and what she has coming up in her future is everything he deserves it needs to do but without a doubt there are people behind the scenes that often communities have no idea their importance and value and I think Melissa is definitely also you're going to miss her to death aired on Twitter yesterday and we want to thank Jody and Sasha for their service as well so if we can get a roll call vote mr. Menna trustee cook yes trustee heard yes trustee mana yes trustee Murphy yes trustee roni yes hear us again yes trustee Smith yes to zero and then we have the second part go ahead dr. Matthews I'm sorry to interrupt you that's okay I was I interrupted you
177actually so I would like to present for your consideration an administrative hiring this evening I would like to recommend Greg McIntyre for the assistant superintendent for business and operations upon the announcement by Joe Minich of her intent to resign we have worked to find the best candidate to step into that position the position was posted on May 4th and closed on May 26 you posted in the typical places the Michigan School Business officials website Oakland schools consortium website indeed LinkedIn colleagues from the Michigan School Business officials were asked for references and emails are sent directly to potential candidates there were 18 applicants through the position a review of the applicants was done daily five applicants were identified to participate in the human x leadership screening interview these five applicants were selected based on their match
178with the job posting their experience and their work history all five applicants were given a senior educational leadership interview through human eggs after all were interviewed human X reviewed the results with the novi cabinet based on the feedback from human X and the insight they have on each candidate three were selected for an in-person interview in front of a panel the panel consisted of all the following individuals Cindy Valentine director of transportation Mike dragoo director maintenance Brian Gordon athletic director Lisa Finchel principal of Novi Meadows Nicole Carter principal of Novi high school Jodie malabon payroll supervisor Christine Diana Kerr executive to the assistant superintendent for business operations Deana wheeler the Director of Finance dr. RJ Weber assistant superintendent of academics dr. Gary Kinser assistant superintendent for Human Resources and myself each panelist was chosen because
179of their connection to the business office and their understanding of the district that that connection was an encounter a counting finance future is purchasing transportation payroll security and budgeting in the district interest each panelist was also chosen demonstrated ability to think through and think about difficult problems each applicant was asked to make a presentation of ten minutes and introducing themselves and identifying what their first 30 days in the district looked like then we were asked a series then they were asked a series of questions from the panelist after the interviews the committee discussed each candidate or each applicant and depth sighting answers to interview questions and I didn't and identifying strengths and areas of concern one cannon it was called back for a second in a person interview with key business office personnel and cabinet
180members after the second interview references were checked tonight I recommend Gregory McIntyre to the Board of Education to be hired for the assistant superintendent of business and operations mr. McIntyre has worked as an assistant superintendent of business services in Redford Union School District does he know he's from yeah I think so okay no were technical difficulties mrs. Holly is walking down to take care of this well you uh you have the document front of you on just continue reading where you left off dr. Kinser Oh unmute yourself dr. Matthews and you'll be all set I left for a while it was a momentary flight of fancy so references for mr. McIntyre spoke of his character his understanding of school finances willingness to find and make difficult decision and as jr. would care for the students
181and staff I believe mr. McIntyre will make a strong addition to our central office leadership teams so I recommend mr. McIntyre to the Nova Community School District Board of Education because I believe that he will I value to our team and continue to help us move forward as a district thank you dr. Matthews if I can get a right recommendation mr. Smith I recommended the Novi Community School District Board of Education approves Gregory McIntyre as the new assistant superintendent for business and operations all support points of discussion okay seeing none mr. mana if I can get a roll call vote please trustee cook yes trustee heard yes trustee Mehta yes trustee Murphy yes trustee roni yes trustee Ruskin yes trustee Smith yes welcoming our new assistant superintendent in our next meeting August 6th it'll be
182awesome he begins on Monday July 20th excellent okay next we have information and discussion we have three items beginning with the return to school plan discussion dr. Matthews Thank You dr. Ruskin as you know the governor has issued a return to school road map here in our district we have been working tirelessly for the past several months on developing a plan to discuss with the Board of Education about our return to school we did not put out a plan previous to June 30th and that was after the last board meeting that the board had in June because the governor did not present her recommendations until June 30th and we knew that we would have this why 16th board meeting with the board to begin discussions of this plan the board will need to approve what
183is called the the preparedness plan at their August 6 board meeting because it has to be turned in to the state and the Oakland schools by August 15th and we will not have another board meeting after August 6 before the 15 and so we initially started with three committees that were looking at in person hybrid and virtual we those were administrative committees because we had to have some some discussions about staffing and decisions that we felt it was too early to bring in our other staff members on and then dr. Webber began developing a team of teachers and administrators that would expand on the work those those original three committees and what we have landed on is is a fairly robust plan but we stayed in the plan that it's a plan that is a
184work in progress and so all of you I think I've seen the Ruhr plan and and all of the areas that we're trying to address in the Ruhr plan the the two basic areas that we have identified is that we will have a in person school experience for students but we will also have a virtual experience for students we have decided not to do a approach for for a couple of primary reasons one is that we don't think it's a fair expectation for teachers in a hybrid approach typically students would come two days a week two or three days a week and then be at home in a virtual experience and when the other half of the students came two or three days a week the advantage of the hybrid approach is that you only
185have half of your students in a school at any one time but the disadvantage to the hybrid approach is that there is an expectation that this teacher would teach not only the students in school that sit in front of them but would also be able to teach the schools that were at home in their virtual experience and so to have an expectation that a teacher would be able to do that in one day we don't think is reasonable the second reason that we don't think a hybrid approach would work well is because the experience for students would be two days two to three days in school a week and then at home and and the experience at home would either be that the teacher at school would ignore them completely give them homework or a
186packet to take home with them for those two or three days that they're at home and and they would have to work on that independently without any feedback from a teacher or any other person at school because that teacher is teaching the students in front of them or that the expectation would be that the teacher would be trying to do both and we don't think that the teacher would would do well in teaching both virtual and in-person and so we are not pursuing the hybrid approach really we're really pursuing that either the in-person or the virtual team I think it's also important not only as a group of teachers and administrators working on this return but parents our school resource officers ahead of foodservice head of maintenance a head of transportation in bringing all these
187these pieces in our school nurse and really the the notion of what I think is really very is that this is changing as we speak in the past two days we've had several large districts say that they are not even going to return in the fall lansing schools just announced within a couple hours it's the same piece so many of the questions that I know dr. Matthews is fielding from community members around perhaps you know why this decision wasn't made or why this one was made I think it's really important at the beginning in this presentation that we all accept a very uncomfortable truth and that uncomfortable truth is that that everything that we do and all the work we do could be shelved for another reason and that is why you know our own
188patience as a community and our own grace that we need to have with each other through this is critically important and I appreciate that dr. Matthews is sharing the why behind the hybrid and why not and I'm sure that he'll share more from that r or plan but there are several things that we are terribly excited about with the Rohr plan and that really is our attention to social emotional learning restorative practices kind of a slow roll approach in that we can talk about Steve when you want me to but you know what I would caution people to do is in living in the community I felt this I had a couple parents question me last week when I was with my son about why we're not doing this or why we're doing that and
189I would just ask anybody to think if you needed to change your business model in 24 hours could you and that's ostensibly what we were asked to do on March 12th our approach in the fall is going to be far more robust on the virtual end we've already went toward that but our belief is that if we are going to come back in stage 4 if that's the choice the governor is going to allow us to do that we want to do everything within reason give people that virtual option but we believe we need to be back together five days a week with our children and our children need us so we have sang out requests to parents to ask questions and we have gotten a number of questions so we're putting them together in
190a in a question and answer that the first version of that will go out to parents on Tuesday July 21st and the second version will go out on to Tuesday July 28th and then from there we would like to have further discussion with our community about some of the points in that they they still either question or don't fully understand before we come back to the board on August 6 six they have that discussion we would also we will also send these questions out to the board ahead of time so that you can kind of get a sense of what the questions are from the community instead of trying to answer them individually an email where we're trying to put them together in a question and answer a frequently asked question format I'd like to
191review some of those with you this evening the first is can parents decide which options to choose for the fall and the answer to that will be yes the district is starting with the position that everyone will be coming back to in person however we are going to have a form that if a family wants to go virtual that they would complete and that form will begin to be available on August 3rd and we will ask them to complete that form by August 9th because that will then influence our staffing decisions so if we we did a survey earlier this spring the asking parents what they were thinking of at the time and 85 percent of our parents said that they would be sending their kids back to in-person instruction and 15 percent would be
192would be going virtual as as the summer has progressed we anticipate that we might have more students who interested in a virtual option because of the the progression of the virus and those kinds of things but we need to know that in order to staff our buildings appropriately so on August 3rd families are going to be able to have that form and and either send it back to us virtually or there will be forms available here at the ESB that they could come in and fill out as well a number of questions have been asked about what happens when a student or staff member test positive for Kogut and and we've been working with the Oakland County Health Department also with our school nurse Kathy Farris and in our current protocol would be that if
193a staff member or student test positive for kovat there will be directed to self quarantine at home for 14 days any siblings of a student who test positive will also be directed to self quarantine at home for 14 days from the date that they received the positive test so if a parent or any other person living in the household of a student test positive for co-ed the students in any of the siblings will be directed to south Florentine for 14 days staff members or students who test positive on our symptom-free may return to school when 14 days have passed since the date of his or her first positive test and they have not had any subsequent illness staff members or students we test positive and our director to seek care for themselves at home may
194return to school win 14 days of fast or NCSD will require a staff member or student to provide documentation clearing his or her return to school and and so this protocol will be outlined to our parents in the information that we send out to them and and we also will explain the protocols for exposure that the Oakland County Health Department has really talked to us about close contact being being really the point of quarantine then close contact is defined as conte contact that is less than six feet apart and face the face for a prolonged period of time 15 minutes or greater and so if if a person has that face-to-face contact even if they're wearing a mask for 15 minutes or longer within six feet of each other they would be expected to quarantine
195at home as well if they've had that close contact and so all of these we will send you this updated question and answers that we currently have starting tomorrow so that you can look through some of these as well with all the someone asked with all the possible restrictions is it even worth returning to in person face to face instruction and there are several groups that advocate for in-person face-to-face instruction the American Academy of Pediatrics American Federation of Teachers the National Education Association and AAS a the school superintendent Association I'll advocate for a return if we can do it safely so let me give you some sense of how we plan on doing this safely the the safety protocols that we're emphasizing are as follows masking for students so students in grades 5 through 12
196the governor requires if weren't raised for the mask be warned on students 6 through 12 but because we have a 5 6 building we are our district stance will be required mask for students in 5 through 12 and then strongly recommended for students in grades K K through 4 so masks will be required that's one part of our safety second will be hygiene so that we will have disinfectant wipes we will have hand sanitizer throughout our buildings on our buses that the expectation is that we will have students use that on a regular basis and then the third is concept called cohorting or keeping groups of students together as much as possible and so when we when we think of returning to in-person instruction we will have a typical number of students in class so
197an elementary that will it be anywhere between 19 and 23 or 24 students in a class social distancing is is recommended but not as strongly recommended not required and and truthfully in our classrooms we cannot social distance six feet apart for me we just don't have the physical space we can spread out our spread out our desk as far as possible use the space within the classroom to create as much space as possible and many of those spaces will be three feet apart from each other but but spacing is definitely a concern and an issue that that not only novi but almost any district in the state and that's why it's not a required element but a strongly recommended element and so classrooms will have that typical number of students in them desk will be
198moved as far apart as possible all desk will be facing one direction students will be assigned the desk and the Kasich students will sit in the same desk all day long that will be their assigned seat and we do this so that we can always know who is around them for that cohorting piece of the experience 712 students they will be assigned a desk in each class period a student movement within the classroom will be limited small group interactions may take place but students will keep an appropriate distance from each other students will not share supplies with each other teachers will be able to move throughout the classroom and interact with students either one-on-one or in small groups a lunch at this time is planned for the classroom students will be able to order breakfast
199and lunch from our food service department and lunches and breakfasts will be delivered to the classroom and this is done to prevent the gathering of large groups especially if we're still in phase four as I had mentioned masks are going to be required for in phase four for all students in grades five through 12 and masks will be strongly encouraged in grades K through four and all staff will be required to wear masks we have also asked some of our robotics teams frog force and some of the middle school robotics teams they are using 3d printers to print clear face shields for all of us the the frog force is actually printing up to 700 of the shield we have a middle school robotics team that's printing another rid of the shields and so every
200staff member will be given one of those shields as well there have been questions about recess and specials or rivals dismissals all those things we are taking our time to think through and think about is there going to be win time yes there will be win time will it look the same as it currently does no it won't primarily interventionists and specialists will be pushing into classrooms as opposed to taking students out of classrooms will students have interaction with other students during the day they will have it K through 6 they will really have interaction with the students in their classroom 7 through 12 they'll have a little bit wider of an experience but we are trying to limit that experience as well hopefully groups of you know a hundred or you know the ninth
201graders only those kinds of experiences so there will be that in interaction with other students our plan is is to encourage the mental well-being of our students and and we had success doing that online but we also believe that we'll have success doing that as students return to school as RJ mentioned dr. Webber mentioned there will be an emphasis on the on the in-person experience of focusing on that social-emotional part for students will be using Playworks as as one of our tools to help us with that we'll also be leaning on our social workers and others dr. Webber I didn't know if you wanted to address any of that I think something that our return to school plan makes it unique I've had a good fortune and being on on nationwide panels about how schools
202return and so on and we're calling it a slow roll back in which think about it is 25% of our class days of the first 60 will be spent unintentional work with dialogues using restorative practices to talk about the trauma that our students and our staff have faced throughout this closure some of our students have lost family members our teachers have lost family members we have had one of the largest conversations about race in our nation's history well our schools have been closed our plan makes space and time for our staff and our students to address those issues as well in real dialogue and conversation we also have and are putting together an assessment package where we can find out where each individual student is regarding their learning so this grace is going to be
203very important in our mind for our students and our staff in the sense that we can't just show up September 8th and pretend that nothing happened let's just get to work the supressing that trauma that's occurred not being honest and open and discussing it we'll do our students and staff in our opinion a tremendous amount of harm also by giving the Grace and the space for people to slow down a little bit yeah you might cover less content this year but I don't really and this is weird coming from the chief of academics that doesn't bother me what would bother me more is if we pretend none of this happen and we just rolled into the school year from a safety standpoint the social-emotional aspects of it as well and perhaps dr. kins are going
204to speak to this you know I'm really concerned about our teachers our teachers will be in you know potentially in classrooms of 20 to 25 students they have their own loved ones they're gonna go back to maybe they're caring for their own aging parents and they're worried about what this virus could do to them that is real the anxiety of the people who serve our students is real and should not and cannot be discounted so the thing about the way we are coming back into it in person is something that I'm exceptionally proud of in it the reason that we can do this is because frankly the community and the board have invested in many of the things that we presented about earlier tonight the other thing I'd like to say about that is it
205will be difficult to do that same level in that same scale for virtual students our goal is to have the best virtual program in the state of Michigan frankly it's lots of people out there a slick advertise and you know telling families they've got it all figured out and I've got to say right now I'm disappointed in a lot of my colleagues across the state and what I'm seeing being publicized having done this for 28 years I have a little bit of an idea of what it takes to educate kids and in being with them in person is the optimal way for 95% of our kids learn there's five percent that it's not and I think this has actually been a very good thing for them but I need the community and we need the
206community to understand that the safety goes way beyond wiping desks and wearing masks it goes into also the emotional and mental well-being of our staff and our students and that is something we are going to attend to so you may not see your kids start right out of the gate hammering on content content content because we need to check in and make sure they're okay we need we need to take care of them right dr. Kinsler I didn't know if you had any comments yeah I would like to jump in so talk to whoever thank you for segwaying into that I really would like to comment on our staff and thanked Heather Burnside and grant grant Dalton who is our new MEA representative for partnering with us and together we really are going to implement
207a system which is best for our students and the only way we can do that is if we also take care of our staff dr. whoever commented that the challenges they face are real and we're mindful of them we're going to do our very best to implement the plan that were in the process of developing with fidelity and in a way that provides high quality instruction to our students in a very humane way Thanks we have some other questions related to kind of the in-person experience that that I will share the answers with you to tomorrow but also we will share these answers with our community on Tuesday such things as lockers and walking in the hallways changing classes some of those kinds of things recess we plan on having says typically the recess experience
208for a k-6 would be the teacher taking out their own class outside more than one class could be outside but they wouldn't be able to interact with each other they would be kind of that cohorting function would continue even through recess specials would be k-6 more than likely done in class so that our teacher would go in the music teacher would go in the media person would go in and this is done again that keep kids kind of in one location to prevent them from kind of engaging with other students throughout the building it really is that cohorting experience and then some may say well this isn't the typical in-person experience and the answer is no it's not but it's done in an effort to promote safety and and to ensure that if illness does
209come that we would be able to identify the touches that that sick person had with other students in the building or other staff in the building and so we believe we can create a safe environment but again part of this is going to be based on how comfortable the board is with this approach and and so we're going to share all these questions and answers with you because ultimately you're going to have to sign off on this now the other part of this you know we'll have the in-person option but we'll also have the virtual option and the virtual option will look significantly different than the virtual option we had in the spring the virtual day will be really a virtual school day there will be teachers will be available during school hours there will
210be a minimum of 15 minutes of live instruction every hour and then teachers will do much of what they do during a cut of a typical school day they could assign students work they could work with small groups of virtual students they could conference individually with students or they could continue to provide a whole class instruction but there will be a minimum of 15 minutes of live instruction each our during the course of the day the time commitment for virtual students will be very similar to the time commitment for in-person students in other words there there will be the regular school day students will have touches throughout the school day with their teacher on in multiple hours teachers will assign work that students may do it kind of individually and then check back in with
211the teacher our students may be put in you know a zoom has a feature a breakout room students may be put in breakout rooms with other students are virtually they'll work together those kinds of things but the time commitment for the virtual experience will be very similar to the time commitment for the in-person experience there will be testing there will be grades given virtually you know we're looking for answers that to how to do fine arts you know virtually you know how do you do choir how do YouTube and how do you dance Orchestra all those kinds of things and there may not be a great answer to that but we're continuing to try to find the answer so our students will have that opportunity to have that experience well virtual students interact with in-person
212classrooms and the answer at this point we believe is know that in-person and virtual experiences will be separate can we provide for the social-emotional development of our students virtually we did we had some success with that in the spring and we think we learned some things in the spring and we think that we can continue to build on that and focus on the social-emotional development of our students even if it's a virtual experience what will electives look like we think the electives is a question that we're continuing to work on and we'll the learning format completely be in zoom and the answer to that is no zoom is one format but we'll also use as a primary kind of learning management system Schoology and then other programs like zoom Google classroom seesaw will continue to
213be used as well dr. Matthews yes cool part are first off the school board so parents know this if they're not aware and perhaps we can put this in the FAQ but a lot of the work we've done in the past decade has really gotten us ready unfortunately or fortunately for this moment but recent action the school board took that will really help families is the device purchase for staff and students so we will be going to a 1:1 device for students while the president's ap board on the app one of my favorite questions I get from community members is why can't you just teach all the kids with zoom like all day and tonight fair question however you know being able to really keep people engaged especially 22 kindergarteners in front of a computer
214for a full day if we really think about it's not reasonable I think those questions come out of genuine desperation of dear goodness gracious can I really do this again with three kids at home and I get it and I'll tell you I was Teacher of the Year principal of the year and if I myself taught my son well one day a week he got a good week it was really hard for me and I'm a teacher so I get it but we also have to realize that in a virtual setting it just cannot replicate what we do with our children in school in anybody who's telling people out there that their kids can have the same experience online as they do in school is not being honest we are gonna do our best our
215absolute best but we desperately want our kids together we want to be able to talk to them to communicate with them to help them with all the things that I think our teachers do a wonderful job with but from a platform standpoint as dr. Matthew said we have everything there the board has approved devices one of the biggest questions dr. Matthews we got early is why didn't we give grades at the high school there were a lot of equity reasons that we made that decision but going for in the fall grades are gonna be part of every aspect virtual of virtual learning on there so parents need to hear that that we learn from that and as well I know dr. Matthews myself for open if he if the community has suggestions or recommendations that
216we are not seeing please let us know not only will we listen will engage with you around them but I also just wanted to to say a couple things about things that I've been approached at in several times I think the number one question is and people are not trying to be disrespectful but the question is dr. Matthews why can't you just have the teachers teach their kids via zoom for the whole day and it's just a very difficult thing to think about I know dr. Kinser as an elementary principal so maybe he'd want to say something to that I would say that the foundation of Education at any level but even more so in the early grades is the human connection between teachers and students and only so much can be accomplished especially for
217younger students over zone it has a very beneficial function as part of an instructional day but it's very difficult for it to be used as a primary tool so that gives you kind of a broad overview of both the in-person and the virtual experience there we also have you know transportation that we're looking at mask and face for required for anybody who rides on the bus staff or students we will have hand sanitizers and disinfectant wipes on the bus for students to use liberally we're gonna continue to pick students up each day masks are going to be required etc at the end of the day we're going to develop a strategy to limit the groups of students that congregate together before they get on a bus so we don't have you know if you've ever
218been around the middle school or the meadows for example you know all those students kind of come out all at once we're gonna have to try to figure out how to limit some of those kinds of experiences and we're working on that as well athletics we're gonna follow guidelines by the MHSAA but ultimately I think the board can and and [Music] exert its decision-making on on this plan I'd like to send you as I mentioned the questions that we've kind of answered so far for you to look at tomorrow as I said we're gonna send out kind of frequently asked questions to parents on the 21st and the 28th you will share those with the board we will continue to answer the questions from people and then on August 3rd people will will kind of
219be defaulted into the in person and if they want the virtual they will have a form that they would fill out and send back to us by the 9th so that we can start our staffing initially we're thinking that it would be best for people to stay in their their choice for at least the first semester into January because it would be difficult to say for example you know 25 percent of our community said virtual and then after 3 weeks they said oh I really want to be back in class you know in school this isn't working for my kid it would be difficult for us to to staff that at the school if all of a sudden that happened because 25 percent of our of our student population would be almost 2000 students and
220so how do you bring all of those students back in this in the class in the in-person instruction if you staffed for them to be at home and so you know the the governor may have some say about this is you know that cases of coronavirus continue to increase she may be she may step in and make a decision you know as dr. Webber mentioned tonight the Lansing school district has made the decision to start everybody virtually and that certainly is a prerogative of the board if they were just choose that but our goal would be to create a safe environment for students that come to for both students and staff and also to have the virtual option for parents who would choose that for this first year our goal is to continue to keep
221our students together so that we can get their per pupil allocation over the course of this year so that we don't devastate our budget which is a short discussion item that's coming up but that's kind of the presentation tonight dr. Ruskin we could entertain questions over the board could just after tomorrow when they see this first series of questions if they have additional questions they could send them to me and I could respond to the whole board advice Thank You dr. Matthews usually I would go around the table and have everybody you know ask a question I want to say a couple things ask a question or two and then certainly if there's some burning question that a board member has that you don't think will be answered in these FAQ s or a comment
222or anything you would like to say that you certainly feel it's important to say during this meeting I wouldn't want to not give you the opportunity so but in the interest of time we'll try and keep those comments and discussions short okay um so first off I want to thank all of you for all the work you've done and everybody who's done work behind the scenes you know we as a board recognize how much pressure and work and caring and commitment that's been put into this and we certainly appreciate that you know I believe that students should be back in school but that being said I respect every Communion community members decision on what's best for them and their student because it's certainly a personal decision if I could request from dr. Matthews dr. Webber
223if you could in a fake use put information on who's serving on or who served on the current committee there's been questions out there in the community on who's having these current conversations and I know we've said teachers and parents but I think um in the roadmap to the return to school from the state of Michigan they did a really nice job of just putting the members that were the primary members right out there for everybody to see so I think that that would be important just to see the diversity and expertise that's on those decision-making situations in regards to the hybrid and certainly dr. Webber this is something you'd like to answer our you know with fa Q's I don't want to put you on the spot or have a long discussion but was
224it considered doing not a traditional hybrid but potentially live stream kiddos into the classroom so if I know if there's several districts doing you know if the biology class has 30 kids 15 of them would come certain days the other 15 would be at home but they wouldn't be at home doing the traditional online learning that's being described they would actually be live streams right into the classroom for version of that time yeah the concerns I have about that modality are its and you see it tonight in a presentation where I was fading in and out you know misshapen sty was fading in and out dr. Matthews froze it also so there's a technical issue to that there's also what it does to constrain and constrict a master teacher from working with their students to
225think in in any way shape or form for instance that a first or a second grade teacher would be able to do something like that it's hard and then the third thing is and again this is I'm we are very fortunate but this is where I'm going to get a little chippy you also have busted our butts the last ten years to put us in a position to do what most districts can't do because we have our lined curriculum because we have our aligned assessment because we have the technology platforms we've invested in we're going to be able to provide experiences for kids that aren't going to merely be sticking a camera in a room and pointing it at a lecture based instruction for the whole hour so what I'm what I'm and I say
226this empathetically I feel badly for the families in in districts who weren't able to get all of that together and whose plan really is for virtual learning as well and dr. Matthews shared one of these districts would be today where they're gonna simply put a camera in every room and if you want to learn virtually then you're gonna show up to that camera lesson if you will and there's a tragedy behind that because if we all have to go out and your district has not build a virtual platform of meaning and depth then what do you really give your community so Danielle these are the gird president Ross and these are the questions that I definitely want to answer I know it's ten twelve after a long day but I am more than happy to
227entertain these because these are the pieces these are the things that the 240 people that we've been working with have argued about went back and forth a vetted have thought about and I'm happy to help the whole community here the reasoning behind our decisions the third thing and then I've done is and I think I brought this up to both of you about and I could be having it completely wrong but the clarity on the different phasing systems that the state of Michigan has so I'm under the understanding and just to be clear for our community members because this is a confusing topic that there is a phasing system in the state of Michigan that ascertains the economy and we are in phase four in our area for that but then there is also the
228michigan state safe start plan which oakland county is currently in phase 3 because that is what the school return to school aligns with is that correct or am I wrong in pointing that out or say asking that there are you you're correct there are two different kind of phases or stages that the governor has identified currently we're in phase four for return to school but overall there are there there's also a kind of the Community Safety stage as well that that's being discussed and and those those are different stages / phases but but currently we're in phase four for return to school which is allows in-person instruction thank you for the clarity does anyone else from the board have any comments or questions mr. Cook I've got two mice here so I gotta find the
229right one you know you some parents have been asking about the virtual option and what its gonna look like so that they can do some investigation and decide whether that's what they would need for their students or their kids and I'm kind of curious and it's because I spent a lot of time talking to some professors from Lyndon University about the difference between online learning and virtual learning and from what dr. Matthews described it sounds like we're gonna do online learning not virtual so I guess more in depth on how this is gonna look for the parents and and what they can expect would be great you know you don't have to answer that right now but you know that's one of the things that wrote down the other thing is if we if we
230slip back from phase 4 2 phase 3 and we're no longer allowed to do in-person instruction but we're already into the school year are those students gonna be basically - they're they're you're gonna step into the virtual academy or you know are they gonna get that same type of instruction understand the the face-to-face time and it's not going to be the same you know the the other thing is you know we're we we've got a good plan for our k-6 to keep them isolated and in pods and in small groups the problem with 712 our students are you know have to they have to go from classroom to classroom and wouldn't it be beneficial to have a hybrid option just for those students you know that would allow smaller groups smaller smaller number of students
231in the school at one time and the teachers still you know instead of teaching you know five hours in person would be teaching three hours in person to our sunlight or vice versa you know to me that that kind of sounds like a a you know a way to help out and alleviate some of the the distancing issues we may have and my last thing is just is kind of a comment dr. Matthews I talked to you about it you know the direction of this where we go here in the fall the direction of the school district is the board's responsibility and you know you release this to the parents with a couple hours notice to the board of what it was gonna be we did see it shortly ahead of the parents but it
232would have been nice for you to come and give this presentation to the board ahead of releasing it to the parents it's just it's it's one of the roles of the board in you know we've been lectured over the years I staying in our swim lane so you know we really appreciate everybody's effort which reminds me another person asked me how are the parents chosen that we're on the committee you know or are we going back to those same parents that are used over and over and over again yeah I'd be happy to answer a lot of those questions mr. cook so first all the questions you asked are exactly what is keeping people like myself and my colleagues working seven days a week to try to figure this out because there are no easy
233answers and I will never apologize for slow-rolling a good plan to our community as opposed to quickly jumping and changing our plan every day or every week I am grateful to serve in novi where we will not recommend to the board to do what the Utica Community Schools did which is to offload their entire virtual learning to a private company to do it I the time that we are taking to do this should be I would hope a bomb to parents who have worked with us to know that we are taking this incredibly seriously and working incredibly hard to do so as far as parent representation holding several different parent groups and I'd like to think I'm my own parent focus group because about ten parents every week stop me wherever I'm at to tell
234me what we should be doing or asking questions which again I'm fine I live in Novi I'm good with that - Danielle's point we'll go ahead and supply the 240 names of the people who have been working towards this and helping us and from the high school standpoint the other part that's making our virtual discussions so difficult is the standard that my colleagues are holding themselves to to come up with the perfect solution is an unrealistic standard that I'm trying to get to help them understand that that it is very difficult to do things to the absolute level that we've done them here without sacrificing certain things so our own stubbornness is we're trying to find solutions that other districts frankly have already given up on in one of those pieces is how do we
235honor a rich fine hearts tradition and know by our marching band our you know the band that we have I think of Melissa Manson's daughter and colorguard going back to that I'm not willing to turn my back because people need answers right now on it I think we need to keep working really hard tomorrow we have I think six meetings set up to discuss specials in general so I think those are all good questions but in the and I can tell you from a leadership standpoint it has been really difficult to thread two hundred and fifty people together through zoom so if there is a concern about protocols or sharing of things with people I would also please ask for grace in the sense that being able to do those things in a virtual way
236is is that much more difficult I think the dr. Matthews having those target dates of next Tuesday's Steve what is that day the 21st and then the 28th which is the following day tomorrow we'll be able to have some other ideas about specials but our goal and we believe people move to Novi you know our core classes are great in Marianne I think you could speak to this a little bit I mean people come to Novi because of what you all is a school board of built which is all of the extra things that we're seeing other districts turn away from and we are fighting like heck to keep those Thanks thank you dr. Matthews a quick question you had mentioned if we had a student that that tested positive they would be asked or
237forced I guess to go in a quarantine for 14 days obviously we're talking about an in-class student not a virtual student so are we what's what's the plan for that particular student I mean obviously at that point they can't switch to virtual learning right so what do we do with them we are working on the plan that they would continue to receive instruction and it would be in a virtual way so the question that we're trying to sort through is do we roll them into a virtual classroom that's already established or would the expectation be that the in-person teacher would would continue to support that student in a virtual way over the course of those 14 days I mean if a student has to go out we're gonna do everything that we can to keep
238them there and I wish the world could see what I've seen in the past four months which are our teachers they will I am certain communicate with whoever the virtual teacher is in the transition to make sure that that student is attended to also the work that Shelley Patel has led around virtual IEP s the work that Miss happens that has led around 504 s doing everything we can within reason to attend to those needs as well so I think that's a great question Willie and that's a question I've been asked quite a bit which is so what happens if my son or daughter's class gets quarantined for two weeks does that mean they're out of luck and absolutely not we will continue do you think it's important to note that according to at least
239Oakland County Health guidance at this point is that if even if there is a positive within a classroom really the only people have to quarantine would be those who came in direct close contact which is at six feet face to face for an extended period of time for just 15 minutes or more and so it wouldn't be the whole class that would have to quarantine it would be and that's why the the assigned seats are important so that we know who's around the person all those kinds of things sorry I'm just trying to you know that's okay okay so I just had kind of a quick thing that kind of came to my mind and this is something maybe to ask you know maintenance or something at some point so because I understand air circulation
240is an issue filters things like that so I don't I don't know that I see anything specific on there but I think it might be helpful I know that other communications I've gotten from other like gyms and things like that talk about what they're doing about those aspects as well to make sure that air circulation is better in their buildings I know that we're supposed to keep our doors closed from the legal standpoint so what happened so we have talked with mike dragoon who is our director of maintenance about the air in the building and and currently we the percentage of air that we bring in from the outside recirculated air a certain number of times during the day we're going to increase that the percentage so that it so that the air is exchanged
241more frequently we have great filtering system kind of kind of a result of a lot of the bond work that we've done so we we have great confidence that the air or flow in buildings will be good you bring up the question of doors and windows some of the guidance that give Ben kind of stands in contrast to the safety guidance that we've been developed over the last several years you know closed windows closed doors and and so we're working through that you know maybe that we keep interior doors open as opposed to closed and locked to prevent students from touching the doorknobs all the time and and having to clean those on a regular basis because because frankly we don't have the custodial staff that can can go through the building and clean those
242every hour and and so maybe we would keep those interior doors open and that might help the air flow as well but but we are attending to that and a parent has asked that and that will be one of the questions that we answer for parents ok had to unmute myself um first I want to thank dr. Webber document is um dr. kinder I have a lot of close personal friends that are teaching and the Utica Community School District and I have heard their woes and so it just makes my heart happy that you guys all I mean you're taking into so many opinions on this back to school plan that it's not you know being dictated from the top down we're we're listening to lots of people so that that's very nice as far
243as filters I work at an office building and we have upgraded our filters I'm sure that's probably in your plan you know there's there's filters that you can get that take out more particles as far as what dr. Webber said yes we do have people that move here because of our school system you know that they want to be a no lie because of the school system so you know let's keep that and then Willie you had mentioned about you know what happens if somebody gets covered in a classroom and I've been researching and it's a very very small percentage of kids that will attract this they're more likely to get this from an adult you know and bring it into the classroom and so then passing it to each other is you know small
244so I mean that and I know we've got a plan and I think it'll be very a very good one because I don't think we'll see a lot of that happening I feel we're you know doing so much more than a lot of school districts are and I feel very good beyond this board at this time even though it's a difficult one I think we're doing a great job Thank You Miriam so again we will share this information with the board tomorrow we would encourage you to ask questions this these will not be all the questions that have been asked and some of the questions may not have answers tomorrow and that means we're still working on them the goal is for this first run on July 21st to be able to answer these questions
245and then and then get some feedback and perhaps revise some of these answers but also to answer in another series of questions on the 28th and and in I would just reinforce that I understand mr. cooks perspective that the board makes decision for the district and and that's why we wanted to bring this to you that the timing was very difficult to get this to the board before we shared it with parents began when we told parents that it's a work in progress because the governor didn't give her guidance until June 30th and the next time that we met as a board was tonight and so that's why we're having this discussion tonight and that's why will we will carve out lots of time on August 6 for us to have this discussion as well
246so that before you approve any plan you feel very comfortable with what we're doing Thank You dr. Matthews we appreciate you next we have our budget update and the budget update is is briefed by I shared with you a spreadsheet that shows some of the targets that were established for the 2021 budget as far as the reductions in kind of the salary buckets and reductions in the non salary buckets but but the truth is we still don't know what our target really is because we don't have an answer from the state of Michigan as to what our 2021 budget will be we also don't have a clear answer as to what are the ending of our 1920 budget is as well even though there's appears to be a framework in place that reduces the per
247pupil allocation by about a hundred and eighty dollars per student but then on the other side of that there's an increase in some of the cares money into districts it appears they're reducing by one dollar and increasing by two dollars but it's but it's very unclear at this point so so we just wanted to continue to have this as a tickler for the board that this is an ongoing discussion that we're having that we really are proceeding with plans but we're also being cautious because just this week we heard for example with the US Senate maybe moving a bill that would provide relief to districts as they look to open in the fall and so all of these things coming together we just don't know the answers but we're continuing to monitor getting mr. McIntyre
248on board will help us do that although miss wheeler has been doing a tremendous job helping us navigate through this but we just wanted the board to be aware of some of those targets with the understanding that those targets may shift as we get more clarity on what our final budget will be for 2021 Thank You dr. Matthews mr. men Oh dr. Matthews what what effect do all of these plans in the fall that we have affect the 2020 2021 budget the plans are there is an expense to the plans for example the disinfectant the wipes the cleaning that we're going to do the upgraded filters for example all those kinds of things the masks that we're going to have for students to wear we we we got on top of that early and we've
249been keeping a spreadsheet of how much all of those expenses are and in the hope is that we're going to get reimbursed for those expenses although there is no guarantee at this point but we are there is an expense that preparing for school for the fall that we have not had in the past years there are any areas of savings as a result there will be some areas of savings for example there probably will not be as many field trips that will require busing in the fall as we've had in the past so that is the savings and transportation for example we're going to try and reduce the amount of paper that we use because if everything you know even in class we don't want kids sharing paper necessarily so we're going to use the
250technology that we have in our buildings and our computer carts and those kinds of things for for students to use it in a virtual or a kind of an online way so that we don't have to print as much so there will be some savings but the the expenses far outweigh to say one thing a question that I had from a community member was around professional development for teachers and they said that they saw that in one place we're not going to be engaging in professional development yet another we did and really that we have six days set in our calendar for next year where we do not have to pay for guest teachers because those days will be days that the kids would be home and that will be the the really the threshold
251of our professional development so that's about a hundred and sixty thousand dollar savings and guest teacher costs but as dr. Matthews and Mike dragoo and Gary Ken dr. Kinser and I were in a meeting yesterday just wipes alone yikes yeah so so the so the savings and guests teachers we think will will be somewhat significant because we won't be doing that during the school year we'll be using those calendar days and so as I said there are some savings but that cost far exceed the same thank you okay seeing no other comments I think we're ready to move on Oh mrs. Murphy's raising her hand I'm sorry I just want to clarify this is just for informations to keep us posted on the budget really pretty much can we expect maybe this kind of at
252every meeting just a basic budget update so if we don't have any questions okay thank you thank you dr. Ruskin we do have policy recommendations that were brought to the policy committee and these are recommended to us through Lux Calvert Senate having been discussed in the policy committee so policy 6011 naming school district buildings and facilities the governance and policy committee is recommending that the words facility and facilities be added to the first sentence than last sentence respectively so that it is consistent with the ridge and the policy title buildings and facilities bylaw 1001 conflict of interest this is a policy revision of our organizational and functioning of the board and this revision the definition of relative is being defined more in-depth adding spouts stepper half family members mother father son daughter brother and sister
253bylaw 1002 special meetings the first recommendation comes to ensure compliance with the Michigan Open Meetings Act 15 that 15 point two six one changing the notice of special meeting from 24 hours before the meeting to 18 hours before the me the second remand is the meeting procedures remote participation the recommendation is to add the following language to remote participation board members including those who are absent due to military duty may participate in meetings remotely on the following conditions at least a quorum of the board members are present for the board meeting any absent board member discloses a reason for his or her absence in the location from which he or she is participating the absent board meeting may hear and be heard by other board members and those in attendance at the board meeting the
254absent board member notifies the board president of his or her anticipated absence at least three business days before the meeting so the board president may make arrangements and notify the general public of the means by which it may contact the board member prior to the meeting and the board president takes steps to ensure the general public is aware of the manner any absent board member voted on any or all matters brought before the board for a vote such as requiring roll call voting and we do many of those currently policy 2006 students curriculum attendance and truancy the recommendation is to add stronger language to the attendance and truancy policy recommending recommended language is the school district requires its students to attend school every day school is in session accept point excused by the school district
255the school buildings principal is responsible for enforcing this policy in cases where the school buildings principal concludes a parent's failing failing to comply with Michigan's compulsory school attendance law she or he may refer the matter to Child Protective Services or the appropriate police agency or prosecutor's office and then policy 4002 personnel nepotism the recommendation is to add the same in-depth definition to relative as we recommended for bylaw 1001 that is being added adding spouse step or half family members mother father son daughter brother and sister so these are presented for information and discussion tonight and if you have any questions on those you can reach out to me or Miss Holly or any member of the policy committee and we could give give you some background but we would bring these back to the board
256on August 6 for approval thank you okay it looks like no further discussion in regards to this mr. Meno okay with regards to policy sixty 11 I think there and I don't know if this is something that we're planning on bringing back at a future future board meeting but there is has been some discussions about potentially naming some some of these facilities after some longtime coaches and we did talk about this during the policy committee meeting recently currently the way the policy reads in fact I think all we're asking to do at this point is just add some clarification but I think there is a request that bubbling up to see if maybe we would actually reconsider how this was written in order for us to allow naming of some buildings I think the board
257all received all received the request from a community member who's who's heavily involved and wanting to move forward with with some of these naming things so I was looking maybe for you Paul or Danielle to let us know if there is a plan to bring that forward at a future meeting so the plan in place currently and dr. Matthews can help with this or Paul you can pipe in was to get the policy clarified because currently it didn't match the title and the verbage so that was the the priority I believe of the of the committee the community member sent a proposal if you will to the entire board and my plan was to reach out to that community member and let him know what the policy currently states and potentially offer some alternative options
258besides facility and building namings if you would like us to have further discussion we certainly at our future meeting we can put back on the agenda a policy committee discussion and we can specifically discuss that proposal mr. Mike I was just curious if there was a plan about around that that's all I was just gonna respond to the community member directly to clarify the current policy that we at the policy committee agreed on Mr Cook do you have any additional information no I was actually going to talk a little bit about and under committee reports but you know I was probably is a better time but yeah it was the main discussion here was the clarification and so that the the title of the policy and the verbage of the policy matched and then it
259it also does match what our practice has been you know so if we want to discuss this further yeah I think we can discuss it in the committee we did we did actually discuss some of it in the committee but we can have a deeper discussion and come out with a you know a more in-depth recommendation at that time okay you're muted Danielle we can okay yeah if there's any further questions or comments please forward them to dr. Matthews and he will send them out to the whole board so that we can continue to communicate on these okay next we have our second opportunity for comments from the audience additional non agenda item comments thank you and we have the superintendence report dr. Matthews I have no report disease okay and our administrative report dr.
260Kinser in light of the late hour I will passing my report this evening as well yeah I can't so we had three of our Novi students want a current high school student into Alumni helped to lead a national conference today put on by the American Institute of Architects or on student voice and student agency they did a phenomenal job and made Novi super duper proud so a big shout-out to Sunita and marina and Megan thank you that's it mrs. hood no no I am eating oh I just thought I saw you're unmuted so I assumed that you did I'm sorry Mrs Murphy now I just wanted to say real quick I've really found it the 21-day challenge that the staff put together on social anti-racism know exactly what the name of it what the challenge
261that got shared with everyone it's it's been interesting listening and things are short so that's really you know many of the little snippets and videos that they're sending a very short but but definitely giving a wide range of different stories and you know for me I think it's just been really it's been added some value especially to this time of being home with kovat and hearing other people's stories and kind of making those connections even if it's virtually so I just want to thank the group that put that together and worked on that so that it would be personalized for no bicycles which I felt was you know a very valuable thing to do because obviously we have a lot of diversity in our schools and you know it's kind of des tailor it to
262us so I just want to thank those folks for putting it together and sharing with all of us so thank you Mrs Murphy any other board communication you No okay I just wanted to thank mrs. wheeler for all the work she's done in the extra job she's taken on over the last I think five ish weeks since miss Minich has left the district we look forward to welcoming mr. McIntyre and I also just wanted to reiterate and echo what jarv said that sometimes you know earlier we had a lot of public comment which we all encourage and support here at the board we want to hear from our community but sometimes it can initiate a response of defense and defensiveness but you know I think after we all take a deep breath and reflect it
263it really just opens up opportunity and I think that we all feel that way that anytime we get to hear someone else's opinion or voice or comment besides our own thoughts that we then have an opportunity to reflect and continue to have really in my opinion tough conversations but that is only what the only way that work can get accomplished so I appreciate our community members putting in thoughtful time and energy to ask questions both on the social justice and anti-racism comments but also on the Rohrer plan because these are very important decisions being made about our students which is the reason that we're all here so I just wanted to say that and please make that comment and public forum open so that we continue to talk this is Roni I see you kind
264of raising your hand well you know it's funny cuz why would they were doing this I was texting my kids because both having gone through the high school but never mentioning anything about this and so I'm like it was there and they've confirmed this which shocks me that it would actually be there so I was I was surprised so that's all I had to say I was just shocked at some of this stuff that these kids actually said that you know we're actually there for everybody having an open heart and an open mind to listening because it takes a brave person to come to a public meeting and have conversations especially the tough one so that's what we're here for and we appreciate everyone's commitment to our students and our district to do better but
265more importantly just to ask questions and be open and inviting to working together else's comments Oh mr. Smith has his thumbs up we appreciate you he's not going to talk he's tired okay so if there are no more board communication comments I would ask for a motion to adjourn don't move Richard if all seven board members who want to make a recommendation and make a support but I will say mr. Mehta made the recommendation and mr. Smith made the support if we can have a roll call vote mr. Menon trustee cook yes trustee hood yeah trustee mana yes trustee Murphy yes