001[Music] Hey. [Music] [Applause] Order item 1A. Please rise and join us for the pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Moving on to item 1B, approval of agenda items for discussion. I move that the agenda for the June 16th regular meeting be approved. Motion by Mrs. Coleman, supported by Mrs. Shaw. Any discussion on item 1B? Hearing none. Mr. Scott, yes. Mr. Gogleski, yes. Mrs. Coleman, yes. Mr. Keller, yes. Mrs. Shaw, yes. Mr. Campbell, yes. And I'm a yes. That motion passes. Item 1 C, consent agenda. I move that the consent agenda for the June 16th, 2025 regular meeting be approved. Support. Motion by Mrs. Shaw supported by
002Mrs. Coleman. Any discussion on item 1 C consent agenda? I just have a question. So on the um organizational meeting, we have that listed as July 21st. Is that approving the entire calendar with this consent agenda? No, you all approve of the calendar at that meeting. Okay. Thank you. Any additional discussion hearing? None. Mr. Scott? Yes. Mr. Gogleski? Yes. Mrs. Coleman? Yes, Mr. Keller. Yes, Mrs. Shaw. Yes, Mr. Campbell. Yes. Yes. That motion passes. Item 1D, superintendence report. Thank you. Um before we get started, I do want to um recognize you, Megan, our president. Um unfortunately, this is your last harrah. This is your last board meeting. And um I just want you to know that the staff here in H Heartland cannot tell you how much we appreciate all the support that you've given
003us uh over your time on the board and how much we appreciate you and your leadership here at this table and moving us in the direction that we needed to go. So uh thank you for everything and uh I'll be touching base with you later. I'd like to take you out to lunch or something. So, all right. [Applause] Welcome. So, I got to remember to get the lights or Oh, Renee will say, "Hey, you didn't get the lights." All right, there you go. So, first on the agenda, um the board may recall that we uh the board had asked us to uh seek some uh opportunity to have our transportation department taken a look at. Um we did hire the Aman consultation group. We have Tim here along with Phil, his co-partner in this effort.
004So, Tim, I'm going to call you and Phil to the podium and you can go over what you found within our transportation department. Very good. Uh thank you very much. Thank you all uh for the opportunity to be here this evening and and to take you through the report. Um as as Mr. Hughes mentioned, my name is Tim Ammon. Uh with me is Phil McConnell. We were here um doing the on-site work related to the review of transportation services. Some of you were able to meet with Phil um when we did some of the outreach to the PTO groups. Um, what I want to be able to take you through here tonight is a brief summation of the findings and the recommendations that have been included in our report and then consequently any other questions
005that emerge from the actual uh full report itself, we're happy to address uh here tonight as well. Okay. Um, so with that, I think it just just starting at the beginning to to rebaseline everybody. Uh, what we were looking at was effectively sort of three different core areas of focus. Um, one was just the the evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of operations. So, essentially making sure that we were using the resources that we had well. Um, looking at uh the community input on transportation and particularly in as a consequence of some of the things that have gone on over the last um year or so and and being able to incorporate that feedback into our recommendations. And then finally, um, thinking more about this persistent driver shortage occurring, not only here in H Heartland,
006but frankly across the country, everywhere that that we do work. Um, but recognizing that, you know, the way we've described this driver shortage problem is this driver shortage problem is a national problem with local solutions. And so, how do we start to think about developing local solutions to try to resolve these? Yes, certainly. Yeah, usually that's not my problem. Um, but yeah, fair enough. Um, so I think what we want to be able to point out and this this is just sort of the summary again when we look at at at the different functions within transportation, it is a complex business and ultimately I think when we look at the operation here, one of the things that we see and that we believe is foundational to effective transportation is the design and development and and
007awareness of um a solid range of policies and procedures for how operations are supposed to function. um you here I think have done a good job of putting uh the core of that together. Um throughout the report we do make some recommendations on some additional uh enhancements to that but I think foundationally uh the opportunity to build an effective transportation system exists that growing out of those policies and procedures. Uh, additionally, one of the things that that happens in transportation, and this happens a lot when there are challenges like the driver shortage or challenges like the supply chain or some of the other things that we've run into, is we end up with with some tension from an organizational alignment standpoint where we're trying to use resources as efficiently as we possibly can. So, minimize
008the asset use. But the problem with minimizing asset use is oftent time that comes at the expense of the service quality. And so this question of how do we balance the two and how do we try to align the organization such that when I am doing whatever job it might be in transportation whether I am a technician whether I am a driver whether I'm the director of the department whether I'm participating in some way shape or form in transportation I understand what the organization is supposed to be doing and how it's supposed to be enhancing access to education. And so making sure that that exists that alignment exists throughout the department is something that we we think can um that that we can do some development in the the the driver shortage is pernicious in
009a lot of different ways. It's pernicious from the perspective of cost. It's also pernicious from the from the impact that it has on the types of services that are being provided. So what we see here is as a consequence of having to do some of the route consolidations that we've done, what we've ended up with is actually longer ride times. And that longer ride time, I think, has an additional spillover effect of making the service potentially less attractive to the people who are actually eligible to use it. And so as a consequence, those folks don't use it. And so what we're trying to figure out is how do we arrest that flywheel and start to think about being able to to provide the level of service that we expect to while still using the the
010resources efficiently but encouraging that ridership especially given the fact of what we know about you know the safety of transportation operations relative to other modes of transportation. Right. So so that's something that we think uh again is going to require some continued work. uh you you have a challenge there though in that like this is a massive geographic area. So so you know at its core transportation is a time and distance problem and we've got a lot of distance here to deal with right. So so we have challenges relative to time. So things that certain districts might be able to do which is adding like a third or a fourth tier to the system. It's very difficult to do here because I can't get out and get all over the district three times in a
011day unless I want to start at six in the morning and finish at 9 at night which seems like not a great service quality either. Right? So, so we've got some challenges when we think about the geography of how to deal with it just from a pure logistics standpoint. And then finally though, but what we do see is if all the kids who are eligible to ride did ride, the service would actually be really effective from a comparative performance metric standpoint. Um the fact that only half of the kids ride that are eligible certainly changes that a little bit. But but in some respects, you have to design for the system you think you're going to have to provide. And so there's this tension again that exists from the logistics management perspective of how do
012I try to ensure that from a resource standpoint um putting the routes together in such a way that makes them attractive to students to you to be able to use them that ensures that we can attract and retain drivers and that meets the service quality expectations that all of you have for the system. Right? It's not a simple problem. It's not a simple problem at all. And so that's one of the things that we try to work through um through the rest of the report. Uh when we think about the community piece um you know this is a credit certainly to the community here and this is a you know 235 responses that we had um is act we've done these surveys in a lot of places that is a robust level of participation um
013and in in the report you can see the level of participation like out of the gate people were on it right people were on responding so so that I think is is useful in a in a lot of respects but it's particularly useful relative to what they provided in terms of commentary in in response to the questions and the narrative comments that were provided that we were able to use to try to understand and contextualize some of the other findings that came from the quantitative and the qualitative analysis of the of the review. um your your drivers uh for all of the challenges that have happened in in the recent times um your drivers still got very high ratings from the community and and got further commentary within the narrative themsel about the level of
014appreciation for what is a difficult challenge for them to try to meet. Um so I think that is a credit to them for sure. Um, I think when we think about the driver shortage, it emerges differently in different aspects of the questions, but it does emerge in terms of people worrying about double runs and worrying about stop locations and worrying about three kids to a seat because we might have not have enough drivers to have two kids to a seat and long ride times. And all of those things which seem in isolation like individual problems are actually part of the systemic challenge associated with the driver shortage. component of things. So again, from a resolution standpoint, what we have to be careful of is when we're resolving this, what are we doing to try to
015be able to do that, right? Um and and we had asked, you know, if this thing continues, because frankly, it has been, right? The driver shortage has been around certainly for as long as I've been around. Um and and the question was, what what do we think is a reasonable way to continue to respond to that? and and I think there were two pieces that emerged very um clearly in the survey responses. One was for any sort of in near near services thinking about reducing those near-end services uh and then if there has to be a pause again at any point in time what people really want from the pause is clarity time to respond and some definitive understanding of when it might be over. Right? And I think understanding those three things helps from
016a strategic standpoint when you're designing that kind of a response, right? I mean, that was an overwhelming message um throughout throughout the survey. And then I think lastly, um what we do see is we do see other anecdotal evidence throughout the survey of, you know, um my students used to use the bus more than three times a week, but now the ride time's long or there's too many kids on the bus, so now they don't use it anymore. Right? And it's those sorts of triggers that we see that that again help feed some of that understanding of why the ridership that you know we would project at a certain number is roughly half of that when we start to actually look at the actual counts. Okay. So um when we look at the driver shortage
017there are some some distinct challenges and some distinct characteristics of it. And and what I will say is you as a board, you as a community have done a lot of things to try to respond to this, right? This is clearly something that has that that there has been creativity applied to. And what we see that first is we see that in the structure of the compensation packages, right? Because one of the things that we have to think about is not everybody, you know, wants a black Model T, right? So, how do we design a compensation package that expands the pool of who the potential applicants are by offering them something different? And you all have done a good job of thinking through that and trying that. Now, one of the things that the revealed
018preferences have occurred is that like it there's something about it that's not either high enough or not broad enough to be able to attract enough people to to cover all the positions. But directionally, what you've tried to accomplish is the right thing. The right thing is understanding the segmentation of the possible pool of applicants and the possible pool of of employees to retain and designing packages that could be attractive to them. That is a very smart and very sensible thing that you have taken on and that's certainly a recommendation that we make to to other places and and what we what we see here and when we talk about the driver shortage overwhelmingly it gets talked about as an applicant problem. We don't get enough applicants. We don't get enough applicants. Well, if you do
019the math, what what's much more important is not letting people get escape, right? Retention is really super important because if if the ratio from an application perspective is I have to get 10 applicants to fill one position. If I lose one person, I have to get 10 applicants. Right? So this idea of thinking about how to use the retention bonus to keep people as much as we possibly can is a very smart and very thoughtful way to think about the driver shortage because the worst thing we can do is lose somebody. The hardest thing we might be able to do is get more people in but the worst thing that we can do is lose somebody because that is a 10 to one problem. Right? So, so being thoughtful about how to continue this idea
020of retention and what that means from an organizational culture standpoint and how you approach that, all of those things are of paramount importance to try to mitigate any continued problems around the driver shortage, right? And then I think what we see certainly is um from an entry- level compensation perspective um that's the applicant side of the house, right? So if we think about the application funnel, we have sort of three or we think about the employment funnel, we have sort of three phases in it. We've got like we got to get them in the door and get them to fill out an application. Then we got to get them through the process for everything that they have to do. And then once we get them, we got to keep them, right? And so so when
021we think about the driver shortage, you have to think about all three components of that. And the signon bonus and all of those other kind of things are terrific as it as it relates to the applicant. The retention bonus is is for keeping people in the pool once we have them, right? And then the final part is how do we collaborate with our partner who's the employment agency to ensure we're not losing people through the process because if we don't do all three of those things, the problem doesn't get solved, right? Because we will lose people. I mean the the the ratios are, you know, your folks will know them, but I can tell you that somewhere between 10 and 20 to one for applicants to to actually get an employee out the bottom, right?
022That is a lot of work. That's a lot of work. And so what we have to think about is how do we get as many in in the top of the funnel as possible? How do we get them through the funnel as quickly as possible? Show them what the culture is. Because what we have here and what you're fortunate about is you have pretty high rates of retention, right? So when we get them, we keep them. So how do we get them through there to do that? Right? That's an an important part of the strategy around how to try to deal with this. Um so when we do think about those options, I mean the simple fact of the matter is is unless we can get enough people in the door, we're going to have
023to think about how to manage this difference between the planned system that we're building for and the actual system that we're running. um and trying to think about how do we manage that what what I think from from the analysis that we've done um demonstrates a fairly long ride time with an hour on average, right? Um that that is a that is a fairly long ride time to to be thinking about and so so we have to go back in and we have to look at at the routing structure again. We've got to see see what might be possible there. Um we also have made a recommendation around um entry- level driver compensation, right? because what we have what we see in the comparative metrics is that's where we might be a little bit less
024competitive than we are when we look at it particularly as a res result of cash and loo and the signon bonus um uh and the retention bonus I'm sorry um so so when we think about how do we get more people in the top of the funnel right that's an application process question that is a how do we how do we do some of the things that the department is doing already with the RTC which was really good progress for us to see over the course of the project which is trying to increase the marketing opportunities, trying to increase the material that's being put out there to increase the collaboration. All of those things are all good things, right? But what again, what we really need to be honing in on is if it's 10
025to one and I need five, where do I get 50 people that want to sign up for this? Right? The math is really easy. The process is awful, right? But the math is really easy to figure it out. So there's a lot of things there's a lot of levers that we have to think about in ter in terms of how to try to pull that. You know, I think one of the things and and I think this is this is um it's always an interesting thing to us when we hear people say, you know, we just don't have enough applicants. We say, great. Do you have a full-time recruiter? They go, "No." Well, how do you get applicants then? Well, we put out ads. We hang a sign. Great. You know, this business, hiring people
026is a contact sport, right? You got to go out there and you got to get them. And so recruiting has to be somebody's job. It has to be the thing that they think about every minute of every day in terms of how to turn that one into 50 so that we can turn that 50 into 10, right? Or that we can turn that 50 into five. And it is a high contact activity. And so when we're thinking about particularly given our new structure relative to the relationship with the RTC, one of the things that we want to be thinking about is who is out there in the sort of hand-to-hand combat for the for the employment aspect of this because that's got to be somebody's job. And then I think lastly, one of the things
027that we want to be able to think about is just from a timing perspective, and I know some of this conversation has gone on, but but when people are applying for these jobs, they're not jobs that people can wait six, eight, 10 weeks for as they're going through the process and all of those kind of things. What we want to be able to try to do is find ways to get them in the door, get them to understand who our culture is. Start getting them compensated so that we don't lose them to process, right? and then we figure out how to get them through the rest of it. All of the background checking and everything else, right? But there have been a variety of strategies that have been instituted around the country. Whether it's you
028start bringing people in and you start training them ahead of time on your own and they get compensated for that, whether they wash buses, whether they go on as an aid as soon as they get their background check cleared, right? But once that it is an enormously precious resource. So once that application gets in here, you can't let them go. you got to find a way to get them in here because that that one to 10 gets worse if you don't, right? So, so when we think about how do we consider other options to try to figure out how to get people compensated because this is an enormously competitive strata of the dog of the employment market because I can leave here and I can go apply at Target online. I can go apply at
029Lowe's online. I don't need a background check. I don't need any of that kind of nonsense. I can be working in a couple of weeks, right? and if it's going to take me a month and a half to get something, I may love this job, but I can't wait a month and a half. So, how do we think about ensuring that we can get people compensated as quickly as possible, right? Because that's a that's a necessary part of it. Uh and then I think what we again this and I credit you for doing this this segmentation of of the employee population and the way that we think about it. This is something that I think will be an ongoing aspect of this. Um because as the economics just not only locally but nationally will continue
030to change. One of the things that we've got to think about is how does that change the incentives that we need to be able to provide to try to bring people in. Right? So when we're thinking about that sort of segmentation process and how it relates to compensation and what we can do um that is an ongoing process that we need to think about it is something that we should be measuring right we should be measuring how many applicants do we get and how many of them do we turn into employees and we should be measuring from the day an applicant submits how long does it take them to get the background check done how long does it take them to get fingerprinting done how long does it take them to get into training how
031long does it take them to get through training we should know all of those things because those things are going to tell us where we have to go in and make process improvements around trying to get people through as an employee sooner rather than later. Uh and then I think one of the things that um can support all of this, the department is actually pretty well off in terms of its ability to manage the routes and some of the electronic and technology tools that are available. Um but I think particularly given some of the things that we saw in the survey and um some of the measurement that we were trying to do that was wasn't as easy as it could otherwise be um is thinking about some additional uh technologies to be able to
032support the operation whether it's telematics um which is something that we're recommending um that that you look into whether it's student management which is essentially counting the number of kids getting on and off the bus. So we have a regular account of what's the difference between plan versus actual and where is it and how does that mean how does that potentially allow us to change the routes to accommodate that. Um and then lastly and this was actually asked for pretty frequently during the survey um which was from a parent perspective. How do you communicate out to me is my kid on the bus or off the bus right when did they get on the bus? When did they get off the bus? So, especially in light of um of some of the challenges around rerouting
033and everything else that we have, thinking about those technologies to further support the department and further support your efficiency efforts around the department, I think could be useful. Um, and then lastly, the the ongoing structure and the relationship with the RTC, I think finding ways to make that productive, finding ways to make that work for what you want it to be, um, I think is something that's going to have to to continue to go on. Just recognizing that the relationship now is different from where it was. And so if we just think about this recruiting thing to start from, right? If they're they can be your partner in recruiting, but if they're not recruiting for you, you got to go out and get the knife in the phone booth, right? Like that's the the way
034we think about the relationship has to be designed to reflect what it really is and then we can evolve it as we continue to move forward. So um with that, I'm I'm happy to take uh questions on the report, questions on the commentary, whatever it might be from from the board. Chuck, this report will you distribute um more broadly? Yes. Yes. Once we um are done talking about this, we'll put it on our website. Okay. Perfect. Quick question. Um what action right now is the most important for us to take? What would be your suggestion? So, I think there's two that I would want to do at the same time actually. The first is the continuation of looking at the routes given the the the lack of participation, right? So thinking about um managing the
035gap between plan versus actual. Um and I think the second one would be where are we going? What are we doing every minute of every day to get people to fill out applications? Those are the two things that we need to be doing. Do you think the problem is solvable? I I think uh so I guess so I'm going to give you a consulting answer for that. I think it depends on the definition of solvable. Um I think that you know will does the driver shortage go away? The answer is no. It never has. Right? What what I think all of these things are about is mitigation, right? And I think that's the framework for a lot of this is that everything we do is mitigation of the problem. we we will we will go
036shorter and longer periods of time where the scope and the amplitude of the problem are you know different but but you know I've been doing this work for 30 years and at no point in time has there never been a driver shortage and you know 2008 recession we had a driver shortage you know postcoid we obviously had a driver shortage right like you know anytime there was the the the the lie in the business is boy once the economy slows down we're going to do great like well first of all That's like sort of a terrible thing to wish for, but like secondly, it doesn't actually work. So, so I think it's so I think everything that you do really isn't about like this is never going to get to zero, but it gets better.
037So, are there any ex I guess based on your experience with other districts and your discussions with the team, is there anything that the board is not providing to the team today? I know you talked about some of these GPS tools which I think you know those are aimed more at wrership not necessarily driver perspective no I think the only I mean what what I suspect well what we have recommended what what the administration does is Chuck's problem but um but what we have recommended is you know thinking again about compensation in a way so so there would likely be some conversations with the board about how to do that um and what the impact of that might be from a from a fiscal perspective. Um, but I think the board has obviously by the
038way that you've done this demonstrated a willingness to listen and to act on it. So, so I think to to argue that the to to have any kind of an argument that the board's not doing something about it would be wrong. I think the only question is what are the things that you're going to have to get asked for next? Have you seen I saw there I I know you didn't present it today, but in the packet there was a some quite a bit of data on kind of the cost per rider and things like that. Have you ever seen a a district that maybe offers for somebody that's willing to opt out like, "Hey, we'll give you some kind of incentive." So, because I think one of the challenges is right, not knowing who's
039going to be riding, who's not. And you know, I don't even know if it's a something that's feasible, but kind of some kind of So, so, so opt-in opt out systems are things that come up a lot around the country. So your neighbors to the south actually Ohio has an optin out opt out process actually that you can do on a state by state here you have a legal obligation to transport the kids who are eligible right like so so if if a student is eligible and wants a ride you have to transport them but you have to have the ability to transport them it doesn't necessarily mean you should leave a seat open for them right so so surveying the community about listen here's the way this is going to work tell us if
040you're going to ride right And if you aren't going to ride, great. That helps us from a planning perspective. But if you need a ride, we're going to figure out how to get you there, right? So, so it's when when people think about opt-in, opt out, one of the things that they think about is that it's binary and it's really not. It's mostly just a planning tool because if I know, for example, and and frankly, you're doing it already, right? When you look at your high school routes, you know, we plan for 120 kids on a high school route, right? Well, there's only 70 seats on the bus, so we know at least 50 of them ain't riding, right? But but it's usually a lot more than that. It's usually 50% of the total. So
041So we've got this sort of uh non-agnowledged existing optout system as it is. And and what what can be helpful is to formalize that some and say, "Hey, listen. if you're, you know, if you're not going to use the system, it would be really helpful for us to know that because especially if we're driving out in the woods to come get you, right? Like that adds a lot of time, which means that's a, you know, again, if transportation is a time and distance problem, it means we can't go get other kids. So, so it doesn't have to be a not allowable. It's a help us plan better kind of an approach as a way to think about it. Yep. Might be a question for Superintendent Hugh. So, a lot of time, money went into this.
042There's great data that we have. So, what do we do to move forward to try to implement this so it doesn't get sheld and forgotten? Just transportation will take the lead or what do we think we do to continue this? We're having this conversation on a regular basis in regards to um wages, right? Like we hear that wages can be a problem for an entry level. So, we continue to try to work on that. Um we do work with the RTC because as the community knows, we're part of the RTC. So, we have to be cautious of uh if we go here, everybody's got to follow and get their approval to follow. Sometimes we push a little bit and we we actually have some things in the handbook that other districts don't offer, such as
043the $2,000 a year bonus. Uh it's a signing bonus for a first year driver and an attendance bonus for the second and future driver. So, that adds to that dollar an hour rate. The problem with the dollar an hour rate is we advertise a dollar an hour rate, but people don't take the time to look at what else comes with that. So, we have to do a better job marketing what else comes with that and what's that total package. So, we've talked about that. Um, we've also talked about, you know, as the board knows, we tried to efficientize, uh, tried to create more efficiency within the routing system last year and cut drivers, but by cutting drivers and being more efficient, we ended up have more kids not riding because the routes were longer. So,
044it's a double-edged sword, right? So, in order to get more efficient, Tim, we talked about this. You've got to add drivers in buses in order to be efficient enough that people want their kids to get on the bus because now it's a 45minute ride versus an hour ride. So you every time you do something there's a unintended consequence on the reaction side of that, right Tim? Like this is what we've talked about. So we have to keep looking at this. Um start small. We we did um listen to what Tim had to say and we purchased an app for parents to get quick notification for next year that's been out there. I've shared that with the public. My hopes is that the public is is getting that app so there'll be a real quick hey
045your bus is 15 minutes late so that we're not getting inundated in the office on the first day of school with where's the bus supposed to be here 15 minutes ago. Yes, the app will tell them it's coming. It's just running late on the first day of school or whatever might happen. And some other things that we're doing as well uh beyond the marketing is constantly looking at the culture within the department and how do we ensure that our drivers feel like while their paycheck comes from LESA, they are H Heartland drivers. That's huge, right? And so when a driver has a problem that the RTC is responsible for, we have to drop everything and help that driver figure out a problem to get an answer because it's important to that driver. And so when
046you work with an RTC like we have, there are some real good benefits to having the RTC, right, the the consortium. But then there are those negative sides of you can get lost in the shuffle. So, constantly having these conversations and I think this was a really good exercise um for the board to engage in because I think we're going to continue to bring things to the table and how can we do this better and how can we make sure that parents want to um ride our buses. I hope that helps. I have a couple questions. First of all, I want to say thank you for putting that together. It was very helpful. Um, having struggled with this issue for quite a while some of the things I think um, we're able to narrow down
047a little better than maybe what we could do on our own and expand. I especially like the idea of just putting people to work. I mean, that seems like tomorrow you got somebody interested. Yeah. If they pass a background check, get them on a bus, make them an aid. They're going to learn a lot, I think, just riding along. So, I love that those easy to implement quick ideas. Um, and I'm glad that the community response talked about how great our drivers are because that's something we hear um as board members a lot from the community, how great the drivers are. If anything, there's sort of a sense of compassion for the pressure put on them, not just um by the current situation, but just the way the way the world is and how much
048how much a bus driver has to deal with. Uh, so I'm glad our community recognized that. when you you talked about kind of uh maybe low usage rates and high ride times, do you have any comparisons for us on what we see or what are their average usage rates or average kind of ride times to compare to? So, so ride time is a bit more challenging because it is so geographically determined and and road network determined and all of those kind of other. But what we see is once you start to get above 45 minutes, people start finding a different way because that's an hour and a half a day, right? And and people would find something else productive to do with that time. Um and and so so I think when we look at
049the systems what what while there's no sort of like this should be your target what what you what the target becomes is where do we start to see the drop off and and we start to see that drop off in ridership usually around like 45 minutes or so. Um and and so so the from a wrership perspective, you know, one of the things that we would typically like to see is um if if 60 to 70% of the assigned riders are riding, that's pretty good, right? And you're about 10% or so underneath that, underneath the floor of that. So 20 under the top, right? So um so and and that's, you know, a little bit like the quote about failure, right? it's got a thousand fathers kind of a problem in terms of like it
050might be because the ride time's long, it might be just because the stops are too far spread out. I mean, there's a thousand reasons, but like you can chip away at each one of those thousand, right? And start to understand, you know, why why that might be the case, but but we would we would suggest that you're looking for something in that 60 to 70% of planned ridership. And it's different at the high school level obviously, but like if you average the system out, that's where we're looking. Yeah. And and forgive me if it's in there. and I missed it, but um do we have a baseline of kind of what that usage rate has been historically before we started reducing routes? You probably could get it. I mean, the data is decent enough um
051as it exists to probably be able to go get it. Yeah. I mean, we we didn't grab that, but I think, you know, there's enough history in the department and and you can um with some of just the basic reporting that has to go on, you can kind of back into it, right? like it's it's it would be pre it would be valid not precise. Yeah, I think is the way to think about it, right? But it would but it would be a valid representation I think of where the number is. Mr. Scott, I can uh try to answer that question from uh uh historically we've always looked at 33% is what is not writing on a regular basis. It's always been around that number and over the last couple years it's dropped because of
052the things that are happening. So if you know I your number puts us right where we have historically been. So cool. Thank thank you for all the work on that. We appreciate it and I I look forward to implementing some of your ideas. So thank you Tim. Thank you. Sorry. One other question with respect to the number of applicants. Do you see I guess is there any major demographic that maybe we're not targeting that you think we need to go after you know based on some of the Yeah. existing drivers and who tends to sign up to be an applicant. I know we're kind of doing more broad. Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know that I can answer that specifically um for for you. I mean, I do think I do think what
053um if we just think about method method, right? Um one of the things that we hear about all the time is well, we we advertise with a banner. So, your population of people who know are the people who drive by the banner, right? that is a distinct subset of the community. So, so, so you know I I think if what we're from a from a mode and method perspective just the a diversity of ways that we're trying to again get out and touch people. So whether it's in newslet I, you know, I you all may have seen it and and heard about it, but we asked people in the survey, would you want us to contact you about being a bus driver, right? We we didn't get any responses, but like it's that kind of
054thing, right? If you're going to talk to somebody, talk to them about it, right? Take the opportunity to, you know, shoot your shot and and see how it goes. and and so so I think the way to figure out if we're not getting to a specific demographic is to look at the demographics that we're going after and methodologically how we're doing it and then seeing like you know where's the where's the blank spots. So so I don't I don't have a a specific answer in terms of like yeah it's the you know 24 to 36 year old stay-at-home you know part-time parent. I don't have that kind of nuance for you, but but I think you could get there. Thank you so much, Tim. Phil, you sat quietly. Phil did a lot of the work,
055Tim. So, you got Please. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you all. Thank you all. Appreciate it. Yep. Thank you. All right. Well, next we have our friend Greg, Greg Janicki, who uh worked with the district and the staff and the board. uh came to a board meeting and uh helped us with the strategic plan. So, Greg, you're up once Renee gets you running. Thank you. Good to see you all again. Enjoyed that transportation presentation. Has a strategic element to it, I'd say. So, good to see you all again. I'm uh really grateful for the opportunity to come here to uh present the work that was done by you all, the community, the stakeholders over the last six months um with the strategic plan. Um you have with you um in your packet a
056couple of uh printed versions of summaries of the work that was done. Uh the summary document u a two-pager which I found some school districts will take and um revise that or or post it directly to their website as the highle summary of the work that has been done. And there's also a copy of the presentation that um I'm giving today. So, I'm just going to run through what you've already seen in the work that we've provided to you. Um, much of this may be for the folks that are sitting behind me as well who have um participated at some level uh in this but may not have seen um the final product for today and then of course I'll take whatever questions that you have um following the sharing of this. So in summary,
057um, six months worth of work. Uh, sometime last fall, um, late fall, you all approved the process of moving forward with the strategic plan and and identifying MASB. And I was fortunate enough to be um, able to provide the support in the facilitation over the six months. We started that data collection in February all the way through April. Um, the board meeting here in April was the last group that I I spoke to. Then uh the May retreat and all day love fest um that we had uh great session I think a lot of great work done there. The uh implementation workshop which took the work from the retreat and brought that to the administrative team to do some of the heavy lifting um identifying the activities that would u make the most sense and
058the most impact for the district um to work on which is included in the plan. And then of course I'm here in uh June today uh welcome to summer uh to present the final report for the board. Um so um in summary we had well over 800 respondents both um in combination of the online um survey as well as the community sessions. Um a lot of input we were gathering data to use that as a decision-making tool in the retreat. Uh so the strengths, the improvements, uh barriers to implementation, vision, all of that shared um as part of the retreat. So, our May 3rd retreat, a lot of heavy lifting work done at that retreat for those of you um um even in the room that may have participated. Reviewing the data, um looking at
059the input summary, digging deep, um reviewing the current vision, mission, goal statements, and belief statements coming out of that eight hour retreat with revised vision, mission, and belief statements, which um we'll talk about here in a few minutes. establishing the strategic goal areas which took a little bit of the work that you had already done in the goal areas that were familiar with Hartland and bringing those um um kind of revising and refocusing those a little bit and then um working towards um the next step of the implementation meeting. So a list of the participants again um including the implementation meeting um 35 36 participants. So um again a lot of um a lot of great input a lot of great discussion over over those days um the uh outcomes from the retreat then starting
060with the revision of the vision statement. So lot of uh great conversation, great work. Um the vision statement um that was brought forth and and what I'm bringing forth today is H Heartland Consolidated Schools, a community culture of excellence where all sore. And what I personally found um I I would say um enlightening and inspiring about this particular vision statement was the conversation around trying to find words that represented Hartland uniquely. And so um both with the vision statement and the mission statement, the more unique this can be to represent the future of H Heartland, the more power it brings to your decisions as a board. And so this verb of this this word soar really did resonate with those um in the community. So it's it's great to see that you were able to
061integrate that. And then the mission statement um mission statement Hartland Consolidated Schools in partnership with our community and guided by reason, respect and responsibility inspires academic success and personal growth for a premier educational experience. So there was, if you recall, a lot of conversation in the retreat around the words that most stood out in the input session, which were premier, um, academic success, but also lots of discussion around what makes H Heartland Hartland, which are the three Rs. And while this went back and forth on should we include in our mission statement something about the three Rs, should we not, it's a little bit long. Um ultimately coming back to the administrative team uh it made sense that this is the unique element that is H Heartland and should be represented in the mission statement
062and for all of you and for the community. A lot of the mission statement is less about repeating it verbatim and simply being able to understand what it means to you and you being able to articulate what this mission statement means for the decisions that that you have to make. um the what will probably be some um proposal regarding transportation coming forth, right? Asking the question, does this particular uh action support what we want to achieve as a district? That's the power of what a strong mission statement can have on decision-making. Also, as part of the retreat outcomes was a revisiting of the belief statements. Um and what came out of were these list of belief statements. Uh we believe in a culture of reason, respect and responsibility. Again, the community members and those at
063the retreat felt that those three Rs, it is perfectly acceptable to repeat those and ingrain them in the language that we have each and every day. We believe all students can learn. We believe in empowering students and staff to be the best versions of themselves. We believe in providing a safe, accessible, and nurturing learning environment for all. We believe the quality employees are essential to student success. We believe that parent partnership are an integral part of student success and we believe in providing quality instruction and opportunities to maximize student potential. So again um just a little bit of personal reflection um again with my work in other school districts. It's always great to see belief statements as a whole that represent anyone that may have contact with the school district. And so these belief statements
064can be viewed through the lens of anybody who's interested in coming to work for the district. So even when you're speaking to potential applicants for bus drivers, right? Bringing forth this particular set of beliefs in the mission statement can be a powerful way to encourage individuals to say this is a good place to be. This you'll be um you'll be able to live your purpose here. So these statements, the vision, mission, and belief statements have more power than simply sitting up here on the screen or um on a plaque somewhere in uh your schools. They can be views they can be used daily in helping you decide um what you want to be as a district and help attract the type of personnel um that you want to um educate your children. The other outcome
065from the retreat were to create what we call aspirational goal statements around the five goal areas as um in perpetuity at least for the next five years. The statements that will help you all decide are we moving in the right direction? Are we making decisions that are helping support these particular goals? And so I'll read each one of them. So under academics and programs, Hartland Consolidated Schools will provide rigorous and student- centered educational opportunities that maximize potential. Under culture and learning environment, Hartland Consolidated Schools will provide a safe and welcoming learning environment that fosters a sense of belonging where everyone feels respected. Under communication and community engagement, Hartland Consolidated Schools will create, grow, and sustain partnerships to strengthen community connections. Under personnel and leadership, Hartland Consolidated Schools will attract, retain, and develop exceptional staff through
066collaborative leadership. And then finally, finance and operations. Hartland Consolidated Schools will be fiscally responsible while providing quality service in a safe and well-maintained learning environment. And so I I come back to the point of these goal statements to empower the decision makers in the district after a presentation much like the one that you just had on transportation that may come with a recommendation. The power of these statements is to say okay where does that particular initiative fall under in our goal areas and does it help us move forward in these in these statements does it help us move towards the place that we said was important for H heartland schools it's a powerful way to ensure that those coming before you with ideas with initiatives with and ask for money or resources are thinking clearly
067and deliberately about what we have all said what you have all said is important for Hartland schools And so the plan while it is this black and white thing and you have copies of it and there are digital versions um really is not about what is being presented tonight. It's it's more about what you do with it moving forward. Um I've I've joked with this expression many times during the um the input sessions saying implementation is where strategy goes to die. Um, but that's the story when it comes to strategy is using this as your roadmap to help you make decisions along the way and basing those decisions right or wrong. Um, because you don't know, but you can always come back to we're making a decision that is aligned um with what we said
068was important based on the input that we got from our community. So where I'll take you from here then is for each one of these goals goal areas the implementation uh meeting team took these goal areas took the input of all of the ideas that had been crowdsourced about what are some of the things that can be done the actual things that can be done and aligned them with these goal areas and decide what are some of the things that we can do in the first year in this plan that would help move us forward to help us achieve these goals and so I'll outline those um in the next set of slides and then from there we'll um I'll answer any of the questions that you that you have. So under academics and programs
069um priority objectives um to help achieve that goal statement realize a 3% increase in student growth and prepare and launch a system for the 26 27th school year which identifies additional student behavioral supports needed in the classroom. So again, these objectives uh that were identified all came from the work that was done at the retreat as well as all of the input that came from all of the input sessions under culture and learning um to to move forward to help achieve that strategic goal. Uh the two priority objectives market a parent perception survey results by quarter and develop and launch opportunities for stakeholder involvement in three hours education. I'm going to pause on this one for a moment because of all of the objectives that were talked about at the implementation session. I was most
070excited about hearing this particular initiative because I think it can touch everyone in the district. Um I have heard from all of the input sessions over the last six months how important the three Rs are to this district. Yet there may be a gap in what that looks like. How is that shown? how do we actually behave according to the three Rs and seeing that the administrative team was I'll say bold enough to say you know what we need to actually pay attention to this and operationalize something we need to come up with ways that says we have to have stakeholder engagement on what this looks like across all of the stakeholders in the district so I was particularly thrilled um given the work that we had all done that this one um popped up
071you know just popped up um um organically So excited to watch um what may become of this initiative over the next few years. Under communications and community engagement, um priority objectives, increase student and community attendance at district-wide events and increase parent knowledge of district community partnerships. Under personnel and leadership, uh priority objectives, prepare and launch a revamped new teacher mentor program in 2627. prepare and launch a robust teacher recruitment process in 2627 and launch a building level staff recognition program in community life. And then the final goal area finance and operations those uh priority objectives plan for bond syncing fund programming review wage scales for non-UN staff and complete a technology assessment to determine future needs. So, I know it's not coming before the board for action this evening. Um, typically what the board would
072be approving as part of the strategic plan is that evergreen areas of the vision statement, mission statement, belief statements, and goal statements. What gets worked on each and every year that's brought before you at various times related to the budget are those priority um initiatives. What are we doing in the next year that's going to keep us moving forward? And so, um, practically speaking, what would happen from here is the the board would review, and this would be an agenda item for you to vote on, but I understand that you wanted to take some time, you might have some questions, review this, and it will, um, come up in a in a future board meeting for final approval. Um, with that, um, I have no more to talk about up here about the plan that
073was, um, developed, um, with all of your, um, participation, but when I have the opportunity for you to ask any other questions about the work that was done, next steps, um, which actually before I jump into your questions, um, every district is a little bit different on how they choose to communicate and implement the strategic plan. And there is no right answer except for the wrong answer of not communicating it at all. So whatever means you find most valuable or effective to communicate this plan um that should be used to make sure that the community that the loop is closed at least on what the plan is because there was considerable input in interest as I said 800 participants participants in both the inperson and online survey you need to close the loop with those
074individual ual to say here's a result of the work that we have all done based on your input. Um moving forward I know the board has a fairly consistent update process previous on how you've gotten information about goals. So that's something that if not operationalized should should be or continue to be. Uh some boards take a view of getting an update each quarter on all of the goal areas. Um what's being done? What progress have we made? what initiatives have been improved, you know, give us an understanding of where we stand. Some boards will get a more substantial update um on one goal area per board meeting. Uh there's no right or wrong answer here. This is simply how the board wants to stay updated on progress. Um if this is not visible in some
075form, it will drift away. It will just become the thing that we spent six months on. that was a nice little time in the community had some good input and we just sort of drifted away from it. Um so paying attention to it. One of the other items and this is sort of an audit that the administrative team will need to do is should the board um approve the new vision, mission and belief statements, you very likely have the old vision, mission and belief statements littered across dozens of locations around the district. uh saved in computers on templates um maybe even invested in signage. So part of the next step associated with should this be approved is where do we want to make sure that we present this new vision, new mission and new belief
076statements and where do we want to make sure we're taking down um the old? How are we um communicating this? What templates are out there? So that's sort of a communicate I'm looking right at Chuck on this one because he knows what I'm talking about. Um, and then simply to continue to create opportunities for those that had stepped up and wanted to be involved in helping create the strategic plan to keep them engaged. You know, find other opportunities um, you know, renew this in a year. I I just did over the last six months two renewals for two districts who had previously done strategic plans um, a year later. One was a year later, another was a year and a half later. and they wanted to facilitate another um not full retreat but just uh
077okay what's important for us to look at now this next year and so reviewing the old um initiatives that weren't um uh selected for that year you know are these still active what are the new things that have come up and so sort of this active participation of staying attuned to what is important um to work on Greg and I and I appreciate you said that because you know one of of the things that the administrative team uh had to do is come up with the objectives to go along with the goals. Right? So, we spent a lot of time with Greg uh all of the administrative team trying to figure out what is it that we're going to put in here for the first year. What is it that we're going to put in
078this plan that's going to help us to be able to hit these marks to be able to set marks that we think that we really can make progress on and then a year from now come back potentially have Greg come back and work with us. I hope uh and say okay how' we do and now how can we potentially ramp it up a little bit farther right so so moving forward because it's a three to five year process let's get started let's figure this out together let's have some some areas that we can concentrate on some feedback we can give the community and the board on the progress and then okay how'd it go and what do we want to do next that ramps it up to that next level so I appreciate that you
079said that that piece about that one renew. I think that's going to be an important piece. What questions can I answer for the board? I just have a quick comment and uh we heard it from the transportation consultant before you too. We we have all of this information, good information. There's been a lot of thought behind it. We've thought about it. We've we've paid others to think about it. And I think now what we need to see, like when I say now, I'm talking within the next week, some sign of implementation and getting going on all of this stuff. Because for for for too many times, I've seen these lovely little ideas once we leave a a boardroom or a a conference room, these little ethereal thought bubbles just pop and they go away. And
080I think we need to jump on this stuff and I think we need to show signs immediately that we're living and breathing this. And I thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, I we didn't go into um this sort of detail in the implementation meeting because it can be a little bit of overkill, but to your point, these initiatives need to have ownership. There there needs to be somebody that is accountable. not necessarily the person that is doing it per se, but somebody needs to own that it's going to get done. Um, and that's the important next step is who owns these, right? You we've all been in meetings where some idea is discussed and everyone says that's a really great idea and everyone's excited and they go forth and then a two weeks later
081we come back together again and everyone's like, "Well, how's it going on that?" And everybody looks at each other, right? We agreed to do it, but nobody took accountability for it. Um, so you know, Superintendent Hughes's uh job, why he makes the big bucks is to ensure that accountability through his team, right, with thought about who are the appropriate people. Um, you know, one of the the one of the challenges that every district has that I've worked with, every district period, is there's there's always something to do. Everybody has a lot to do. And the clarity on these initiatives is to make sure that they're making sense for the people that are working on them and using the language of the goal statements and the belief statements and the vision. Those can be powerful connections
082for people when they're asking why am I doing this? Why is this important to do? Well, we've said that this is important to achieve this thing. But people have a lot to do. And so it's ensuring that you're selecting the right thing. And that's what that implementation meeting was about was there was way too much to do. Could not have done all of that. You may have actually taken even you know even with what you've narrowed it down to there may be a little bit of okay let's is this really really what we can get done in the next year and that's you know more for your consideration as well. So yeah I'll just pile on to that comment. Well yeah and and there will never be the right time ever so we have to
083just move forward. And Greg, I would like to thank you for taking us through this process, your leadership, your guidance. Um, I know I've learned a lot and I think that, you know, I'm excited about once the board approves this that we'll we will hit the ground running. And again, thank you for for all of your um expertise and guidance as we've gone through this. It's been it's been great. It's actually not as painful as I think we all thought it was would be. So, thank you for that. Much appreciated. I'll take that um set out for the next one that I do. Appreciate that, Greg. Uh thank you as well for for everything you did. I I know I told you personally, but I'll tell the whole world. Um I thought the retreat was
084just an excellent experience for everyone involved and a really unifying experience to put the whole district on a on a single path forward and I greatly appreciate that. That means a lot to this whole community. So, thank you for that. Thank you. Um, I know and you've touched on this a little bit, but just so we can help understand a little bit. So, I know the the objectives, you know, at the retreat we kind of had voted on, if you will, kind of the objectives um that people wanted to see implemented that wasn't those didn't all necessarily ma meet the um first year objectives. And you talked about the renewal and I like that. But how do we um just kind of looking at some of these now um um like you know we have
085bus route apps and stuff like that. Some of that stuff we're doing anyway. So how do we keep some of these 3 to fiveyear objectives in our mind working towards them without you know you obviously can't make everything the priority but how do we always make sure we have something on deck or that or that we're paying attention to three to five years out not just what we can get done this year. I know it's a lot to take on, but Oh, uh, so there were there was a couple of guideposts that I gave the administrative team when we were talking about all of the possible options that could be taken on for the first year. The first was what's most critical to do? So think about of all of these items, which of these
086will have the greatest impact on moving the district forward towards a goal area towards our mission. So most critical, right? The second was what will take a few years to do that we have to start now and so in that case it would be you know not sure what the transportation thing might be but let's say there is a threeyear or two-year project related to transportation you want to say what can what do we have to do in the first year let's get that on the first year initiative so it's sort of a milestone rather than sort of a pure objective of the thing is done um because to your point, some things take a long time and if you continue like going, "Oh, we we'll do that next year. We'll do that next year."
087It becomes the forever next year project. So that was part of the challenge of the conversation in the room was okay, what's most critical? We can't do everything. What are things that we need to start on that are going to take longer? Um so watching what happens over the next year might be okay how do we take that thinking forward into the following year initiatives to make sure that we're continuing to pay pay attention to most critical what's going to take a long time so we need to get started on it now. Okay. Have you seen districts implement like a now near far? So now being the next 12 months near being the two to three years and the far being that fiveyear plan. um and identifying those goals kind of more broadly. I I
088haven't um so here's one of the limitations of the way this strategic plan is is developed. Right? So the two or three initiatives that are identified under each one of these goals are not the only things that are being done in the district. Right? There's sort of a proxy for we want to make sure we're focusing on a few things that are going to have some impact. Let's make sure we don't lose track of them. We don't want to lose track of the day-to-day stuff that everyone is still doing. We want to make sure that we're focusing on that continuing to be the premier excellent educational institution that we said they are. What are the things that are going to sort of differentiate us? Those are prime targets for that one that initiative thing, right?
089A little bit of a stretch, a little bit harder, right? Not the just showing up to work kind of stuff, right? That stuff done dayto-day. So, that's where we kind of focus those those initiatives for that one-year window because it's sort of a a realistic time frame of we'll know when it's done, we'll be able to say it's done. the long-term the five-year sort of things we're going to do. My experience is it I'm I'm choosing my words very carefully here because I don't want to say it's a waste of time, but so much changes over five years to say you're going to do some we're going to say, "Okay, here's what we want to have done this year and this other thing we're going to push off and that's something we're going to start
090five years from now." who it's it's hard to say what's going to be important to work on in five years. And so the the middle ground of a plan like this is those goal statements are meant to be the kind of fiveyear here's what we're striving for in sort of an aspirational way. This is what success looks like. And so if I go back to just the finance goal, right? Your actions long-term should be aligned with being fiscally responsible while providing quality service in a safe and well-maintained learning environment. That should consistently drive your decisions each and every year so that by five years from now, you have accomplished some really extraordinary things. Is that kind of thumbs up? Okay, Megan, thank you. Felt like I talked in circles there for a minute. This is
091my gift. Answer the question, but not really answering the question. So, what other I mean I So, I what I'm hearing you say and I I'm guessing everybody else is on the same page is that we really need to be re reviewing this with you at least annually. Is there more we can engage you or MASB with to keep us on track over the course of the year so that I mean I know there has to be ownership at this table and beyond but is there anything else we should be thinking about engaging with you on before just give you a call in 12 months and say can we do it again? Yeah. So the the 12 month is it I mean sure um MASB would be um thrilled to come back and continue this
092work because I know we we understand this work. It's more about the do you have a process that you're all comfortable with in this cycle that that you're not losing track of it. That can be with an external facilitator that keeps you moving along, keeps you held accountable for that or it can be internally. You can have that be owned by someone. I mean, it's quite a logical person right here at your table, your superintendent, to to hold the district accountable for moving these things forward, right? That's um you hire and hold accountable the superintendent. That's one of your your main jobs. Um I again each board has its own sort of style where they may want to manage the interim, quarterly, monthly updates in a way that they're used to. Um I I only
093maintain that you have to have some way to make sure that the progress on this stays visible to you as a board. um whether that's a board bulletin, whether it comes up as an agenda item um every other month, um you know, that that's up to you. I I feel like inserting me or anyone like me into that process more frequently might just get in the way, right? I mean, I'm being honest there. Not that I don't want to come see you guys every other month. Um but I don't think that's a necessary element that will help the process. I mean, I will absolutely come back at any point should you need um facilitation to talk about this a bit more. I can also provide um Chuck some other samples of what districts have done
094on on collateral. I mentioned I was I was just up in Shboen. Uh that was the district that I did the renewal and they had put together I'll send you an electronic version a PDF of this poster um that was their vision, mission, belief statements and goal statements and it was just a really nice nice looking document and they had it printed out. It was pretty large and they put it in all their schools. They had it in the boardroom. Um so you know when you talk about what's next you know those are some of the things is okay how do we want to make sure that this is important enough that we're um we're communicating it in a way that is consistent and and um logical for the district. So I guess it's a
095collective dis discussion or question rather for the board. Are we going to vote on the goals next month in the July meeting? Is that kind of the the thought? Yeah, I think you all will vote on the the adopting the mission, vision, belief statements, and subsequent goals. So, will there be opportunity prior to July then for us kind of I don't think any of the board members gave any input into the goal? I know we we all met and we did the little whiteboard and put the green circles and you know a lot of this those items that were up there I didn't see and I know we touched on that as maybe they're not year one goals but they're year two year three year four goals but I think probably before we approve them
096I would recommend that we have a discussion around the goals before we vote to approve them next month. I think um just so I can clarify for Greg maybe Greg you can go back to one of the goals. Greg, are you talking about input on the goal or input on the objectives? Because I think the conversation you and I had was on the objectives and where those came from. So I think what the board is is voting on is the strategic goals, the goal statements. Goal statements. Yes. You can have continued conversation over the next year and so forth on how the objectives are being addressed and what that looks like. So, and that can be in, as Greg said, lots of different ways. You can say, "Hey, Chuck, you know, quarterly, I want you
097to come and give an update on where are we with what have we accomplished in each of these areas." But, um, our objective as administrators and working with Greg was to take all that stuff that everybody put their little sticky note, uh, uh, dots on, not all of those made it to the surface because some of those things that we're just going to do, right? Like for instance, I give the the example. Um there was a number of dots on one about making admissions to all athletic events free and it had like nine dots. Well, we have to be thoughtful and deliberate about that. Like probably not just going to turn around tomorrow and make it free because there is an aspect of our athletic budget that rests on gate receipts and whatnot. But there
098are some things that we already talking about and doing to try to what would that look like for our students body next year that maybe isn't free but maybe we take less from right maybe we we charge less or do something. So we're having those conversations. What you see here is what we as administrators feel we can accomplish and begin showing the board progress on. So, I guess you could, you know, come back and say, well, the board's going to adopt the strategic goals, vision, mission, and whatnot. Um, and then continue conversation about priority, objectives, but the board needs to vote on the goals, the four areas before we can move forward, if that makes sense. So, there's no vote on the objectives at at the next meeting. It's only the I'll call it the
099middle blue section that says strategic goal statement. Yeah. What what we recommend at the the board level is the vision, mission, beliefs, and the goal statement. Got it. That's the five-year the objectives. And again, every district uses different language, objectives, initiative, the the things that the administrative team is actually doing each year, right? Um that's it. we as uh MASB remove that from part of the five-year strategic plan because that's that's sort of the operationalizing of the plan, right? And that's based on budget, that's based on other um priorities that you will have as a board. So, this is presented as representative of what it would look like in the first year, the objectives that came out of the work that was done. Quick question. Yeah. where it says strategic goal statement. Yeah. Be for
100for example what you have up here right now. Be fiscally responsible while providing quality services in a safe and wellmaintained learning environment. That's a beautiful warm fuzzy. What's the quantifiable measurement? What is the goal? Yeah. So what you would be doing is taking those objectives and saying how do we want to make sure that we're making progress towards that each year. So some of those metrics can be what I'll refer to as leading metrics which would be things you're going to do. So the bond seeking fund programing that's a thing you're going to do. You know whether it's done or not by the end of the year and you believe that that activity is going to move us closer to the goal statement. A lagging metric is this one relative to student growth. So that's
101something you the administrative team and the teachers are going to be doing stuff and one of the measures of success of academics and programs is a lagging metric which is the 3% growth. Right? So this plan kind of takes the metric piece as two different ways of tracking that. So you as a board can go to the administrative team and said, "We said we were going to do this thing this year. How are we doing?" Right? It's a visible, you know, it's done or it's not done. That does need to happen in those objectives, right? It's got to be something you can, right? In the past, we've had a kind of a a tough run in setting what we've defined as goals, which were really nothing more than statements of, yeah, we're going to do
102this, but not really considered a a true goal without having some quantifiable number there. And that's the one thing that I want to make sure that in the process of implementing all of this stuff, which is great by the way, I want to make sure that there is some some metric that we can go back to and say, "Ah, this is the measurement of how well we're doing. Yeah. So, you do you do need to have a way at the end of the year to say something was achieved or not." Right. And this as an example again is one leading and one lagging metric. So again launching a system you as a board will be able to determine that was done or not done and that's the metric of we did it or we didn't
1033% increase in student growth again a metric and so knowing so the job here is to ensure that the objectives that have been proposed are are are measurable in the sense we know when they're done or they're not done. Right? there's there's a clarity to yep, we know it's done or it's not done or achieved or not achieved. And then does it align with where we wanted to go in that broad goal statement? So, what would the calendar look like then for finalizing the objectives? I mean, maybe that's a board question, but I think it would make sense to have it prior to the start of the next school year, right? Probably put it on the July put the goal state the goal, strategic goal statement on his action and objectives on his discussion. Is
104is that what you were concerned about? That's what I'm asking. I think it's either that or we've talked about moving it to a calendar year basis, right? So, I think there should probably be some discussion next month. Yeah. I And I know Megan, you're probably already thinking about next month and not having to worry. I mean, likely the August meeting will likely be after school starts, right? So, July is really it, right? I mean, school will be already rolling once we probably come to our August meeting. So, probably getting getting on the agenda for July to approve, I think, would make the most sense to But I think you could start some of that like discussion's great, but if you have ideas where you're like, "Hey, right here, I want to see X, Y, or
105Z. Call it whatever it is." But technically, from what I understand, the board is not voting on priority objectives. We will be voting on the strategic goal statements. All five of those. Correct. What's been the normal count? Is it October, Chuck, that we've normally voted on the objectives from each committee? Yeah. Yeah. Usually October. So, we've got we've got time. I mean, I don't think that's got to be rushed. I think your objectives end up going right into your um superintendent goals. Other questions? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time again. All right. Thank you. All right. I know all of our new hireers out there are going, "Huh?" But so close. But I want you to know I thought this was important that you all heard this and
106you understood where we are as a district. And the nice thing is every one of our new hires have heard us talk about the three Rs and how important that is to this district. So, uh, just bear with us and then once we get to your part, you can leave. So, uh, Rachel is, uh, doing our budget presentation. So, here we go. Hey, here we go. You guys are getting a your a bang for a buck here today. So, uh, on the superintendent report. So, um, great stuff. Um, so tonight, uh, on the agenda, uh, we have two things to take care of budget-wise. Um, we are, uh, adopting budget amendments for the 2025 fiscal year, and we're adopting an initial budget for the 26 fiscal year. Uh June 30th is our fiscal year end
107date. Um legally we have to have a budget adopted by July 1st for the new year. And so here we are. Welcome to the budget hearing. Uh just a quick overview of the various funds that we have in the district. Um you know just uh pretty self-explanatory what these different funds do. Uh just one thing I wanted to point out. Um we do adopt budgets for the general athletic food service and student activity fund. Uh so you'll see that those are items that we need to take action on. Uh the debt fund and capital projects funds were not legally required to adopt budgets, but I did provide you with all sorts of great numbers and information on that um just so you can kind of get an idea of the activity um in in those
108areas. U I'm going to focus most of my comments here today on the general fund, but obviously if you have questions on anything else that I provided, I'm I'm happy to help you. Okay, so we'll start by taking a a quick look at our general fund revenue by category um for 2025 compared to 2026. You can see the largest source of our revenue does come from the state and that's in terms of our foundation allowance um and any categorical funding that the state provides. Uh one thing I want to point out when I say categorical funding that means one time. So that's only guaranteed one one year at a time. And sometimes those get renewed every year, but sometimes uh they're here one year and gone the next. So um you can see the categories
109uh pretty much stay the same uh from year to year. Uh but we are projecting uh $3.5 million decrease in revenues uh for 2526 and that is due to those one-time dollars that uh we can't count on going forward. Um, so I mentioned earlier that July 1st we're legally required to adopt a budget. However, the state has not adopt its budget yet and as you can see 80% of our revenue comes from them. So you can appreciate the challenge we have in adopting a budget when 80% of our revenue is not really known at this point in time. But we'll get a budget eventually and we'll make an amendment when that time comes. So, this is taking a look at our general fund expenditures again by category for the 2025 fiscal year compared to 2026.
110Unlike revenue, we um you know, our expenditures are a lot easier to project uh going forward. Um and again, categories remain pretty consistent year-toear with instruction being our largest category, which makes sense, right? We're in the business to uh educate students um and support services both um inclassroom and um out of the classroom support um making up the second largest category. And again, our our expenditures are remaining pretty consistent, a slight decrease uh project for 2026. And while we do have uh built-in increases for any contract settlements we did, inflationary adjustments, all that, um we did have to uh reduce revenue for those um programs that were funded with those one-time categorical dollars. And so we had an increase over here offset by a decrease over here. And so we have relatively flat expenditures projected
111right now for 2026. So taking a look at those same expenditures uh but just broken up a different way uh you can see that um about 79% of our uh where we spend money is on salary infringe benefits which makes sense. We are a service-based industry. So that's uh that's that's not uncommon there. Um and again our our um categories remaining relatively consistent um yeartoear. So this slide's taking a look at our general fund fund balance. You can see here in the blue uh the blue bars um representing our fund balance and that orange line is representing the uh percentage of fund balance to expenditures. It's a pretty common metric we use here in the school business to determine overall financial health of your school district. Um typically 20% you're in pretty good shape. So
112you can see for 20 uh 42 25 we're projecting to finish at 29% which uh I would consider to be very good shape. Um and again you've heard me talk many years uh the way that we got here is really due to a large number of one-time dollars that we've received over the last uh five years. First in the form of federal uh pandemic relief grants. And what we've seen in the last two years particularly is the state's really shifted a lot of its allocation to those those one-time sources um where we've been able to uh benefit. So you can see that you know projecting out fund balance is projected to come down but then that's again because we are um taking out those one-time uh dollars uh but projecting out consistent expenditures and and
113programming. And so where this helps us is we can take a look at this, see what direction we're heading. Uh if those revenues aren't going to come in like we need them to come in, then we have time to to make adjustments and and shift where we need to. What I also tried to do here is is show on this gray line um what the percent of fund balance of general fund expenditures would be if we did not have those onetime dollars. Um so you can see we'd be in a lot different place. Uh obviously um one could argue that we may have made some different decisions, right? But this just gives you a a a good picture of of what a big impact those onetime dollars have made. And again, sorry to not not
114to beat a dead horse here, but um just showing our revenues and um how significant those one-time dollars have been uh past several years, which shown here on this graph is is those areas in the gray um in in each of those years. Uh so you can see it's a pretty significant chunk of our uh revenue stream that is not guaranteed year-to-year. Um and so again that uh makes long-term planning a little bit of a challenge. Um but uh overall um you know we we can still see where we're where we're going and where we're headed. You can see in the out years where expenditures start to outpace uh those those revenues if if those onetime dollars uh don't don't come in. Uh but for now I would say you know for 2526 we're still
115in very good shape. Um, you know, we have time to make adjustments if we need to. Our fund balance is such that that we can and we will just sit back and wait patiently for the state to adopt the budget and see see where they come up with. So, uh, that's all I have prepared for you. So, I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. I have no questions um for you, but thank you for making this understandable and answering my questions from a non-numberc crunching person. Um, thank you for, you know, all that you do. I know it's a a tough task, especially when you're trying to develop a budget, um, using monopoly money. So, um, but just, you know, my appreciation for you loving numbers. So, and having such a great fund
116balance. I mean, it says a lot about you and Superintendent Hughes and and your team. So, thank you. Thank you. Uh, Rachel, um, quick question. Uh recently the state um state house just passed um additional spending per pupil, but I know that there's certain things that go along with it and I'm not sure of the details. Do you know anything about that right now? Yeah, we have we have some numbers uh kind of showing what what that would look like. Um you know, when when you're looking at that, you know, at first it's like, oh wow, this this is awesome, right? But there's a couple things that are a little cautionary with that. Um, you know, again, the House proposal is shown in terms of a categorical. So, again, guaranteed one year. So, you know,
117$1,200 a student, that's great, but is that going to continue, you know, year year after year? I think there was some other concerns with um that proposal particularly in terms of um you know structurally it didn't look sustainable um from you know the um house fiscal or senate fiscal agency perspective um you know and there there was some other you know rating of one-time dollars to to put over here. So, um I know there was some other concerns uh like that uh coming coming out of that proposal, but um yeah, if you're just looking at the dollars, it's it does look pretty good. So, but it's important for the public to understand, too, that's just the house's version. It's got a long way to go and and the way it's looking is that we may
118not have a budget into October. The deadline is September 30th where they have to provide us a budget. So they have to reconcile between the House's version, the Senate's version, and the governor's version. So there's a long way to go yet. Yeah. And and the the the Senate and the governor are kind of over here, and the House is way over here. Um so I I imagine those negotiations are going to take a lot of time and a lot of effort. And um we have had a budget July, August last couple years. I would be shocked if we had one by July or August this year. So, but I I'm I'm happy to be surprised. I'll say that. Rachel, thank you as as people have said for putting this together and for taking time. Uh
119I know you met with a lot of us last week to go through it. Um you know, this the current general fund budget has a deficit of about a million dollars this year, which we we have the fund balance to cover. I think everybody's concern is the chart we're looking at right now where that fund balance quickly disappears and it looks like, you know, by 2728 we're up to a five, four, four, $5 million budget deficit, which would scare anyone. Um, how are we budgeting those revenues? Is that just a conservative? How do we budget those revenues three and four years out? Yeah. So, you know, obviously it's it's difficult because you don't know what July 1st is two weeks away. We don't know what our revenue is going to be at that point, right?
120Let alone two three years out. Um but it's it's more of an art than a science. U make some assumptions on student growth um or decline based on, you know, our our population consultant. um we take an estimate of what foundation allowance increases might look like based on what the re what the state revenue is projecting. So if state is projecting their revenue growth to be 2% you know that's that's kind of what I use as a as a as a guidepost for um foundation allowance increases um you know the the only revenue categorical revenue I keep in are the ones that we've consistently gotten year after year. you know, 31A, um, we've gotten and everyone's gotten for I don't know how long that's been around, 20 years, longer than me. Um, you know, that
121that one stays in at at a relatively, you know, flat level. It's it's those oneoff ones that, you know, I I take out and leave out. Um, but that's not to say that coming in 206, the state comes back with different ones, right, that that could fill in that gap. And that's where, you know, we we'll watch and see what happens, right? And if next year those revenues aren't coming in like we would hope, then it's time to start looking and saying, "Okay, you know that." And and that's what fund balance is designed to do is to allow you time to make those programmatic changes if you need to. Um if if those revenues aren't aren't coming in like you need them to. So we have a just so the general public knows we have
122a very healthy uh fund balance right now but when you know looking out to 2020 I mean what what level does that get to when when we're having a very different conversation about making cuts? Uh so we legally can't go below 5%. So we're quite a far ways off from there. Um, and we don't want it to get anywhere near that level. Uh, because that's when contract language starts kicking in about, you know, give backs and and things and we we were there in 2016 and I don't ever want to get back there ever again. So, um, you know, that that's that's, you know, we and we've been having conversations already about, okay, what's happens if this doesn't if these revenues don't come in. Um, you know, what what do we do? What what shifts
123do we make? Um, and and so, you know, and we have those conversations all the time because we're in a in a totally different place than we were, you know, even five years ago. So Rachel, I do appreciate your conservative approach to this though because I if I remember probably three years ago having conversations with you about budget ads or this or that or trying to understand the budget because it is much different than your normal fiscal budget. Um I remember seeing a three-year trend that was trending down which would put us in our seats today. Um but we've been able to keep that up. So, I appreciate that you've taken a conservative approach to ensure that we aren't falling through gaps and those types of things that that we're feeling that hit. Um because
124I'm sure if I pull out those papers, we probably should have been at a 10 or 12%, but here we are. So, thank you for that. Yep. Absolutely. I'll echo my colleagues comments. Thank you, Rachel. Appreciate all the time you spend going through it. I know it can be uh quite daunting to put a large budget together. So, appreciate all your efforts and and great work. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thanks everyone. Thank you, Rachel. All right. New hires. And again, after we do our thing, you can go home. So, um thank you for being patient. Let's start with our new hires and I'll call up the buildings. Uh Miss Frasier, why don't we start with Lakes? I don't know how I got chosen to go first, but that's exciting. Alphabetical Lakes. All right.
125Okay. Well, I am pleased to introduce to you Shayen McGuffy. Shayen will be teaching music at Lakes Elementary this coming school year. Um, she comes to us with three years of elementary music experience in the Carmen Einsworth School District. Um, our committee loved her energy and we definitely felt that she was the one to continue the Lakes music program. Um, and you know, I I spoke with her now former principal and I always asked the question, knowing everything that you know about this person, would you hire them again if you had the opportunity in the future? And all she could say was, well, I don't want her to leave. So, I thought that was a great thing. So, we are excited to bring her on to the Lakes team. I'm super excited. Thank you so
126much for this opportunity. [Applause] Miss Hodam, you're up. I'm gonna introduce them in alphabetical order also. I like the plan. All right. So, I'm very excited to introduce you to first Christy C. Come up here, you guys. Come on up so they can see you. Um Christy C is coming to us um as a teacher in um the Livingston County GSRP program. Um she has children here. Her son just graduated, two sophomore daughters, very involved in cheer. Lots of people know her in the community, I found out recently. Um as I've mentioned her name, um they're very excited. We think she's the perfect fit for our second grade team and um we can't wait to have you start. Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for this opportunity. I
127thank Miss Hutam and her team at Round for giving me this chance to be here. I thank Mr. Hughes and Miss Gregory Gregory the chance to be here tonight. And as a H Heartland parent of a 2025 graduate as well as a baseball player, I thank all of you for giving him the opportunity to leave on a state championship as well as giving him the best academic foundation for his college career. So, thank you so much [Applause] All right. And my second hire, um, also for second grade is currently Drew Wilson, but she will be Bako. And I did not do a well Italian accent there. I'm sorry, but I tried. Anyway, um, Drew student taught last year in third grade with Michelle Vincent. Many of you know her. And um we liked Drew um
128probably within 24 hours. Um amazing energy. Um wonderful connections with children. Um joined every team, went to every meeting, signed up for every opportunity. So um we love that about her and we're so happy to have you. Thank you. Yeah, I I loved student teaching under Michelle Venton. So, I thank her and the whole round team, round elementary team, um, for making me love Hartland School so much. And I do want the board to know that it's an extreme privilege to be a part of a student's education. And I just want to say thank you to you and Miss Hodum for giving me the opportunity to make a positive impact on this community. It means a lot. So, [Applause] Thank you for reminding me, Miss about the state championship baseball team. Congratulations to them. [Applause]
129Um, next, uh, Mr. Wreck. Let's do this. Mr. Wreck, come on up. Come on up. Come on up. Um, let's do all the shaking of hands. Once you introduce everybody, they say something and then we'll shake all their hands at one time. How's that sound? Watching how this is going. You're changing it on me. So, all right. So, first, uh, first of all, thank you for having us. And our first hire is Alicia Manac. She will be teaching fourth grade for us. Um, we have a little theme with our hires this year. Um, we had a teacher leave and Miss Manelac jumped into kindergarten halfway through the year. Very difficult situation. Came in, handled it with grace, handled all of our kiddos wonderfully, made growth um, and really became a part of our village culture
130right away. So when we had our fourth grade opening, it was uh an easy choice when she put her application in to stay with us. So we are very pleased to keep her. She's a Heartland parent. She's had two go through village, one more. She taught in Ohio for a number of years before she stopped to uh raise her family and ended up by our good graces at Village Elementary. So, thank you. Um, like Mr. Rex said, I have three kids in the district. Uh, when we moved to Miss Michigan five years ago, um, I couldn't be more grateful that we ended up here in H Heartland. It's been nothing but good experiences. Um, and like you said, all three kids started out as village kids and village is a special place and I'm very
131excited to join their amazing staff and I thank you for this opportunity. [Applause] And next is uh Lexi Roberts. It was an interesting uh as we're getting ready to hire for our third grade team. I got a phone call from a colleague in Brighton said, "Jason, I have an amazing candidate. She student taught in another school in Brighton. Came over. I had a long-term sub, a series of long-term subs, and it wasn't going well. Lexi came in after finishing her student teaching and made it wonderful. Great educational experience for the fourth graders at that Brighton school. Uh he said, "It's really hard to make this phone call because I'd love to hire. I just don't have a spot for her." So, um our interview team thought the same thing. She came in, blew us away
132with her enthusiasm, her kindness, and I walked her to the door and I came back and the interview team said, "So, what' you think?" And I said, "That's not how we do things. You tell me first and then we make a" And I said, "She was wonderful." And they said, "Great. We agree." So, we're very, very glad to have Lexi join in our third grade team. Oh, thank you. That was so sweet. Um, yeah. Thank you guys so much for this opportunity. I'm from Livingston County and I have just heard wonderful things about H Heartland forever. So, I'm so excited to join. Um, thank you Jason for this opportunity and yeah, I'm really excited. [Applause] We were wondering if you were going in a specific order. I said we're probably next. All right. Well, this
133is just the beginning of seeing us at Farms because we had multiple retirements. So, we Tom and I and our interview panel have been very busy interviewing over the last month. And I am super excited to introduce to you our very first two teachers that are joining our team. I have Rebecca Mi. She is going to be joining our sixth grade team teaching ELA. She has 20 years of exper teaching experience. Her son was a school of choice to Hartland schools and her husband went through elementary and middle school in H Heartland. So she um applied for the position loving the culture and the academics. Um and we were very excited to have her join our team. Rebecca Mali, thank you so much. Um, it's a privilege to be here tonight and to meet all
134of you and learn more about your district. I'm really excited and I hope to make a positive impact at farms. [Applause] Next up is Jennifer Garris. She also has two students, one who is a 2020 or two children, sorry, one who is a 2024 alumni and one who is a senior this year. her energy that she brought to the interview committee and the excitement and the passion for teaching was what we needed. We were at the end of the year, we had like 20 days left and we were like, "Yes, we need her energy." Um, she explained to us multiple times her love for reading. She is also going to be a sixth grade ELA teacher and we can't wait to watch her instill that love for reading to all of our students. So, welcome
135to Jennifer Garris. Thank you. You're welcome. Um, I'm so excited to be here. I can't tell you how excited I am. I have been in the Harlem schools with my kids K through 12 and I've learned so much from watching their teachers. Um, I learned the art of reading aloud from Mrs. Wreck. I learned how you need to connect individually with each one of your students from Mr. Anderson. I watched Mr. Wisner show up at all of the sporting events throughout the years. And I learned a lot about communication from Mrs. Kent. So, I It's a wonderful group of teachers you have here. I'm thrilled. I'm excited and I'm honored that to be chosen. So, thank you so much for this. All right, Mr. Howard. Good evening everybody. We uh we were not quite as
136busy as farms, but we had four folks that we've interviewed or we've hired. I've got two with them with me tonight. Avery Miller, I'll go alphabetically here. She's going to be she's going to be taking over for eighth grade ELA and we're thrilled to have her. One of the first things I heard and it it it's I probably sound like a broken record based on what you've already heard tonight, but uh you know people that work with Avery like 10,000% hire her, hire her, you know, gobble her up. Don't don't let her get away. And very regretful that they couldn't have didn't have a spot for her in Fenton. She comes to us from Fenton Middle School where she student taught this past year. Uh the things that people had to say about her, she's
137reflective. She's hardworking. She's always looking to get better. And and most importantly, what we often talk about and we've heard tonight, connecting with kids, the making those connections. It's what we have to have and it starts there. As we've always said, kids don't care what you know until they know you care. So, Avery Miller excited to have Avery at the middle school. Well, thank you so much for those kind words. Um, thank you guys for taking the time tonight for all of us to come here. I'm so honored and beyond blessed. Bless is just the word that comes to my heart that I was chosen to be part of this community to help the kids grow and get to where they want to be. So yeah, thank you. Also with me tonight is Haley Pashette.
138Haley comes to us from Ann Arbor Pioneer High School where she taught uh science. She's going to be she's going to be taking a seventh grade science position. And again, you know, one of the first people I talked to about her was make sure hire her. She is so great. She's so confident. She connects with kids. kids love her. Always improving, always seeking to striving to do better. So, again, uh you know, we're looking for those folks that want to connect with kids and uh improve their instructional capacity all the time. So, thank you and welcome, Haley. Thank you, Mr. Howardton, for your kind words. Um I'd like to thank the board and Mr. Howardon and his team at Or Creek um for providing me the opportunity to be an educator here at H Heartland.
139Um, I'm very excited and I'm really looking forward to make um some meaningful contributions to the district as well as building and maintaining relationships with families and their students in the community. So, thank you. [Applause] Gerald Congrats. I we do all W's. Well, good evening. Uh excited to be here to introduce uh three new teachers uh to H Heartland High School. Uh we screened a lot of candidates. Uh interviewed each of these uh candidates with a committee and um the committees were blown away. So, so uh excited to have these three on our team. Um I'm going to start with Danielle White who's going to be teaching ELA, ELA 9 and 10 specifically next year. Uh she's a recent EMU graduate and a student teacher at um Novi High School. I spoke with those that
140work closely with her at Novi High School and her current employer. Uh they described her as the best student teacher ever. That's what they said. Um, eager goes above and beyond. Fun, confident, positive, respected, builds relationships, kids love her, and she's a leader. Excited to welcome Danielle White. Thank you. Thank you so much. I am just beyond thrilled to be here. Every single person that I've met here at the H Heartland community has been beyond welcoming, and I'm honestly just excited to be able to contribute to that community and hopefully get to be um a mentor like my own mentor teachers one day. So, I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you so much. All right. Next up, Cody Wingler is going to be teaching math, specifically geometry and algebra 2. Uh, an MSU graduate and
141has been a teacher, math teacher at Graham Blank High School for the past eight school years. Uh, speaking with those at Graham Blank High School, they described Cody as a really great person and teacher. He's punctual, flexible, and can teach all classes and has done everything that they've asked him to do. Um, he is a phenomenal or he is phenomenal and can make difficult concepts understandable to struggling students. We would we are very sad to lose Cody. He is reliable and builds relationships with his students. He can teach anything and is equally capable in the highle math classes as well as the lower level math classes. So, super excited to welcome Cody. Uh, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to be here and be a H Heartland Eagle and to soar
142with you guys. And, you know, uh, just with eight years of teaching, I'm hoping to make it a lot more here with the community that you guys have. So, thank you. All right. And last but not least, we have Ron Vanwagner, who's going to be teaching business. Uh, next year he'll be teaching personal finance, marketing, and retail. He's a University of Michigan Flint graduate. Uh, has many years of experience in the business world. And this most recent year was a teacher, a long-term substitute teacher at Kersley High School, teaching social studies, business, and was their their DECA adviser. Uh, speaking with those that worked closely with Ron, they described him as amazing, connects with kids, staff love him, wealth of business experiences, gets involves involved, and does whatever is needed. Professional, has found his passion
143with teaching, connects curriculum with the real world, is upbeat, has a ton of school spirit, and you won't go wrong with hiring Ron. Welcome, Ron. So, I had a uh six- page speech, but I don't want to take too much of your time, so I'll keep it brief. Uh thank you so so much for the opportunity to be a part of the H Heartland community. Uh I know a lot of teachers, you know, they look forward to summer and they they don't want to go back to school right away. They want to enjoy it, but right now I'm counting down the days to get back in the classroom. And I cannot wait to get started. So, thank you, All right. So again, you all get out of here. Thanks for coming. We'll see you soon.
144Um, so ends the longest ever in my nine years in H Heartland superintendence report. All right, moving on to item 1E. Um, we have one call to the public uh card. I'm going to ask that you all be civil. Um, she's a familiar face to us all. Um, we'll still give her the three minutes. I'll give her the two and a half warning with my handy dandy yellow folder. But uh Crystal Briskkey, how excited are you that I'm your last one? It's me. I know, right? Well, truly though, on behalf of the HCSAA, Hartland Consolidated Schools Administration Association, we would like to thank we would like to thank President Glabbach. Thank you for support and leadership. Thank you for always listening. Thank you for always making decisions while thinking about what is best for all
145students, staff, district, and community. Thank you for being a supportive parent in the district. Thanking Thank you for taking the time you dedicated to the schoolboard away from your family and to the district. Thank you for dedicating your time and skills to ensure the district always moved in a positive direction. You and your family will truly be missed and we wish you well in the next chapter. Thank you. You're making me blush over here. What is this? [Applause] [Music] What a great way to end the call to the public. Crystal, you rat. It's a mic drop. Thank you. All right, moving on to item 1F, committee and building reports. We will start with you, Mr. Scott. Nothing to report. All right, this might be simple, too. Mr. Grogaleski. Ditto. Mrs. Coleman. Well, now I'm feeling
146pressure. you should. I was going to say a couple things, but I guess none of it is super pressing. I just want to say congrats to the class of 2025 and congrats to our staff and teachers and administrators for making it through the year and for it being such a successful year. Thank you for the jazz hands out there. Um, let's see. I guess that's probably all I was going to say. Big thank you to Megan, but I think Crystal said it all for me. So, thank you. Uh, no, Mr. Keller. this show. Um, thank you Megan. I, you know, ditto to what everyone else said and also, um, gosh, we've had another state championship come through H Heartland, right? The boys baseball team. If you didn't watch the game, check out the highlights. Amazing
147finish by those boys. So, congratulations to them and we will miss you, Megan. Thank you, Mr. Campbell. Thank you, President Glaybach. Nothing to report. Awesome. Mr. Keller, you got a report? No pressure. [Laughter] So, no report, but I just wanted to remind everyone we'll be starting our new uh pairings. So, once we um I guess have a full board next month potentially, then I'll solicit inputs from everybody. I know some of you have already shared, so for those that have, thank you. Um but if not, we'll have uh hopefully final pairings next month. Awesome. And I am last. I have no committee or building report, but thank you all. Thank you to the amazing staff administration of H Heartland. Um my family has been very lucky to take advantage of that. Um and we will
148certainly miss H Heartland. You aren't getting rid of our entire family, so there'll be other um claybacks that are still embedded into the school district. But um thank you all. It's been certainly a privilege to lead this district through the tough times, through the great times, um through the wins, through the losses, and so I can't thank them enough. Um we have an incredible, incredible group of teachers, administrators, um and staff that are just so committed to this district, and um that's something that I will never forget. So, thank you. All right, moving on to item 2A 2025 2026 parent hand parent student handbooks. I move that the board of education upon the recommendation of the superintendent and the assistant superintendent of personnel and student services approves the secondary intermediate and elementary parent student handbook
149changes for the 202526 school year as presented. Motion by Mrs. Coleman supported by Mrs. Shaw. Any discussion on item 2A? Um, just a real quick comment. There were a couple of things in here that really stood out in some of these uh uh amendments. The first one, I was really happy to see that we are allowing students to self-administer when they have problems with breathing and asthma. and being a lifelong asthmatic and carrying around a little iron lung in my pocket since I was eight, I appreciate the ability to to have a student use that when they have to. Um the other thing uh I was looking at the uh class uh uh attendance um uh statement here that students in violation of attendance limit but will be required to make up time over 10
150absences combined andor tardies in class for like I don't it says 30 minutes of makeup time. I you know this is a down the road uh something that in the future I'd like to discuss more in detail in terms of uh punishment and and what happens with students that continue to break uh certain rules but anyway with that that's all I had any additional discussion uh just one question I didn't get a chance to ask um but there was some language around reporting communicable disease um to the Ly County Health Department. And I was just trying to understand what kind of information is shared sort of relative to individual privacy like how do we communicate that? What information would be shared? Is it generic information? Is it you know Bobby Sue got whatever and yeah
151I guess how how specific do we get with that information? It it's pretty generic. Obviously, there's hippo laws, so we can't share too much, but it is our county health department. So, if there is a concern that it is something that has the potential of spreading, we need to get them to weigh in and then we evaluate what needs to be shared beyond that. So, you'll never we never have to share student names or things like that. We potentially could because they have to reach out to parents. So, the big one that has come up most recently has been chickenpox, right? we had a diagnosis of chickenpox and then we we get concerned does that have the potential to spread with our other kids who've been vaccinated who who haven't been and so we start
152with a tracking system of is it one student is it multiple students now out of the same classroom so if it were to become multiple then we're going to have to start sharing some of that information okay thank you for that explanation any further discussion hearing none and Mr. Scott. Yes. Mr. Goggleski, yes. Mrs. Coleman, yes. Mr. Keller, yes. Mrs. Shaw, yes. Mr. Campbell, yes. And yes, that motion passes. Item 2B, Livingston County Sheriff Road Patrol extension of services. I move that the board of education upon the recommendation of the superintendent and the assistant superintendent of personnel and student services approves the Livingston County Sheriff road patrol extension of services as presented. support. Um motion by Mrs. Shaw, supported by Mrs. Coleman. Any discussion? I'd like to start with just making a comment to say
153thank you to uh Mr. Keller and um and to Mr. Campbell u for the extra work that you put in on the side meeting with Chuck and Rachel and um reaching out to the sheriff's office and getting questions answered. Um it was very helpful. It was a lengthy document that you put together with the answers to all of our questions, but it was much appreciated. Thank you. Any further discussion hearing? None. Mr. Scott, sorry, I I still have some discussion. I was waiting for anybody else to to jump in. Okay, go ahead. Um, I had the opportunity to sit down with the H Heartland Township Supervisor and manager to review the contract. Um, and I think there's still a disconnect. I went over some of the answers we got from administration with them. The comment
154I got from them was that nobody from administration had reached out to them with our questions. And um so I they did offer to come, you know, be here if we want to at want them at a meeting. I think that may be helpful to help us understand uh what that relationship is potentially going to look like now that things have changed on our end. Uh I'm I'm still not supportive of of subsidizing I mean to me honestly it just feels like we're subsidizing the H Heartland's uh Heartland Township um public safety bill. And I don't know the list that's on there of uh expectations. I I've reviewed it with uh other folks in law enforcement, um other school resource officers, police chiefs, dispatchers, and that list doesn't really seem like it would be any
155different than that what they would be doing without us writing them a check. So, I don't understand the purpose of taking $60,000 out of the classroom to subsidize H Heartland Township's um program. And we keep referring to it as a Livingston County deputy. This is really this is agreement with H Heartland Township, not with Livingston County. We already have an agreement with Livingston County and we have an agreement for private security. I think that has the potential to be increased to get you know as we saw in the um strategic plan getting SSOS or SRO's for every building was a top priority for the 40 or 35 38 people that were present at the retreat. So I think that needs to be our priority to get to get every building equal coverage not to subsidize
156Hartland Township's bill. So, I I can't be in favor of this. Um, if at at this point in time if we're willing to bring in the township manager andor supervisor to have a discussion at the board table of what it's actually going to look like, you know, that I I would definitely support that. But, um, I think we have bigger priorities and as as Rachel has showed with the budget, the purse strings are really tight this year. Um, I'd much rather see that put into our classrooms with dedicated staff. Trusty Scott, I guess I would just ask you if you received different information than that was in the document that Trusty Campbell sent to us, is there a reason why you didn't share that information with all of us? If if we have to make
157a decision about this tonight, why why you didn't share what you learned from them? Well, I'm I mean, I'm sharing it now. I don't know. I I don't I'm not going to share specifics because I think it would be a safety risk to share specifics, but um you know I I just don't think it's the right thing to do to subsidize H Heartland Township's bill. And there there may have been a time and a place it was necessary 3 years ago when we didn't have SSRO's and SRO's, but now we're spending 3/4 of a million dollars almost on our own public safety and security. I don't see the need to continue to subsidize the township. You know, they they felt and I said this from the beginning, they felt I think that there's an undue
158burden on the on H Heartland Township by the school system because a majority of the HCS schools are in H Heartland Township. That means Tyrone doesn't pay, Genanoa doesn't pay, etc. Brighton doesn't pay. And uh I think I think they feel there's I'm not can't put words in their mouth. The impression I got was that they feel there's an undue burden on them from the school system and that's why they're looking for some reimbursement here. I I I I don't believe that to be true. Um if there was a a point, you know, as as Mr. Campbell pointed out in Fowlerville, all the municipalities contribute to the school safety and security program. That would be great if we could have that here. And that's something I talked um to the H Heartland Township folks about
159getting some of these municipalities, surrounding municipalities to chip in. And if this does pass tonight, I I would like to see us pursue that to try and get this money recouped by some neighboring municipalities. But, you know, this is what I don't think, you know, they understand this money comes directly out of the classroom. and a lot I I don't think there's anybody any parents in this community who truly understand that we are paying for the the H Heartland Township Deputy. I mean, it's it's it's a little bonkers any further. And it doesn't there I could not find a single other school district in the state of Michigan that has an an agreement like this. There's not a single one. There's plenty in reverse where municipalities are paying for school safety. There is no situation
160where school districts are paying for municipal officers. Could not find a single one. Any further discussion? I uh I have a quick question. Uh Mr. Campbell, Mr. Keller, what was the source of all of your information? I just want to confirm this without going back into my email. What what was your source of information? Who, in other words, who did you talk to? Uh, Mr. Keller and I met with Superintendent Hughes, Mrs. Boy, Mrs. Gregory. Um, collaborative uh, sharing of information together. Okay. Was the township involved at all in this or No, no, we got that information through Superintendent Hughes. Okay. um as opposed to having this become another drawn out kind of you said they said kind of thing. Um if the township is willing to come in and just explain their side of
161things too so we get two good clear sides of information. I I I would be more than willing to uh make a motion to just delay this a bit just so we can have another source of information and clarify what some of these questions might be and just exactly what is right, what is wrong, who actually said what and so so on just to make a clear decision. I am not, you know, going in one direction or the other right now. I'm just worried about we may not have all the facts. I think the thing to do was when this was provided three weeks ago, Mr. Scott, thank you for taking the initiative, but take someone with you and then share that information. I mean, we're going to vote on this in maybe 30 seconds,
162so it's a little bit late for us to get that info. And if you talk to a dispatcher and a chief, that's great, but who is it and what's the information? I mean, if it's like if it's Northern Michigan or out of state, wherever that is, maybe it's a different situation. and we can't speak to that, but that's why it was good to work with Mr. Kellerby collaborative, you know, and we had this going, keep us included in that meeting that you took it upon yourself to do. That's great. But but what are we supposed to do? This is an action item because we have to come up with that budget today. I don't I don't know what to say. No, I'm not I'm not criticizing. I I appreciate you guys taking the time to
163put that together. I I appreciate that 100%. I'm not but my concern is that those questions never made it to the township to answer. So I'm not putting that on you or Mr. Keller. I'm just was a little surprised when I sat down with them and you know they said they had not received any correspondence from the school district regarding questions about the contract. So, not on you at all. And I, you know, with open meeting rules, I I don't know that we could take this discussion to email. I'm I'm trying to be open about it. Um, I think it would be better to have them here to have an open conversation. This contract doesn't end until uh the end of the year, so we still have six months. Mr. Hughes, is there anything you'd
164like to add to the discussion? I'm not going to get in it with Mr. uh Scott. I can assure the board that I had plenty of conversations with Mr. Fountain and Mike Loose. So, I'll leave it at that. Any further discussion? I guess I'm, you know, it's new information. I, you know, I don't want to shoot the messenger. Thank you for bringing it to the table. Um, it does kind of in my mind change the dynamics of the situation. I know for me I was somewhat opposed to the arrangement um in the first place just again thinking that you know in conjunction with the community feedback which stated that they wanted more SSO coverage versus a road patrol which is I'll call it more of a hybrid or less than 100% of coverage for the
165same price kind of looking at the the best uh bang for our resources. you know, I'm I'm opposed to it from that perspective, but I I guess I would still be interested to hear what what the township has to say because I guess I you know, kind of what you're saying, Mr. Scott, is in line with what I've heard some trustees mentioned. So, it would be nice to have kind of everybody on the same page. So, I would certainly entertain uh delaying the vote. Just just so you understand too, Mr. Keller and Mr. Campbell, this does not in any way, shape, or form um you know um just uh take away from the effort and work that you did. Um what concerns me is that getting one side of an argument um maybe could leave
166some some open open uh issues. And I just think if we can get somebody from the township here to ask some real questions to um I' I'd be all for that. Any additional discussion? I think we vote on this. We have to vote on this and then possibly the three of us I would propose myself, Mr. Keller since we have this ball rolling include Mr. Scott now to speak with the township before the the next meeting and then provide an update then with what we find. Then we have some resolution. Mr. Scott, I I share your frustrations. That is frustrating to hear if there was no communication that he's alleging. So, let's let's get an answer to that and then we'll know and then if at the if we think it's appropriate as the board
167and we share the email to get a representative here um for the July meeting, we'll ask that. I think the only concern with that, Mr. Gamble, though, would be the timing, right? If we vote now, we've already made the decision and at that point it's But, you know, it's it's yesterday's newspaper, right? So, I think we need to But to Mr. Scott's point, I like the idea you recoup the losses, talk to the other townships, however that can work. You know, it didn't sound like, sorry, please. I was just going to say it didn't sound like there was a a deadline on their end. Um, the way we left it was or what kind of what we got was they were kind of waiting to just see what we decided before they finalized any plans.
168So, they haven't finalized uh their plans with the L County yet for 2026. Any further discussion? I guess I'd like to move to postpone the vote on the Livingston County Road Patrol contract. Second. Um, can you please define a time frame for postponement? We have not been doing that and we need to indefinitely. You should probably not postpone things indefinitely. So if you want to how about August to allow opportunity for a July? Mr. Keller is moving discussion to postpone item 2B to did you say till July? Uh August please to August board meeting or August. So it be an action item in August discussion in July. Okay. Thank you. Um again just repeating Mr. Pillar is moving to postpone item 2B to the August board meeting with discussion in July. I heard a um
169second from Mr. Goleski. Is that correct? Correct. Yeah. And and again, I'm not trying to negate anyone's uh reporting or anything like that. Simply trying to get maximum uh information on this would not be a bad idea. I don't, you know, I don't know which way to uh really go on this by by the fact that we just kind of have one side claiming that this will be what what will be done and and so on. Um if this is true from what Mr. Scott said that some of the uh township uh trustees are claiming that they're not they really haven't been in contact with anyone. That's something I find disturbing. So that's why we're going to continue this, please. Okay. Well, I I I got to tell you, I'm not going to sit up
170here and be told that I was a liar. Mr. Scott's insinuating that I didn't have these conversations. Mr. Gooleski is tagging on to that. Mr. Keller's tagging on to that. Had Mr. Scott had the meeting and shared with the board what he found out like these two did, we'd be in a different position. This is ridiculous. We're going to continue. Any discussion on the amendment made by Mr. Keller supported by Mr. Goleski? Just jump in. It's hard to operate if this has been going on for a while just to come in at the meeting and say, "Hey everybody, I've been working on this for a while." It's just if there was leadup and inclusion leading up to this then it'd be different but it's hard to operate with that when we find out in the
171moment. That's that's frustration with that. Appreciate your efforts but that's just sharing that thought. Any additional discussion? Yes. No one is uh calling anyone a liar here. Um what we are doing is asking for the facts and more information. That's it. No one is making a claim that so and so didn't do something. We just have conflicting information and to get it cleared up is hardly a uh uh a major issue. I don't understand any additional discussion on the motion by Mr. Killer hearing none. Mr. Scott, yes. Mr. Gowleski, yes. Mrs. Coleman, no. Mr. Keller, yes. Mrs. Shaw, no. Mr. Campbell, no. And I'm a no. That motion does not pass. Back to the original motion of 2B. The motion was made by Mrs. Shaw, supported by Mrs. Coleman. Any discussion? Yes, I would like
172to um since we're not able to postpone it, again, I still have some concerns over the funds being used in the most uh efficient manner. So, I I guess I would like to move that we divert the money that we would be applying to the road uh commission fund to apply that to an SSO. So, you can't really divert money. It has to be an item, two separate things. They're two separate in items. You could put that on the agenda for next month. Why is it not allowed? Because it's two separate subjects. One is Livingston County Sheriff Road Patrol and the other is school resource officers. It's not on the agenda today, but we'd be taking the money from the subject we're voting on and applying that to something else. Why is that not in
173context? Because it's not on the agenda. So, if you're planning to do that, you would vote this down and then you would carry that forward. I'd still like to vote on it. It's you can't make a motion to divert funds. Rachel, have you ever I don't know that you can make a specific motion to divert funds from one to another. I'm not an expert in Robert's rules. I have no idea. But it's not on the agenda. So, you'd have a you'd have to move to add it to the agenda and then that would be a secondary motion after this one. But you would have already had the vote. So, what would that would that do? You could move right now to add something to the agenda. You do need a two-thirds vote to add something
174after the agenda's been passed. Obviously, everyone can hear your intentions of of what you'd like to do with those funds. So, that's no secret, right? So, I need to move to add If you're trying to do that right now, yes, you would need to add an item to the agenda. Can you make another motion? I know we just did while there's a motion on the table. Like are we doing a second motion in theory? But you you should take each motion as is. I mean, everyone can hear Mr. Keller's request. It's not a secret. So, yeah. So, we need to deal with the motion on the table. After this motion, Mr. Keller can make a motion to add on the to the agenda. Everyone has heard Mr. Keller's request in said motion, but the motion
175on the table is item 2B, Livingston County Sheriff Road Patrol Extension of Services. We need to take that one. So, I have an idea. I mean, based on a couple things. One, I've said from the beginning on this, if we are asking Harland Township deputies to go to Brighton Township, we should absolutely have to pay for that 100%. I agree. If we are asking to take resources out of H Heartland Township, send them to lakes or farms, uh, we should have to pay for that. Keeping that in mind, and also the fact that, um, Hartland Township hasn't signed anything with Livingston County yet. If we sign this and send them over it tomorrow, they can't sign it and send it back because they don't have an agreement yet. So, we can make them an offer.
176And I would suggest that that's what we do, that we make them an offer of what it's worth to pull H Heartland Township deputies out of Hartland and send them to to Farms and Lakes. Um, I don't know if that's 5% of the contract, 7% of the contract, but that would, you know, I I think um if anybody has an idea of an number, but I would move to amend the uh H Heartland Township School Covered Expectations Contract to be 5% of the township contract rather than 20%. So, you're moving to amend item 2B instead of as presented to be specific of 5%. Am I hearing that correctly? Currently, it's stated on the contract is 20%. So, I'm I'm stating that we asked to reduce it to five, which I believe covers their time to
177leave Hartland Township. Somebody has another number, I'm open, but I think that seems much more reasonable. So I have a mo a motion to amend item 2B by Mr. Scott. Instead of indicating extension of services as presented, extension of services as 5% of total cost. Am I hearing that correctly? 5% of the cost stated on the contract because I they can go hire four more agents. I'm not paying 5% of that. But I'm saying currently it's stated on here that we're going to pay in year 1 20% of $287,89740. What I'm suggesting is we offer them 5% of $287,897.40. Mr. Scott is moving to amend item 2B, Livingston County Sheriff road patrol extension of services. at the end of this road patrol extension of services 5% as presented in the contract in front of us.
178Is that correct? That is correct. Is somebody supporting this motion? I support supported by Mr. Gooleski. Any additional discussion? I think again it's it's hard to come up with a number when the five of us had a meeting. It was our understanding that in good faith Superintendent Hughes did have a meeting. uh conversation at least with supervisor loose and it was agreed upon 20%. So, if we agree with the 5% and pass that, we don't know what H Heartland Township's going to do. And I think again the frustration is in the moment we're coming up with these ideas, very good because it would save the district money. But there's been not four weeks, but multiple weeks of planning that led us to this agreement to vote on today. Whereas we're learning of this in the
179moment, like why 5%, why not six or four or 12? It's just a number and we just propose and hope that they bite while we still try to plan our budget with this action item that we had so that Mrs. Boy can move us forward financially. It's just it's hard to function as a board and we have these last minute ideas. So it it is hard to function. I agree with you Mr. Campbell, but a few months ago we okayed and and approved uh a way to get together and have discussions um special meetings that discussed policies like this. We have yet to have one. And that's why I proposed it because some of the things that we get caught up on and we get angry and we get bitter and we start rolling our
180eyes at one another. This should not happen. And no one is either calling somebody a liar or saying that you guys do didn't do your due diligence. There just seems to be a conflict of information. That's it. Agreed. And there's no no offense taken just quickly. That is why though we met with five people as opposed to one person individually taking the initiative to go and do something on their own and come back and I spoke to all these people and have this information. So that's why we have to include people to lead up to the meeting when we can all make an informed decision with information. I I'm with you just sharing the thought. So the I mean the 20% is we were at what two months ago we were at 30% or something.
181Now we're at 20. I mean, um, yeah, they could turn it down and they could say no or they could negotiate and say, "Let's do 10 or let's do 12." But, um, and then we'll take that back up. I'm suggesting that this board send them an offer of what we think it's fair, and I'm looking for a fair number. I I don't think anybody has data on how many hours we're pulling these deputies outside of H Heartland Township. So, if we had data, you know, or you wanted to make it hourly, I I want to be fair. I want to compensate them. I just don't think so. When they're leaving H Heartland Township, yes, we should have to bear that burden. Absolutely 100%. Um, but for them to hang out in the village in the
182morning, we shouldn't be paying for that. I'm sorry. There's nobody in this community that thinks we should pay for the sheriff's deputies to sit in the village in the morning um just because there's a lot of school, but that's what they should do. you know, should we pay them to chase down people who are who are illegally passing buses? Absolutely not. That's what they should be doing. That's why they exist. Not to have the school district have to pay them to chase down uh dangerous folks in a community is absolutely insane. So, if there's another number, if somebody thinks they spend 7% of their time in Brighton, I can't imagine that they spend 7% of their time in Brighton. My guess is it's 2 or 3%. I think five is um is completely reasonable. President
183Gabot, can I call for a roll call vote on this? Any additional discussion on the 5% ad hearing? None. Mr. Scott, it's the amend. Just to be clear, it is the amended motion. Mr. Gooleski, yes. Mrs. Coleman, no. Mr. Keller, yes. Mrs. Shaw, no. Mr. Campbell, no. And I'm a no. That motion does not pass. Moving on. Original motion. Item 2B, Livingston County Sheriff Road Patrol. Originally, a motion made by Mrs. Shaw, supported by Mrs. Coleman. Moving for a roll call vote. Mr. Scott, no. Mr. Gooleski, no. Mrs. Coleman, yes. Mr. Keller, no. Mrs. Shaw, yes. Mr. Campbell, yes. And I'm a yes. That motion passes. Item 2 C, approval of HA updated contract. I move that the board of education upon the recommendation of the superintendent and the assistant superintendent of personnel approves the
184HA updated contract as presented. Motion made by Mrs. Coleman, supported by Mrs. Shaw. Any discussion of item 2C, approval of HA updated contract? Hearing none, Mr. Scott? Yes. Mr. Goleski? Yes. Mrs. Coleman, yes. Mr. Keller, yes. Mrs. Shaw, yes. Mr. Campbell, yes. Emma, yes. That motion passes. Item 2D, 2425 budget amendments. I move that the board of education upon the recommendation of the superintendent and the chief financial officer approves the 2024 25 budget amendments as presented. Support motion by Mrs. Shaw, supported by Ms. Coleman. Any discussion on 2D budget amendments? Hearing none. Mr. Scott, yes. Mr. Goleski? Yes. Mrs. Coleman? Yes. Mr. Keller? Yes. Mrs. Shaw? Yes. Mr. Campbell? Yes. I'm a yes. That motion passes. Item 2E, General Appropriations Act resolution for the 2526 budget. I move that the board of education upon the
185recommendation of the superintendent and the chief financial officer approves the general appropriations act resolution as presented. support motion by Mrs. Coleman, supported by Mrs. Shaw. Any discussion on 2E general appropriations act? So, is this where Mr. Keller's motion comes in then? No. To uh fund the SSOS. Oh, that I thought you were talking about something else that Mr. Killer is moving. Um, isn't that what you were talking about when we were talking about um He could certainly add it as a a motion. I don't know that it's going to be added into this. He he can move to add it to the agenda, but I don't know that it's going to make it into this budget cycle. If we amend the budget, make a motion to amend the budget to include funding for two more
186SSOs. You want to do that without Rachel modeling it? Well, I mean, we already had it modeled in Mr. Campbell's information. And it wasund about 130,000 a year to we had it modeled out for the current status plus two was about 130,000 just in the past she's modeled it out against fund balance just for well know I mean it would it would dip into fund balance by 130,000 because we're in a deficit of 1.1 million but Mr. Keller can certainly Do we amend the appropriations? This is totally out of my This is I guess I don't really know what to say. Um so you you want to add an agenda item to the budget or to you want to add it to this appropriations act or you want to add something to the agenda? I
187don't understand. I'm saying that we would it be possible to amend the budget to include the additional two SSOs that we've been discussing. I mean it again it goes back to what M trusty Campbell has said like five times like we've had this this should have been brought to all of us before this like putting Rachel on the spot and what's it going to be and I mean I don't think this is an appropriate time to talk about adding Can I ask to the budget? Can it be included in a budget amendment? Like say you guys discuss it at the next meeting and you agree that you want to add that because once you get your final budget, you don't have to get your final budget numbers from the state, you have to amend this
188anyway. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So, but it I mean it was not modeled by Rachel, but Mr. Campbell and Mr. Keller did model out pricing for our status quo and then for a few other options including adding two more SSOs so that every building could be covered. And I I guess what I'm saying is I believe that is what's necessary for the district to have adequate safety coverage. Then I think adding it requesting to have it added to the agenda next month for a discussion item would be what would need to be done. Okay. Yeah, I think we move forward with this because it's already been her appropriations have already been modeled out and then that would be in a second amendment and we have to we have to approve this by July 1st. Okay. All
189right. Motion by Mrs. Coleman supported by Mrs. Shaw. Any additional discussion on 2E? Mr. Scott? Yes. Mr. Goleski? Yes. Mrs. Coleman? Yes. Mr. Keller? Yes. Mrs. Shaw? Yes. Mr. Campbell? Yes. I'm a yes. That motion passes. Item for I'm sorry, 3A. Item for discussion, breakfast and lunch prices. So, I'll let Rachel jump in. Rachel. Yep. Um, so we just wanted to have a a brief discussion and just make everyone aware. I don't have anything in the in the packet regarding this. It's just uh it's just more of a of a heads upformational piece um that may be coming up here pretty soon. Um, so as you know, last two years, Michigan has provided free meals to all students regardless of their income status. Um, and we also know that the state hasn't adopted its budget
190yet for next year. So what we don't know is whether that program is going to continue or not. Um, so if meals are not free and not included as part of the state's budget next year, we will need to look at uh adjusting our pricing for what we charge uh for those for those paid students. Um the last time we've adjusted meal prices was back in 2019 and 20. Uh so it's it's been quite a bit of time. And in those last five years, we've had a free meal program of some sort of or another in the last four of of those five years. So we really haven't had to uh make adjustments uh since then. But we also know that since then a lot has changed. Um and at this point uh we're waiting
191for two things. Number one, state's got to pass its budget. so we know which direction we need to go. Um and secondly, the USDA uh provides um a tool, let's say, on on what those meal prices need to be because at the end of the day, what you can't have is you can't have your free meals subsidizing those paid meals. Uh and they haven't released that tool yet. So, I don't really have numbers to give you. Um you know, kind of doing some early modeling, it looked like it could be between 50 and 75 cents uh increase. Um but we'll run that calculation once we're ready and uh and and um bring a recommendation uh when it when it comes time. Uh but we wanted to give everyone an early heads up just because based
192on the way things are going uh it seems like we may need to act pretty quickly uh just based on when the state finalizes its budget when we need to. Um the last two years the state of Michigan has given you 100% Yes. of the whatever. Yeah. They they provide the difference between what the federal government provides and Okay. And so the federal government gives you X and the state gives you X and that makes it 100% have 100% subsidize at the federal free rate. Got it. Yes. Okay. So we and we don't know what the federal reimbursement is going to be or the state reimbursement. We don't know if Michigan is going to subsidize include if they're going to subsidize those meals again. So we go back to a normal program like we normally
193like before like before where you know if if if you qualify yes you'd have to qualify for free or reduced meals. What were what were meals before this free program? What were we charging? What were we charging? So uh it's different based on the building. Okay. So breakfasts were anywhere between you know $2 for elementary and uh $2 or $3 for high school. Okay. lunch is closer to 2.75 or three or four dollars for high school. Um, you know, so even at, you know, let's say a 75% or a 75 cent increase, right? You're still looking at 475 at the high end for a high school lunch, which is still better than Jimmy Johns, I guess. But, um, yeah. So, um, but, you know, just a heads up that this that this may be coming.
194And um we also know that meals will at least be three free through September 30th because the state year end uh is is September 30th. So that'll kind of throw a little little confusion. It'll it'll be a little messy, but um but we're just going to do the best we can. The other thing, um, Lisa Wave, she's going to be mad at me because I'm calling her out, but, um, Lisa does a fantastic job with our food service program. The, um, the endless regulations and things that she needs to be on top of that are going to be further complicated by uh, more more strict, you know, dietary requirements. It's just amazing me her her depth of knowledge and she does a wonderful job. So, she has actually shared the um regulatory book that she
195has and it's like this thick of regulations. So, I can't even imagine having to follow that. Rachel, I just have a real quick question. I don't want to get into the weeds too much here, but in terms of the food, um the actual vendors that supply that, do we have any choice or say in that or is that directed by the government? We get meals, we get food given to us, and that's it. How does that work? Yeah, we have we have say in in the vendors that that we choose and and we are largely part of different consortiums, Lisa, not if I'm saying this correctly, um that that um help with the pricing and and the cost on that. Um but we do have we do have some control over that. Yeah, I was
196just curious as to whether or not there's any room for competition, let's say, with the money that we're given and you know to Okay, thanks Lisa. So, um depending on what type of food it is. So, we get we don't it used to be you know they drop boxes of chickens off at the back of the the school and you had to process them. So now we get what they call it a commodity bank and it's a certain amount of money that we have to pay um that we can use towards commodity foods. So um we can pick our commodity processor our overall consortium and we use the the Great Lakes consortium because it's the largest one with the most um resources and there's um three in the state of Michigan and that's the one
197that we pick for our commodity foods. anything we buy commercial. Um we do have a consortium that we also join to provide us um special pricing, but we can spend a certain percentage outside of that if we find a better deal somewhere. Um but because we use Gordon Food Service and the Great Lakes Commodity, we're able to find a lots of different vendors in there and lots of local foods um that even though it's coming from Gordon's, a lot of them are from coming from local farmers. Gotcha. Great. Thank you. I just didn't know how that worked. I didn't know how the whole inner work. They give us a little chunk of money and it depends and how much we get is based on the the previous year's um lunch counts. Anything else? Okay. All
198right. So, Rachel, I'm sure you'll have follow-up information for everyone. Yep. Absolutely. As soon as we know, we will let you know. So, um and hopefully that's sooner rather than later. Awesome. Item 3B, universal preschool. Just want to make the board aware um that and I think the board is well aware that we're moving our 51 building towards a universal preschool building. This year we had two and a half sections. Next year we'll have six sections which we have uh they're filled up uh from what I understand. U maybe a seventh section. uh LEA will run a halfyear program here in this building and shift them over to 51 at semester next year I believe Carol and so we just want you all to be aware that we're moving in this direction with a consortium
199a collaborative effort between all of the county schools to ensure that uh the fiduciary which is LEA is going to be paying for the employees um and then everything else is reimburseed based basically but that way wages are set so that we're not competing with other school districts in the county and what they're paying their their teachers and their support people in the classroom. We'll have our own uh director in Jessica Panzenza who is there now and we will again move towards 51 building a fully preschool universal preschool program and out of the business of daycare. Uh, but that's still coming and if we can go 11 sections next year, we'll go 11 sections. If not, we could still have room for some other things happening there. So, I'll turn this over to Dave, Carol,
200and Rachel if there's any questions. One quick question, and Mr. I think I emailed you about this. I had a concern about an employee that did not know how how it would affect her from going from a H Heartland employee to a Lisa employee. And what uh what happens to those folks then? Um they're not going to lose any time within the system here, are they? In other words, they don't start off as brand new employees now with Lisa, do they? I don't I don't know what they actually have. Um there's there's not an association or anything. They're at will employees, year-to-year employees. So, Carol can probably answer that best. I think there's one teacher I know that has some bank time. I don't know if that's what you're asking about. Okay. And I had
201met talked to Dave about that. We're still working on details with that. Okay. Asking about Well, wasn't just that. It was the longevity of years that she had with Hartland and then after x number of years now she's going to become a Lisa employee and how does that affect her and her retirement and all that? I had absolutely no idea how to answer that question. So yeah, that that it's the same system. It's the OS. Yeah. Well, yeah, that the steps their pay scale will be the same as far as steps and longevity and things like that and they'll work it where our employees would fit into those steps. Um I will say that their steps are are pay more money than ours do. So she she's going to wind up making more money than
202she did before. Um, but there's no there's no that that has not been determined yet as far as that goes, but it that will their longevity here will translate over to Lesa. Okay. Yeah. So, and really I don't know where or where that would be to notify her of that yet. All right. And that was the big concern. If she has X number of years with Harland, then how much does she lose or whatever. So, yeah, the years I I can't guarantee, but the pay will be more. Okay. Yeah. This this is a really good thing. This universal prek is a great thing uh for our district and for our kids in Harland. And so this year we had three classrooms and next year we'll have six classrooms. And it really depends on numbers on
203how quickly it can grow. Awesome. All right. Any questions on that? Um sounds like Dave and Carol are taking lead on additional questions. Um item 4 a future meetings just for the public's awareness June 23rd a special meeting for board candidate interviews at 6:30 right here July 1st a special meeting um appointment of new board members 6:30 July 21st is the organizational meeting 6:30 um right here we don't have board meetings anywhere else guys sorry I don't think I need to say that item 4Bformational items I just have one quick thing um with respect to the interview questions. I had sent out an initial list of questions requested feedback and input. So, thank you to you guys who sent me the input. Um, I will compile the final list of questions and make sure everybody
204has that ahead of the next meeting, the special meeting. Um, I'll reach out to each of you to confirm like what question or questions you would prefer to ask. Those who submitted questions like Mr. Goleski would have first dibs on his question that he submitted. Um but if you have no preference, I'll just assign you a question so that everybody knows in advance what they'll be asked. And then also um Renee will have provided for us um one page each or one copy each of that list of questions for each candidate so that you can jot your notes down with those questions. She'll have that at the table for us. So all questions will be there. We should be all good. That's it. All right. Item five, closed session superintendent evaluation discussion. Mr. Keller, I
205move uh that the board of education in accordance with MCL 15.268 section 8A and upon the request of the superintendent enters into close session to discuss the superintendent evaluation. Motion by Mr. Keller support supported by Mrs. Coleman. Any discussion? Do we have a is was there a formal request for close? A formal request. Thank you. Yeah. So I know the the packet reads a little differently, but I felt it was important that we cite the actual statute and confirmation that Mr. Hughes had asked for it. So that's why it reads a little bit different. And I had reached out to President Gabbach and Vice President Coleman just to kind of make them aware of this and unfortunately it was too late to make the change in the packet. So for any of you are will
206you make sure Rene gets that language? Yes, I can do that. And then um I also I guess is there a second? Sorry. Um Mrs. Coleman, are you supporting that? Um I just also before we vote, I want to point out I guess something that kind of stuck with me a little bit last year. So I guess when I when I looked up the definition of what a consensus is, you know, in the spirit of kind of how we interacted very well, I think with the um strategic planning process and I thought it was a very collaborative and I would say that it was more of a consensus process that you know as we go into this close session I hope that we can do that. And I did want to share some things that
207I kind of pulled out from, you know, as trying to trying to get more accustomed to using AI, right, in my daily life. And so I asked Grock, you know, if four out of seven people is considered a consensus. And and the answer that Grock gave me is that four out of seven is not typically considered a consensus. Consensus generally implies a broad agreement, often unanimously or near nearly so, among a group. While four out of seven is a majority, it falls short of the stronger agreement usually associated with consensus, which might require at least a supermajority. The exact threshold can vary based on the group's rules or context, but four out of seven is more accurately described as a simple majority. And just to get a second opinion because I don't want to just
208take one. I asked chat GPT what it thought of um a consensus and it says strict unaminity or near unamity. I can't say that word but consensus often implies general or overwhelming agreement sometimes approaching unonymity. In such cases four out of seven would not be considered a consensus. And then if it when it talks about collaborative or deliberative process, it says consensus often means that everyone can live with the decision even if not everyone fully agrees. In such settings, four out of seven would not qualify unless the other three actively consented or did not object. So again, I want hopefully everyone will take that into consideration, including our facilitator when we go into the close session. So Mr. Keller, just so that you are aware and I can send you the exact statute, but the
209state of Michigan defines consensus. It's unlike uh some other states. So, for instance, uh consensus is defined uh as a minimum of four votes in the state of Michigan, whereas in other um states, for example, if you had a board where two people weren't there and you would have three out of five in the state of Michigan, that would not pass. But I'll send you that. I think he's referring to the languages used by MASB specifically for the superintendent evaluation. I don't believe statute superintendent evaluation statute uses the word consensus. It's the overarching MDE, but I'm happy to send it. No, but I but correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. You're referring to the language in the superintendent evaluation. Well, I think when we all had training, right, the whole purpose of this new tool
210was that the team, the board reached consensus on something. And I I think that last year and previous years that we've fallen short of that and it was essentially a majority decision. So again, just want to point that out. Any additional discussion on item five hearing? None. Mr. Scott, yes. Mr. Goleski? Yes. Mrs. Coleman? Yes. Mr. Keller? Yes. Mrs. Shaw? Yes. Mr. Campbell? Yes. Name a yes. That motion passes. Um just to the public, we will shut down the live stream and we will um come back to resume and adopt the final rating. But that is it after this. We'll be on pause. We'll be on pause. We're back in open session. Yes, sir. At 10:34 p.m. Okay, as we talked about in close session, we'll go through these A1 through A6, then we'll move
211on to B, on to C, on to D, and then E, then student growth, and finally progress towards goals in the area of A1 policy involvement three just we're good wait I I didn't put a three so are we all right how are we communicating here without violating open meetings act you're communicating just fine right now okay so I'm hearing a disagreement on three can we come to consensus on a two and a No, no consent on two and a half. All right, show of hands on a three, please. One, two, three, four. Three on a four. Three. A2 gold development. A three. No. No. Two and a half. Hands on a three, please. One, two, three, four. [Music] A3 information 2.5 on J. You'll get feedback. Y was computers wrapped up there. All right.
212Uh, I'm sorry. A3. 2.5. 2.5. Hands on 2.5. No. All right. Hands on a 2.5. One, two, three, four. Thank you. Materials and background. A4 a three. All right. Let me see. Hands on a three. One, two, three, four. Thank you. Or questions. A5. A two. Hands on a two. I've got three. Hands on a two. Two and a half. Hands on a two and a half. I've got two on a two and a half. One and a half. Hands on a one and a half. Which one are we on? Five. Hands on one and a half. Hands on a three. Hands on a three. How about a one? Can I see hands on a one? I've got three on a one. All right, we're going to go back up again. One and a half.
213Hands on a one and a half. Hands on a two. Four. Hands on a two. That is a two for A5. Board questions. A6 board development 2.5. Hands on a 2.5, please. One, two, three. Hands on a three, please. Hands on a two. One, two. Hands on a one and a half. Hands on a one. Okay, I've got three at a one. Let's try a two again. Hands on a two. Hands on a two and a half. Hands on a two board development A6 two for the area of A1 through A6 2.58333 area of community relations B1 Three. Hands on a three. Four hands. Thank you. B2. Community parent input. Three. Hands on a three. Four hands on a three. Media relations. B3. Two. Can I see hands on a two? Four hands on a
214two. Thank you. B4. District image 2.5. Hands on a 2.5. Four. Hands on a 2.5. Approachability B5. Hands on a three. Hands on a two and a half. All right. I had three on a three. I've got three on a two and a half. Can I see hands on two and a half again, please? Hands on a three. Okay. Four on a two and a half. That was approachability, correct? D5. B5. Okay. All right. So, for the area of B1 through B5, I have a 2.6 staff relations. C1 staff input. Hands on a three. Four hands on a three. Thank you. Staff communication. Hands on a three. Hands on a two and a half. Hands on a two. All right. I had three hands on a three. Let's try two and a half again. Two
215and a half. Two and a half. Two and a half. Four on a two and a half. Uh, that was staff communications. All right. Personnel matters. C3, a three. Hands on a three. Thank you. Delegation of duties. C4. Hands on a three. Four hands. Thank you. C5, recruitment. Hands on a two. Six on a two. Thank you. C6, labor relations. Hands on a three. Four hands on a three. And the visibility in district 2.5. Can I see hands on a 2.5? Four hands on a 2.5. Thank you. That is an overall for C1 through C7. C7 2.714286. D. Business and Finance D1, Budget Development and Management 2.5. Can I see hands on a 2.5? Can I see hands on a two? Got two hands on a two. Can I see hands on a one and
216a half? All right. Can I see D1, management, development, uh, budget development, management? Can I see hands on a three? Okay. Four hands on a three. Budget reports three. Hands on a three. Four. Thank you. Financial controls. D3. Hands on a three. Five hands. Thank you. Facility management. D4. A two. Hands on a two. The high. Six on a two. Uh, no. Sorry, five on a two. Thank you. And D5 resource allocation. Hands on a three. Okay. Four for a three. That is an overall score of 2.8. Instructional leadership performance evaluation system. E1, hands on a three. Thank you. E2, building level leadership. Hands on a three. Four. Hands on a three. Thank you. Staff development. E3 2.5. Hands on a 2.5. I see three. How about a two? I see three on a two.
217Can my two and a halfs come down to a two? Can we come to consensus on a two for staff development? Majority. We'd be coming to majority. Let me see hands on a two. All right. I see four hands on a two. Thank you. School improvement E4 three hands on a three 2.5 two All right. Can I go back up to 2.5? Can I see hands on a 2.5, please? Can I see hands on a three, please? All right, I've got three on three. I had a couple two and a halfs. Can we come up to a three? This is school improvement. School improvement plans are in place at all buildings and aligned to districtwide goals. All right, hands on a two and a half, please. One, two. My threes willing to come down. All
218right, let's keep hands up. Let's see hands for a three. Are my two and a halfs willing to come up? All right, I'm going to go there. 275. Okay. 275 E5 curriculum three. Hands on a three. Thank you. Instruction. E6. Hands on a three. One, two, three, four, five. Hands on a three. Thank you. Student voice. E7. 2.5. Hands on a 2.5. Four. Thank you. Support for students. E8. Hands on a three. Four. Thank you. and professional knowledge E9 hands on a three please four thank you that is a category score E1 through E9 of 2.805556 805556. Our rating areas A through E, total score 2.71547619, a 91%. Moving into the area of student growth, I've got a three. Can I see hands on a three for student growth, please? Four hands. Thank you. Progress
219toward districtwide goals. I have a three. Thank you. Professional practice 2.71547619 student growth three progress toward districtwide goals three total score 2.815059524 815059524 that is a 94% which falls squarely in the 85 to 100% range of effective. Next steps I will provide a copy of the PowerPoint here with all the scores. I will provide a copy of some uh observations and notes that I took during our close session. uh some ideas on some things to look at for the next evaluation cycle. Reminding you all that with your upcoming adoption hopefully of your new strategic plan, uh that when it comes time for developing goals for your superintendent evaluation for the next round, just about everything that we'll be expecting of the superintendent is going to be found in one of three places. It's going to
220be found in the evaluation instrument itself. It's going to be found in the my kit plan, our child, our uh school improvement plans that we have in place. It's going to be found in the strategic plan. So, between those three places, we should find just about everything that we're expecting from our superintendent for the next year. If we as a majority of the board decide that we want to come up with one maybe two goals above and beyond what's in the instrument, above and beyond what's in our my kit plan, above and beyond what's in the strategic plan. That's okay. Just make sure that they're not duplicative or redundant of everything else that we're already expecting of the superintendent. Like I said, between the instrument that we just went over, the MYKIP, and the strategic
221plan, there should be more than enough goals for you to evaluate your superintendent on next year. So, when you sit down to start planning out what that process looks like for the next evaluation cycle, please keep all that in mind. Okay. Any further questions for me tonight? You'll send that to I'll send it to Superintendent Copy Board President. I would just like to go on the record since we're in open session that I I I'm still not comfortable with the way this evaluation was done in the fact that it really was majority as as we put on the record rather than consensus. And I don't believe as we discussed in close session, I don't believe that this um evaluation tool was tested for a majority. Uh it was as as Mr. Bennett pointed out, tested
222for consensus and I I don't think we've appropriately applied the um uh the tool to this case. So I just want to make sure that that's documented and go on a record with that. Moving to item six, superintendent evaluation rating. I move that the board of education rate Superintendent Hughes 2024 2025 evaluation as effective. Motion by Mrs. Shaw supported by Mrs. Coleman. We are to have no discussion. That discussion happened in close session. Mr. Scott, no. Mr. Goaleski? No. Mrs. Coleman? Yes. Uh Mr. Keller? No. Mrs. Shaw? Yes. Mr. Campbell. Yes. I'm a yes. That motion passes as effective. Item seven, we're adjourned.